Mutant Chronicles D100-Hack
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The exceptionally unofficial Mutant Chronicles d100-hack This document aims to bring Mutant Chronicles back to its Basic RolePlaying-roots, and assumes that the reader is familiar with that game system as well as with the new Mutant Chronicles. It draws heavily on the new RuneQuest which I consider to be the best d100-game out there, the Madness-meter from Unknown Armies/DarkORE, and bits from The Big Gold Book, the RQ SciFi- document and the hack that doesn't exist in a galaxy far away as well. BRP presents a transparent, mallable ruleset, and the visceral and tactical gameplay inherent to RuneQuest's latest incarnation fits my vision of Mutant Chronicles quite well . The RuneQuest 6th Edition-core book and RuneQuest Firearms-supplement will be needed to make sense of this. RQ Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying across the Parallels is highly recommended, if not mandatory, reading – it covers many of Mutant Chronicles' -isms better than this hack, it just wasn't available when I started tinkering with this. Obviously, possession of a copy of Mutant Chronicles is essential. The original Mutant Chronicles from Target Games is worth a look if you can get hold of it, both for being cool and for using a mechanic very close to BRP which can be helpful for converting on the fly. This conversion's job is to run a dark, art deco-styled techno-fantasy game, all painted with a cartoonish brushstroke that stops being cartoonish when your arm hangs on by a single tendon and your mind is burning its last fuse. It is a hack, by a hack, and very much standing on the shoulders of giants, being nothing but a set of houserules, quickfixes and ramblings. My style isn't necessarily someone else's style – if anyone finds anything of value here, great. If not - well, it's a short read if nothing else. Your Mutant Chronicles May, like your RuneQuest, Vary. Mutant Chronicles, RuneQuest, Basic RolePlaying, Unknown Armies and Nemesis/DarkORE are registered trademarks of Paradox Entertainment/Mōdiphiüs Entertainment, Moon Design/The Design Mechanism, Chaosium, Atlas Games and ArcDream Publishing, respectively, and are used without any particular permissions. Onionman-doodle courtesy of Google's image-search and someone called Scott Johnson. This document uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Moon Design Publications LLC, which are used under Moon Design Publications’s Fan Material Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This document is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Moon Design Publishing. For more information about Moon Design Publications and Moon Design Publications products, please visit glorantha.com. Mōdiphiüs Entertainment does, to my knowledge, not have an official fan material policy like the one above. If they did, it would be in this spot here. Character Creation Characters' abilities are defined by the seven core characteristics from RuneQuest, with an eight attribute added: Social Standing. Use any method you want to generate them; attributes can be rolled in order, rolled and distributed, point-buy or whatever your preference might be. All characters use the baseline human attributes except for Magic Points (which are replaced with Tenacity – detailed in the chapters on the Art and the Symmetry). Character creation follows the same 3-step approach as laid out in RQ – Cultural Background, Career and Personalization. The different corporate backgrounds, as well as some careers, are laid out (roughly) further on. These backgrounds and careers should be treated as guidelines. They are not exhaustive, nor are they attempted to be balanced against each other. New ones can easily be made up. For an alternative, look at RQ: Luther Arkwright or the deconstructed character generation demonstrated in RQ Star Wars. Having ditched the patented lifepath-system of MC , a character's singular career is much more important in defining him or her. This is hopefully alleviated by extended backgrounds and event tables. Core steps of Character Generation I. Generate core attributes. The attributes may be modified during the next stages, but they should give you an idea of what you have on your hands. II. Determine corporate affiliation. Roll twice on the Adolescent Events-table and record the results. Determine background, record Social Standing, skills and traits. Distribute 100 points to available skills – all background skills must be allotted points as pr. RQ-core, and no skill can be allotted more than 15 points. You should pick one or two passions to reflect corporate, cultural and family background. III. Choose your character's career, roll twice on the Special Events-tables and record the results. Record any traits and distribute 100 points to the