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 Hey, I'm Julian Kay, aka Alien Rope Burn, long-time poster, short-time lurker, and I'm here to talk about my radical mutant animal role-playing game, Mutants in the Now, with art by the skilled Fábio Fontes! Inspired by the most popular mutant animal game of the 1980s, it aims to recreate the wild feel of playing a 1980s-era anthropomorphic RPG, but with modernized mechanics and a more progressive viewpoint. Player characters are mutants uplifted by a mysterious glowing Goop, learning to fight to find a place in the modern world. The tone is somewhere between gritty and goofball, tongue-in-cheek and thoughtful.  Character creation starts with mitigated randomness; low rolls give you more points later on, and you have a limited amount of roll adjustment you can use to change your fate. However, your mutant animal is created through Genetic-Organic Optimization Points ("GOO-P"), allowing you to adjust what animal abilities they have, level of anthropomorphization, and psionic powers (if you're into that). But there's more; you can use them to improve your attributes, or get into the weird realms of "zoomorphic" traits, like being a centaur or having both arms and wings. Beyond that, myriad combat styles, skills, equipment, contacts, and more round out your character. It's a very crunchy character generation system, designed to be a fun mini-game of its own to play with as opposed to the more slimmed-down character generation of many modern games. There's also just a lot of odd options; animal fighting styles, hundreds of mutations, and playable earthworms! It's a traditional game with twists. Skills are percentage-based, with a variety of special abilities gained from your skill packages. Combat is d20-based, with a minimum of modifiers; most combat modifiers are derived from attributes, keeping math slim and offering a wide variety of tactical options to flesh out the emphasis on martial arts and cool weapons. And, of course, there's baddies including corporate criminals, nouveau ninjas, and interdimensional invaders!  It's available digitally through itch.io and DriveThruRPG, or physically & digitally through Indie Press Revolution. There are also previews available at both the itch and DTRPG pages. Character sheet, combat references, a mutation worksheet, and errata notes for physical copies are all included. So, tell me about your characters, your stories, what you'd like to see, or just share silly animal pictures. It's time to mutate all over again!  Signups to be notified of the Kickstarter launch for Mutants in the Next is now live! With art by Sophie Campbell and Fábio Fontes, this promises to be a big with, with a murderer's row of creatives lined up for stretch goals. Human-born mutants, wild mutations, new species, new mutations, new psionics, new fighting styles, new villains, and so much more! Let's make more Mutants! Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 21:01
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I really liked this book, it feels like the old TMNT game without seeing all the reprinted Palladium rules lol I especially liked the list at the end of the book about here the goop game from.
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Feb 15, 2022 21:31
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I like how there's a rule (in the print version, though I don't see it in the digital) that applies only to 12 people in the world, especially since I'm one of them. I haven't gotten it to the table yet but I've had fun with character creation, definitely has the feel of a mini-game.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:20
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Yeah, chargen is really fun. I ended up waffling on some of the finer details, since I didn't have campaign context, but even without spending takebacks I ended up with a guinea pig industrial spy I'd happily bring to the table.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:27
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This game is real good. Everyone who had a good experience with the old Palladium TMNT game should buy this, it captures some of that magic.
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Feb 16, 2022 00:42
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Thanks so much for the kind words! It's always heartening to read.Napoleon Nelson posted:I like how there's a rule (in the print version, though I don't see it in the digital) that applies only to 12 people in the world, especially since I'm one of them. It's only in either A) the print version or B) if you're a backer that downloads it directly from the Kickstarter release post. Though every marketplace (KS, itch, DTRPG, IPR) has a different "stamp" on the back (because I like adding extra work for myself, I guess), the only real difference between any them is that the Kickstarter versions have that backer clause for takebacks. It was born of me realizing how hard it was to roll, say, an axolotl in the final tables, and not wanting to deny those who had backed for a specific species their chosen critter. Of course, the arachnid-free versions cut the tarantula from the animal list and tables, and arachnid from the species; those were born from a backer with a severe spider aversion and has just been carried forward from there. Those also have a slightly different stamp on the back as well.
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Feb 16, 2022 21:22
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This thread needs more love than just a bunch of short posts, so I'm gonna go ahead and do some character creation so folks can see what you get. And there'll be audience participation! (sorta) So, Step 1 is determine how your group works together. You have three options: Diverse Group, Connected Group, and Family Group. Diverse is everyone rolls up separately, then you figure out how you all work together. Connected means you're all products of the same experiment/accident, but different species, while Family has you share an origin and a species. For our purposes, we're going to choose Connected: one origin, many species. This decision is also important for... Step 2: Cursing Your Dice! This is one of the little touches of modern game design that makes MitN an improvement over the Palladium games. So, just like TMNT, there's a lot of random generation in character creation: attributes, origin, species. However, MitN makes things a little easier on you with takebacks, points you can spend to reroll dice or otherwise adjust the outcome in certain steps. In Diverse Groups, each player gets 4 takebacks to use, while Connected and Family Groups provide 3 takebacks to each player, plus 3 group takebacks that can only be used when determining shared details (origin and/or species). Takebacks are only used during the Attribute, Origin, and Species steps; anything left over is simply converted into extra health at the end. Step 3 is rolling your Attributes, but I'm actually gonna skip over that for the moment and go to Step 4: Origin Story, as the only other group step for a Connected Group. I roll a d100 for the main Source of Mutation table, and get a 98: Experimentation Result. This means our mutation was no accident, but deliberate tinkering by someone. This directs us to the Institutional Background table, where I roll 01: Rural Escape. So soon after we mutated, we escaped into the wilderness, and roll on Rural Background instead. I don't particularly care for that table, so I'm going to spend one of the group takebacks to reroll, getting 71: Agent/Employee. So we were mutated specifically to work for the organization. I like this much better, so even though we have 2 more group takebacks, I'll just leave them to be converted to health at the end. Our background gives us a basic skill package, 2 covert, military, or professional skill packages, two hobbies, one basic or agent equipment package, +10 SHT (Superficial Harm Threshold, think SDC), +2 Prowess, and +1 Will, as well as the option to take a secret combat style. A nice basket of options, overall. The final part of Step 4 is to roll your species, but I'll save that for when I make my individual character. Here's where the audience participation comes in! If anyone else wants to make a character for this group, have at it, and help fill the ranks of Project GOON. I'll put my individual character generation in the next post.
