[Review] Project Oasis by Joseph Bloch -- 5 out of 5 Stars

Project Oasis, written by Joseph Bloch (Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage) and self-published through BRW Games, is a 36-page PDF campaign supplement for Mutant Future and Apes Victorious, both being post-apocalypse (PA) games by Goblinoid Games.

Set 1000 years after the Devastation, it is a “kitchen-sink” style setting, containing all the themes and ideas from a wide spectrum of early PA literature, film, and television, focusing on the materials developed in the 1970s. Planet of the Apes, Ark II, Omega Man, Logan’s Run, Twilight Zone, Mad Max – it’s all here in a fantastic melting pot that gives you an entire continent of possible adventure.

 

 

The two-page introductory section explains the basics of the world and how it came to be; speaks of technology and geography; and gives some basic guidelines for the kinds of campaigns the setting is designed for (very different from many modern PA settings, due to the strong influence of the middle-era of the PA genre). Details are brief, but give a game master more than enough material to get started.

 

We then get to the meat of the booklet, the 22-page gazetteer. This covers every major power in the PA setting, a mix of stone-age savagery to high-tech insanity. Virtually every kind of PA trope is covered in this, with lots of opportunities for a game master to start a campaign in exactly the kind of setting he wants, then move the adventure on to other regions. There are ape realms, human-friendly, human-neutral, and human-enslaving; there are high-tech mutant realms hidden under wastelands, low-tech mutant wilds, human-mutant cooperatives, and mutant-power domains; there are hidden high-tech cities of wonder where the people are dedicated to recovering what was lost, high-tech cities of wonder where the people are kept in dystopian decadence, and there are low-tech kingdoms dedicated to keeping things exactly the way they never really were in chivalrous glory. And that’s just for starters!

 

I’m being a bit nebulous here, as I believe that it would give you, the reader, far greater joy to discover the world of Project Oasis on your own, rather than have me list off the regions chapter and verse.

 

Two things I will discuss are "Project Oasis" itself and the inclusion of adventure hooks with each region. First, Project Oasis is not simply the name of the book, it is also a major faction in the PA world. Project Oasis is a very high technology organization, operating from a secret base, that seeks to bring the world back from savagery (echoes of Ark II, Earth II, and Planet Earth); to this end, they send out teams of adventuring types to help uplift goodly domains and bring down or stall villainous ones. This provides an excellent hook on which the game master can hang her campaign, as it enables player characters to travel all over the continent (and beyond) with as much technological support as the game master wishes them to have at the time. Second, each of the region entries has three adventure hooks included, at least one of which deals with Project Oasis and how it, and its representatives, might interact with the peoples and powers of the region. So the book itself, as mentioned in the introduction, really gears play toward a Project Oasis-based campaign, though myriad other options are readily available.

 

The volume finishes with three short appendices, two dedicated to new monsters (one for Mutant Future, the other for Apes Victorious), and the other a listing of inspirational material. The new monster sections include everything mentioned in the work that was not otherwise found in Mutant Future and/or Apes Victorious, each section covering the same monsters. The list of inspirational material provides most of the books, films, and television shows you would need to read or watch to better understand the setting. Personally, if you have no experience with the middle-era PA genre, I’d watch Ark II, the Planet of the Apes movies and television series, and the Logan’s Run movie and television series; these give you a complete overview of the relevant material and, most especially, style of the genre.

 

Finally, there is the continental map. Created using Hexographer, it shows the relation between the new geography of the continent and all the various regions, including cities, major towns, ruins, and other notable locations. The only problem with it is that I have not been able to find a scale for the map anywhere on the map or in the book… I think it is 30 or 40 miles per hex? [NOTE: Confirmed from Joseph that the scale is in fact 30 miles per hex.]

 

Click to embiggen; this is a small and shrunken snippet of a full continental map!

 

The upshot of the review is that this is the best PA campaign setting on the market today, if you are into the middle-era PA genre. If you aren’t, well, get on the bandwagon! The PA middle-genre provides you with all the action, adventure, seriousness, and wild and wacky wahoo you could ever want out of a PA setting, and this book distills it all down for you. Project Oasis plus Mutant Future and Apes Victorious can provide literally years of PA adventures. With Project Oasis Joseph Bloch has presented the PA gamer community with a PA campaign “Greyhawk Gazetteer” upon which to build and develop their own campaigns.

