Feigning Ignorance

Though we're only two sessions into the Metamorphosis Alpha campaign, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, including me. Prior to this, I don't believe any of the players involved had ever had the chance to play MA before or, if they had, did so for very long. All of them were, of course, familiar with the game in broad terms, including its central premise. While I'm sure there have been many players over the decades who weren't aware that their characters were actually aboard a generation ship gone mad after a chance encounter with a radiation cloud, that's definitely not the case in my campaign. Everyone playing the game already knows the score.

I bring this up, because one of several things about the campaign that I've enjoying as the referee is watching the players pretend, via their characters, that they have no inkling of the Big Picture. The characters began the campaign as inhabitants of the village of Habitat, located on the shores of Lake Refuge within Wolf Forest. So far as the characters know, their ancestors journeyed here from the Barren Hills of Warden after having been cast out of the First Garden by the Builder. This is the world as the characters know it and the players have been operating within that frame.

In reality, though, the characters live on Habitat Level 2 of the starship Warden, one of two levels constructed to look like natural, terrestrial environments – in this case a forest – with an appropriate "climate" maintained by artificial means. Though there are a couple of features to this environment that reveal its true origins, like the Sky Columns (elevators) that can be seen reaching upwards, none of this is known to the characters, who have a fairly simple, even primitive worldview.

Consequently, when we had our first session a couple of weeks ago, I presented the current situation in Habitat in accordance with that worldview. The weather had suddenly gotten inexplicably colder, harming the crops, killing off game animals, and threatening to do the same to the old and infirm among the villagers. The elders did not know the cause and so sent the characters off into the wilds to seek a solution or, barring that, the location of the places where their ancestors first dwelled when they came to Warden. If nothing else, they could retreat there and escape the encroaching cold.

The elders have them all supplies, including a "wrath stick," an ancient Gift, to be wielded by the party's leader (a pure human, since mutants bear the curse of the Builder). To him, they taught the prayers necessary to use it – the Prayer of Loading, the Mantra of Targeting, and the Prayer of Humble Jam-Clearing. Then, they set off to ascertain what was happening and, if possible, to correct it, so that the people of Habitat might once again resume their toil in hopes of securing the Builder's favor, so that they might one enter the promised New Garden.

Again, to be clear, the players understood a lot of things I described to their characters under veiled words. For example, they recognized the "wrath stick" as a firearm, but their characters viewed it as a holy artifact and treated it with appropriate reverence. When the party's leader prepared to fire it for the first time, he recited the necessary prayers beforehand and several of the characters added, "Praise the Builder!" at the end of it, which I appreciated. The prayers do nothing, but the characters believe they do, which is why they recite them whenever the wrath stick is employed.

For whatever reason, I absolutely love this. I think it's the proper spirit in which to enter playing a game like Metamorphosis Alpha, whose Big Secret was revealed almost half a century ago. There is simply no way to preserve it at this late a date and I'm hard pressed to imagine ways to "subvert" it that don't do extreme violence to the game's central premise. That's why I think the approach my players have taken – leaning into their characters' ignorance of the true situation – is probably the best way to enjoy MA in 2025. As I've said before, I have no idea how sustainable this is over the long term, but I plan to have fun with it for however long it lasts.

Three

While I'd prefer you to comment over at Grognardia Games Direct, your comments are very welcome here as well.

Three by James Maliszewski

Let Me Know Your Preference

Read on Substack

Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega

Since I recently started refereeing Metamorphosis Alpha, I've been thinking a lot about the game and its history. This inevitably led me back to the only version of MA I actually owned before the 21st century – 1994's Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, released as part of TSR's Amazing Engine series of games. Like the original version of Metamorphosis Alpha. this version of the game is fairly obscure, with comparatively few people even remembering its existence, let alone having played it. Indeed, I think it's possible that it's even more obscure than its predecessor, perhaps by being one of the last Amazing Engine products published during the tumultuous final years of TSR.

For those who don't recall, Amazing Engine was TSR's attempt to produce a set of generic rules that could be easily ported to a variety of different genres and settings. Designed by David Cook, the Amazing Engine rules were very "light," based on four ability scores, skills, and percentile resolution. Each setting book for the game built on this foundation, adding specific rules as needed. In Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, for example, specific rules additions primarily concerned mutations and high-tech equipment. 

Never having actually played any Amazing Engine game – a distinction I doubt is unique – I can’t speak to how well it worked in practice. Nor do I know whether the line’s cancellation less than two years after its launch reflects problems with the system itself or simply TSR’s dire financial state at the time, when no new product line likely stood much chance. The sad thing is that Amazing Engine did produce several genuinely interesting settings. I was particularly fond of For Faerie, Queen & Country, a Victorian fantasy setting, and Kromosome, a “biopunk” setting. Several of the other eight published settings were, by most accounts, also quite well done, though few people seemed to notice. Amazing Engine was very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it product line from the last days of TSR.

Designer Slade Henson, in his preface to Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, explains that the game began its life as a supplement to the 4th edition of Gamma World. That does not surprise me, since Jim Ward had been promising an MA supplement/expansion to Gamma World since at least 1981. The game's third edition very much seemed to be building toward it as well, making it one of the few things that captured my attention about that particular version of the game. However, it was never to be, nor, as Henson recounts, was it to happen for 4th edition. Once GW 4e was cancelled, the planned Metamorphosis Alpha boxed set – complete "a couple billion cards, a few trillion maps, and a googolplex of creative tidbits for the Game Master" – was to be converted into a stand-alone 144-page book. "I think I sobbed that day," Henson says, and I can't really blame him.

