Thinking about Mutant Bodies

The character creation rules of Mutant Future generally start from the assumption that characters are able to use the same weapons and armor regardless of their class, so a Mutant Plant can wear chain armour and a short sword if they so choose. But, it also specifies that the Mutant Lord and the player should establish fair restrictions appropriate to that mutant. I set rules which allow that this is to be applied case-by-case, and I’m thinking about how to resolve it. We have a character who is a Mutant Animal, a Mantis Shrimp, and I want to have some ideas about how to play this.

So the rule we started from is that characters with abnormal shapes cannot fit into the stuff made for Normal human bodies, and some of the Players may have an abnormal shape. This is loaded and I want to unpack it a bit. Because it’s a true thing about the world we live in, people whose bodies don’t fit and work the way Normal bodies work can have difficulty navigating spaces, both physically and socially.

Mechanically, I want to make that a thing that is balanced. In our last game, a character tried to trip the Mantis Shrimp and when I look back I think that tripping or losing balance (on a thin ledge, for example) shouldn’t be a thing that can happen to a squat, dozen legged, hot dog shaped animal. So I also want it to be a thing that I approach with fairness (from the perspective of design and mechanical balance) but also with compassion and understanding (from the perspective of a host and player).

So I started by revisiting this really great talk between Judith Butler and Sunara Taylor. It’s part of a documentary film called An Examined Life which ha some very interesting segments and which I really enjoyed on the whole (the Butler segment most of all).

Watching it reminds me that there’s something very loaded in Mutant Future that I imported into Mutant Wilds, which is a kind of hierarchy of perceived humanness. Mechanically, it plays out quite simply. Mutant Humans are foreign but the most human like, and so they suffer a 1 point reaction penalty; Mutant Animals are frightening and abnormal, and so they take a 2 point penalty on reactions; Mutant Plants are Alien and you wouldn’t know how to interact with one, and so they suffer a 3 point penalty. Androids are mistrusted (as they’re leftovers from the apocalypse, but also are the most clearly not human) so they also suffer a -3.

Pure Humans – this is a term I imported from the original that I want to revisit – suffer no penalties. Nor do characters who can “pass” – Mutant Humans whose mutations do not alter their body in a way that allows others to see they are Mutants, and Androids which are sufficiently believable copies of humans (or Mutant Humans). Lastly, you never suffer these penalties if you’re dealing with an NPC of your class.

The unstated premise of this is that the world didn’t get better, and even though mutants are now common we treat bodies we don’t understand (or aren’t used to) differently and construct a (new) world that doesn’t really fit these others. This isn’t unique to Mutant Future or Mutant Wilds or even D&D. But it warrants unpacking.

We start off in a patriarchal, ableist, classist world, in the case of Mutant Wilds a broken world, a land of a second colonial era. This is the Town, which is contrasted with the Dungeon. The Dungeon a place that expresses a very different kind of violence, but also a place that is desirable where the Town is not. The PCs do not remain in Town for long, it is not a place for them. They cannot ever have more than what they do now by remaining in Town; Town does not change.

In the Dungeon, the PCs each play to their strengths to the benefit of the group, and each PC has disabilities such that he relies on the others for help.  The mechanics of D&D do this on their own; some problems are problems that require Magic, others a good sword arm, and so on. And so the Dungeon is a place of recognizing abilities, of acknowledging disabilities, and of helping others with us participate safely. We alternate relying on others and protecting them, and we play against a Dungeon that will exploit any weakness it sees.

Discrimination follows us into the Dungeon, but it is not part of the Dungeon itself – it is an aspect of the Town that has been brought in by outsiders. The Dungeon does violence to us, but to each of us indiscriminately; and when it does, it asks us to work together to assist those of us who need help and to acknowledge each character’s strengths and abilities. The Town, by contrast, chooses who it does violence to; it discriminates, and when it does, it is not a thing we can necessarily protect our friends from.

Town doesn’t change – unless the Players change it. They can do this (intentionally or not) by bringing the Dungeon back to Town with them. They do this in the form of the treasures and influence they return with, enabling them to influence the world. But, they also bring back the Chaos of the Wilderness. Either they do violence, or their actions create a threat of violence that may be done by the Dungeon to the Town – it is very rare, that players can simply because so wealthy and influential (without doing more) that they can simply deem that things change in Town.

And this works for our game I think. It’s a game about isolation and about a lack of safety and the need to work together to survive against an unfriendly world. The people you meet are going to know one way of doing things that works, and changing things is going to always carry great risk. There’s nobody to help you in the Wilds. Change is a power given only to the Players and it makes them strong and cool.

And I like that a body shape difficulty comes with a benefit, because that’s how the Dungeon works. But I think in future editions, I’ll make these rules optional. They fit the world I want to build, but they might not fit yours. That’s a thing you may want to talk about with your players as well, to see what people’s comfort levels are and what sort of a world you want to build together.