Mutants & Magic

In a dark future wasteland, the great cities have risen and fallen. Civilization’s grip on mankind has grown weak and arthritic. Dark forces seek to renew forgotten covenants, and primordial beasts reclaim the wilderness.

One thousand years after the Fall, a strange new world rises from the old…

a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery!

Mutants & Magic is an old-school rules-light fantasy/post-apocalyptic RPG, run via the internet using Skype and Gametable. This gameblog is intended to capture character information, house rules, campaign background, session logs, and player communications.

Follow these links to jump to some key pages:

• About Mutants & Magic
• Campaign Setting
• Character Creation

Empire of the Petal Throne

The original Empire of the Petal Throne is out.

Woot woot!

Barrowmaze

My latest PDF purchase is Barrowmaze from Greg Gillespie.

It’s a classic old-school megadungeon with an undead theme. It fits well with the campaign background of Mutants & Magic, involving the overthrow of the Necromancer Kings prior to the rise of the Affiliation.

I’ve got ideas of how to convert the Nergal/Orcus/Set concepts from Barrowmaze to fit the mythology of Chardros the Reaper in Mutants & Magic (hint: It involves the Tomb of the Iron God), and there are several other aspects (such as mongrelmen) which can apply without any tweaking.

I don’t have any megadungeons yet in the Grass Plains region (in the Outer Territories, east of the Free City), so I think I think it will make a good location for this adventure…

Lesserton & Mor

A while back, I picked up Lesserton & Mor from Faster Monkey Games. It’s a sourcebook for a vast ruined city (Mor), and the town inhabited by its descendants (Lesserton). Its approach is quite innovative, providing tables for the referee to develop Mor through random rolls. Although developed for a fantasy campaign, I believe it would fit quite well into my Mutants & Magic campaign (with some minor conversions).

In Mutants & Magic, Mor was an Ancient domed metropolis which continued to be inhabited after the Fall as an independent city-state until it was conquered by Beastmen. Lesserton was founded by the refugees, who then came under the domination of the Necromancer Kings until the founding of the Affiliation (see the Campaign Background for more info). I think I’ll place Lesserton and Mor near the Dismal Swamp (not too far from Krake’s Borough, actually).

In terms of game rules, the Tainted are actually near-humans and Lesserton Orkin are mutants instead. Halflings use the rules from my recent demihumans post. Instead of Orkin, it was a Beastmen army which conquered Mor (this is a source of much distrust against Beastmen in the Affiliation).

I recommend this supplement for referees looking for an interesting mini-setting. You can also download the free Player’s Guide to Lesserton. If I get a campaign going for Mutants & Magic, then Lesserton & Mor will certainly be an option for characters.

New Races – Demihumans

In a previous post, I raved about Anomalous Subsurface Environment from Henchman Abuse. I’ve decided to swipe the dwarves, elves, and halflings from this module as playable races for the world of Mutants & Magic.

The flavour text is quoted from the demihumans post on Henchman Abuse (and can also be found in the module itself).

Tempora Mutantur

(A bump for my other blog.)

During the minimalist one-page RPG buzz last year, I put together another little post-apoc game, called ‘Tempora Mutantur‘. Since then, I’ve added a number of (one-page) supplements and grafted something resembling a campaign setting around it. You can find the results of my work here:

• Go To: Tempora Mutantur

Tempora Mutantur uses Simon J. Bull’s “SotU Refired” as a basis, which was itself inspired by Nicolas Dessaux’s original “Searchers of the Unknown”.

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Gods Eyes

I just picked up Anomalous Subsurface Environment from Henchman Abuse. It’s quite excellent and I recommend it highly.

One element that I’ll definitely swipe for my wahoo post-apoc setting is the concept of “Gods Eyes”. Here is some text from the module:

The gods of men in these latter days are also the creations of men, though no divinity will admit to this history…

High above the atmosphere, enormous satellites containing the hardware necessary to run these AI’s orbit the planet. They number in the hundreds, and communicate directly to their followers through “eyes” installed in their temples below. These eyes are massive screens through which a god may directly observe its followers, and appear to them.

The gods, through means unknown to simple organic minds, are able to grant spells to their priests. The priests must pray for renewal of their powers at certain times of the day. These times are linked directly to when the AI’s are in orbit directly overhead.

I’m thinking that the Church of Law is devoted to the orbital gods, worshiping them via the gods eyes.

Magic March

I’ve decided to document a bunch of my house rules related to magic and spellcasters during the month of March. A lot of these have been kicking around in my notebooks and random textfiles for years, but I’ve never brought them all together and edited them into something coherent.

The first four posts deal with wizard subtypes and sorcerer variants, mostly inspired from D&D 2e and HackMaster. The next one tackles old-school variants of pact magic and the binder class from the closing days of D&D 3e. Finally, the glyph mage and summoner attempt to be D&D variants of wards and circle magic from the Palladium FRPG.

I’ll keep this post current to compile the material as it’s published. As always, feel free to add any comments or suggestions.

• Specialist Wizards (Schools of Magic)
• Sole Practitioners (Extreme Specialists)
• Sorcerers (Non-Vancian Spellcasting)
• Warlocks (Elemental Sorcerers)
• Binder (Split Class) (Pact Magic)
• Glyph Mage (Split Class) (Magic Symbols)
• Summoner (Split Class) (Summoning Circles)
• Diabolists (Non-Spellcasting Ritual Mages)

(I also did a first draft of the Glyph Mage, called the Ward Mage, using different rules.)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted new material on this gameblog. I see there are at least a few of you who still stop by; hopefully there will be something here that you find can find useful in your games.