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"Imagine, if you will, the world of the not too distant future. On one hand, advanced and futuristic, on the other, bleak and war-torn. The advanced nations of the world develop miraculous levels of medical science and put colonies on neighboring planets, while the world's less-developed nations suffer in abject poverty."
Moses has been kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to talk with me about his new RPG Mutazoids 3e. I have known Moses for quite a few years from the Gamma World email lists. I wish him well on his adventure into the world of RPG Publishing.
-Craig Janssen aka NetFlame
Permission is granted to use this interview in e-zines, magazines, Internet, (Non-profit) etc. as long as proper credit is given to myself, Moses "Wolfy" Wildermuth, and copyrights statements are left in place. Questions? Email me at NetFlame@cfl.rr.com and view the copyright page.
Q. Can you tell us about yourself?
Well, sir, I'm a 39 year old originally born in Indiana, but a born-again Texan now, with a bit of a rebellious streak tempered only by a no-nonsense approach. I sold my first article to a well-known numismatic publication (Coins Magazine) for the then going rate of 2.5 cents per word, at the age of 15. I have a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration with Computer Science (programming) as a primary focus as well, with 169 total semester hours. I liked to take as many non-related electives as possible, to include Social Anthropology, History, and Geography. I always had specific interest in ancient history and numismatics and over the last year have begun collecting and restoring ancient Roman coins in my "spare-time".
Q. Can you tell us about your game design experience?
It all started in high school about 1980, I read LoTR 6 times, the Silmarillion 3 times, and someone introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons.... By 1982, I had been elected "Head GM" over 2 other GM's of my high school D&D club. We each started with 8 players from among the club-members. As the three games got their starts, people starting complaining about their GM's and left the other two campaigns to join mine. I finally had to put a limit of 13 players in my game. The only way for new people to get into my game was for someone to quit or literally die. The other GM's were instructed to follow my example of GM'ing and model their campaigns rule interpretations after mine to stop the loss of player's from their games.
I knew then that more than Role-Playing, Game Mastering was a natural instinct for me. By 1985, I had been increasing moving away from AD&D and only GM'ing Gamma World. At one point in time, I decided the only way I would ever get a game with rules customized for the Post Apocalypse setting would be to write it myself. There were a few tentative attempts, nothing really accomplished, but the seed was planted, and the goal was set. I GM'ed 3rd and 4th edition Gamma World for another 10 yrs. Most of the campaigns were designated as Earth-like Colony worlds, not Earth itself, so that it had to be designed almost from scratch. After moving to Iowa in 1995, my RPG experience was greatly diminished.
In 2001, I needed an RPG fix in a BIG way and saw my opportunity to complete one of my goals in life by creating my own post apoc game, and I went for it. Designing the world of Mutazoids3e was rather easy. Seamlessly meshing homespun rules with Open Gaming Content and original Mutazoids rules into a standalone game system tailored for post apoc was the biggest challenge, but looking back it was a fun and exciting process more times than not.
Q. How long has Mutazoids 3e been in development? Who is on the design team?
I purchased the copyrights to the original two editions of the Mutazoids game in July of 2001. The design plan from the beginning was "design by committee", with myself as the final say of what would be included and how it would be included. I began taking in submissions and suggestions from other long term apocalyptic players and GMs, and started scanning/OCR'ing the text and organizing the notes immediately. By August 2001, the Mutazoids Developers CD was ready containing all the original mutazoids material and many of the notes and ideas that I had been gathering. Development actually began in earnest after I moved back to Texas in October 2001. John Shaw was a big part of this phase of development. He understood the intricacies of the Open Game Content extremely well and his rule expansions and revisions form a bulk of the new Open Game Content released in the Player's Guide and Handbook.
Several others followed working on and adding to one section or another while I worked on still another section. By April of 2002, the committee had created about a 750 page volume, and I called a halt to submissions while I edited the work. About June and July of 2002, the project went into proof- reading and play-testing until February of 2003, when final editing and layout began. The resulting 240 page Player's Guide and Handbook was released 2 yrs and 2 months after the original rules for Mutazoids were purchased from Whit Publishing.
Q. What were some of the pitfalls you experienced while designing Mutazoids 3e? One major hurdle was to create a standalone game that would be different, yet still easily convertable to the standard Open Game System. The upside of this hard work is that standard Open Game settings are also easily converted to the Mutazoids3e system.
Q. If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
I would have done more homework before doing anything and learned more from those who had gone before. I would have joined the GPA (Game Publisher's Association) sooner and listened to their sage advice more often.
Q. Why did you pick Mutazoids as a base RPG to develop?
As a GM for Gamma World for so many years, I picked up the Mutazoids City Handbook somewhere along the way and used it extensively in my 3rd and 4th ed campaigns. This one book had a profound impact on the adventures and scenarios that the Player's characters could expect in a city, town, or village. I gained a real appreciation for the thought and insights provided via this book. It had that nitty, gritty, realistic, post apoc, mutated feel to it, and the rule books also contained suggested histories for other parts of the World. There were a few other things that I really liked and kept into the third edition (ie - physical change mutations and disadvantages), but those two factors were most important in my decision to use Mutazoids as the base of my new game.
Q. How is Mutazoids 3e different than the older versions? How is it better?
Definitely the first noticeable difference is the art! but inside the pretty cover, there are many expansions and additions and fixes in the 3rd edition. The first major improvement, some may call it simply a change, was to make player characters into exciting vigilantes, explorers and adventurers, rather than playing the repressive agents of unjust laws. Then we added non-human mutazoids, as PCs, NPCs or creatures. Choosing to use Open Gaming Content proved to have a considerable impact on the game, allowing for many types of situations to be anticipated and dealt with, and a wealth of Open Game material to draw upon. Continuing the process of adding material from other Open Game game settings into a Mutazoids3e campaign is also incredibly easy.
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