Day 25: Randy Civilized, Mutants in the Now

 Welcome back, we are now officially in the last week of the challenge, the final 7 characters of the year! I decided to go with some random character creation this time, picking up Julian Kay's Mutants in the Now, a playable homage to the Palladium TMNT game from the 80's! I haven't had the chance to get it to the table yet, but it's a fun read and I really enjoy rolling up characters in it! I also used the Mutants in the Next expansion, allowing for human mutants and even regular human, but I didn't roll one of the new animal type, nor human born. I could have picked normal human to make use of the new book, but that's kind of a boring choice in a vacuum. I also could have rolled on the age table, but didn't feel like it! I still picked some option from the book, so the PDF wouldn't be too sad! Let's get right to it, then!

Character creation is split into 9 steps, but some of these steps are way way more engaged than other as you shall soon see. First step is "Getting Together" where we determine the nature of our group. As I'm making this character by myself, I take Diverse Group, which is your standard group of random mutants coming together after meeting in a tavern. The other options are Connected group where we mutated together and share a background but of different animal species and Family, where everyone is the same species as we are an actual family. The main difference here is the number of Takeback allowing us reroll and other dice manipulation during character creation, with Diverse Group having more individually, while the other option have less individually, but a number of shared Takeback for the options that apply to everyone. Using Mutants in the Next also gives us an extra Takeback as there's more table to roll on. That whole thing about takeback is basically the entirety of step two, so let's got straight to the next step, rolling our attribute. We roll 4d6 down the line for all 8 attributes, befitting the random nature of character creations. We can use Takeback here to reroll one attribute or raise an attribute by 1d6 and lower another by that same amount. I rolled decently enough that I didn't mind having low strength and Prowess, so I didn't use any Takeback here. Low attribute are not that punishing and are balanced by giving a number of extra Goo-P, the currency to mutate our character at a later step. Even my good stats were low enough to give a little bonus, so I ended up with a nice amount of bonus Goo-P.

 After writing down the bonus my stat score would give, it's time for Step 4, Origin Story. I roll that my character mutated during a Transportation Accident, pointing me to Rural Background and Species for my next rolls. I get Farm Living, my character was raised by a small farm family, gaining me +2 strength and endurance along with my skills and equipment package for later on. For the species roll, I turn to Mutants in the Next for the extended table, rolling low enough for a pet Species, then a Pet Mammal. I rolled very high and hoped that would mean something pretty exotic, but my character is just a regular Brown Rat. Oh well. I still go through the optional tables, getting Unusually Short but Above Average Weight for my size category. Then Life before Mutation as a pet result in General Neglect, the farm kid asking for a Rat pet ended up not spending much time taking care of me, for shame! I also rolled that I mutated with 1d6 different animals from the same Pet Table, rolling a one, so I mutated alongside the family bulldog! The last roll of this step is how I learned to fight, again getting a high roll for Weird Happening. It doesn't give any benefit, it's just a strange story. Could have been fun if it gave access to secret fighting style, but I suppose it's an optional table so it wouldn't make sense.

 We move on to step 5: "Let's Mutate" and that's actually the meat of character creation! I look at the Rat, Brown entry, noting that I start at Size Rating 2, gain +36 Goo-P (with a 40 Goo-P from my attributes), I can enhance Determination, Perception, Endurance and a 4th attribute of my choice, I have the Rodentia and Omnivore trait. It then list the Major and Minor Traits we can select, along with one unique trait that only my specie can take, Cornered Rat. It all make sense on a mechanical perspective, but mentally I find it strange that we're mostly spending Goo-P to mutate traits that are natural feature of our specie, except for size that start at our natural animal size and Anthropomorphic traits to make us more human! The whole thing makes more sense when starting with a human becoming a mutant, but the opposite is the default and most likely result if human-born is even a possibilities! It's listed later on, but I start with the Anthropomorphic traits first, consisting of Diet, Movement, Prehensility, Speech and Mask. Being Omnivore from the start, I don't need to spend point in the ability to eat burger, but I do need to spend 10 points to be able to be naturally bipedal, 10 points to be able to use tools and 5 points to be able to talk! I'm not a big fan of this section, I think it would be better if the default was Bipedal, Vocal and Prehensile, gaining point if we go back down. It just feels bad to have to spend point just for the ability to talk in an RPG. Mask is how human we can pass for, the default is Bestial, we're notably inhuman even when wearing disguise or in silhouette. The other options are Inhuman, the standard TMNT ability to pass as human by wearing a trenchcoat and a big hat or clinging to shadows, Kemonomimi where we're mostly human but have some animal features that can be hidden and Cloaked, where we're almost entirely human looking. I don't know how that's supposed to work with all the physical traits you can take and it's entirely independent from the other Anthro trait, so you could be a non-verbal worm with no limbs that somehow can look fully human, which is very funny to imagine. Mutants in the Next also adds Perfect Mask, but that's for non-mutant human.

