Mutant Future Madness

Last week I had the pleasure of playing in Jeff's Mutant Future game over at Armored Gopher. It's quite a drive for me but well worth it, and I think next week I'll have Lori joining me for some mutant madness.

Prior to this game I hadn't given Mutant Future much of a read-through, not out of lack of interest but rather lack of time, so I was a little worried about my lack of knowledge. Turns out the game is dead simple and Jeff's able Mutant Mastering makes it easy to pick things up. My first character, Jonagar Throgus, was dead within minutes, but in a game where it takes all of 60 seconds to roll up a new character I wasn't too heartbroken. We had a mutant with blindness and light control powers, and two mutant plants, one near-blind with explosive fruit and one with both pheromones that caused hatred and wild obsession! What a wild group! I rolled up Thorny Bill before Jonagar was dead, sensing his impending doom, and ended up with a mutant rose with heat rays and psycho-somatic pain (basically doubling all damage I took, ouch!).

Through some clever planning we were able to make short work of the mutant pigs we set out to slay and decided to retire after our first success, choosing the safer life of merchant and truffle farmers over desert-raiding adventurers. I think Jeff mentioned starting things out a generation later, so I rolled up Thorny Bill Jr., who's armed with a cool assortment of spikey-type powers that fit the name nicely. I'm super psyched about the next game and can't wait to see how long I can survive in the horrible wastes of the desert. I'm also excited to see the kind of characters the others will roll up, as the random mutations can lead to some rather hilarious mixtures of powers and drawbacks.

I have to say one of the things I loved the most about the game is getting to see someone else run a game and learn a little bit to aid my own gaming style. For instance, Jeff rolled up a random encounter which I'm almost positive was just "giant spider", however he did a great job of setting a stage for it rather than just dropping a spider in front of us, a skill I've yet to refine. It honestly never occured to me to do such a thing; usually my random encounters just meant "hey, theres a bear over there" rather than "you find a small cave, and can hear something grumbling about inside". Always a treat to see someone else at work behind the screen and always an opportunity to learn something new!