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Feb 16, 2022 22:24
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Sure, I'll give group chargen a shot once I'm home from work. (Weirdly, my test character was also an Agent/Employee, but hey, it's a good origin.)
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Feb 16, 2022 23:41
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Whew, character creation takes much longer when I keep having to stop for work. Anyways, let's see what I end up with. Backtracking a bit to Step 3: Attributes, I need to roll my 8 primary Attributes: Cognition, Strength, Determination, Prowess, Affinity, Endurance, Perception, and Speed. Rolling is pretty simple: 4d6 down the line, which gives us: quote:Cognition 16 Overall a pretty good set of roles, but I really don't like that low Endurance. As much as I want to have all my takebacks for rolling on the Species tables, I'm going to spend one here to reroll Endurance and take the outcome of my choice. I get an 11 the second time around, which is good enough for me. So my character's strong and fast, smart, and incredibly stubborn. Attributes affect several things, but right now the only thing we need to worry about is Bonus GOO-P, the points we use to buy mutations in Step 5. The lower an attribute is, the more GOO-P you get, and if you happen to roll above a 20, you actually get GOO-P taken away. With my attributes, I get 4+5+1+5+9+9+8+1=42 GOO-P, on top of whatever my species gives me. (This calculation takes place at the end of Step 3, before I add the Prowess from the group background.) Going back to Step 4, it's time to roll on the Species Tables. With an Institutional Background, we start on the Institutional Species table. Rolling an 81 directs me to the Lab Species table, and now I have to make a choice. I can spend a takeback to either flip my roll, turning it into an 18 for Pet Species, or I can reroll entirely, but the Institutional Species table is 50% Lab Species results, so I may gain nothing. After some deliberation, I reroll, and get... 11, so it looks like I'm doing Pet Species after all. Rolling there, I get a 16: Cat, American Shorthair. Just for fun, I blow my final takeback on a reroll, and get a 12, which is also Cat, American Shorthair, so clearly the dice had something in mind for me. At this point I also add the +2 to my Prowess from the background, bringing it to 17. Step 5: Let's Mutate! Here's where all the fun happens. Now that I know what species I started as, I get to spend GOO-P on all sorts of things. To start with, let's take a look at Cat, American Shorthair:  So we've got Size Rating, which is how big we are, the GOO-P we get for this species, three attributes we can spend GOO-P on to enhance, the species' basic traits, which can matter for some abilities, the major and minor traits we can purchase, and any unique species traits available. There are also some traits that are universal, unless otherwise mentioned for a species: Movement: Quadrupedal, Prehensility: Locomotors, Speech: Nonvocal, and Mask: Bestial. All of these can be bought up with GOO-P, of course. So, we'll start by adding our GOO-P together, 42+33=75, and then start spending. We'll start by looking at Size. I'm currently a 6, which is cat sized, so I'm going to spend 2+2+2=6 points to move up to a 9, around 5' feet tall. I could go taller, building for Working Cat, but I like the idea of a scrappy little guy. Next is Athropomorphic Traits. Diet starts at Carnivore, and I'll spend 1 point to move it to Facultative Carnivore. I can eat plants and other stuff without making myself sick, but most of my diet is meat. Movement is next: I start at Quadrupedal, spend 5 to move to Semi-Bipedal, and then another 5 to become fully Bipedal. Prehensility starts at Locomotors, and I'll spend another 10 to move through Grasping to Prehensile. Speech starts at Nonvocal, bought up to Vocal for a total of 5 points. Mask starts at Bestial and I'm going to leave it there, because who needs to look like a human? So far, we're down to 75-6-1-10-10-5=43 GOO-P. Now for major and minor traits. I can only buy the traits listed in my Species, so I'm going to go ahead and spend 15 GOO-P for all the major traits except Cat Fancy. My character is less 'adorable, pettable' cat and more 'hell machine from the streets' cat. Minor traits only cost 1 GOO-P apiece, plus 1 GOO-P for each subtrait, I'm going to go ahead and spend 12 points to just grab everything listed there, for maximum cattitude. I'm going to pass up Working Cat, since I'm a little guy. That's another 27 GOO-P spent, leaving me 16. The only other things to spend GOO-P on are attributes and psionic powers, so I'm going to do both. 6 points will get me +3 Perception, for a new total of 15. If it had originally been 10 or less, the gain would have been doubled, but alas. The final 10 points are going to be spent on Telekinetic Boost, allowing me to launch myself any direction I please, even through windows and other flimsy obstructions. I am my own Fastball Special. Now we move on to Step 6: How You Fight. Instead of the various levels of Hand-to-Hand that Palladium games have, in MitN you just pick your core style, which gives you some attribute bonuses and abilities, with a list of supported maneuvers. Coming from an Institutional background, I can choose a Sport, Street, or Wild style, or Secret because of our specific origin. I'm going to pass on the secret style available and take Heihuquan instead, because it works nicely with some of the traits and abilities I have. This gives me +1 Strength and +2 Prowess, for a total of 16 and 19 respectively. Step 7: Getting Good is where we finally select the skill packages and hobbies from our origin. We have one basic package, two covert, military, or professional packages, and two hobbies to select. I