career's skills – no skill may be allotted more than 15 points. An additional passion, reflecting career and events, could be cooked up after finishing this step. Note that many careers have requirements. These requirements can of course be freely ignored, but they are a cheap attempt to add an extra dimension to character generation and to differentiate careers and their status. IV. After finishing your career, roll a final time on the Background Events-tables. Distribute 150 free skill points as you see fit to round off your character – a suggested spending limit is 30 points to a single skill. These free points can be used to bolster any general skill, as well as any advanced skill picked up during chargen. Other suitable advanced skills can also be added. Characters are presumed to start play in their prime years. You may voluntarily choose to age your character – instead of counting years, we'll use age brackets: • Middle aged: Increase free skill points to 200, reduce CON by 1d3. • Over the hill: Increase free skill points to 250, reduce STR, DEX and CON(cumulative) by 1d3+1. Your Brawn, Endurance and Evade-skills will be capped to Attribute x5. Roll one additional time on the Special Events-table. NPC's will be impressed by your spryness. V. Put in any finishing touches, equip your character, think up a final passion, and go kick down some doors and take names. Feel free to take advantage of the many tables provided by the Character Lifepath-chapter of Mutant Chronicles. Social Standing Social Standing (SOC) is determined by character background, and is a measure of a character's monetary means, living standard and effective credit rating. It is often also a clear indicator of a character's family's standing. The rough levels of Social Standing, along with MC3 Earnings-levels and available cash-on-hand in Cardinal Crowns are: • 4 or less: Impoverished/0/1d6x100 CC, goods worth the roughly the same amount stuffed in a sock or hidden cache. • 5-8: Meagre/1/SOCx500 CC, roughly 5 times that amount in stuff (rustbucket car, meagre savings, etc). • 9-12: Average/2/SOCx1000 CC, roughly 5 times that in stuff that can be easily liquidated. • 13-15: Comfortable/3/SOCx2000 CC, roughly 10 times that in stuff, plus a decent credit rating. • 16-17: Affluent/4/SOCx3000 CC, roughly 20 times the amount in quality stuff, plus an excellent credit rating • 18+: Wealthy/5/Virtually unlimited means. You probably have people to handle this “cash”-thing for you. Refer to Mutant Chronicles (both the new one and the old one if you can) for more info on personal economics and to RQ for rules on bargaining. An MC3-Asset could be considered to be equivalent to about 1500 Crowns. A character's SOC will primarily change due to in-game events, with jobs aced or botched, and with friends and enemies made. Characters could attempt to socially climb on their own as well: For every SOCx(Earnings x1000) Crowns invested instead of spent, increase SOC by 1. If you're Impoverished with zero Earnings, you're denied the option to improve your status until you somehow manage to get a decent place to live and and a set of clothes you don't rent from the lice – until you reach SOC5 – through other means. A fat wallet will open doors closed to the less fortunate, and will furthermore double as a soft attribute determining a character's level of general education – lots of money means access to tutors, good schools, educational media and the means of developing a certain eloquence, while a character from a poorer background has had to work for a living. A high Social Standing does not necessarily imply that a character actually knows something – that is covered by skill – but he has a good chance of knowing of something. Adolescent Events Table (2d20): 2 Family tragedy! A freak accident (or was it an accident..?) wipes out your entire family and puts you in an orphanage. Add a hardened notch in both Helplessness and Self-gauges. You start out with a maximum Social Standing of no more than 8 and are limited to a blue-collar background. 3 You did some questionable chemical experimentations in your youth. Anytime a skill roll comes up “01”, you'll zone out for1d6 rounds. During a flashback, any tests requiring physical coordination or mental coherence are one step harder and your Action Points are reduced by one. Endurance and Willpower-test are one step easier. Your glassy stare and clumsy demeanor are noticeable under scrutiny. Miraculously, this condition has not been caught by any medical screens. 4 Something has scarred you for life: add a failed notch in gauge of choice and Passion: Phobia(something) at 70-POW. 5 Brushed by the Dark Soul. Whether in dream or in real life, a nighmarish encounter has left you with 1d3 failed Unnatural-notches and an innate and deeply troubling Knowledge(The Dark Symmetry)+10.