Merry Mutant Christmas!
Today, I finally got around to doing what I’ve been putting off for months — editing the monsters in Earth Delta (just in case you somehow got here from some odd link, Earth Delta is Lizard’s take on Gamma World style mutant adventuring using the D&D 4e rules). For a long time, I’ve been telling myself the lie that I would hook up my old PC, dig out the saved monster files from my old install of Adventure Tools, load them all, convert them all, and re-export them all. The truth is, after 6 months, it ain’t gonna happen, period. Furthermore, Adventure Tools does such a swell job of mangling converted custom monsters that I’d be better off just re-entering them, and, third, Adventure Tools doesn’t actually have the correct Monster Manual 3 attack and damage calculations anyway. So I just went through every damn monster in Earth Delta — that’s 114 so far, from Annihilation Army Alchemist to Wastelander Scout — and manually checked attack rolls and damage, and fixed a whole bunch of other errors as well — ranged attacks with no ranges, conditions with no end clause, confusing or poorly worded powers, missing keywords, typos, general inconsistencies, and more. The actual stat block format is still “old style”, which is a shame, but I don’t want to get stuck on stylistic issues when there’s content to be written.
I also decided to split Earth Delta into two books — the Core Rules, which has all the Player and DM stuff, and the Mutant Manual, because the file was just getting unwieldy in Word. I expect to be posting the core rules, chock-full of changes, fixes, expansions, etc (the last update published was October!), before the end of the year. The Mutant Manual… well, smeg it, it’s here now, and if I find a lot of errors I’ll just slip up another one while no one’s looking.
Anyway, here’s what the cover looks like. You can click on it to get the file.
Wow! I haven’t had a chance to read this through all the way (as it deserves) but the Mutant Manual is very impressive. The art is fantastic, and there are some mutants in there that really stuck in my mind (I love the cult of personality Elvis impersonators – reminds me of that movie ‘six-string samurai’).
I picked up the Gamma World set on boxing day (but haven’t had a chance to play) and from what I’ve seen these creatures make great additions to that game as well as D&D.
Once New Years is behind me I’m going to have to sit down at the computer and read it through as well as the rest of the Earth Delta material.
@Victor — All credit for the art goes to Joshua Diffey, who did indeed put a Six String Samurai spin on Elvis. I need to get around to adding in the followers of John “Batman” Wayne. 🙂
Hey Lizard, hoping this gets past the spam filters. Not sure when/how it happened, since I only started getting into Earth Delta within the past 3 days or so, but the link to this version of the Mutant Manual is incorrect. It’s a quick fix, but it would be a lot more convenient if you used the link here: http://mrlizard.com/images/PDF/Earth%20Delta%20Mutant%20Manual%20Beta%201e.pdf
rather than the currently broken one which is:
http://mrlizard.com/earth-delta/merry-mutant-christmas/Earth Delta Mutant Manual Beta 1e.pdf
Thanks for posting these, and I hope that seeing another comment keeps you cheery in these trying times!
Thanks for the alert. As for the spam filter, anything that makes it past Akismet just needs a one-time approval from me, so it’s good now.