also gain an additional number of hobbies equal to my Cognition bonus (+3 in this case), and can choose a number of my skills equal to my Cognition bonus to be specialty skills, which start higher and improve faster. Each package gives some attribute bonuses, an ability, and three primary skills. You can choose to discard one of the primary skills to replace it with an optional skill listed, or further improve the remaining two primary skills. For my basic package, I'm going to take Traversal, further enhancing my character's ability to get around. I get +1 Prowess, +1 Speed, the ability to ignore some terrain disadvantages and extra movement, and the Athletics, Climbing, and Swimming skills. Since I'm a cat, I'm going to swap out Swimming for the Escape optional skill. For my other packages, I'm going to take Predator as a military package and Life Sciences as a professional package. Predator gives +1 Strength, the ability to get WILL from inflicting injuries, and Stalk, Track, and Vigilance as skills. Life Sciences gives +2 Cognition and +1 Affinity, the ability to determine some of a creature's traits, and Botany, Biology, and Genetics as skills. (The Cognition boost also bumps up my extra hobbies and specialty skill picks to 4.) Hobbies are just individual skills, without the other benefits of a package. For my 6 hobbies, I pick Sneak, First Aid, Diagnosis, Writing, Shadowing, and Forensics, and for my four specialties, I'll choose First Aid, Athletics, Shadowing, and Genetics. My character excels on the hunt, but has also picked up quite a bit of knowledge from the lab that mutated him in the first place. I could have also traded in hobbies for weapon proficiencies, but you get free proficiencies in any weapon you start with, and that's good enough for me. The next part is probably the most complicated bit of character generation, so real quick, as a recap and reference, my character stands at: quote:Cognition 18 Now, to actually calculate the value of my skills, I have to do some cross-referencing. Each skill has two associated stats, and each stat has a base skill value and a skill gain value for when you level. For package skills, I use the higher attribute's base skill and the lower attribute's skill gain. For hobby skills, it's reversed; lower base skill, higher skill gain. Specialty skills use the higher attribute's base skill and skill gain, and add my Cognition modifier to the base value as well. So, after a little work, I end up with: quote:Specialty Skills: Athletics 74%/+4%, First Aid 70%/+4%, Genetics 72%/+4%, Shadowing 74%/+4% Now on to Step 8: Get Stuff. Gear is simply a matter of picking the package of your choice and making any decisions it asks you. I can have a basic package or agent package. I'm going to go with agent, giving me inconspicuous clothing, a commlink set, a gimmick, and a choice between a commando, martial, or spy set. I'm going to pick martial for three traditional weapons, a basic gimmick, and -30% on my wealth roll. Gimmicks are special items and options you can choose from depending on your package. I'm going to spend my agent gimmick on a Smoke or Flash Bomb, giving me a bonus on hiding or the ability to just leave a fight, and my universal gimmick is going to be spent on Citizenship, so I actually legally exist. My wealth roll comes up a 69, modified down to a 39, so I have $1,000 in cash or liquid assets on hand. Finally, for my three weapons, I choose basic knife, stun baton, and throwing blades. Finally, we reach Step 9: Wrapping Up. For my character's name, I choose to pull from famous scientists and go with Mendel. I need to pick three Values that represent what I'm willing to fight for; I'm going with innovation, inclusivity, and freedom. Mendel is a strong proponent of the type of experimentation that resulted in his mutation, but he's also motivated by making sure the subjects of these experiments are considered people and treated as such. Secondary Attributes are various derived characteristics calculated using Attributes and Attribute modifiers. Initiative is your Perception and Speed modifiers added together (+6), Defense is 10 plus your Prowess and Speed modifiers (18), Morale is 10 plus Determination and Perception modifiers (16), Superficial Harm Threshold(SHT) is a base determined by my size, plus my Endurance, Determination, and any unused takebacks and other bonuses (64), HP is twice my Endurance plus unused takebacks (24), Willpower(WILL), spent to gain temporary bonuses, and is my Determination modifier, plus any bonuses (5), Contacts(CTCT) measures how many people I know that can lend a hand and is based on my Affinity bonus (+1), Lifting Power(LIFT) is what I can carry and is my Strength times 10 modified by my size (85), and Move Rate(MOVE) is the feet I can move in 3 seconds, calculated as my Size times 3 plus my Speed times 3, +25% because I took Traversal (109). My abysmal CTCT rating means I have one contact with one skill to call on; clearly Mendel is not a people person. Rolling on the handy Random Contact tables, my contact is Raphael Satou, an intelligence agent who helps me out because he likes assisting mutant animals. (FYI, Alien Rope Burn, the skill listed for Intelligence Agent on the Institutional Professions table is Spy, which isn't a skill.) And that's everything! I present to you Mendel, one feline geneticist who will also stalk you across the city and psychically throw himself through drywall to claw your face off. Mendel, Fast Feline posted:Mendel
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Feb 17, 2022 02:22
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Since ARB is very likely to check this thread, I do have a question that is probably a matter of personal opinion: what would you consider, say, the Turtles and Bebop/Rocksteady to have looks wise? Bestial or Inhuman?
