Updated Rule Books

I’ve updated my rule books and hosted them on DropBox, which is much better for version updates. I’ll keep the older versions around because I like keeping that sort of versioning. These have some small changes. The Players’ Handbook was updated and the Mutations book remain unchanged; I made some small updates to the Monsters book, but the biggest changes were to the Referee’s handbook.

As I discussed in my previous post, I updated the treasure table to have a chance of replacing denominations of coins with small, medium, or large value treasures. I’ve also updated the Mech Suit rules; I’ve been thinking about how to lay them out for afew days and I think I’m happy with this set-up.

My rules closely mimic the Magic swords of early D&D, where when you roll a sword, you then roll to find out how smart it is; the smarter swords are also more powerful. Swords can have basic powers that are like +1 to hit / damage, medium powers are things like returning to your hand if thrown, and exceptional powers do things like grating Wishes or Giant’s Strength.

Basically, Magic Swords are powerful. If they’re the basic sort, you have a good chance of winning a fight with someone who doesn’t have one. If you have a medium sort, it does something strong that makes solving a problem or winning a fight much easier. If it has an exceptional power, it does something that solves a problem in one step.

Mech Suits are powerful and if you find one it should be Cool; however, the default Mutant Future suits didn’t have much flavour. They all had a big pile of abilities and a bunch of weapons and that’s a bit boring. I want them to be a bit more like the robots in Armored Core, where every suit is unique and personalized and cool af. I was also thinking today that they don’t necessarily have to be humanoid. Other forms could be things like predatory animals, insects, or maybe futuristic vehicles.

So when you roll an EMA, find out its starting class to see how many powers and weapons it has. Then roll its Intelligence to find out what sort of VI or AI the suit is outfitted with; the AI has 3d6 INT, but the class of suit determines the roll of 1 die. Suits with better AIs will have more abilities and weapons.

Then, roll weapons to find out how your suit is armed. Roll basic weapons first, then advanced; basic weapons will do things that make it easier to win fights, exceptional weapons will do things that guarantee victory. Weapon tables use 2d6 so some weapons are less likely; really high results are the coolest stuff (or can bump you up to the exceptional weapons table) really low results let you roll two weapons instead of one.

Next, roll powers from basic to exceptional. As above, basic powers will do things that make it easier to win fights (or solve other problems) and an exceptional power is a thing that solves a problem in one step. You say you do it and the problem is gone. Cool. These tables also use 2d6 to create rare abilities.

If you have an AI, roll its alignment. Then, roll its purpose. EMAs are mostly military tech, so they were made to do violence, although some did things like law enforcement, wildlife management or fire suppression. Of course, if your AI is chaotic it may have changed from a civilian protection function to a civilian destruction function.

Then you’ll want to give EMAs a bit more colour; suits should have a name, a history, first owner, intermediate owners, colour and markings, how does the AI or VI speak, and other interesting features. Lastly, there are two rules; Mech Suits are Cool and using them colours them. If they eventually fall out of your players’ hands, the new owners will find a different machine than your players did.

Referee’s Handbook

Monsters Book

Mutations Book

Players’ Handbook