 

Project Oasis is a book I wish that I had written. And really, I can’t give it better kudos than that.

 

Five out of Five Stars

 

Project Oasis
by Joseph Bloch

Published by BRW Games
36-page PDF with PNG Continental Map
$9.95

Buy Project Oasis at DTRPG

Buy Project Oasis at RPGNow

 

Note: I purchased Project Oasis with my own money. I have not been offered anything in return for a review. The links above go through the Affiliate Program at OBS, so if you buy something after clicking through, I get a taste of the action. Hope all the cyber-cops are happy with this disclaimer.

[Found Treasures] Gamma World Map featuring the Yceea Campaign

I went to grad school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa from 1992 to 1994. While there I ran numerous campaigns with many gaming groups. One of these campaign was the Yceea Gamma World Campaign. This Gamma World setting had several influences. The two most prominent were from television and literature.

As one can see, the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV series had a major influence, from the inclusion of a "New Chicago" arcology/mega-city in central Illinois. New Chicago, along with a dozen or more similar locations, were built by the Starmen, the Pure Strain Humans who arrived from interstellar colonies and re-colonized the irradiated Earth. The Starmen were the source of all Pure Strain Humans in this campaign, as all native humans were Mutants. PSH had spread throughout the lands, as the Starmen arrived centuries ago, had a civil war, and those who wished to live free from the kind but stifling benevolent tyranny of the City-State settled their own lands.

The other influence were novels by three authors: Donald Moffat with Crescent in the Sky and A Gathering of Stars; the excellent Budayeen Cycle by George Alec Effinger; and of course, the Horseclans series by Robert Adams, notably mentions of the Khaleefate of Zahrtogah. And so most of the Earth, or at least, the campaign area, was dominated by a vaguely Islamic-style culture, with Ahmeers and Sooltahns, Mahleeks and Khaleefs; as with the Khaleefate of Zahrtogah, rulership was usually held by those with the most potent mental mutations...

I haven't yet found any of my notes from the campaign, just this map. I hope something printed remains; all my notes were on the first computer I ever owned, complete with a dot matrix printer. I think I might have even typed up some notes on a typewriter I still owned. But almost 25 years later, it is unlikely that much else remains. I might just rebuild it from the ground up for a Mutant Future or Mutants & Mazes campaign...

Scale is 8 kilometers per hex, or about 5 miles per hex.

As usual click to embiggen...

[Saturday Night Special] Mutants & Mazes Campaign

Click here to check out the blog entry on James Mishler Games.

Mutants & Mazes: Realms of Murikah

Realms of Murikah Midzee Lands Maps

In the year 2419 the Golden Age of Man came to a cataclysmic end with the Great Rad War. The terrible weapons used in the war scoured the earth, razed mountains, boiled seas, turned the planet on its axis, and caused the very face of the world to change forever. Man’s civilization was cast into ruin, and the essential natures of men, beasts, and plants were forever altered thanks to the Glow of the Rad, which created whole new monstrous life even as it destroyed for all time other forms of life.

Five hundred years later Mutants – men, animals, and even plants – all but overwhelmed the remaining tribes of Pure Men. For a time it seemed that Pure Men might truly be extirpated by the descendents of those who suffered from the follies of their ancestors. But then, unto the Pure Men came the gods – or at least, beings claiming to be the gods. These first gods claimed to be the Old Gods of Law returned, to help gird the Pure Men in their battles against mutant-kind, to turn the tide of savagery back and hold aloft the light of Civilization. Odin and Zeus, Horus and Huitzilopochtli, the Angels Gabriel and Michael, and others – out of lost and garbled myth and legend these potent beings came forth and taught the disparate surviving tribes of Pure Men the rites and rituals that would perform divine magic.

And magic it was that turned the tide for the Pure Men. Slowly, haltingly, the tiny realms into which the mutants had thrust the Pure Men grew. Crusading priests of these Old Gods drove back the mutant menace; villages grew into towns, towns into cities, and cities built kingdoms. A thousand years after the Great Rad War the land of Murikah was divided into scores of petty kingdoms; most possessed a poor level of technology, at best on par with that of the ancient Dark Ages, as most of the Old Gods called for the rejection of the high-technology of the lost Golden Age as much as they called for the purging of the mutants from the lands held by Pure Men in the name of Law.

