I love me some Metamorphosis Alpha, but after having run it I find the rules somewhat lacking. Sure, there are lots of tasty tables in the rulebook, but there really isn’t a conventional system of advancement, or class/skill system to let you differentiate characters of the same race. These are considered features by some, advancement and diversity coming from gear and experiences, but I find it just a bit lacking in a D&D derived game.

Also, I love me some weird psychedelic fantasy. Heroes who look like hairbands, sorcerers who’s “magic” is more mental powers and sci-fi tech than hocus pocus, and weird chimeric monsters get my motor running. I also dig mystic weirdness, don’t get me wrong, but “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and all that. Maybe Vancian style spells are Psychic programs, and Abomination type monsters are aliens.

Rules-wise its Labyrinth Lord using Mutant Futures Mutants and Mazes variant and Starships & Spacemen for the occasional crewman out of time.

Day one of the “Gamma Cloud” or whatever, a huge group of crew members seek shelter in a level given over to dense forests to ensure viable forest eco-systems on the world yet to come. The outer layers of the forest suffer hugely from mutation, but the biomass protects the core of the level.

Generations later a 1300’s era feudal society develops among the un-mutated humans. Much like the peoples of the 1300’s these people begin to cut down all the forest they can, preserving some “forests” in the form of tree farms. Only the mutated forests (Full of elves, demons, and monsters) are left forming a ring around the only country in the known world.

Near the center of the level is Yvonne (a camelot standin), there are a few more small cities, a hand full of villages, and several distinct mutated forests. From the forest come the “Elves” (a catchall term for human like stable mutants), and “Beastmen” (animal like mutant humans, Mutant Animals, Mutant Plants, etc). Immediately underground are a series of ancient tunnels, dungeons, and caverns; below that is the “Underdark” a whole industrial city level subject to heavy mutation and used by the ships systems as a dumping ground, no daylight, no life support, if it weren’t for the diverse flora of mutated fungi….

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