Mutant Crawl Classics: Home For The Holideath

This is going to be a mix of a session report and review of the adventure. If you don't want to have the adventure spoiled, here's a quick summary: We had a lot of fun with all the zany things in this adventure. It's whimsical, wacky, and wild! I recommend you give it a shot.

Now onto the section with spoilers!

So the setup for this is that the PC's tribe and another tribe have an annual gift exchange they do to maintain the peace between the tribes. The gifts have been stolen and the PCs are sent to try to retrieve the gifts in time for the exchange. I modified that a bit to make it more en media res.

My campaign has more of a "Umerican Survival Guide" setting so it's only been about 100 years since "The Great Disaster". Part of the joy of doing that is also setting the campaign where I live. So the gift exchange was between the Portland Oregon tribe and the Vancouver, Washington tribe on the remains of the I-5 bridge in the middle of the Columbia River. As the PCs (from the Vancouver tribe) were paddling their raft to the location, I had them witness the Portland tribe members flung off the bridge. Then, after the PCs climbed up to see what was going on, the thief (with a bag of Portland tribe gifts) used its rocket boosters to fly at them and take the Vancouver tribe's gifts too before flying off to Jantzen Beach.

A pure strain human used a Legendary Deed to grab the thief as it flew but then failed another deed as it tried to maneuver so fell into the bushes on shore. The others rescued the fallen human and then followed the flying thief to an old Toys R Us building. There, they found the fun things found in the adventure such as smart wrapping paper and a stingbear. But that's just the first floor! On the second floor, they found mutant rats and wooden soldiers (I changed the elves in the adventure to the rats from Nutcracker) and a crazy old toymaker along with a giant snowglobe. Then up to the final floor where they confront the A.I. named XMAS and a Christmas tree decorated with weaponized ornaments. But that's not all!

After all of that, the PCs found the thief, a matronly maid robot who attempted to spank the naughty PCs (yes, that's in the adventure!) but had its eye stabbed, which initiated a self-destruct sequence (that was my addition). The PCs escaped with the gifts, the exchange happened, and everyone was happy. Next adventure will start on the road when the Vancouver tribe sends them north in a car!

Mutant Crawl Classics campaign

I started my Mutant Crawl Classics campaign this past weekend. I made a couple of tweaks to the game:

First, I'm only using two classes. I created a Pure Strain Human class that gets a Legendary Deed die that acts like the Mighty Deed die from Dungeon Crawl Classics and also gives bonuses to artifact checks. The other class is the Mutant/Manimal/Plantient class that gives 5 random mutations and lets players pick what kind of mutant they want to be.

Second, I'm using the Umerican Survival Guide setting. Generally, that means I'm using the random occupations, equipment, and vehicle rules along with the whole zany near-future vibe of the setting.

I started things off by showing a fan-made anime video for Weird Al Yankovic's Christmas At Ground Zero to get them in the mood and then started it off at level 1 with Home For The Holideath, which I will go over in my next post.

2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac now available in print at Lulu

The Gongfarmer's Almanac is a collection of fan-submitted goodies for Dungeon Crawl Classics (and Mutant Crawl Classics). It is released in PDF for free and you can now get the consolidated PDFs in print at Lulu. It's 428 pages and the paperback is priced at-cost at $9.81

The link is here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/the-gongfarmers-almanac-community/gongfarmers-almanac-2018/paperback/product-23782037.html

 If you search Lulu for "gongfarmer's almanac", you can also find the books for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

My first product is up on RPG Now!

It is "pay what you want" and is a list of 600 place names taken from the Bible that you can use in any RPG setting, especially ancient historical or sword & sorcery campaigns.

600 Ancient Hebrew Place Names

Let's read Mutant Crawl Classics!

Over at rpggeek.com I am reading through the new Mutant Crawl Classics RPG by posting a bit about each section and then saying what I think about it and inviting others to do the same.

Please take a look at https://rpggeek.com/thread/1994342/lets-read-mutant-crawl-classics and let me know what you think!

Pulling Adventure Ideas from Western Novels - Heller with a Gun

The 3rd Louis L'amour Western novel in my pile is Heller with a Gun. The hero is a super fast gunfighter, the title's heller with a gun. He encounters an acting troupe making their way west and they've hired a guide to take them through the snow-covered mountains. The hero falls for one of the actresses and realizes the guide is a crook after the actors' money. So he follows them but before he can rescue the acting troupe, the hero is ambushed!

The woman lock themselves in a wagon and have a gun to protect themselves. The sole man of the acting troupe gets away and finds the hero and they hole up in a cabin while the hero heals from his wounds. Then begins a game of cat and mouse with the bad guys trying to find the escaped actor and the actor getting advice from the hero and trying to free the women. Then a third faction arrives - hostile Indians! First the Indians try to steal the hero's horse. The hero has healed enough to shoot one and drive the rest away. Then the Indians attack the wagons, killing some bad guys and getting the locked wagon door open. The hero arrives just in time again!

Then the cat & mouse game starts again. The surviving bad guys are after the good guys and the Indians may be after them both! The good guys are trying to make it to town and near the end, they stay at another cabin for the night. There, they are attacked by the bad guys who capture the male actor and the female actor who the hero has fallen for. Luckily, the hero is a heller with a gun!

The great thing about this book are the different factions interacting, the hiding and finding, and the action scene at the end where the bad guys have the place surrounded. A very nice adventure or even a random encounter for sandbox play!

Pulling Adventure Ideas from Western Novels - Hondo

I recently finished the 2nd Louis L'amour Western novel in my pile. This one is Hondo, which was his first novel published in the USA. It's a pretty simple story with the hero encountering a woman and her 6-year-old boy living alone in Apache territory. It seems her husband abandoned them but she doesn't worry about the Apaches. They've always had good relations. Our hero, Hondo, is skeptical. The Apaches are at war with the white man and Hondo is half Apache and serving as a scout for the US Army. He regretfully leaves the woman and finds his Company all killed by Apaches. He comes back to report and finds the woman's husband. The husband is scum of the worst kind and tries to shoot Hondo in the back. Of course, Hondo kills him first.

Meanwhile, the Apache chief is in a bit of a bind. He has sworn to wipe out all whites but he has had friendly relations with this woman's family for many years. In order to satisfy his honor and his tribe, he makes the boy his blood brother and gives him his headband to wear. This is the bit that I found interesting. Do you have a hostile enemy in your RPG campaign? Make them honorable. Have them make special exceptions to their plans of conquest or revenge. This makes the enemy interesting and able to dealt with in more ways than just combat.

Have you done this in your campaign? Tell me your stories!