Slowly, the mutants were being driven back into the wilds, as kingdoms grew and empire building began again. Then two things happened at about the same time, both inimical to Law and Civilization built by the Old Gods, which would change the course of history.

First, the Other Gods appeared. The Other Gods are the gods of Chaos, the ancient, dread enemies of the Old Gods – Asmodeus and Tezcatlipoca, Set and Hecate, Tiamat and Tsathoggua, among many others. To oppose the Old Gods and their Pure Men worshippers, they patronized the mutant races, and granted unto them the same magical might that the Old Gods gave to the Pure Men.

Secondly, renegade Pure Men, who had chafed under the rule of the priest-kings of the new kingdoms, sought to gain the power of magic without being required to bow and scrape before the Old Gods. Whether they discovered it themselves or the Other Gods presented them with the needful information, these heretics and free-thinkers gained the power of Wizardry, the arts of arcane magic – the command of magical forces outside the dispensation of the gods.

But these budding wizards discovered the hard way that magic has a price – without the proper wisdom to rein it in, magic rapidly masters he who thought he was the master of magic. Over time, they discovered that this weakness could be mostly overcome through application of aspects of pre-Rad super-science. And so the Sorcerer-Scientists arose as a faction of the new wizardly groups. Unfortunately, a side effect of the application of super-science to the minds of these magi is that it usually drives them insane!

Thus, even as the kingdoms of the Pure Men were staging a great resurgence, the Chaos Priests of mutant-kind, the scholarly wizards and scientists of the renegade fringe of Civilization, and the megalomaniacal sorcerer-scientists of the wilds exploded into action. For a thousand years countless factions fought each other amidst the ruins of the Rad Glow. In some realms, wielders of divine and arcane magic learned to cooperate; in others they fought tooth-and-nail. Science was reborn, as men and mutants sought every tool in the battle for supremacy. Empires rose and fell; whole new races and civilizations grew and fell into ruin.

In the end the Sorcerer-Scientists allied with the Chaos-Priests of the Other Gods and their mutant followers against the forces of the Law-Priests of the Old Gods and their allied Wizards and Scientists. Chaos and the Sorcerer-Scientists won; the Kingdoms of Law were crushed, their lands and people split among the allied factions, and for most of the following thousand years a true and terrible Dark Age fell upon the lands of Murikah.

The forces of Law retreated into the wilds, there to hide, lick their wounds, build their strength, and bide their time. For they knew that the one great weakness of Chaos was that, by its very nature, its followers could only remain allied and at peace with one another for so long. And so it was; within a few generations the old alliances fell apart, and the factions began fighting one another for territory, dominance, or extermination. A century ago the last of the great Chaos Empires collapsed in civil war. Today, Murikah is a patchwork of Law and Chaos, Pure Men and Mutants, magic and technology and super-science.

In the lands of the Midzee, the vast freshwater sea where once stood the five Great Lakes, Chaos still has a strong hold in the Mighoomee Isles, in the city of Granpoor, in the Thunderlands, and in the wastelands of Zhawg, Kahmzoo, and the other ruins of the great cities left from the Great Rad War. Of the forces of Law, only the Ahntaryo Republic and the Empire of Man oppose them. And in-between there stands a patchwork of petty kingdoms, decadent city-states, savage tribes, Glow-ridden ruins, and mutant-haunted wilderness…

***

This pack includes two maps to begin with, the Geopolitical Map and the Settlements and Ruins Map. Further Midzee maps will be posted here; a gazetteer will be sold separately. The map pack is [b]Pay What You Want[/b]!

[Gondwane] Map of Lin Carter's Northern YamaYamaLand

One of my favorite series by Lin Carter is his exploration of the Dying Earth genre, the Gondwane Epic featuring the tales of Ganelon Silvermane. Gary thought enough of them to include them in Appendix N. They read like the adventures of a gaming group, and the world seems designed for a science-fantasy campaign, with its odd mix of magic and technology.

Being on a map-making binge, I was overjoyed when I discovered that I had thrown an early, hand-drawn study of Northern YamaYamaLand, the main region featured in the adventures of the first two books, in my box of papers and stuff before heading out for Virginia. So over the last couple days I've been futzing around with another Hexographer map. 

