Mutants In The Now Part 2

Secret of the GOO-P

Wow, Didn’t Even Have To Reach For That One

Same Cover, Second Part!

As promised (assuming I actually finish and post this… Ghu knows, I’ve started articles only to pick them up weeks or months later), here’s Part 2 of my review/walkthrough of ‘Mutants In The Now’, with Part 1 being here.

When last we left our intrepid bovine, he was… still a bovine. An unmutated cow, a blank slate waiting to be scribbled upon, which can get problematic as most bulls do not like to stand there while you draw on them. Farmers can get mad, too, and they have shotguns. Bad idea all ’round, then.

I mutated during a “Transport Accident”, so let’s say I was being taken to The Last Roundup, destined not for greatness, but for hamburger. A delivery van full of mutagenic whatsis was going the other way, the driver of the cattle truck was a little drunk following a country-song-worthy bad breakup, goop got spilled, and I got a bunch of GOO-P to spend. Confused by my new sapience, I ended up finding shelter with a group of aging hippies who survived by selling artisanal vegan makeup on Etsy.

That fills out the “role-playing” part. Time for the game part! Numbers! Calculations! Crunch! The stuff you pay for! You don’t need to pay money for “make up a story”, you pay money for rules! Lovely, complicated rules that turn all the vague uncertainties of life into concrete formulas that can be learned and mastered! (Gosh, I wonder why TTRPGs are so population with us Asperger’s/ADHD types. I wonder, I wonder… but I also digress.)

Huh. I missed some ‘personalization tables’. Since I haven’t started mutating yet, might as well roll on them!

Height: I am 4% taller than average,adding 5% to rolls on the weight table. Curiously, the chance of being average height is only 2%! 48% will be either above or below average. This actually kinda makes sense – very, very few people (cows, chickens, axolotls) are precisely average – the very peak of the bell curve is narrow. A subtle, and interesting, choice on the part of the designers – I like it. (Also, I spelled ‘axolotl’ correctly on my first try! Go me!)

Weight: Wow, I am a chonker! Rolled a 96, +5 for my size, throwing me off the chart! I’ll read it as a 100. When all the rolling is done, I am 81% heavier than my size would indicate. Given my low strength, speed, and endurance, the implication is that it ain’t muscle. My high prowess, though, indicates I’m quite agile and dexterous. We’ll see how the other rolls work out, I learned how to turn any random string of numbers into a coherent vision rolling up Traveller subsectors, back in the day, this is old hat for me.

It’s Mutatin’ Time!

In Other Words, A Dell Box With Legs

Enough dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying! Let’s look at my basic stats. I am, you will recall, a cow. Technically, I suppose, a bull, as I chose to be male, and the rules don’t care about sexual dimorphism mechanically, which is probably for the best. That’s too big a can of worms. (I played with it a little in the first version of Earth Delta, then dropped it. Adds little of real value.)

Looking back to my original stats in Part I, my attributes, which are mostly craptacular, give me 52 GOO-P, and I get 10 for being a cow, so, that’s a total of 62. I am not sure if I have to pay for the listed traits or not, we’ll see.

The listed “Enhance” traits are ones I can spend GOO-P on, plus one of my choice. Here’s the fun part, if the chosen attribute is 10 or less, you get double the bonus for your GOO-P. I can spend 10 GOO-P on Strength, which raises it by +8 after doubling, to 18. I will also spend 6 GOO-P on Endurance, to raise it to 16. This leaves 36 GOO-P.

My stats currently look like this:

• Cognition: 10
• Determination: 15
• Affinity: 13
• Perception:17
• Strength:18
• Prowess: 18
• Endurance: 16
• Speed: 13

My SR (Size Rating) is 13. This gives me a base weight of 1-2 tons, 1d12 damage, Resistance 2, 33 SHT, and some other stuff. It also makes me inconveniently large, at the top of recommended PC range. I could gain some GOO-P by shrinking, but I will stay with this for now.

Now, beginning with base traits, we spend GOO-P to mutate! This is a typical chart. I begin as a quadruped, so, I need to (or rather, can choose to) spend GOO-P to ascend towards humanoid. 10 points makes me a biped, which fits the genre requirement. Let’s go for it. 26 GOO-P left.

It takes another 10 points to get to prehensile limbs, and 5 to get speech. This leaves me 9 GOO-P. I am not going to spend points on “Mask”, which is how well I can pass for human – I’m 2 ton+, 12 foot tall biped. I doubt anyone will not suspect something’s “off” about me even if look a lot less bovine.

For 12 points, I could be a ‘tauroid’ (centaur), which is an interesting option – I could sell back some stat bonuses or reduce my size to achieve this. But, nah. Let’s go for full cow-man.

