Starting a Lords of Creation Campaign!

I think I've talked about my teen players before... several of them run their own games now, which thrills me, even though I'm only a player in my son's OSRIC game right now.  I ask my son questions about the other games after he plays, and I'm always intrigued:  one runs a game called Tephra, several run mash-ups of different versions of D&D with pieces of other games thrown in, and one runs a rules-loose game he created using The Metamorphica to create characters.  All of them seem to mix genres freely.  It makes me happy see that creativity, and I enjoy hearing my son tell me about their games, even if I'm not playing.

It got me thinking, though, that if they don't care much for genre-specificity, I might be able to run a game of Lords of Creation for them.  Although I've owned it since it first came out, I've only run a few short one-shots; it really didn't fit the TSR mold we were used to.

I decided to give it a try.  On the 26th of April, I started small... just my son and one of his buddies, both high school seniors.  I told them both that rather than roll up characters, they were gonna be themselves.  I had them assign themselves values for Muscle, Speed, Stamina and Mental, but told them nothing higher than a 15 or lower than a 7.  They then traded character sheets, just to provide input to each other.  For Luck, I had them roll 2d10 three times and take the average.

I set the game in early June 2019.  That would make Mike a new college graduate, and Greg, who plans on a three year school, a graduate with one year of work under his belt.  I let them adjust their stats a little to account for the next four years, then had them pick skills based on their college and work plans.

We played several hours, and they both seemed to have fun.  Since I'd told Mike I could run the game for five players (until I was comfortable with the rules,) we planned to play again on Tuesday, the 28th, since they only had a half-day of school. When everyone got to the house, I sent Mike and Greg to the basement to play video games while I ran the same character creation scenario with Jake, Logan and Donald.

I'll write about the two sessions in the near future, but the one thing I wanted to point out now was a real surprise to me:  In spite of all these guys having played in my OD&D and Traveller campaigns, and in each others' games, playing as themselves brought an entirely different vibe to the game!  No matter what I described, or how poorly I described it, it was clear, especially with my son, that the experience was far more visceral now that it was happening to THEM, rather than characters they'd made up.  I had a blast and it seemed like they did too!

The Metamorphica, and Rule 0

Back in early March, I was looking for some random mutation tables online, and came across a free .pdf of The Metamorphica by Johnstone Metzger on lulu.com  I downloaded it immediately, but didn't get around to doing anything with it until recently.  The manual is a masterpiece!  It is system agnostic, so I can use it with my OD&D campaign as well as my Traveller campaign, and any other games I choose to run.  The .pdf is 154 pages long, most of which are full of charts for rolling up mutations, and descriptions of said mutations.  Also included are several appendices.  I especially like Appendix 3, Characters by Campaign, and Appendix 4, Characters by Type.  The former lists different campaign styles, and provides still more tables and information about how to generate specific mutant types for specific campaign styles; the latter assists with the creation of specific character types, such as mutant hordes and mutant plants.  The last three pages are a bibliography; a veritable Appendix N of resources that influenced the creation of the book.

The night I downloaded this, we were playing in my son's AD&D 2e world... and I was one of those distracted players we DMs gripe about.  I kept oohing and ahhing as I perused the file and several players asked about it, and wanted copies.  Turns out, at least two of them have written up campaigns using this book as a character creation manual.  At first I was perplexed; there is no system in this book... it's not a ruleset!  Speaking further to them, I found out that the two of them, and my son, worked out initial game rules of their own, and they'll update them as needed.  All they have now are a simple character generation method and stats, and basic combat.  No longer perplexed... proud instead!  They started with D&D 4e; then after playing in my Traveller campaign and my OD&D (3 LBBs) campaign, decided 4e was way too crunchy and dropped back to AD&D 2e.  Now they've gone further, implementing Rule 0 in the strongest way possible!  Huzzah!

By the way, I'll be using The Metamorphica as well.  The Melashravishim of my Star Clans Traveller Campaign will be partially generated using some of the tables in this book.