This week I’ll be running a Saturday morning MCC session of The Museum at the End of Time for the Summer Knights Online Charity RPG Event.
Not knowing the players’ experience level with Mutant Crawl Classics, I typed up a handy “What to Roll” reference sheet to hand out before the game, based on the similar DCC reference by Matthias Weeks:
I’m currently working on a second volume of The Gongfarmer Militia — my DCC zine of hirelings and henchmen — for Mutant Crawl Classics. Translating the NPC system in the first volume to the post-apocalyptic setting of MCC is a challenge. The sci-fi games MCC is modeled on such as Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha didn’t include henchmen in their rules, so there’s no tradition to draw on as there was for expanding the hirelings rules from Dungeon Crawl Classics and its predecessors. But perhaps more challenging is the fact that MCC doesn’t really include a coherent economic system of any kind.
As written, the entirety of MCC’s economic system is contained in two lines: “To barter with fellow tribesmen, the villages of the characters all trade goods using an abstract concept of ancient origin by assigning trade values in terms of ‘creds’. Creds are simply a non-material value system used to barter goods, and not an actual physical currency.”
This lack of any functional economy makes crafting hirelings and henchmen more challenging. For NPCs joining the party, this can be alleviated by focusing on non-monetary rewards for serving a party of Seekers: safety, power, a sense of belonging, etc. But for NPCs offering services it’s not so clear cut. If a tinkerer has the ability to repair broken artifacts they aren’t going to do so for some vague sense of camaraderie with the party. A pilot who’s maintained a functional gyrocopter isn’t going to trade transportation (with its inherent risk and fuel costs) for protection during a journey she wouldn’t otherwise undertake The genre conventions of post-apocalyptic books and movies dictates that they’ll want something more concrete and tangible such as food, power sources, or rare trade goods.
Instead of tying services to an abstract “cred” value, I’m moving instead towards a system based on Andrew Theisen’s blog post on post-apocalyptic bartering. His system relies on creating exchange rates between various categories of goods — for instance, 8 livestock are worth 1 weapon. This level of abstraction gives plenty of room for judges to customize the system for their setting, including inserting their custom equipment into the exchange rate.
The piece I’m working on is adding services to the exchange rate for NPCs offering specialized services such as repairing vehicles or hacking into computer systems. Post-apocalyptic literature is rife with such characters and I want to make sure they’re represented in the zine without making the exchange rate so granular as to make it difficult to use.
If you’ve tried expanding the economic rules of MCC or any other post-apocalyptic rules set, fell free to drop me a line at jonathan@peraspera.games and tell me about it!
Seekers of the Un-K’nown by Louis Hoefer is the first module in Dandyline Games’ Classics Mutated line for Mutant Crawl Classics. (Full disclosure: Hoefer is a friend and part of my regular gaming group.) The adventure takes inspiration and tropes from the classic D&D module In Search of the Unknown and reimagines them in the post-apocalyptic world of Terra AD: the hidden fortress of Quasquenton is now the ancient war bunker Quartum-Q, home of the long-dead heroes Rogo Khan & Zee L’Gar. The PCs have been sent by their tribe to discover why people have gone missing.
The module opens with a large hexcrawl across an ancient battlefield littered with unexploded ordinance, giant mutant weasels, and digital “ghosts” of artifacts of the ancient humans. The base itself is a sprawling two-level edifice filled with squatting beastmen, malfunctioning robots, and tantalizing clues about the secret history of the base’s former inhabitants. That means there’s a lot packed into the module’s 54 pages. Judges should do a thorough read-through of the adventure before running it, although Hoefer has included some helpful hints for running the adventure.
Seekers can easily encompass 3-6 game sessions when the hexcrawl is included. When I ran the module at Gen Con in 2022, I skipped over the wilderness portion and dropped the PCs at the door of the fortress. I also moved around a few rooms on the map on the fly to ensure the players discovered the most salient secrets before our four-hour session was over. That said, the adventure was a big hit with the players (even though two PCs went down in the final fight). I’d also recommend removing the holo-entertainment room if time is a factor, as PCs can easily get sucked into a redundant mini-adventure there.