I spend most of the rest of my points to pick almost all the Major and Minor traits of Brown Rats, including the unique trait, then raising Determination and Endurance. The remaining points all go to raising my size rating from 2 (About 9") to 8 (About 4'), leaving me with nothing for psionic power or wild mutations. Still, I'm happy with all that I got and I didn't spend any Takebacks, so they will be extra HP and SHT at the end of character creation. Step 6 is choosing our starting Fighting style, rural background let us pick from the Sport, Tradition or Wild list. If there was Rat-style kung-fu, we could pick it too, but that's not a thing. Every Fighting style give a core ability, a bonus to attribute or derived stats, a base ability and a list of supported maneuvers you can do with no disadvantage. We also don't have disadvantage on maneuver that are supported by the weapon we're using if we're proficient and we get to deal weapon damage on maneuver if both our weapon and style support it. A lot of my Natural Weapons have maneuvers supported by Pro Wrestling and it gives a bonus to my best stats, so that's what I pick. It's also just fun to imagine a 1m tall rat Power Bombing a guy. Also, remember earlier when I rolled that my character learned to fight through a weird way? I decide on the spot that he met and was trained in the sweet science by the ghost of Macho Man Randy Savage.

 Step 7 is the Skill steps, our background way back in Step 4 let us know how many Skill Packages we get from which list and how many hobby skill we have on top of that, with a bonus from our Cognition. Each skill package gives us a bonus to Attributes, a special ability and three skills, while Hobby are individual skill we can take. I take Automotive and Traversal so my rat is good at moving around, then Stage thanks to his mentor, the ghost of Randy Savage. I'm sure the idea was more theater or comedy, but Pro Wrestling 100% counts as Stagecraft. For Hobby skills, I took a mixed of skill that works with the background and skills that would be fun to have, if not useful. We also get to pick 3 specialty skills thanks to that +3 COG, with a bonus specialty in Swimming thanks to one of our Major Trait. Skills in this games are percentile based and depends on two attributes, one for the base chance and the other for how many point you gain when improving the stats. Package skills use the best attribute for base chance and the worst for improvement, Hobby skills are the other way around and Specialty lets you use the best stats for both and you add +COG on top of that. Step 8 is the gear section, our Farm Living background gives us one Basic Equipment Package. I gain Concealing clothes (A hoodie and overalls), a flip phone, a pack, a stun baton (Actually a Cattle Prod) and one choice out of a few option. I picked Driver, giving me a choice of Basic Gimmick, a Supercar gimmick, repairs tools, a survival kit and -20% on my wealth roll. I pick up a bugout bag as the gimmick, basically a ready to go bag of supplies that allows to survive for 3 days without rolls. A supercar can be replaced by a superbike, but a modded car is good enough. I roll a Decent Cash for starting money despite that -20% but I then roll 1 on my 1d10*10 roll, so I got 100$.

That leaves us to Step 9, wrapping up! We first need a name, I decide to honor the character's ghostly mentor, our rat calls himself Randy Civilized. We then pick three Value that we fight and struggle for. As Randy Civilized mostly uses his natural weapon and a cattle prod, I decide that he's a technical pacifist, he fight but doesn't kill and tries to keep wounds to a minimum. Thus, his main Value is Mercy, then I give him Adventure so he's a propulsive character more than reactive and Competition as the third one. He's a nice person, but he's also a Pro Wrestler and Street Racer at heart, he wants to test his skill against others in matches! Our high Affinity means Randy has two contact, one with three skills and the other two. Thankfully, we're one Affinity short of getting a third contact, so I don't have to deal with the fields for the third contact being borked on the form-fillable sheet! We have a few charts to determine who our contact are and why they're helping our Mutant, I get the entrepreneur and amateur architect/forensic expert Benjamin Washington, helping us because he's connected in some way to the Goo-P and the fisherwoman and hobbyist geneticist (?!) Cassandra Wilson, helping us because she was radicalized by the internet. Neat! I then note down derived attributes, getting +5 HP and SHT since I didn't spend any takeback.