I first did a readthrough of the core rules for old Mutant here. And since I just can’t be arsed to do a proper Monstrous Mishaps post this week, I figure I might as well write up a few of the supplements and keep them around for when I have some space to fill. Hey, they’re nice and short! First off is adventure I Reptilmännens Klor (“In the Claws of the Reptile Men”).
The adventure starts with the players being residents in the village of Nackby, a sleepy rural community whose heart is the steam engine used to grind grain to flour and heat the houses during winter. Now, however, a miscreant named Algot Forsbro has stolen an important cog from the engine. The players are sent to find him, something they can do either by pursuing Algot in the direction he was seen leaving the village or questioning people in the village of Rulsjö, where he claimed to live.
If the players go to Rulsjö, they find that Algot lied and has never lived there. If they follow him, his trail leads to Little Sandisle and then further to Large Sandisle, where they may find Sandby, a dwelling of stand-offish, sandpaper-skinned mutants called Sand People. Most of the adult Sand People appear to be away at the moment. Either way, there are random encounters to roll for, and either way one of those encounters is seeing a plume of smoke rising over Nackby.
When they return, they find that it’s been raided by the Sand People, and that they’ve kidnapped three women, two of whom are meant to be sisters to two of the players. Algot was with them, and he was overheard speaking to someone named Oscar (who isn’t stated to be a Sand Person, just a “merchant” with red hair, but apparently he lives in Sandby, so I dunno). Oscar told Algot to bring the women to the nearby forbidden zone to sell them to “the reptile people.”
They also returned the cog, for some reason. The way the book explains it, Algot stole the cog to sell to Oscar, but Oscar had no use for it and therefore decided to return it. But since he didn’t want to waste his trip to Nackby, he decided to… launch a major raid and kidnap three women while he was at it? I am honestly confused as to the motivations of this character. If he didn’t want the cog, why not just throw it in the lake or something? I mean, I can think of reasons why he’d want to return it – because it’s the right thing to do, or to avoid souring relations with Nackby – but none that are compatible with him violently attacking and taking slaves.
It gets even more puzzling. The next thing that happens is that Algot decides not to sell the women to the reptile people (who are basically Dragonbane lizard folk, who in turn are basically D&D troglodytes, reimagined as post-apocalyptic mutants) but to instead take them directly to the trading house they will in turn sell them to. Fine, that makes sense – he plans to cut out the middle man so he can pocket the profits himself. Excepet the trading house is stated to be owned by Oscar. So… Oscar is selling the women to the reptile people, so that the reptile people can sell them back to him? What the hell?
Anyway, the players presumably head to the forbidden zone. There are four significant locations in there: the base of the reptile people, the trading house, the prison where the women are being kept, and an abandoned printing house that the players seem to have no reason whatsoever to visit. There are also more random encounters. One of the encounters is Algot, who got nabbed by the reptile people when he was transporting the women to the trading house, so now they have the women anyway and Algot is wandering around trying to find his way out of the forbidden zone. He knows where the reptile people base and the trading house are, and also that there are giant yellow rats in the printing house, which for some reason is considered important enough to mention. There’s also a cleaning robot that will aim “a strange metal tube” at the players if it encounters them – it’s just a vacuum cleaner, but of course the possibility for tragic misunderstandings is high. The robot also knows where the reptile people hang out.
Precisely where to find what information isn’t entirely clear, but I think it can be inferred that the reptile people know where the trading house is, and the guards at the trading house know where the prison is. So if the players can question Algot, they can go to the trading house and then to the prison, and if the players question the robot, they can go to the reptile men, and from them to the trading house, and from there to the prison. That’s just my interpretation, though, all the text says is that the GM has to decide how hard any of these locations are to find.
As for the locations themselves… well, they’re dungeons, but they’re not even especially good dungeons. Mostly they are stripped-down ruins where the only loot is humdrum everyday objects that the players have to roll on the Find Field to figure out that they have no earthly use for. The reptile people base have a ton of reptile people, including a six-armed high priest. The printing house has a ton of giant yellow rats, who are described as being able to talk despite having animal-level intelligence. The prison has a pair of guards. The only spot with some excitement is the trading house, which is manned by Harold the armoured-skinned hare-mutant, Steve the bear-mutant and Roonie the hamster-mutant. It also has some actual valuable loot in it, since it’s where Oscar keeps stuff he’s planning to sell.
There is an appendix with some new creatures, including “hunting owls” that are really just great big man-eating owls, and standard un-mutated bears (contradicting the core rulebook, which stated that there are barely any non-mutated animals left in the world, just bizarre critters). Also we get introduced to geiger counters and metal detectors, as well as anti-radiation and antidote pills. Slightly useful, I guess?
All in all, this one was terribly uninspired. It’s badly described, the plot points make no sense, and the locations lack even the cheesy-fun “dungeon crawl through a mysterious ruin that’s actually a regular modern location” factor that Mission to Mos Mosel had. There are a few nice touches, like how the reptile men live in a “long green house with many windows” that’s actually an old subway train, or the ancient newspaper article on the wall of the printing house that talks about the city of Stockholm being evacuated due to the plague, but they’re a rather thin sprinkling on top of a bland cake.
Oh well. Next up is The Iron Ring. I dimly recall that one being a bit better. We’ll see when we get to it – the next time I feel creatively bankrupt, I suppose…