Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Mutant Past

This is a writeup of a session that happened over 3 months ago! I wanted to do it for a long time now, but been unable due to my laziness/schedule. Still, it was so much fun that, even after so long, it still feels like it happened just a week ago.

It started with me and Julia trying to convince our friend Adam to play some D&D with us, since we knew he has played RPGs in the past. He said that he would like to, but is afraid that he's gonna kill it, since he always had problems with immersing into the game world. I told him that random jokes and bursting into laughter is nothing bad, but he wasn't quite convinced.

That is when I devised a master plan to lure him into gaming with us.

Since I was already pretty stoked about playing some Mutant Future I decided to kill two pigeons with one rock (or whatever that idiom is in English) and use the gonzo atmosphere of the game to convince Adam. Knowing what he likes, I showed him one illustration form MF handbook (the 50's astronaut sheriff riding a giant spider-chicken from page 23) and said: " Hey dude, look at this! Maybe that's what you'd like to play?"

He obviously laughed and said it's an awesome idea, but he was still kinda nervous about it. I told him not to worry, that we're gonna have loads of fun. Finally when an opportunity appeared, we met at my house.

We started in a most peculiar way. By rolling a joint (another step in my plan to make us feel relaxed and comfortable) and deciding when to order pizza, since the time pepperoni hits the gaming table is crucial to the whole evening. Order it too early, or too late and the game might be delayed/interrupted/suddenly ended by the heaviness caused by the cheese. We settled to eat and smoke in the break between making characters and playing.

And so character creation begun, while the joint lay on the table like a loaded Chekov's gun.

It soon became clear that we won't really need it. Choosing races and rolling mutations was enough to bring us to our knees and laughing to tears.

Adam quickly picked a synthetic android (though I tried to tempt him into making a robot on custom rules), but Julia couldn't decide whether to make a mutant plant or an animal. I decided that they can create two characters each and pick the one they like better, keeping the other as a back up since I still felt a bit uneasy with new monsters and not knowing how fast they can kill the party (a party of only 2 mind you).

Julia ended up with a nameless palm tree (thanks Jeff):

Str: 14 Dex: 17 Con: 16 Int: 14 Wil: 12 Cha: 10
Hp: 49 AC: 7

Mutations:
• Aprehinsile Tendrils (Dex 10)
• Radioactive Emissions (150ft./10d6)
• Pituitary Deformation
• Density Alteration
• Meta Concert
• Echo-location
• Unique Sense (smell water for 1 mile)

Pretty badass, isn't it? Her second character was no less awesome. It's a wolf, with wings and Vampiric Field, Killing Sphere and Control Weather mutations!

Adam was less successful with his rolls (and yes, I made him roll for mutations, cause it's funnier that way). He set out to create an assassin android, but this is what he ended up with:

Mr. Apple, Synthetic Android

Str: 14 Dex: 15 Con: 13 Int: 13 Wil: 11 Cha: 6
Hp: 50 AC: 7

Mutations:
• Chameleon Epidermis
• Optic Emission (3d6)
• Aberrant Form (large legs, twice the speed)

In other conditions, this would be a great character, but compared to Julia's doom bringing dendro-carnivores, his was kinda weak. I was trying to cheer him up by telling him he's rolling mutations that are in line with his original idea of an assassin, but than he rolled those damn funny large legs. He ended up drawing a huge all-star sneaker as his character pic.

His other character was also quite on the other side. It's a duck that spits napalm!

After we finished filling out character sheets and buying useless equipment (like a dog for an android, about which we forgot instantly), we took the aforementioned break. We ordered pizza, chilled for a couple of minutes and smoked that damn joint... This was a mistake.

You see, I especially made it extra light, so that it would just loosen us up and not send us flying under the ceiling. But the moment we started playing and eating pizza, all hell broke loose. In a good sense. Though I was the DM, I felt like watching Mutant Big Lebowski (and not because of drugs).

My players simply blew me away. The dialogues between the Palm Tree and Mr. Apple (aka the cowardly assassin android) were just pure gold. Every several minutes we would all roll on the floor laughing, because of something we would say. It was also the first time in my life I was afraid someone might choke to death on pizza.

Still, I feel that drugs had nothing to do with it. Mutant Future is just a great game and after the game we agreed we didn't need any superficial help in having ultimate fun.

I won't reveal much of what happened during the session, as I used some great stuff from this blog and my players might go back there. Let me just say, they were running away from giant anthropomorphic ants.

What I can say though, is that they solved a mystery of who's killing people in a small mutant western town, run by Roby - a sheriff that's a blend of those two guys.

Everything played out great. There were moments of genuine tension when the players where investigating an abandoned, supposedly haunted house. And some comedy relief when they found out that the strange creatures living underneath the house are actually cowardly Cockroachoids who will sell them the information they need for a nice load of shit.

In the end, both Julia and Adam were screaming for more and that's what is a measure of a good game. I think that, with the exams out of our way, I will try to go for a full on session in a bit darker tone. Still, for retro-stupid gaming, MF is probably unbeatable!

Session Quotes:

Me: " You see ...."
Julia: " I HAVE NO EYE'S DAMMIT!"

2 minutes later

Me: " You are walking down an old, squeaking staircase, it's pitch black and you can't see..."
Julia: "For fuck sake man!"

close to the end of the game

Julia: "Hey man, what happened to your dog?"

1 comment:

  1. Hey, I'm flattered! Thanks for the shout-out. I've been a bit neglectful to my blog as of late, but I have a whooole bunch of stuff coming, including an announcement of a new MutFut supplement that's been in the works for a while.

    ReplyDelete