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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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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 06:39 |
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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potatocubed posted:Apropos of nothing, but 'Little Blue Bird of Hackiness' is extremely good. Thanks, ha ha. Bouquet posted:The Mutant Vigilante reward tier description should probably have a "for" after "looking," if it's possible to edit at this point in the process. As soon as somebody pledges, it's locked in stone, ooops. That is a strange and cool mutant, and boy, does he sound well-fed.
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May 15, 2022 06:40
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Oh wow, I need to check that out when I've had a bit to rest, but in the meantime... Mutants in the Next has funded! I owe it to everybody who's joined in with the project, backed, spread the word, and did me all sorts of favors. Thanks! That gets us to eyeing the first stretch goal at $22,000, which is to get Crystal Frasier to write an adventure! To say she has a lot of experience in that from her time at Paizo and Green Ronin is understating it, and I'd love to bring her on board. So spread the word if you can, and hopefully we can start bringing a whole crew on board.
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May 27, 2022 23:36
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We've hit the first stretch goal, which adds an adventure by Crystal Frasier! But we're so close to adding art by Darren M.A. Calvert, who does brilliant black-and-white art like- - and it's just a little more to tip over and it's driving me nuts, so give it a gander. I'm really looking forward to seeing what support in this final week reveals!
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Jun 6, 2022 16:54
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Napoleon Nelson posted:ARB, you managed to include all of my top species ideas in your new list. That's great in that I don't have to pick between, but now I'm not sure what I can add. I hesitate to bring it up, but emperor penguins are in Mutants in the Now - you can find the original animal tables here. That being said... You can always trust in my ability to find another interesting analogous member of a species. For example, the short-tailed gray opossum was added when a backer just gave me the Virginia opossum in the original book, and I offered that one, and it really fits because it's actually used as a lab animal relatively often for various reasons, and is also an interesting predator in that it's really dangerous for its (miniscule) size. So it was a strong contrast, and I can offer alternatives if you get stuck. And there are, indeed, tons of cool penguins out there on those ice and rocks. Bouquet posted:Bring in another era-appropriate work involving genetic manipulation and do some raptors from Jurassic Park. Gee, I haven't even gotten to wombats yet! That being said, I do plan to have a genemod that got cut from Now that's definitely along those lines, though a little... off from what one might expect.
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Jun 7, 2022 18:23
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 06:39 |
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 Mutants in the Next is publicly available now, for the record! You can find all the relevant links at the j/k! Games webpage. I'm super proud of the toolbox tome we put together for you folks. (Art above by Sophie Campbell.) Dawgstar posted:Just to make absolutely sure I'm Doing It Right, with human-born mutants you still buy up your Prehensility or your Mask to whatever level you want, it's just you originally were completely human in appearance but now you have cat ears and a tail because my rolls say I'm making a Puma Sister. (Literally, I rolled cougar.) Yeah, doing a "reverse process" from human towards animal was considered, but it added a lot of complexity for the purposes of gamefeel, and I didn't feel tacking on a separate system would have helped. Bouquet posted:Alien Rope Burn I know you said somewhere in one of the books to let people be pretty free with which skill they use for a roll so don't worry about all the overlap, but this is just kind of exhausting to contemplate. Even my friends who are nostalgic about the Palladium stuff in theory aren't going to be excited about poring through all this in TYOL 2023 as busy adults. As discussed better in Next, skills are meant to be a form of characterization and RP prompt more than necessarily being prohibitive, so there's intentional overlap. There's a reason the rules typically just reference making a "dramatic roll" rather than a specific skill, if you miss out on a particular named skill, or if you want to suggest new skills, that's fine. It's intended to be loose and evocative.
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Oct 18, 2023 00:48
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