Where Mutant Crawl Classics is more "Gamma World" this is way more "Mad Max." There was a period in time with Gamma World (2nd to 3rd Edition) when Mad Max influences were strong and you could see that reflected in the rules, but Umerica takes Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) and shoves it directly in the trash heap of Americana and lets it roll around in the giant landfills of plastic culture, television insanity, roadside mythos, and that oh so sweet half-century period from the 1950s to the year 2000 where America was the world.
It is pure Route 66 Post Apoc Trash Punk in its french-fried greasiness with a soggy wax-papered cheeseburger on the side.
And it is glorious.
Everything here is mostly compatible with Dungeon and Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC), with the exception of the armor system in the Umerica Survival Guide (USG) being a piece-based salvage system and the classes in MCC being slightly weaker than their USG counterparts. You could balance that in a number of ways, like giving MCC characters (assumed to be from primitive tribes), 3d6 ability bonus points, extra hit points - or whatever.
Umerica has gritty firearm rules, whereas MCC is more the sci-fi artifact laser pistol style of weaponry, so there is a technology level difference (though it doesn't matter too much since everything is equally deadly). You could mix these games and equipment lists and frankly, it would not really matter that much. One game could be the expansion for the other. All three games could be expansions for each other.
Fun With Timelines!
Mutant Crawl Classics stays closer to the DCC lore, and even DCC itself could be considered a far-future post-apocalyptic game itself, given Appendix N influences and all. If I were to put this game on a timeline, Umerica would be the game furthest back in time:
- Umerica - The world is destroyed tomorrow.
- Mutant Crawl Classics - Eventually the world is rebuilt into a sci-fi paradise, and then destroyed.
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - After all that, people forget and the world goes back to fantasy.
So Dungeon Crawl Classics is the end-timeline game 9000 years in the future. Or if you assume the TSR-isms of the standard accepted notions:
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - Oh, isn't this D&D, oops!
- Umerica - The world is destroyed tomorrow.
- Mutant Crawl Classics - Okay, this is sci-fi now.
Or you could do this with the timeline:
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - This was once D&D. No robots in my campaign, please!
- Umerica - The world is destroyed tomorrow.
- Mutant Crawl Classics - Feels like Gamma World again.
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - Back to Appendix N, yeah, this is post-apoc fantasy!
And it doesn't matter because, in the end-of-the-world maniac gonzo fantasy reality of the DCC-verse all timelines are collapsing and crossing over, and you could have Umerican motorcycle games fighting MCC death-robots on a volcano where a party of DCC townsfolk is headed up to investigate the "strange thunder on the mountain."
And I am sure there is a way I could put Umerica last on the timeline...
- Mutant Crawl Classics - This was actually where Earth started, as a destroyed sci-fi colony.
- Dungeon Crawl Classics - Now this is both D&D and post-apoc sci-fi.
- Umerica - The world became Earth, and got destroyed tomorrow. Damn it!
Or they all happen at the same time in three parallel universes and they all cross over. Just make sure the DCC-with-robots and the DCC-no-robots worlds are two separate things. Or not. Some people do not like robots in their fantasies.
Me? S3 was a thing, and back in the day sci-fi and AD&D crossovers were a huge deal.
Tone
The only thing to consider when mixing MCC and Umerica is tone. MCC assumes a destroyed sci-fi civilization, like a Gamma World setup, so the classic Americana influences should be toned down and replaced with more of a "mad science" sort of destroyed sci-fi culture feeling.
With Umerica, you are face-first in the dumpster of trash nostalgia culture. Now, you could assume that this sci-fi world started to go on another of their "retro is cool" recycled nostalgia craze culture kicks (sounds familiar, huh), and that sci-fi world became a high-tech, retro-loving, mass-market mess. So you could have both in the same world, parts more commercial, with the underlying strange high-tech society underneath that created this veneer tribute culture refuse pile.
I do like this idea the most since it has the built-in story of a "master controller" caste of the high-tech Gamma World-like overlords, while the mess of the surface world is this artificial post-commercial trash pile. Yes, they had laser and microwave weapons in the far future, but because of pop culture, they still made 20th-century replica firearms because that is what the nostalgia-crazed population wanted. Matter replicators underneath the world, fast food restaurants based on EZ-Bake Ovens on the surface.
A sci-fi civilization that was driven mad by trash nostalgia. I love it.
Not familiar at all. No.
But it does make me feel good.
Or you could have both but kept apart, and assume the MCC areas of the world rejected that culture, while the Umerica areas of the world are just this weird because of all the psychotropic drugs still around that were put into the water supply to make people more receptive to buying and consuming nostalgia culture. Because, you know, that would never happen in real life. And you know, the map of the world does not need to be the same, you could random hex-crawl the whole thing and toss out the road atlas. That high-tech future society and the great disaster shifted things around.
In short, figure out what your gaming group likes, more Mad Science or more Mad Max, and play that game. If they like both, then put these games in the rules blender and have fun.
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