I can see why Mutant Epoch (ME) has a cult-like following; the game has a unique look and style, a "freak" art style that reminds me of 1970s underground comics. It is not slick, and the proportions are oddly off-kilter, but that leads to a style that gives you an impression of a "world that isn't like ours." Too slick art, a few notable, hyper-realistic fantasy artists, would break the immersion. The game looks like "the best artist in high school's notebook." Not the most realistic, but the coolest.
One hardcover is a 200-page solo adventure. What? Nobody does this.
Some hardcovers are the size of phone books. They are packed with ideas; this isn't filler, paragraphs of fluff-text, or art-filled borders. We have world books, expansions, adventures, character options, and a game that feels infinite in a relatively small campaign space and library.
Where classic D&D subsumes and turns fantasy tropes, this does for pop culture, 90s comic books, and post-apocalyptic genres. Modern D&D no longer does that; it has abandoned Appendix N and exists only as commentary on the last 10 years of pop-culture fantasy and wannabe anime dressed in comic-convention cosplay.
Mutant Epoch picks up where 1990s comic books and Heavy Metal left off.
There is no default assumption of how a character looks. Some games go cartoony and round-faced, almost like Disney art. Others stick to standard fantasy tropes. Some are one artist's style, and this one falls into that category, too. Some are old-school blends. Mutant Epoch has no "standard look." You can be attractive or a complete freak with two arms off one side of your body, and horns growing off the other. You can be a soldier or a superhero. You can be a monster. You can be a robot, cyborg, or android.
Different character types have various levels of play complexity.
The game this compares to is Mutant Crawl Classics. But where MCC feels like transposing a post-apocalyptic world into the Dungeon Crawl Classic rules, and assuming you can fill in that gonzo post-ruin flavor, ME forces your hand, and you get the gonzo world written into every character option and rule. Both games rely on the adventures to fill in the flavor. MCC relies more on spectacle and the "wow" of what the adventure writers can imagine, and like DCC, it deemphasizes things like gear lists and survival for extraordinary mutant powers and godlike AIs.
MCC also does not feel like it has a default world, other than a tribal existence with lost knowledge and neon-colored skies. The game leaves the world up to you, and like DCC, it foregoes an equipment list and leaves that all to you. I like using Mutant Future to fill in the gaps with this game.
Eliminating shopping and the collection of gold is a hallmark of DCC and MCC, and in that regard, it is like 5E.
ME is an actual post-apocalyptic game, with survival rules, scarce gear, and a variety of systems all colliding to create a world. It feels heavily inspired by classic games such as Aftermath. There is a core system, a host of optional options, divergent systems that work together, and a collision of character types that create a unique, visually unappealing but entirely compelling world. ME is very close to Aftermath's world and feeling.
But Aftermath is a very technical game, almost a post-apocalyptic survival guide rewritten into a role-playing game. It lacks the fun and style of Mutant Epoch. You don't get diverse character types, a merging of technology and human life, or a complete evolution through mutations.
The low-level world in Aftermath is solid and something I keep coming back to. Its barter-based economy, which relies on seasonal farming for populations to survive, is exactly like the one in ME.
Mutant Epoch delivers a modern post-apocalyptic game that destroys other games in the genre. Even the classic Gamma World, closest to ME in tone, fails to measure up to ME. Gamma World feels too clean and written for kids, sanitizing the post-ruin world to turn it into "alternate D&D with laser pistols." Gamma World never really had a society for us; it was more a fantasy plus survival game, with the rules laid out.
The later editions of Gamma World began to embrace the mutant and freakish side of the game, but the original was very human-centric and tame, as evidenced by the cover art of the first edition. Gamma World became a poster child of TSR's mismanagement, never really finding itself. The game died on the vine and has never been as popular as the fantasy options since.
Another game Mutant Epoch feels close to is classic Rifts, minus the magic and MDC systems. I hate comparing the game to Rifts, but ME feels like it delivers better on what the average "world" is like, more than Rifts. Despite the flavored location books, I have no idea what the average "life in the ruins" life is like in Rifts; I still have no clue what "average life" looks like in the Rifts world.
With ME, what the world looks and feels like is baked into every picture, and I instantly get transported there when I open a book.
Another game that gets the low-level world is Mutant Future. This world is a typical medieval fantasy world of mutants and different species. Guards have crossbows, and carts may use salvaged modern tires. People farm the land, and the "lost places" are dangerous "no-go" zones. The world is feudal with kingdoms, fiefdoms, and lands. Mutant Future has the game world that Gamma World lost, and that MCC needs.
I want the prices for mutated pack animals and carts, bits of salvaged technology, crossbows, and suits of plate armor. I need the statistics for boats and fortifications. I want the price of rations and medical supplies. Mutant Future is a big part of almost every other game here, since it fills in many missing pieces.
Mutant Epoch owns them all. The library is vast, but the expansions are not filled with collectors' pap and fluff. The Quick Start rules are the heart of the game (minus the equipment list, found in the full rules), and the book is still helpful as a quick reference guide and simple set of starting options for new players. The books are split 50-50 on rules and bestiaries versus adventures and gazetteers. Only the core rulebook is needed, and the quick-start rules are nice.
Mutant Epoch is turning into my go-to post-apocalyptic game.
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