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The Mutant Epoch
"The Mutant Epoch is about humankind's attempt to reclaim some semblance of civilization, calling upon its best and boldest to uncover the lost knowledge and power of the old ones...".
248 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 22, 2012
I have not yet played Mutant Epoch but after reading the rulebook, I am very impressed. With all the different rules and tables and illutrations, the game is complete and it smells of 80's nostalgia. If you never play the game or read the rule book, buy it for the art work alone which is absolutely amazing.
June 9, 2021
I played this game at the North Texas RPG Con this year. It’s a very Gamma World-ish game, both in design and in play, but with an edge on it. There are few special rules, but those include rules for starvation, hypothermia, “meat shields”.
The chase rules are the longest rules in the “Game Play” section.
It is very simple. For a two hundred and forty page rule book with small text, this is an extraordinarily simple game. Players really need only two mechanisms: rolling d100 against their score, or rolling d100 on a chart with different thresholds of success. The GM might call for a “C” level hazard check, for example; if it were my con character making a Strength check, this would mean rolling 72 or less on d100.
Initiative is handled as group initiative, but with a chosen character (the character on watch, or the character on point) handling the roll; this means that that character’s bonuses figure in.
Most of the pages of the book are not rules per se but descriptions of creatures, relics, and mutations.
Character creation is dead simple. Going through the rulebook for the first time, home, after the con, I made a new character in less than fifteen minutes using the outline at the beginning of the “Character Generation” section. It probably helped that my character, as a “kitchen slave” had no skills, but on the other hand as a “Ghost Mutant”, he does have eight mutations. Almost everything is rolled randomly; those eight mutations are the maximum for a Ghost Mutant. (A “Ghost Mutant” is one whose mutations are not obvious; the character can visually pass for a “Pure Stock” human.)
This produces a character that looks like it took a lot more time and thought to create than it actually did.
The character generation system sets the character up for their first scene in the game. This particular character has little starting equipment but the torn rags he wears as clothing, the manacles on his wrists, and the whip scars on his back. He also starts the game slightly wounded, with no bounty on his head.
There’s not much in the way of damage totals to keep track of. Characters have endurance; whether it’s physical damage, stun damage, or fatigue, it all comes off of endurance. Superpower-like mutations usually have a maximum number of times per day they can be used, rather than subtracting from some fatigue-like stat. It’s also possible for some powers to cause damage to stats other than endurance.
The simplicity (at least on the player end, although the GM has little more to deal with other than having multiple characters and situations to keep track of) makes this a great con game. No explanation of rules was necessary other than pointing us to the Hazards chart and telling us to read across it when asked for a letter result.
The weirdest thing about the rulebook, however, is not the setting, as weird as it is, but that the appendix, along with a blank character sheet and some blank map grids, includes cut-out dice. Presumably you’re supposed to photocopy or cut out the pages, cut along the outlines of the dice, and fold them into three-dimensional dice. That’s going to take some serious skill at folding and gluing. Especially the d30.
The chase rules are the longest rules in the “Game Play” section.
It is very simple. For a two hundred and forty page rule book with small text, this is an extraordinarily simple game. Players really need only two mechanisms: rolling d100 against their score, or rolling d100 on a chart with different thresholds of success. The GM might call for a “C” level hazard check, for example; if it were my con character making a Strength check, this would mean rolling 72 or less on d100.
Initiative is handled as group initiative, but with a chosen character (the character on watch, or the character on point) handling the roll; this means that that character’s bonuses figure in.
Most of the pages of the book are not rules per se but descriptions of creatures, relics, and mutations.
Character creation is dead simple. Going through the rulebook for the first time, home, after the con, I made a new character in less than fifteen minutes using the outline at the beginning of the “Character Generation” section. It probably helped that my character, as a “kitchen slave” had no skills, but on the other hand as a “Ghost Mutant”, he does have eight mutations. Almost everything is rolled randomly; those eight mutations are the maximum for a Ghost Mutant. (A “Ghost Mutant” is one whose mutations are not obvious; the character can visually pass for a “Pure Stock” human.)
This produces a character that looks like it took a lot more time and thought to create than it actually did.
The character generation system sets the character up for their first scene in the game. This particular character has little starting equipment but the torn rags he wears as clothing, the manacles on his wrists, and the whip scars on his back. He also starts the game slightly wounded, with no bounty on his head.
There’s not much in the way of damage totals to keep track of. Characters have endurance; whether it’s physical damage, stun damage, or fatigue, it all comes off of endurance. Superpower-like mutations usually have a maximum number of times per day they can be used, rather than subtracting from some fatigue-like stat. It’s also possible for some powers to cause damage to stats other than endurance.
The simplicity (at least on the player end, although the GM has little more to deal with other than having multiple characters and situations to keep track of) makes this a great con game. No explanation of rules was necessary other than pointing us to the Hazards chart and telling us to read across it when asked for a letter result.
The weirdest thing about the rulebook, however, is not the setting, as weird as it is, but that the appendix, along with a blank character sheet and some blank map grids, includes cut-out dice. Presumably you’re supposed to photocopy or cut out the pages, cut along the outlines of the dice, and fold them into three-dimensional dice. That’s going to take some serious skill at folding and gluing. Especially the d30.
February 26, 2019
Amazing art, old school d100 rules, lots of post apocalyptical fun!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews