2020 Day 30: Mutants in the Night
At 17 pages this is one of the shortest good rpgs in my collection. 20% of the world’s population mutated and became something more. 20% looked different. Can you guess what the world did to those 20%? Yes, that’s right, they locked them up and denied them human rights. Now the mutants struggle to survive in a world which would prefer to kill them than afford them any dignity. They are a people apart.
That’s not a coincidence. This is a game about apartheid and racism.
Which is good because as a game of superhumans it’s pretty rubbish. You choose one of five powersheets and can gradually acquire the restrictive (and minimalistic) powers from those sheets. On top of that, your chances of success are… not great. It use the mechanics from Blades in the Dark, so it’s a matter of rolling a small number of dice and hoping to get a 6 (full success) or at least a 4 or 5 (success with consequence). This does reflect the risky underground actions you are taking and fits the setting well, even if it takes a while to get used to.
However, the best part of Blades in the Dark rules are the clocks. Blades uses clocks for everything: quest or project tracking; approaching guards; doomsday clock; etc. It’s a lovely visual mechanic to let the players know their progress or risk, even if their characters are not aware; I’ve started using it elsewhere.
Melokuhle was 8 when his father Lubanzi changed. Melokuhle watched his father’s skin slowly become redder and redder. Lubanzi’s work became hostile and he started spending all his time in the bedroom. Then, when he started struggling to control his fire, he moved to the basement before his scared wife Angel just kicked him out. He didn’t last a night before he was stoned to death two roads away.
That wasn’t the end of it. Everyone knew that Lubanzi had been a mutant, and the neighbours hounded Melokuhle and Angel. Angel was a social animal, dependent on her friends for validation, so the ostracism and branding of “mutie lover” broke her. When the camps opened, she volunteered herself and Melokuhle willingly; not because her friends told her to, or because they were mutants (they weren’t) but because she thought that’s what they deserved. She remains a broken person, doing the bare minimum to survive. That made Melokuhle a fighter and when he actually mutated several years later he joined the resistance. He combines that with caring for his mother.
I’m not going to create a camp/city for Mutants in the Night so we skip straight to step 2: Choose a Powersheet. Melokuhle is a Pyromantic like his father and calls himself Fathers Sun. He is flame red, his dreadlocks like flames running down the back of his head. With concentration, he can change the colour of skin to something less obvious. He tends to be covered with a light layer of soot. He is also only 14, so he has lots of energy and an increasing amount of endurance. He’s exactly the kind of mutant the humans would want to deal with before he becomes a serious threat.
- Pre-collapse aspect: Urban
- Relationships: Mother (dependent), Thandie (a cat-featured Whisper, friend and proto-girlfriend), Prince (an entitled white Silence, who has been chatting to Thandie and who probably only joined the resistance to prove his superiority).
- Vice: Slaying (aka being the cool dude on the street). Melokuhle is always seeking new ways to do cool things with his flames.
- Powers: Fireball, Burning Strike, Fanning the Flames (Push yourself to do combat tricks)
- Action ratings: Focus 1, Prowl 1, Wreck 1
This game showed me that Forged in the Dark games can be really good. There's a really strong resonance to this game; although there are a couple of gaps best filled by reading Blades. Oops.
Spreads cover for Mutants in the night
https://oriondblack.itch.io/mutants-in-the-night