The general form of the setting is as per the book; I've added in additional details such as villages, more ruins, lairs, and the like, and filled in a few holes in the northeastern and northwestern corners of the map. The most unusual features, for the uninitiated, are those found in Dwarfland. These are not Tolkien dwarves; they are the Death Dwarfs, a form of Unlife, inimical to the more common like of Gondwane. They are more like poisonous goblins than dwarves, and the life and lands they rule are similarly unpleasant...

The scale is arbitrarily set to five miles per. It could as readily be six or 10, as during the story the distances traveled seem not to jibe with one another, essentially traveling at the speed of plot...

Anyhoo, one of these days I might get around to trying a Mutants & Mazes (Labyrinth Lord/Mutant Future) or Labyrinth Critical campaign in the setting... that would be sweet. As usual, if you want a bigger map or the original Hexographer files, just let me know.

Click to embiggen

[Gamma World/Mutant Future] New Map of Central Gamma World

So as is pretty obvious, I've been in a slump lately, creatively speaking. Other than that Outdoor Survival map I worked up two months ago, it's been... a while, since I've done anything. I'm trying to get the mind working again by futzing around with Hexographer once again. This time I've put together a Gamma World/Mutant Future/Mutants & Mazes map.

The map is loosely based on the second version of the Gamma World map included with the 2nd and 3rd edition of that game. I took the map, tilted it 30 degrees ("The war blew the world off its axis!"), and cut out the central lands to give me a base for a 30 hex tall by 50 hex wide region (with wide, wide interpretation). Then I just added bits here and there, slapped on some names, and Bob's your mutant uncle!

I have no plans on doing anything more with this map, so feel free to run with it if you want for your own campaigns. The names provided are either names of the ruined cities or of the regions; there are no names for any of the modern towns or tribal locations. Much of the West is nameless, as the tribes there are few and far between. The scale, by the way, is 30 miles per hex (more or less).

If you want the original Hexographer file or a larger PNG, just email me...

As usual, click to embiggen...

[Mutant Future] Thundarr!

So my wife and I spent several days last week watching all the Thundarr episodes on the DVD we bought from Warners several months ago. This was our second time around on a (more or less) complete watch-through. Afterward, we both sighed sadly and talked about how we wished there were more episodes... Then I remembered Thundarr Thursdays on Savage Afterworld. Ding! Within minutes of our mutual whine fest, we decided to start up a Thundarr-based Mutant Future campaign. Some basic House Rules to more fully emulate the Thundarr experience:

• There are the following races overall: Pure Human, Mutant ("Mutant Human"), Moks, Manimal, Mutant Animal, Mutant Plant, and Androids.


• Pure Humans are as listed in MF, though they can be Barbarians, Sorcerers, or simply Adventurers (the core "Pure Human" class). Ability score bonuses are based on the class.


• Mutants always have obvious physical differences; all Mutants from the same tribe/village have the same basic appearance differences: Body, Arms, Legs, Head, Face, Eyes, Ears, Nose, Skin, and Hair. Mutants do not necessarily have other "power" mutations; only Mutant Masters have standard MF mutations. A Mutant can be a Sorcerer, Mutant Master, or simply a Mutant (as per Pure Human class, though without any bonuses to ability scores).


• Manimals are the various humanoid races evolved from animals; like Mutants, they do not have any "power" mutations unless they are Mutant Masters. Each Manimal tribe has its own common physical traits; one tribe descended from apes might not look anything like another tribe descended from apes. Manimals have technology (though usually low) and culture (if often savage). A Manimal can be a Mutant Master or simply a Manimal (as per Pure Human class, but with a different range of ability score bonuses based on the base species type, plus special animal abilities as gleaned from Gamma World 4th Edition).


• Moks are not Manimals... they are something else altogether. Moks are always of the Mok class.


• Each Mutant Animal and Mutant Plant is usually unique, though there might be a pack/flock/herd/grove/orchard of kin with similar mutations. The class is essentially unchanged, save that most Mutant Animals are still distinctly animals, rather than humanoid animals. They are, unlike Manimals, uncultured; not savage, but simply without most culture, and usually little or no understanding of technology.


• While there is no real precedent for Android PCs in the Thundarrverse, I'm open to it, as there is definitely a tradition of robotics! I might actually work up a Robot class, for more primitive, Robby the Robot/Bender Bending Rodriguez type of PCs.


• We are using the Barbarian and Sorcerer classes from Savage Afterworld. There is also the Mutant Master class (a modified Mutant Human class, open only to Mutants and Manimals, in which you can improve your mutations and even gain new beneficial ones), plus the Mutant Animal, Mutant Plant, and Android "racial classes."


