Mutant Encounter for MA1e: Aquatazons!

 Aquatazons - a creature encounter for Metamorphosis Alpha

Pic from: Spacehunter, Adventures in the forbidden Zone 3-D

The Aquatazons or Water-women, are found in and around large bodies of salt water (Deck 15) or in flooded areas. They are a combination of Human and Dolphin DNA. There are NO males in this Mutation. The Aquatazons can reproduce with Pure Human and Mutant Males. They prefer mutants with water-born mutations.

Armor Class: 7                       Hit Points: 45
Movement: 4 land, 10 water
Radiation resistance: 13          Constitution: 12
Mental Resistance: 11             Strength: 14
Dexterity: 15

Defect: Skin Structure Change - extremely vulnerable to fire damage and cannot remain out of water for more than a few hours without drying out and dying.

Mutations: Cetacean (Mutation Manual; pg. 4) Mutant is kin to dolphins and has webbed fingers and toes allowing great swimming speeds. They also breathe through a blowhole in their upper back, and can hold their breath for upwards of 15 minutes in or out of water. They see underwater using echolocation.

Normal Reaction: If approached peacefully the Aqutazons can be traded with. Certain hunting parties may retreat or attack on sight depending on the situation. They prize any tech or gadgets that can be used on or underwater, especially weapons.

Attacking: Aquatazons are masters of the calm water ambush. They make use of their breath holding ability to make opponents believe they have fled or they wait just below the surface for unwary prey on a boat or shore then shoot out of the water throwing harpoons or hooked nets. They have been known to use tridents, and specially modified Slug Rifle (type 2) that fires a barbed and tethered spear!

Rumors: 
1) Fresh water breeds of Aquatazon have been encountered elsewhere.
2) Some believe that those who accept deals of procreation with the Water-women are eaten at the deals conclusion.
3) There is an Aquatazon city at the bottom of the great sea on Deck 15.

Metamorphosis Alpha creatures from 2015

Back in 2015 my twelve year old daughter gleefully presented me with the following creatures for our games. There is a picture for each mutated animal and a brief description followed by suggestions for mutations and reactions. She stated to me that she would like to have them available for others to use in their adventures. So we begin our series of creatures with:

Lahbkatts

L-24 or Lahbkatt

AC: 6      Hit Points: 48 (halve number for kittens)

Movement: 12 / 16/ 20

Rad Res: 15       Con: 8

Men Res: 7      Str: 6

Dex: 16

Defect: none

Mutations: GM's roll for 4 physical mutations and pick the most lethal combination of two for each Lahb-Katt encountered.

Appearance: Lahb-Khatts are the size of average tame household cats (6 -12 lbs) from which they are descended. They are encountered in groups of 2-4. There is a 2 in 6 chance that the group encountered is a female with her young. On rare occasion (1 in 12) you can encounter a single large Tom-cat of up to 25lbs. All Lahb-Katts bear the same unique fur coloring. The upper body is a black jagged pattern which fades to gray then white until reaching the red underbelly. The eyes range from startling green to gold, and at night can be seen reflecting light sources as they prowl around.

Normal Reaction: Lahb-Katts are very curious and will follow PC's, wait till they are at rest and attempt to sneak in for a kill. Lahb-Katts will work together to drag off small prey or items.

Terrain: Lahb-Katts can be found just about anywhere. Large numbers roam dark alleys in city blocks (Double standard encounter number).

Attacking: Lahb-Katts always attack with their most lethal ranged mutations first if any, followed by melee attacks. Besides any physical mutations all Lahb-Katts have razor sharp claws which they employ to great effect doing 4d6 damage. The large Tom's can do up to 8d6 damage.

Procreating: The females will mate with many Tom's and gestate the most lethal combination of mutations into 2 -3 kittens. The kittens are just as deadly as the adults and have the added bonus of being super cute.

Carlin or "Flesh tearers"

CARLIN

AC: 5      Hit Points: 24

Movement: 12 / 16/ 20

Rad Res: 9       Con: 4

Men Res: 5      Str: 3

Dex: 12

Defect: none

Mutations: Heightened sense - smell

Appearance: The Carlin has bright red feathers that fade to black and then to white on the underbelly. It is a mutated version of the Cardinal that was crossed with Vulture DNA.

Normal Reaction: Carlins will fly off if spooked or caught by surprise. However if there are wounded creatures nearby the Carlins are drawn to the scent of blood. A Carlin flock will be drawn to battle sights by the scent of blood and they will attack any already wounded or freshly dead creatures.

Terrain: Any, except Arctic or Desert.