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Feb 17, 2022 02:57
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Tsilkani posted:snip Thanks for the detailed walkthrough, Tsilkani! Here are my rolled stats: quote:Cognition: 14 Based on the institutional background, my first thought was a hunter or tracker, not fast but implacable in pursuit. I chose not to spend any takebacks on the speed or endurance, and figured I'd see where it took me. And then I rolled 00/68 for my species. A flying pig. Okay, I can deal with this. Flying pig stats posted:Size rating: 10 I decided to keep with my initial concept and spent my 66 GOO-P as follows: quote:Enhance Endurance: -6 A winged pig (I'm picturing giant bat wings) who can't walk on two legs or manipulate objects directly, but who can fly and has telekinesis instead. She can't pass for human, but uses her senses to complete the tasks the institution sends her to do. For fighting skill, I take Pursuit Predator because it seems to fit both with her dogged personality and the knockdown/press opportunities from Heavy Landing. I take Hunting (subbing Track for Baiting) as a basic skill package, Clandestine (subbing Shadowing for Mislead) as a covert package, and Explosives (subbing chemistry for artillery) as a military package (sometimes the targets she's tracking have to be eliminated with extreme prejudice). Then I take Philosophy and Meditation as hobbies (she's got a lot of time alone to think) as well as Vigilance and Burglary (you break into enough places and you'll find some interesting stuff). I take a basic equipment package and the everyday set. It turns out I have access to a bank account with $3,000 in it. As someone who's followed some gruesome orders in her day, I decide her values are mercy, enlightenment, and passion. She's got 2 contacts: Quinn Anderson, a lifeguard who's interested in the weird, and Jackie Lawson, a rancher who's a member of a shady organization. Here are the final stats for Ruthie PV-19: Ruthie PV-19: Stealth Pig posted:Cognition: 14 The fire rages behind her as she trots away from the ruined facility, the rumble of the explosion still echoing off the hills. Lucas grabs her smartphone from her pack and holds it up in front of her face. Without any apparent effort, the screen shifts and dials "HOME" from the contacts list. The line connects, but no one on the other end answers. She grunts, "It's Agent Ruthie. Target eliminated." Without waiting for a reply the call ends. Lucas returns the phone to the pack and takes a position on top of her head. Once he's secure, she picks up speed, spreading her vast bat-like wings and taking to the sky. In the distance behind her the flashing lights of fire trucks appear on the horizon.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:47
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Yesssss 'splosion pig! Whoever designed Project GOON clearly did not care about having normal agents.
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Feb 17, 2022 04:58
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As the backer responsible for the winged pig: yesssss very good
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Feb 17, 2022 07:13
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Antivehicular posted:As the backer responsible for the winged pig: yesssss very good Excellent choice. I was going to pick my Hyena, but the stats just didn't feel right.
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Feb 17, 2022 07:20
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Dawgstar posted:Since ARB is very likely to check this thread, I do have a question that is probably a matter of personal opinion: what would you consider, say, the Turtles and Bebop/Rocksteady to have looks wise? Bestial or Inhuman? The question from a metafictional perspective would be "can they disguise themselves briefly in hats and trenchcoats?" (Or hoodies, or ushankas, whatever.) The turtles can manage it, so to court heresy, I'd say they're Inhuman. Mutants like Bebop and Rocksteady generally don't, so they'd be Bestial. (I'm sure there might be some obscure example of Bebop and Rocksteady doing it, but for the most part, no.) There's a lot of wiggle room in terms of appearance, but that's a good metafictional dividing line: trenchcoats or no?
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Feb 17, 2022 16:23
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The stat lines for the turtles in the Palladium game have them at Looks: None, which would map to Bestial in this game, so clearly opinions vary.
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Feb 17, 2022 17:29
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Tsilkani posted:The stat lines for the turtles in the Palladium game have them at Looks: None, which would map to Bestial in this game, so clearly opinions vary. Yeah, but the reason I asked ARB was as they so wisely brought up the Trenchcoat Gambit. In the movie Raph can go to the movies in a trenchcoat and people will just go 'eh, New York.' If the Turtles layer up they can go out which is why I was leaning towards Inhuman. I remember being mad at the TMNT RPG that you couldn't make the Turtles under the game's chargen rules. I think that might have been the first time I noticed such a thing, which apparently also immediately bugged me.
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Feb 17, 2022 18:37
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Tsilkani posted:The stat lines for the turtles in the Palladium game have them at Looks: None, which would map to Bestial in this game, so clearly opinions vary. Well, TMNT&OS was written based on a grand total of five TMNT comics (issues 1-4 + Raphael), so a lot hadn't been established yet. While it's impressive how broadly accurate it remained (likely partly due to it occasionally being used as a rough guide for future writers). Wujcik's material in supplements would occasionally diverge from the comics where they didn't worry about what he wrote, so though it was fundamental, there are characters like Radical and Complete Carnage that completely diverged from the backstory he set up for them.
