At the Mutants of Madness

 

I make no apologies for my love of post-apocalyptic roleplaying games. My first steady-playing of an RPG was not D&D, it was Gamma World. Yes, I played D&D first, but I played Gamma World (and Traveller, for that matter) much more often. I hosted the Glowburn podcast what seems like eons ago, and have written a few things for the Umerica setting for DCCRPG. 

So, when Mutant Crawl Classics was released, of course I fell in love. I wrote up a couple of Patron descriptions when I finally gathered up the time to do so: The Mold Mother and Supreme Brainskull Commander (truth be told, I ran several adventures for my then-home group with Supreme Brainskull Commander minions as the baddies. I need to put that one on paper some day). But that wasn't enough.

So I wrote and playtested the heck out of an adventure that tries to answer the question: In the MCC Aerth setting, what lies beyond "The Great Radiation Barrier". And what exactly did that thing do, anyway?

I pictured the barrier as an aurora-like emanation that shimmered from the ground up into the upper atmosphere. One essentially has to go through to find out what's on the other side. Most sane people would not bother breaking through to see what's on the other side, but most adventurers are not sane people. Besides there was incentive: an ancient artifact of great significance, something that would go a long way to establishing some semblance of security and protection for those who possess it. 

Now, as you can probably guess by the title, I am fond of cosmic horror, particularly in roleplaying-games. I'm a Call of Cthulhu junkie, to be perfectly honest, and every convention I attend, I try to get in at least one game of CoC. But I didn't want to pastiche a Call of Cthulhu scenario for Mutant Crawl Classics, I wanted something that embraced both the post-apocalyptic setting and at least the trappings of the Cthulhu Mythos. So I wrote At the Mutants of Madness.

AtMoM is a very high-level MCC adventure. I tried playtesting at 5th level, and it was just plain too deadly. So I experimented with my playtesters and after populating a cemetary full of graves, I settled on 7th level as the recommended level. Now, I would encourage you to flout that recommendation, especially if you want to ensure that there is a TPK. You could even run it as a 0-level funnel, but it's not going to last very long. Ideally, the adventure would cap off a campaign or make for a series of high-level one-shots. There's no way to run the whole thing in one sitting, being a sprawling point-crawl with several encounters and a random encounter chart that I am quite proud of (because of its lethality). 

So if you have a hankering to know what lies beyond the great radiation barrier and love to die at the hands of terrors from beyond the stars, this is for you!

Just for giggles, here is one of the many really, really bad "maps" I drew while writing this thing up. The maps in the module are MUCH better!!!

I have to say here, too, that working with Space Penguin Ink to have this published was an absolute pleasure and, for me, at least, an awesome experience. Space Penguin Ink has an eclectic and excellent mix of RPGs, supplements, and soon, boardgames. It's a class operation, and you should be giving them your money. The rewards will be well worth it, trust me! Oh, and I have another thing on the docket with Space Penguin Ink that I can't wait to unleash on humanity!

You can buy AtMoM at Space Penguin Ink, or you can buy it at Goodman Games. Enjoy your radiation-saturated doom!

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