The artwork by Santiago Iborra and Christopher Tupa does a good job of conveying the sights and scale of the adventure, but the maps can sometimes feel a little cramped due to all the detail in them.
While it may take a little extra prep on the part of the Judge, Seekers of the Un-K’nown is a fun addition to any post-apocalyptic campaign, offering plenty of challenges and puzzles for your party of seekers.
Goodman Games will be hosting another one of their fantastic online cons this May 6-7! I’ll be running two sessions on Saturday:
A Fairly Odd Tale (12n-4p Eastern Time): A band of hapless adventurers is sucked into a book of fairy tales and must use their wits and cunning to make it out alive! I’ll be kickstarting a print run of this module later this year. Come get a sneak peak!
Museum at the End of Time (7p-11p Eastern Time): The Rite of Passage is a generational custom, and the PCs’ future position and rank within their society is largely determined by the quality of artifacts brought back to the tribe! This 0-level funnel is one of my favorite adventures to run at cons!
Event tickets go on sale tomorrow, so get your badge now!
I arrived in Indianapolis in the early afternoon and got my vaccination status verified. I wandered down to the stadium and must have passed my luck check, because I later found out I shouldn’t have made it down there without a badge. In the stadium I beheld the wonder of the Wizard Van in all its glory! Then I met some of the Goodman Games’ judges for a group photo before picking up my GM badge. On my way out the door I ran into Alexi and Leah Sargeant of Cloven Pine Games! Alexi was kind enough to sign my copy of The Great Soul Train Robbery.
I started Gen Con with a session of Savage Worlds, a game I’ve heard a lot about but hadn’t played before. It was a 1950s Stargate-esque scenario; I played a military medic escorting a scientific expedition to another dimension where we saved a some villagers from being sacrificed to a hideous beast. I found Savage Worlds very quick to pick up, but a little swingy for my taste — the exploding dice mechanic makes every roll a lot more tense than I expected.
After a quick trip through the exhibitors (where I picked up some Goodman Games exclusives) I met up with my friend Luau Lou for lunch before setting up for my session of The Museum at the End of Time. I only had three of five players show up, but they had a great time traversing the Taboo Lands and descending into the titular museum.
In the morning I ran a second session of Museum which included a woman who came with her husband — it was her first RPG, ever! In the afternoon I ran Luau Lou’s module Seekers of the Un-K’nown, a Mutant Crawl Classics romp that may or may not be based on a classic D&D module. I was a little nervous since I hadn’t run it before, but it wound up being a great session with some memorable moments including mounting spears on a hover bike and befriending the robotic security guards by tending for a damaged unit.
Saturday morning I ran a session of my Dungeon Crawl Classics module A Fairly Odd Tale. I’ve been honing this adventure for a year or so and I think I’ve got it to a solid place — enough so that I plan to publish it sometime next year. I had a mother/daughter pair at the table and they may have been my favorite players of the convention!
My Saturday afternoon game was canceled, so I took the opportunity to grab some classic fantasy novels from the Goodman Games booth and headed back to my room to get some rest.
Sunday morning was supposed to feature a session of Star Trek Adventures, a game I’ve owned for over a year but never had the opportunity to bring to the table. Unfortunately only two of us showed up, so I wandered the exhibitors hall, picked up a few more items, and then went to the Goodman Games raffle. Unfortunately I didn’t win anything, but I had fun seeing all the prizes and watching people delight at their wins.
I had a great time! I haven’t been to Gen Con in 10 years, and this is the first time I ever ran games there. Being with other DCC/MCC fans made it super easy, and Goodman Games was very supportive (they brought afternoon snacks around to all their judges!). I was also grateful that all the games I ran were in Lucas Oil Stadium — it wasn’t nearly as loud there as in other spaces, so even though we all wore masks I never had to strain to hear people.