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Feb 18, 2022 02:21
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Let's Make Another Agent of GOON Let's start with rolling stats. Here's my initial stat line: quote:Cognition 20 Pretty good on the whole, but that Determination is a big oof; I'm willing to see how a low-Strength character works, but I'm not sure I want a mutant who can't take the heat of GOON assignments. I spend a takeback point to reroll Det and get an 18(!), which I'll take. This character isn't the best in a fight, at least not melee, but is whip-smart and tough as nails. This stat line gives me 12+2+5+8-2+4+10 = 39 GOO-P to take into the next step. Onto Step 4, the species step. I roll a 72, or Lab Species, which seems fitting (also, like Tsilkani mentioned, is 50% of the range of this table, so not a great candidate for a reroll). I could flip-flop to 27 to go Wild, but I think Lab fits the background fine. I roll a 10 on the table, which gives us... Chimpanzee, Common! Kind of weird with the Strength, but that's maybe interesting. That said, I'd like a second choice, so I spend another takeback point on a potential reroll. This gives me 47, or... Monkey, Rhesus Macaque. The game is really wanting me to make a simian today, I guess? I decide to go with Rhesus Macaque, since it fits better with a low-Strength character, and also I've never been clear how anthro chimps are supposed to work. For a little fun, I decide to roll on the Personalization Tables. I roll a 47 again (really?) on Table F-1, which marks my character as below-average in height -- 1d10% below average for my size rating, which I roll as 1%, and a -5% to rolls on the next table, Weight. I roll a 49 for weight, modified to 44, so my character is 1d10% lighter than my size rating. I roll a 9% here, so clearly I've got a gangly little monkey on my hands. Tables F-3 through F-5 are all elements of backstory. I roll a 91 for Life Before Mutation, or "Sudden Upheaval" -- some kind of disaster in my character's early life that forced them to survive, but "humanity wasn't directly involved." That's a little confusing for a lab species, so I'm going to treat it as referring to a calamity outside of human control, not necessarily my character being born in the wild. (Google does not clarify for me whether rhesus macaques used in laboratories are captive-bred. I'm assuming they are.) For Table F-4, Mutation Peers, I roll a 35: "You mutated entirely alone." Presumably my character was a solitary experiment subject. I roll a 68 on Table F-5, How You Learned To Fight, which gives me Online Learning; my little weirdo learned martial arts from Youtube videos, it looks like! GOON R&D should probably improve their Internet filters. Onward to Step 5, where we spend all this GOO-P and mutate. Rhesus macaques start with 23 GOO-P, which adds to 39 earlier to give us a pool of 62 to play with. We start at Size 6, or about 2 1/2 feet tall; Size 9 or 10 would take us to the average human height range, but Size 10 substantially improves our Lift mod (1/2 to 1), so I'm going to spend 8 points to move to Size 10. This puts us at (a bit shorter than) 6'. Now, onto Anthropomorphic Traits. As you'd expect from a primate, rhesus macaques start a little closer to human than most animals: semi-bipedal, with grasping limbs as default. I spend 2 GOO-P to go from Herbivore to Omnivore (I think this character isn't very picky about what they eat), 5 to go from Semi-Bipedal to Bipedal, and 5 to go from Grasping to Prehensile limbs. Finally, there's Speech and Mask. For this character, I'm inclined to spend a little more aggressively on being humanlike than I might for another character, especially if I'm taking Mendel and Ruthie into account as my teammates; I figure one of this character's niches as an Agent of GOON is to be able to pass as human for stealth or daylight-ops purposes. With that in mind, I spend 5 GOO-P to upgrade from Nonvocal to Vocal and 5 more to upgrade from Bestial to Kemonomimi Mask: plausibly human-looking, but with a tail (down the back of their pants in stealth mode), big ears, and sort of shaggy sideburn-y hair, maybe weird on a woman. Also, I guess this character is a woman? I probably should have decided that earlier. 32 GOO-P left, and onto Animal Traits, which are pretty minimal for macaques. I'll spend 5 GOO-P for the Arboreal trait, and 5 more for Natatorial, which makes her comfortable both climbing and swimming. I spend 5 more GOO-P for the macaque's special Animal Trait, Prankster, which grants advantage to breaking into places and stealing things, plus adds Distract as a combat maneuver. I'll spend 4 more GOO-P to buy all the macaque's minor traits: Communal, Cheek Pouches, Grasping Feet, and Nearly Human. Most of these are just fun bennies, but Nearly Human allows me to choose an extra stat to be able to enhance from Cognition, Determination, Affinity, or Perception. I'll choose Affinity here (Cog and Det are already on the macaque list, and my Perception is fine as-is), plus Speed as my free bonus. I have 13 GOO-P left, and I'm inclined to spend it on stat increases instead of psionics. I can boost Cog, Det, Prowess, Speed, and Affinity. I decide to drop 6 points each into Speed and Affinity, for +3 each, doubled for Speed since it started at 10; that gives me a Speed of 16 and an Affinity of 15. That leaves me with one precious point, which I'll drop into Prowess to give it a +1 and taking it to 18. Next, it's time to choose a fighting style! I can choose from Sports, Street, Wild, or Secret thanks to the Agent/Employee background. Given that we're talking about a monkey who learned to fight from Youtube videos, I'm going to go for Tricking here: "a combination of gymnastics, breakdancing, and flashy martial arts forged into a demonstration discipline." This gives me +1 Prowess (up to 19) and +2 Speed (up to 18). Now it's time for Step 7, or picking skill packages: for our Agent of GOON, this means one basic, two covert/military/professional, and two hobbies, plus more hobbies equal to COG bonus (+4 right now). For my Basic package, I'm going to take Traversal to synergize with my Arboreal and Natatorial traits; I'm going to stick with the three core skills (Athletics, Climbing, and Swimming), although Escape and First Aid are pretty nice too. This gives another +1 to Prowess and Speed, taking them to 20 and 19. Next, I'm going to take the covert Thief package, which gives a further +1 Prowess (21!) and Burglary, Fence, and Filch as its base skills. Our girl doesn't steal to sell, so Fence doesn't make much sense, and I swap it for Sneak. Finally, I decide my last skill package will be Handler, which deals with animal handling and makes sense for a character who grew up in a lab. This grants +1 Affinity and Perception, for 16 Affinity and 17 Perception total, and the skills Companionship, Trainer, and Whisperer. I think my character is less about the training and more about animal friendship, so I swap out Trainer for First Aid. Next, it's time to pick Hobbies and Specialties. For the hobbies, I go with a mix of stuff she'd learn in the lab (Biology, Genetics), bonus sneak-thiefery (Escape, Hide, Camouflage), and