• Mutants with 13 or better in Intelligence and Willpower can be multi-classed Sorcerer/Mutant Masters!


• I'm using Skills in this game; Skills essentially being "things you are good at" when rolling Ability Checks to do something. Apprentice/Basic level in a skill is +2, Journeyman/Advanced level is +4, Expert level is +6, Master level +8, and Grand Master level is +10.


• All Barbarians begin play with three Tribal Skills, chosen from my Barbarians of the Wilderlands book, and gain or improve a Skill every odd level.


• All Sorcerers begin play with three Lores, which are areas of study that they have more intently studied in the past; these can be as narrow or broad as chosen, but the broader the area, the shallower the knowledge. They gain or improve a Lore every odd level.


• Other classes get up to three "general skills" at 1st level (chosen from the list included in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia), and gain or improve a Skill every odd level. The number of starting skills they get depends on the additional stuff they get based on class; common Mutants get three, most Manimals start with one, Mutant Animals and Plants usually none.


• Every even level a character may choose a Speciality in an existing skill; this provides a +1 bonus when dealing with that particular skill in that particular area. They can instead take a +1 in any Skill they did not improve in the prior level.


• Sorcerers cast spells using the Magic-user spell chart from Labyrinth Lord. They gain bonus spells from both high Intelligence AND Willpower. Plus, this is the number of spells they can cast per day; they have all their known spells available at their fingertips to cast as they have spell casting slots available. Finally, they can cast spells as Cantrips, not costing a spell casting slot, but must make a successful Intelligence check to do so, with the level of the spell as a penalty. Targets also get any saving throws as normal. They may cast Intelligence Score + Level cantrips per day before they run out of Cantrip energy. Yeah, this makes them kinda powerful... but they should be! When advancing in level, a result of 01-20 means they discover a new spell, rather than gian combat bonuses. Otherwise, usually the only way to get new spells is by finding them amidst the ruins of Wizard citadels! Too, I use the Corruption rule; every spell cast in an Evil way has a 5% (cumulative) chance of turning the Sorcerer to the side of Chaos, and thus a Wizard and NPC! I should note that all damage-causing spells can be cast to cause non-lethal rather than lethal damage...


• Most flunkies are 0-level; they fight at half their normal HD and have only 1 hp per HD. They have to make a lot of Morale checks, too. This fits well with the Thundarrverse concepts, as the Bad Guys were usually running away, rather than standing around waiting to get slaughtered.


• Villains and Heavies get full HD/HP options.


• Saving throws versus Spells and Spell-Like Devices are as per Labyrinth Lord; Magic-user numbers for Sorcerers and Wizards, Fighter numbers for all others.

Jodi made three characters (all started at 3rd level, all Lawful):

Rash the Barbarian (Grizzly Bear Clan): Str 18, Dex 16; Wilderness Survival, Battle Cry, Fast Movement, and Wizard Slayer, with a "minor" in Blacksmithing (his father's trade) and +1 to Melee Damage. Wields a Star Sword (as the Sun Sword, but with a 180 charge limitation, charges being used with every successful attack). Lives up to his name a lot! Rides a war horse.

Canthar the Sorcerer (Pure Human): Int 15, Wil 14; Mutant Lore, Manimal Lore, Technomancy Lore, and Political Lore, with a "minor" in First Aid. Spells: Read Magic, Hypnotism, Floating Disk, Allure, Magic Missile, Shield, Feather Fall, Resist Cold & Fire, Feign Death, Ray of Enfeeblement, Pyrotechnics, ESP. Wields an automatic shotgun when he needs to sweep the streets. Rides a "riding horse" (stolen from his step-father Wizard, seems to have unusual qualities).

Bakra the Puma Girl (Manimal with very Cat Girl-like appearance): Str 16, Dex 19; Claw/Claw/Bite, Leap, Quadruped Speed, Heightened Hearing, Heightened Smell, Night Vision, Intimidation, Pilot Advanced Vehicle, with a specialization in Heightened Smell for "Differentiating Races." Wields an M-16, a short bow, and fights fang and claw in melee. Likes to wear jewelry. Rides a feliquine (lion-horse).

Next, recaps of the first two sessions. We will play every night when Jodi does not have to work the next morning...