Next up are Major Traits. These were listed in the stat block, and I pondered their meaning. Now I know! (And knowing is half the battle!) These are traits I can optionally take (for the listed GOO-P cost) as they fit my species. Nine points could get me one or two, but I am going to defy my usual “forward only” style to see if there’s anything else I might want to spend GOO-P on later, as it’s getting a little low. Well, there’s psionics, but the weakest of those is 10 GOO-P. So let’s just look at major and minor traits.

Tough Hide (major) is 5 points. Horns (minor) with outward and charging are 3 points. Hm. I might as well take Enhanced Hearing w/my last point.

This is also my last chance for Takebacks. I still have 2, I will use one to reroll Cognition. Wow! I got a 22! But… ugh. That would have reduced my GOO-P. But, hmm. The end of Section 5 says “Now is your last chance to modify attributes”, with the implication you’re done spending GOO-P, however, that makes no sense – you would save all your low-stat re-rolls until now, getting the extra points and then increasing the stats. I have to assume that’s not the design intent.

As the reroll would cost me 14 points (from +10 to -4), it would require major recalculation. Oh, well. I will stick with my current stats.

Or… will I?

I can sell my size down to 11, still making me pretty imposing. This would give me 15 points. Remove the 14 for the Cognition difference, I have one left. Now I can drop Enhanced Hearing (1 point) and take Burdened Beast (2 points) instead, for +5 SHT, which almost makes up for the SHT I lose by shrinking. Perfect! I end up a little smaller, but a lot smarter.

This Is My Fight Song

I begin with… oh, I need a name, don’t I? Let’s go with Hal Stein (get it?), suggested by one of the hippies who found me and helped me adjust to sapience. If I need a “street” or “code” name, “Bullhead” comes to mind, because he’s a bull, and also (thanks to the takeback and reroll) pretty smart.

From a Rural background, I can learn a Sport, Tradition, or Wild style. “Improvised Panic” sounds like a lot of fun, but doesn’t fit this character. (It does, however, make me want to roll up someone else, whom it does fit, which is the mark of a good chargen system!) A lot of the “traditional” styles (Aikido, Jiu Jitsu, etc.) don’t really feel like things I’d learn on a commune full of aging vegans (though some of them might have been Billy Jack types, I suppose). But “Powerhouse Prey” feels particularly appropriate, synergizing nicely with my horns (as it enhances charge attacks, and my horns grant me a powerful charge attack). It also gives me +2 Strength, +1 Endurance, and an assortment of maneuvers.

So my stats are now:

• Cognition: 22
• Determination: 15
• Affinity: 13
• Perception:17
• Strength:20
• Prowess: 18
• Endurance: 17
• Speed: 13

Get Gud!

I mean, that’s the section heading! Time to pick some skills! From my background rolls, I get 2 basic skill packages and 1 military or professional package, plus some hobby skills. There’s a lot of overlap between categories, making it easier to select the skills you need. From Basic, I’m picking Traversal (getting around) and Farming (fits my background). From Professional, I’m picking Engineer – with my now-high cognition, and manual dexterity, I probably learned to fix a lot of things.

Traversal raises Prowess and Speed, and lets me ignore Disadvantage on rough terrain.
Engineering raises Cognition and Determination, and lets me jury-rig a fix to broken gear in combat.
Farming raises Determination and Strength, gives me +1 WILL when defending my homestead, and gives me an animal companion – presumably, not a mutant.

This ends up being +2 Determination, +1 Cognition, +1 Strength, and +1 Prowess.

I get 5 hobby skills, and my Cognition bonus means I get to pick 6 skills as Specialty skills. Oh, and six more hobby skills, for a total of 11!

And now it gets funky. Each skill has two attributes linked to it. These determine your base chance and how much your skill improves by experience. For Package skills, the higher value is for base chance, the lower for experience. For hobby skills, the lower is used for base chance, the higher for experience, and for specialty skills, you always use the higher. Phew!

It’s possible to swap a primary skill in a package for an optional skill, or drop a primary skill to raise the other two. I took both options in Engineer: I swapped Architecture for Mechanic, then dropped Robotics to give an advance to the others. Note how this really lets me customize the “package” to fit my conception – he was on a farm, he wasn’t learning about skyscrapers or robots, he learned to fix tractors and make do with whatever parts were lying around.

After about an hour of futzing w/Excel and realizing I still remember how vlookup() and nested if() formulas work (it’s like riding a bicycle: You never forget, and you bear the scars of learning your whole life), I finally ended up with this. Skills with a * are my specialty skills. I also took a shotgun proficiency in lieu of one hobby skill.

Armoring 64
Athletics* 71
Chemistry 64
Climbing 71
Crops 64
Electrician* 72
Escape 56
First Aid* 56
Laborer 64
Livestock 64
Machinist* 77
Maintenance 64
Mechanic* 77
Riding 71
Sneak 56
Swimming 71
Traps* 72
Vigilance 56

OK, I had intended to finish this character today, but it ain’t gonna happen. I will, however, try to get Hal Stein complete before too much time passes. We’ll see how that goes.