one actual hobby (Driver). I now get to promote four of these skills to Specialties. I automatically get Climbing and Swimming as Specialty skills from my Arboreal and Natatorial traits, plus three advances since they're package skills. The four skills I choose to promote are Athletics (this character is very physical), Sneak and Filch (she's a well-trained sneak-thief), and Companionship (she has a very strong affinity for animals). At this point, I'll reiterate my final stat block before we start doing skill calculations: quote:Cognition 20 Once we crunch the numbers and derive values, here's how the skills shake out: quote:Specialty Skills: Athletics 72%/+4%, Climbing 90%/+5%, Sneak 72%/+4%, Filch 75%/+5%, Companionship 68%/+4%, Swimming 84%/+4% Pretty solid overall, and Climbing and Swimming are gross. Nice. Moving onto Getting Stuff! I choose the Agent Package (inconspicuous clothing, commlink set, one agent gimmick), then go for the Spy Set (duffel bag of spare clothes, cell phone, two basic or agent gimmicks, and +0% wealth). For my first agent gimmick, I choose the high-tech lockpick for a bonus on opening one type of lock (I choose electronic, so I assume this is a keycard or whatnot). For my two spy gimmicks, I'm going to go from the Basic list and pick Citizenship and License, which in her case is a driver's license. This monkey is a legal person, and she can legally drive! When GOON lends her a fleet vehicle, that is... One thing she doesn't seem to start with, I note, is a weapon. We'll see how that works out. Rolling on Wealth gives me an 11, modified by +0% from Spy (so, 11), which means Ready Money: $300 in cash, as it happens. Walking-around money is nice and all, but it'd be nicer to be banked, so I spend my last takeback point on a reroll of this percentile roll. This gives me a 92: Trust Fund, baby! With $15,000 and, hopefully, a bank account! This will definitely help when she tries to pass as human and obtain goods and services. At last, it's time to Wrap Up. For names, I'm going with a regular human one, to match this extremely Regular Human character: Kathleen "Kathy" Okazaki, who is on paper the adopted daughter of one of the scientists from her home lab. (Kathy is unusually close to her scientists and handlers, who prioritized evacuating her and the other animals during the hurricane that destroyed their original facility prior to getting brought on by GOON, and particularly Dr. Maria Okazaki, her adopted mother and primary force behind Kathy having legal personhood and some financial security.) Her core values are Mercy, Justice, and Adventure; she's very concerned with animal welfare in both GOO-P and conventional labs, and wants abusers of both mutants and non-mutated animals brought to justice, but she's also just in this for a good time. My CTCT is +3, which gives me a single contact with three skills. Rolling on the Random Contact table gives me an interesting person: Charles Mohammed, a covert agent with forensic experience who dabbles in forestry, and who's taken a professional interest in mutant animals. This can only end well. Here's the finished character sheet: quote:Kathleen "Kathy" Okazaki When she's not on duty, Kathy can be found watching parkour videos on Youtube, doing parkour somewhere she's probably not supposed to be, and window-shopping for motorcycles.
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Feb 18, 2022 10:31
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Yes, the ranks of Project GOON continue to grow! A good contrast to the flying pig and the upright tomcat, I like it. Rules as written, you can't use a takeback on the wealth roll, since it's after step 5, but I think that might be because Step 5 is the last time you can adjust attributes and then there are no more random rolls, barring wealth. I don't think any GM would object to using it like you did.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:28
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Oh, that's a good point. I assumed it was acceptable because it was a randomized percentile roll as part of chargen, but I might be wrong. On the subject of takeback usage, a quick question: the "reroll a percentile" option specifies that you can roll again if "the result is the same as before." Does that mean the actual chart result, or just the raw number on the dice? If you roll a different number with the same chart result, can you reroll, or are you stuck with it?
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Feb 18, 2022 23:42
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Tsilkani posted:Rules as written, you can't use a takeback on the wealth roll, since it's after step 5, but I think that might be because Step 5 is the last time you can adjust attributes and then there are no more random rolls, barring wealth. I don't think any GM would object to using it like you did. RAW that's true, and that just comes down to keeping the order of operations clear so that other uses don't cause issues. But if you want to use takebacks on wealth, that's not really an issue; I didn't worry too much about it because wealth is almost like a flavor / non-systematic element. (That's not to say it can't be powerful, but that it's not intended to be set in stone like a mutation is.) Antivehicular posted:On the subject of takeback usage, a quick question: the "reroll a percentile" option specifies that you can roll again if "the result is the same as before." Does that mean the actual chart result, or just the raw number on the dice? If you roll a different number with the same chart result, can you reroll, or are you stuck with it? The chart result; for example, if you're rolling on D-1: Urban Species, get a 79 for Brown Rat and then re-roll for an 82 which also gets you a Brown Rat, you can re-roll again.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:27
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On the mutation worksheet it says zoological traits and in the book it says zoomorphic, which caused me some confusion the first time through.
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Feb 22, 2022 19:25
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Bouquet posted:On the mutation worksheet it says zoological traits and in the book it says zoomorphic, which caused me some confusion the first time through. Yikes! Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to add it to the list of compiled revisions at month's end.
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Feb 23, 2022 18:00
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Would it mess up anything about character creation if I flipped Step 3 (Attributes) and Step #4 (Origin/Species)?
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Feb 25, 2022 17:51
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I don't think it'd be an issue as long as you made sure to have your attributes rolled and total GOO-P calculated before you go to Step 5, but I will say that having the attributes already rolled flavors decisions about background, species, and takeback usage a lot, IMHO. It helps you have a baseline of the character in your head before you make the meatier chargen decisions.