I intentionally didn’t hang around for a lot of evening events; I tend to be susceptible to con crud, especially when I overextend myself. This seemed to work out really well, as by the end of the con I still had plenty of energy. I may ad an evening event or two in the future.
I look forward to returning to Gen con next year!
Welcome to Eastwood presents a clever sandbox location — a mysterious Old West town that, through the vagaries of magic or technology, can be dropped into any campaign — for players to explore and interact with.
Like Museum at the End of Time, combat isn’t the only danger in the town of Eastwood. Without giving too much away, PCs can become enamored of the various opportunities and encounters, failing to realize (until it’s too late) that they’re trapped in the town. The more they attempt to peek behind the scenes, the more bizarre — and perilous — the situation becomes.
This includes a clever resource management component the Judge must handle concerning PCs’ ability to leave. Normally I’m not a fan of putting additional work on the Judge, but the module comes with a handy tracking sheet, making the task less onerous. The adventure also comes with an appendix detailing various features of the “town,” including random encounters, new artifacts, and new creatures.
The module is well laid out and illustrated throughout, giving Judges a taste of the town’s atmosphere and inhabitants. The map is especially nice and makes a good handout to give the players once they have the lay of the land.
I’ve had the opportunity to both play the module with the author and run it for my regular MCC group. Both times we had a blast as the PCs came up with theories as to what was happening and who was puling the strings of Eastwood.
Welcome to Eastwood is a 28-page 1st- or 2nd-level module compatible with both Mutant Crawl Classics and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It was written and illustrated by C. Aaron Kreader of Studio 9 Games.
Event tickets for Gen Con Indy go on sale this weekend! I’ll be running four games:
I hope to see you in Indy!
This past Saturday I drove to Decatur, Illinois, to attend Heroicon, a small convention supporting Games For Troops, an Illinois non-profit delivering board, card, and other games to the men and women of the US Armed Forces.
I was supposed to drive over with my friend Luau Lou, but he had to back out a few days before, so it was a solo mission. On the plus side it meant I didn’t have to leave so early in the morning, as the game I was scheduled to run was in the afternoon. I arrived about 2 hours before my game so I checked out the vendors and got my wife some dice earrings for Mother’s Day.
While in the vendors area I was invited by designer Keun Ahn to play his game Shadows: Heroes & Monsters, a PvPvE (Player vs Player vs Environment) CCG that recently completed it’s crowdfunding campaign. At first I thought it would be a little fiddly due to the number of counters and stats to keep track of, but after a few rounds I got the basics. I even managed a pretty great feint, causing Keun to prepare for an attack that never came, for the win.
I was a little apprehensive about my Mutant Crawl Classics game as I only had one person signed up. Fortunately the player’s father had an open slot so he joined us for a round of Museum at the End of Time. Since it was just the two of them I gave them each 6 zero-level characters; in the end, only 5 left the museum. They really enjoyed the game (both were new to DCC/MCC).
Afterwards they invited me to try Dungeon Draft, a clever card drafting game with a fantasy theme. It went a little slow because several of us were playing for the first time, but I can see it being a nice filler game.
All things considered I had a good time and, while attendance seemed very low, I wouldn’t say no to attending Heroicon for a day again!
Ethereal Gary Con will be running online March 24-27, 2022! Game tickets go on sale tomorrow; I’ll be running three games at the con:
I hope to see you there!
I’ll be at Heroicon on Saturday, May 7, in Decatur, Illinois, running my first in-person con game — Museum at the End of Time at 1p CT:
The Rite of Passage is a generational custom, and the PCs’ future position and rank within their society is largely determined by the quality of artifacts brought back to the tribe! A zero level funnel adventure for Mutant Crawl Classics; pregens provided.
Badges are now available. Proceeds from Heroicon go to Games For Troops, an Illinois non-profit whose mission is to deliver board, card, and other games to the men and women of the US Armed Forces. I hope to see you there!
