High Traffic: Mutant Epoch?

Of all the articles that get a lot of hits here, one that keeps making me wonder why is my Mutant Epoch coverage. I did not know this game was that popular, and I covered it because it has been around forever. I liked the completely random world and character creation. If any game throws you for a loop out of the gate, destroying any notion of "my 20-page character background and history," then this game is it.

You have no idea what you are getting when you leave character creation. You could be a dung farming servant of a mutant lord with a spear and a rock, or a terminator cyborg from the far future with a fusion rifle. Or a mutated cucumber plant. Or a human-like superhero, like from the X-Men. Or an Android. Or a cleaning robot. Or a mutant freak like the Toxic Avenger. Or a holographic AI.

You do not know.

And you probably won't live long, but who cares?

Let's make another character and see who we get.

The game isn't Fallout, Gamma World, Aftermath, Terminator, TNMT, Borderlands, Wastelands, Tank Girl, or Mad Max; it is all of that. This is a post-apocalyptic mega game, wrapping up every genre trope in a world big enough to hold them all, like D&D did with fantasy, ME does it with everything after the bombs fall.

Best of all, ME does it convincingly, and in a better way than even Rifts does (minus the MDC). Where Rifts uses magic to explain it all, this uses a blender attached to someone's arm to mix things all up and does not really care about the why. You only need to worry about everything trying to kill you, take your food and water, and rob you blind. Like Aftermath, trust is a currency you cannot put a value on, and it will be how you survive the ruins.

This isn't like modern fantasy, which assumes a socialist central fantasy government pushes egalitarian equality and opportunity. Everyone hates each other here; people fight over resources constantly, and marauders come along and kill the survivors and take what's left. You battle to build trust with a mutated head on a snake tail and a Commodore 64 on a wheeled tripod, with a text-to-speech module that sounds like it is coming out of a tin can. This game teaches you to respect others who are different from you, and since everyone else is as flawed and imperfect as you are, it comes down to who you are inside that matters.

The biggest choice you have in this game is who you are as a character after the tables spit out something random. Your choices will define you, not your race, class, or background. If that dung farmer rises up to be a Thundarr-like wasteland Conan and finds an artifact energy sword, so be it. You made something of that character and accomplished what 99% of players would roll their eyes at and beg the referee to allow them to roll a new "more perfect" character.

And you most likely got there since you built trust with others.

The starter set is fantastic; it is most of what you need to start playing, and it only misses an equipment list. Not that you need it on this first adventure, you will be finding and scavenging most of what you need in the ruins. And this book is under $20 on Amazon.

The game is a steal and well worth supporting. I never put this one in storage; it continues to sit alongside my SDC Palladium games on workout room shelves.

This is still a classic game I still love, and it retains a very loyal and hungry audience. Thank you for all the hits, and more coverage is coming soon!