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Feb 25, 2022 23:26
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Pasha posted:Would it mess up anything about character creation if I flipped Step 3 (Attributes) and Step #4 (Origin/Species)? The main reason they're in that order is so you all attribute bonuses come after attribute rolls to keep people from having to track "floating" bonuses, though I suppose there is a still a bit of that with the secondary attribute bonuses on certain backgrounds. The chief effect would be that knowing your bonuses and species may inform what attributes they reroll, and allow them to maximize those more effectively. But the game wouldn't necessarily break.
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Feb 27, 2022 19:21
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 Revision 8 is up via Kickstarter, itch.io, DriveThruRPG, and Indie Press Revolution! While the errata has the full list, highlights include:
The combat reference sheets have been revised to match the updates in the main text, and a very minor typo was fixed on the mutation reference sheets. The character sheet is the only document that hasn't seen updates. So go ahead and pull it down again when you can, there are fixes within!
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Mar 3, 2022 16:51
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Hopefully it's not too late to add to the roster of Project GOON, I only recently discovered this game and wanted to try out character generation. First up, Attributes: quote:Cognition: 11 That's...kinda bad, actually. The average of 4d6 is 14, so only three of my attributes even meet the average. I could just spend all of my takebacks right now, but I'm going to hold off until after I roll my species. Lower attributes=more GOO-P, and spending GOO-P to raise attributes that start below 10 gets you double the effect, so it's probably a good idea to not be too hasty just yet. So I roll on table C-3: Institutional Species to determine the actual species table I'll be using, and get an 03: Pet Species. I don't really have a preference either way for any of the species tables, so I'll just go with what the dice say. Rolling on table D-2: Pet Species, I get a 100: Turtle, Red-Eared Slider. Nah, I want to see if I can get something funnier, so I spend a takeback to reroll. I get a 53, which could let me play as a Dog, Great Dane, but instead I'm going to slam down my second of three takebacks to flip that result. My character's species? Goldfish quote:Species: Goldfish I am starting to have a plan for how I want this character to turn out now, but I still need to figure out what to do with my final takeback. Neither Strength nor Determination are part of my Enhance attributes, and both are below ten, so I guess I'll reroll one of them and then spend GOO-P to increase the other later. I choose Determination, and get...an 11. Well, I guess that's an improvement, but this game really wasn't kidding when it said Step 2 was cursing your dice. Anyways, time to calculate my starting GOO-P: 9+12+9+2+5+9+10+6 equals 62, for a final total of 110 GOO-P after adding in the bonus from being a goldfish. This seems like a lot, looking at the three other examples in this thread, but I'll probably need it. Onto Mutations: quote:Mutations: To sum up, I bought every single trait available to a goldfish, and then dumped the remaining GOO-P into size and attributes since I had nothing else I wanted to spend it on. For the major traits, Adaptable lets my goldfish shrug off disadvantages from the environment/status/states by spending 1 Will, Natatorial gives them swimming as a specialty skill and lets them move at full speed while swimming, Prey Sight gives advantage to notice movement or avoid surprise (and also they can ignore the unbalanced condition when rolling to retreat), and finally Slippery makes it difficult for anyone to grab them. Because they are a slimy fish. In fact, you may have noticed that while I spent GOO-P to give my goldfish prehensility, I didn't bother to spend any points on giving them legs, much less making them bipedal. That's because our fishy agent here is literally just a giant goldfish with arms. We'll solve the legs issue in a bit, during the equipment step. Anyways, the minor traits mostly just make our goldfish more of a goldfish, but I'd like to point out three of them. Communal boosts their ability to aid other pc's using teamwork, Flamboyant gives advantage on the first social interction roll with another character (and then presumably they realize they are talking to a giant goldfish), and Scales gives Resistance 1. Resistance negates any foe's damage dice that roll its value or lower, and since I decided to give my fish size 11, which also gives Resistance 1, the two combine for a final Resistance of 2. I should note that resistance isn't added if you have multiple sources of Resistance, you use whichever value is higher, but if you have multiple sources that give the same amount of Resistance, you can increase that value by +1. I also choose to take the goldfish's unique trait, Smart Little Fish, which will come into play after selecting my skill packages. I then chose to spend the remaining GOO-P on Strength (started at less than ten, so enhancing it gives double the bonus for the same cost), Endurance (I want this goldfish to be tough and buff), and Speed. My goldfish's stat line is looking much better, and that's before the increases from choosing a fighting style and picking skill packages. Speaking of fighting styles, I think it's about time someone in this thread finally takes advantage of being able to choose the one secret style in the book: Ninpo Taijutsu. My goldfish is now a ninja goldfish, and gains +2 Prowess and +1 Speed, boosting both up to 20. This character is going to get a bit more ridiculous by the end of this. For skill packages, I'm going to start with the 2 covert, military, or professional packages. First up is Construction to gain Smithing, Laborer, and Operator, plus an additional +2 Strength and +1 Endurance. It helps this buff fish get buffer, and I really like the idea of a goldfish that can smith weapons and drive a forklift. Next, I take Social Sciences to help improve my goldfish's ability to smooth talk people in the instant before they realize they're talking to a fish. They gain +1 Cognition and +2 Affinity, as well as Bargain, Psychology, and Sociology. Finally, I use my basic pick to select Extreme Sports, so that my giant ninja goldfish can pull off sick nasty tricks on their skateboard. +1 Prowess, +1 Endurance, and they get Skate, Surfing, and Escape as skills. I also finally remember that I get +2 Prowess from the agent background, raising it to 23. Thanks to the unique trait Smart Little Fish, I can choose one of my skill packages and advance all of the skills it gives. Naturally, I pick Extreme Sports. For hobbies, I get two from the agent background, plus one from my (recently acquired) 12 cognition. I choose Athletics, Hide, and Sneak, as my goldfish is striving to become a better ninja (they have a very long way to go before they are ever stealthy, however). I can pick one skill to upgrade to a specialty skill, so I go with