Attacking: Carlins attack in great flocks flapping pecking and scratching chaos! The serrated beak of a carlin can shear off flesh for 1d6 damage. An attacking flock inflicts from 10 - 60 D6 damage. Roll 1d6 and multiply by ten for flock size!

Procreating: As normal birds.

The third and final entry in the trilogy of creatures my daughter created for me to use in Metamorphosis Alpha. I give you the:

Lunartipse

Lunartipse

 AC: 8      Hit Points: 6 - 24 (depending upon size)

Movement: 2 in water only    No. App.: 2-16

Rad Res: 18       Con: 1 - 4 ( by size)

Men Res: 3         Str: 3

Dex: 3

Stinger Tendrils: Intensity 14 paralytic Poison.

Defect: none

Mutations:

Bioluminosity - range 10', duration 3 hours, Mutation Manual pg. 4.

Radiated Eyes variant: The Lunartipse can store up radiation and release it bursts like a grenade. They can do this once every 4 melee rounds in a 5 yard radius. Intensity level 10.

The Lunartipse would most likely be found on Deck 15, or any large body of water.

Meet R.O.S.I.E. a Robot PC for players in the "know" about MA!

 So lets say you are going to run a game of Metamorphosis Alpha for some new players, and you're going to use the Alternate Beginning Sequence or one where they come out of cryo-tubes etc. You want it to surprise them but one player has prior experience. What to do, what to do...

Meet R.O.S.I.E. or the Robotic Orientation Specialist & Interpersonal Educator!!!

R.O.S.I.E.

Rosie will greet the newly awakened characters with phrases like:

"Due to an oblique angle you have been reinstated with protocol Alpha."**

"As of this time all blenders are in emergency mode."**

"Make sure your feeding tubes and barf-bags are in their upright positions."**

I created this character for my wife who has played MA before. I was running a surprise game for a group that had no knowledge of MA at all and I wanted a helpful yet confusing character for them to deal with that wasn't an NPC, so with a quick google search we created R.O.S.I.E. 72.

R.O.S.I.E. is supposed to help newly awakened crew with their disorientation and mild Cryo-sickness, she reminds them of their duties and can accompany them on their adventures (like C3PO). However just like the rest of the Warden, ROSIE suffers from the "accident" and now she's not quite as helpful or sensible as she should be.

ROSIE

The only limits I put on her role-playing were that she could never refer to the fact they were on a ship of any kind, and any questions about equipment usage or what was happening had to be answered in weird gibberish or meaningless techno-babble. Below are some of the phrases ROSIE used on the Players when asked questions about things. **see above phrases as well.

"Please locate your carry-on in the drawer below your chamber."

"It is the far-reaching cereal notice for coral underpants."

"The current time is 0200 Centar's"

"Beware, flying darkness eats through the chambers killing indiscriminately."

In response to Rosie what is beyond that door? Which by the way set a perfect mood!

"Shadow apples cast french danger worms in innocent pastures."

"Microscopic pennies invade seismic shift portals."

"Torrential cat hairs fell from bubbles in 3039."

"It's all in the angle of the shoes."

"The neutron dance."

"Pale particles of fractoids, cause inter-racial ruckus in level 3 sector 5."

"Safari peanuts pop parking lot puppies with fruity cocktail skewers, on an average basis of ten."

"Big hats made for pork fed walruses are invaluable."

"Look for Fire Stairs in peanut sauce." In response to Rosie, where should we go?

"Pink kittens in Fish suits eat chocolate pies with mittens." In response to how do I use this weapon?

"Big squirrels steal macadamia nuts. They are their favorite food." This phrase was a set-up by my wife for the introduction of our daughter who plays a mutated flying squirrel that showed up later in the game. 

At times she responded to the Players with beeping or whirring noises and stilted head movements. At first they were scared of her but after she helped a character not sever his own limbs with a failed Technology check on a Vibro-saw, they embraced her as part of the group. We both decided before play that ROSIE cannot allow harm to come to her charges and will always do what she can to prevent them getting hurt. Sometimes they just don't understand her verbal warnings (see phrases above). ROSIE had to use her Paralysis Wave-emitter on a pair of characters when violence broke out between them.

We hope you find ROSIE helpful in your own MA games and feel free to steal ours and let us know what she gets up to aboard your Warden.

My friend Mark.

 One of my oldest friends Mark, GM'ed Gamma world in a way I had never encountered before. The first time I played Gamma World with him (1988-89) he put a single sheet of graph paper on the table in front of me. It was basically a 2d geo-morph of about 4 city blocks.

