I am currently playing the new RE9 and got to thinking, what games are out there that handle mutations?
If you think about it, ‘mutation’ in a TTRPG is just some kind of mechanical change with the thematic reasoning being ‘because their body changed’ rather than their skills, knowledge, etc. It’d be kind of fun to run basically any fast-power-scaling RPG’s mechanisms but describe how, because they gained a level and put their points into strength, the blood vessels all over their body expand and their muscles swell with new, mutated power.
Sure this is true, if It were to design a system around it perhaps feats would be a good framework. “You now spit acid”, for example.
Fears as in ‘Little Fears’ the TTRPG or as in ‘you now do what you are afraid of?’
Autocorrector messed It Up, I meant feats.
Ah, yeah. Pretty doable that way.
Liminal Horror has an excellent mechanic for this in their “Fallout” system. They also are pretty clearly inspired by the Resident Evil Series
Cool! I will def check it out. :)
I’m not really familiar with RE9, but a some surface level research suggests that (mechanically speaking) mutation is just “the abilities of bad guys change mid-fight”.
That seems like it is easy enough to bolt onto more-or-less any game.
You just need a variant stat-block for the enemy and something to trigger it.
D&D 5.5 has a bunch of monsters with abilities which change when they are on half hit points but you can use other triggers such as “is the target is a spell” or “the GM decides the players are having too easy a time and spends a Fear point”.
The trick is to come up with mutations and associated mechanics which fit the narrative.
I’ve run a couple games in D&D 5e with mutating cultists. The party fought a bunch of cultists, and most of them had pretty pathetic stat blocks, but sometimes after the party killed one I’d change it out for a tougher monster’s stat block and describe how it violently mutated.
Behind the curtain, this is pretty useful because you can always decide when an encounter needs more oomph. The players can never be sure if a weak enemy is really a weak enemy or if they’ll become more powerful as a result of trauma. Just like Resident Evil. It’s also a technique that’s broadly applicable to any RPG system.
I lean on Resident Evil a fair bit when I’m designing games. They’ve got a lot to teach about dungeon design, like how to use backtracking instead of simply branching paths. I also like how puzzles aren’t too clever for the average player, or how they signal that locked doors might be opened not by a key but a key item.
off the top of my head, gamma world, mutant crawl classics, Mutant (and its more modern version mutant year zero).
Mutants and masterminds depending on your definition of mutation, since its more like “superhero marvel mutants” than like “radioactive mutants”
Monte cooke games also has a 5e supplement called “arcana of the ancients” that includes mutation rules that are pretty good IMO.
I dont know if it will include it, but i am like 90% sure the upcoming mystic punks from exalted funeral is going to have something to do with mutants.
Other Dust and its more recent incarnation, Ashes Without Number, are OSR games from Kevin Crawford with many systems to help you create your own post-apo setting and run adventures within it.
Other Dust was especially written as an homage to Gamma World and so has an entire section on creating mutant PCs (5 pages or so of mutations). The setting’s gimmick is that any living being affected by radiation gets “healed” by the global nanite system. But because the system was corrupted during the apocalypse, it will turn those beings into monstrous freaks.
Ashes Without Number goes a bit more generic with more options as to what kind of apocalypse happened, but still has that section on mutations.
Other Dust was a bit involved, with mutation powers, then separate flaws and benefits on top of it, so a mutation could be beneficial or not, regardless of its nature. Then separate to that are stigmatas which are visible aesthetic traits that mark you as a mutant in the eyes of strangers. Ashes Without Number simplified things a bit with positive and negative mutations. And stigmatas which are still there as an aesthetic layer. In both cases Kevin takes care to offer options to pick mutations, randomly or not.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay…or am I misunderstanding the assignment?
That is one I forgot myself to provide, but remembered after posting. :)
i guess you’d also want some horror along with that so:
basically all “call of cthulhu” rpgs from “achtung, cthulhu!” to delta green has strange fish people mutants.
rippers, a savage worlds setting/game/supplement/whatever they call those now, allows for experimentation with monster parts, that can be easily reflavoured as mutations or lead straight up to mutation.
Not necessarily, it was more about the mechanic itself. :)
But I agree, the systems you’ve provided are great examples.
There’s a system-agnostic document which is a giant table for mutations. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/198038/the-metamorphica-revised?products_id=198038
I think Friend Computer knows got to handle mutants.
It’d be pretty straightforward to reflavor the Apocalypse World psychic maelstrom into a mutation.