Psychology. What's more terrifying than being psychoanalyzed by a ninja goldfish riding a skateboard? Speaking of, let's knock out the equipment packages. I'm picking the Agent package Commando, to give my agent loose-fitting clothes, a commlink set, an edged weapon (curved sword/Katana), a firearm (I'll go with a light pistol), worn armor (Ninja suit), and for my gimmick I'm taking Heavy Bionics to give my goldfish the bipedal trait. If this was for an actual game, I'd ask the GM if I could reflavor the heavy bionics as just a fancy skateboard that my giant ninja goldfish rides around on. For wealth, I roll a 32, modified down to a 22 due to the Commando package, and end up with $600 in cash. For values, I go with Justice, Preparedness, and Self-Reliance, as I imagine this goldfish has probably seen one too many ninja movies. Finally, after doing all of the cross referencing for skills and figuring out secondary attributes (remembering that I get +10 SHT and +1 Will from the agent background), here's where my giant ninja cyber-goldfish skater is at: quote:Origin: Experimentation Result, Agent/Employee To wrap things up, I'll name the goldfish Grace, and roll up their starting contact. Charlotte Takahashi, a Geneticist with an interest in the weird. Alright, I am putting the blame for Grace's creation squarely upon her shoulders. Charlotte was in charge of Project G01-D, an experiment to see how the agency could combine mutants with cybernetics. It was immediately discontinued after Grace was produced. Her skills as a Contact are Genetics, Sociology, and Swimming. I am also just going to say she's the reason Grace got so hooked on ninja movies. So there we go, Grace is a giant, eight-foot tall cyber-goldfish ninja who rides around on a skateboard because they have no legs (and also it's fun). They're still figuring out the whole "stealth" thing of being a ninja, but honestly, who's going to believe a security guard when they claim to have seen a giant ninja goldfish skating around and fighting crime?
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Mar 19, 2022 10:52
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Because I can't leave well enough alone, Mutants in the Now just got a major update! This has been to clean up and clarify the material for a second printing, an upcoming translation, the next Kickstarter, and more. It's now available wherever you got your copy- Kickstarter, itch.io, DriveThruRPG, or Indie Press Revolution. And if you don't have a physical copy, it's a good time to get the new printing. https://twitter.com/AlienRopeBurn/status/1510362303107117062 Astus posted:Hopefully it's not too late to add to the roster of Project GOON, I only recently discovered this game and wanted to try out character generation. Just want to add I love seeing these characters, all the members of Project GOON have been super rad!
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Apr 2, 2022 22:26
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Yo ARB, what exotic locale are you getting published in?
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Apr 3, 2022 00:19
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grassy gnoll posted:Yo ARB, what exotic locale are you getting published in? I was approached directly about translation into a relatively niche European language; I'll be able to talk about it more in the future. I'd also like to reach out to other publishers in time, though, as I had a fair member of overseas backers in the original campaign.
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Apr 3, 2022 01:35
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Not sure if I overlooked a rule on this but is this legal: you roll your attributes and one is an 8. You spend a takeback to add 1d6 to another attribute and reduce the 8 attribute by the same amount. Can you then spend another takeback and reroll the attribute that was an 8, and if so do you use the original number to determine if your roll is higher or the adjusted one? Made a Teenage Mutant Karate Cow so far and quite enjoyed it. ARB, I'm really impressed with the amount of thought you put each animal, especially the fact each one has an unique ability. Update: Took a closer look at the wording for Takebacks and now know the +- step is after step 3, which is where rerolls are only allowed. Knuckle Sammich fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 6, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 02:08
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You got it; that's why there's a hard breakpoint to where you can do rerolls. Early playtests had a lot more swapping and rerolling in later steps which required you to keep track of both your rolled attribute and bonuses separately. The +/- 1d6 was a compromise to allow some degree of swapping/prioritizing without having to track multiple numbers for each attribute at every step.
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Apr 6, 2022 00:45
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I'm offering a $10 discount on physical purchases of the Revised Edition of Mutants in the Now for those who bought physical copies of the Kickstarter Edition. Details are in the Kickstarter post.
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Apr 8, 2022 21:26
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Sign up to be notified when Mutants in the Next goes live! Keeping Sophie's involvement mum is probably one of the hardest things I've had to do in my life, and I have a exciting list of other tabletop notables to get involved through stretch goals! I'm looking to make more Mutants, and make it a big deal, so please spread the word! It'll have human-born mutants, wild mutations, new species, new mutations, new fighting styles, new villains, and much more. Join me for the Next mutation! also prepare for embarrassing overuse of the word "next"
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Apr 25, 2022 18:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
I'm very excited to see what Sophie comes up with, amazing that you were able to get her on board and keep quiet about it.
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Apr 25, 2022 19:13
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I am very excited for more everything, and anxiously awaiting that page to go live.
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Apr 27, 2022 19:17
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Very cool you got Sophie, ARB. I figured somebody on the comic liked the RPG as they named a band After the Bomb (which makes sense in the context of the comic even).
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Apr 27, 2022 19:45
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| # ? May 2, 2024 04:57 |
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 There's an official launch date: May 10th. Gotta slide in between those big-name Kickstarters. I'll be doing announcements on Twitter leading up to it between my snarky subtweets. ----- There's also a fan-modified fillable character sheet now thanks to Kordwar on Reddit to download, as well!
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May 3, 2022 18:01
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