Mutant Epoch Role Playing Game Review & Commentary

"The Mutant Epoch™ post-apocalyptic RPG challenges your in-game persona to survive in an age of rediscovery, high adventure, savage conflict, and freakish mutants and machines. Characters work in small excavation teams making forays into ruined cities, through junk strewn wastelands, twisted forests, nightmarish swamps and across polluted seas. During their expeditions they must contend with mutant beasts, the environment, as well as raiders, cultists, and robotic forces, only to stake their place in the newly emerging barter forts and factional bastions of humanity.

        Players can take on the roles of pure stocks, mutants, ghost mutants, cyborgs, beastial humans and an assortment of synthetic or engineered humans. All you need is the TME hub rules book, dice, paper and pencils, a few friends and your imagination.

The Mutant Epoch™ uses the Outland System™ game mechanic, which employs the full set of polyhedron dice, is easy to learn, logical, fast paced, and perfectly suited to the hard core action of post apocalyptic game play.

    Inside this lavishly illustrated book you will find all the rules, art and content to generate characters, challenge them with perils, and then reward them with potent relics.

       This core book includes: • 8 character types   • 30 castes   • 36 skills   • over a 111 mutations •68 cybernetic implants  •104 creatures   • 9 robots and 10 androids   • complete encounter tables   • hazards, traps and insanity   • typical humans   • rules for called shots, parrying and chases   • 9 relic vehicles, 44 weapon relics, 14 armor relics and 70+ miscellaneous relics   •common PA vehicles and 10 scrap built Vehicles   • dozens of helpful tables   • character sheet  • GMs party record sheet • grid and hex paper, and much more!   "

So reads the add & hype from Outland games? Does it live up to it ? 

 So the Thursday night Stars Without Number game crashed. Two players bailed. One due to sickness & the other due to car problems. The whole night was a bust with pouring rain & cold. Things couldn't be worse accept for the fact that Outland Arts had brightened my night with a copy of  " Mutant Epoch"!
Lets see what we have? 

The book is really thick & it was packed well. Already scoring points right off the bat! 

The cover just screams action & post apocalyptic fun! Sort of got this weird fifth element/90s Judge Dredd action thing going on here.
The Introduction goes through the background of the Mutant Epoch. The whole storyline has a flexibility about it. Seems to be taking place in the 23 century has a wide, wide, variety of characters right off the bat.So the background is nicely done. Echoes of another Gamma world game in there as well.
Character generation & observations 

There is a metric ton of wall to wall artwork in the book. The book screams 70s & 80s OSR role playing goodness.
Character Generation is very flexible & the whole thing is customization is key here. There are lots & lots of random tables. 

Very Flexible PC types with ton of options that actually seem to work. That's a nice switch from another old school game that I recently re took a look at. 

Wall to Wall mutant animals! This has got to be one of the most extensive sections on mutant animals & how to play them that I've seen.  Teenage Mutant Turtles by Palladium games was the only other game that had mutant animals this well designed. 

Love the concept of "Ghost Mutants" a Marvel style mutant whose powers aren't as easily visible. There's a definitive comic book vibe about this game that comes straight through the character generation even.
The Game Play section is clear, easy to read,& sets out the parameters of the game. The game play even spells out the flavor of the game without hitting you over the head with the world. The flavor of the game play feels like Gamma World or Metamorphis Alpha without some of the kinks of those systems. Accept there's no mutant plants as characters
The Hazards section 

The Hazards section isn't simply things that kill you PCs but elements that can lead into further adventures & complications for the game itself. The hazards can really complicate the hell out of PCs lives & be used as a meter for the campaign background.
These are pretty well thought out & very fleshed out for game play.
The Encounters section is nicely done as well. The encounters are the frame work of the game. These seem to give more bang for the buck then some other games.
Monsters & Robots Sections 

Wow just wow. These monsters are each laid out by type & species. There are metric ton of mutant menaces across the page through out with a lot of artwork to go with them. These aren't made for encountering their made to chew up & spit out PCs. There are some familiar faces or varieties of them from other games of yesteryear but these monsters are like something from a 50s Atomic horror movie. That's a good thing in my book. 

The stat blocks are laid out & pretty easy to read. These look much more DM friendly then other games & the monsters look good enough to spawn adventures on their own.
The robots actually look like their a part of the world that their from & not something stuck from the latest Fallout game. The robot section back ties into the PC section.The technology of this world leads into the relic section.
The Relic Section 

The relic section is fairly even with a number of familiar & iconic weapons from the post PA genre. These could be used in any number of adventures for fast, quick, & dirty adventures. These relics are not something that is endemic to simply one game world
The Tables Section 
Some of the best I've seen in a post apocalyptic game recently. The bottom line is that a science fantasy rpg can live & die by the tables section. If as a DM I've got to go searching for tables we've got problems & lost time during game play. These are well thought out & very nicely done.
Appendices 
An actually useful section information regarding the game. This section rounds out an already impressive rpg book.
Index 
Possibly one of the most useful things an rpg company can stick into a game book. Other companies please take note on this & give us indexes in your product. This one actually works well.
The Bottomline  
The bottomline is the bottomline on the Mutant Epoch game. There is a lot of bang for the buck in this game. You will not need another post apocalyptic game once you have this book. There is enough here to play at least 12 different campaigns. For 28.00 for 246 pages of mutant playing & killing madness this is a great game. I haven't been this excited to see a game in a while this is one not to miss.
This one does actually live up to the hype. The fact is that this can be used on its own or even mind for days for ideas for a number of different genres.
Since I believe in total transparency Outland games did send me this review copy but seriously they didn't have anything to do with this review. I'm totally blown away with their product.
You can find more about Mutant Epoch  & the ton of support that they bring to this game line right Here