Imagine a top down view of this:

 Now I had seen Dungeon Geomorphs before, but a ruined city! This was new to me. Mark looks at me and points to the lower left hand corner of the map and says "You wake up here." I look down at the map and see what I take to be a Drive-in Theater. A handful of ruined cars and the Snack-shack where my character has awakened. Well before the days of the games like Fallout 3, I find my mutated human Player character with an entire 81/2 by 11 inches of unknown landscape to explore. I just want to say that you don't always need a campaign "WORLD". Mark showed me in that instant that even a campaign neighborhood could be just as awe inspiring. It was really the first level of a dungeon when I reflect upon it now. Soon I was to discover the "lower" level or sewers that lay beneath, as well as basements and sub-basements of various structures. Let's not forget the upper stories of many of the buildings as well.

 My character never left that map and still resides there to this day. In my time exploring that single sheet of graph paper I've met a biker gang that held out in a Gas station/garage, flesh eating "crazies" from the sewers at war with gator-men holding out in the water plant. Robot controlled electrical power substation, that I stayed away from. These guys who captured me, dosed me with radiation and threw me back out on the streets with nothing.

 I had later encounters with a smaller party of them and wiped them out! I still think they watch me somehow.

 This is probably my fondest memory of Gamma World as a player. I was always excited when Mark would say he felt a Gamma World game coming on. I have more stories of Mark and his single page Gamma World maps to tell so watch out!

 

Metamorphosis Alpha: Robot enemy for players to get killed by.

 

art by Android Arts

Max 2

Autonomous Supervisory Cargo/Maintenace Robot

Background: Max2's were Robotic managers for general purpose household and repair robots. They could issue commands and concentrate work efforts when and where needed. During the "accident" Max2's artificial intelligence was damaged and now it wants to eliminate all non-robotic life on Deck 13. When encountered it will pursue PC's with intent to kill. Max2 cannot however get other robots except Security types to attack, as it reports all biological life forms as hostile to the central Computer.

If the Max2 is destroyed it will return in a shiny new unit within 2D6 turns. My players ran afoul of Max2 on Deck 13 while scavenging for supplies. It turned into a tense few rounds of cat & mouse as he chased them up and down the aisles of cargo containers. They beat him up pretty good, but not before they suffered greatly from the tractor/repulsor beam & grasping claws! They retreated back through a ventilation conduit from which they initially gained entry.

Max2 is like a robotic Jason Vorhees / Michael Myers type silent stalking killer! And yes he will spin his grasping claws in a circular fashion just like in the "Black Hole" movie!!!

Have fun murderizing your players with Max2. 

Metamorphosis Alpha: Starting a game on a smaller scale.

Valley Forge from Silent Running

So you want to start a Metamorphosis Alpha game but feel overwhelmed by the vastness of the Warden. Scale it back and try a smaller ship. Here we have the Valley Forge from the movie Silent Running which can easily become a host for a small scale MA campaign.

We have six domes that you can use to set up your separate environments, and a nice spaceship part for all your robots and technical weirdness.

A fun exercise is to use the  Wilderness Encounter tables from your Expert D&D rule book or other game of your choice to help create your Domes.

I'm going to use my D&D Expert rules charts on page X57 to create an example couple of Domes for our small-scale Warden.

Let's see, we have ten categories: 1)Clear, Grasslands, 2)Woods, 3)River, 4)Swamp, 5)Barren, Mts, Hills, 6)Desert, 7)Inhabited, 8)City, 9)Ocean, 10)Jungle.

Rolling a D10; I get a - 7 Inhabited. ok, now I will roll again - 4 Swamp.

So Dome 1 is going to be a Swamp environment that is inhabited. Now lets see by what... rolling our d8 we get a 3 for Inhabited - Humanoid, and 8 for Swamp - Dragon!

Dome 1: home to a tribe of mutant humanoids (descendants of crew who became trapped here long ago) that are in a constant battle for survival against mutant-giant alligators "dragons".

Now for Dome 2: we get a 1- Clear ,Grassland & a 5- Barren, Mtns, Hills.

D8 comes up with a 4 -animal for the Clear, Grasslands  & 2-flyer for the Barren, Mtns, Hills.

So I think the Dome 2 environment will be a large nature preserve, like a mini Yosemite National park. I can fill this with all sorts of mutated versions of regular animals etc.

Do this process four more times, adjust or re-roll if you get too many similar results and you are off and running with a mini-warden ready to be explored.

The players can start as members of one of the inhabited domes or crew freshly awakened from cryo-sleep and sent to "fix" a problem in one of the domes by the now Insane or malfunctioning ship's A.I.

Have fun!