That said, the resulting book, truncated though it is from its original form, is not bad. I won't go so far as to call it good, because it has numerous flaws. However, it was, as I said, the first time I'd seen Metamorphosis Alpha in print in any form and so I liked it well enough. Furthermore, in many ways, it's an improvement on its legendary predecessor, most notably its organization and its relative completeness. It's perfectly possible to run an MA campaign with Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega and not be constantly beset with questions like, "What exactly does this mutation do?" or "Where did I see the rules for surprise?" Speaking as a referee in the midst of trying to make sense of the 1976 MA rulebook and occasionally failing, these improvements are no small things.

Likewise, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega gives a much clearer and more well defined sense of not only what happened on the starship Warden in the past but also in the present. The book provides referees with a history of the ship, from its launch to its encounter with the radiation cloud to its fall. There's also a post-sized map of all nine decks of the Warden, along with its various city and agricultural domes. These, in turn, are each described, giving the referee some sense of their inhabitants and current state. The end result is a much more cohesive presentations of the Warden and plenty of possible starting points for new campaigns and adventures.

None of these features are bad in themselves and, arguably, they're boons. One of the flaws of the original Metamorphosis Alpha is its sketchiness. As I mentioned in a previous post, MA 1976 is more of an outline toward an RPG than a fully playable game. In that respect, it's a bit like OD&D. On the other hand, one could reasonably argue that that very sketchiness is a virtue, giving individual referees a very free hand to make the Warden – and the game itself – his own, since he's left with no choice but to fill in the game's innumerable blank spaces and lacunae himself. 

By contrast, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega does a lot more of the heavy lifting for you – not all of it by any means, but enough that there's a much stronger and more well defined foundation on which to build. That can be a great thing, provided you like the foundation. Otherwise, it can actually be harder to use, since the referee now has to work against the overall content and tone on offer rather than simply making it all up from scratch. I think it's here that Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is more of a mixed bag. Many of the descriptions of the Warden's current state are, in my opinion, strange and silly – like a tribe of Amazons who worship deactivated robots and mutant cows engaged in a range war against cowboy hat-wearing ranchers, to cite just two examples. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, which is why I can't say Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is unqualifiedly bad. It's not and, by many definitions, it does a really good job, given the constraints under which it was produced and published. I also have some affection for it, since it was the first version of MA I owned and it has probably subtly informed my sense of what the game and setting is without my even realizing it. But a replacement to the original 1976 game it is not, which, for all its many flaws, strikes me as much more filled with possibility than its would-be successor. 

The Current State of Dream-Quest (Part I)

An update on Dream-Quest, one of the many projects I've been working on since the summer.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Demi-humans Get a Lift"

For a lot of old school AD&D players, the appearance of Unearthed Arcana in 1985 marked the end of an era. Filled with a wide variety of new options for players, it fundamentally upped the power level of characters in a way that forever changed the game. What's interesting is that is that, at the time, some people were critical of UA because they felt it "didn't contain anything new." In a sense, that was true. The book consisted primarily of material reprinted from several years' worth of Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column in Dragon. Very little of the book's contents should have surprised anyone who was regularly reading Dragon, as I was.

And yet, somehow, by compiling all that material under one cover, it became more than the sum of its parts. I knew lots of gamers, myself included, who'd allowed this class or that spell from Gygax's columns into their AD&D campaigns without so much as a second thought. In aggregate, though, they all took on a different character. Things that never bothered me before suddenly did, when placed side by side with other options I hadn't allowed (or didn't like). The result was that Unearthed Arcana was the book that "broke" AD&D for me. It was a bridge too far and it contributed to my growing disillusionment with the game in the mid-80s.

One of the last of Gygax's columns previewing material that would eventually appear in UA was "Demi-Humans Get a Lift," which appeared in issue #95 (March 1985). In his characteristic way, he explains the purpose of his article thusly:

 After long contemplation of the plight of dead-ended demi-human characters, and considerable badgering from players with same, it seemed a good plan to work up some new maximum levels for those demihumans with super-normal statistics -- and in a couple of cases just reward those with high stats across the board. Demi-humans were limited in the first place (in the original rules) because I conceived of a basically human-dominated world. Considering their other abilities, if most demi-humans were put on a par with humans in terms of levels they could attain, then there isn't much question who would be saying "Sir!" to whom. With that in mind, let's move along to the matter at hand.

Once again, Gary makes it clear that, in his mind, demi-humans were always supposed to play second fiddle to humans, which is why he included level limits. One may argue that such limits do a poor job of discouraging the play of demi-humans, but there can be no question that that was the intention behind it.

Despite that, Gygax decides here to give in to "considerable badgering" from players of demi-human PCs and provide the means for demi-humans to reach higher levels of experience. He does this in two ways. First, he allows single-classed demi-humans to exceed the standard level cap by two. Multiclassed demi-humans must abide by the usual limits. Second, he allows demi-humans with exceptional ability scores, whether single or multiclassed, to achieve even higher levels. While I think the first change is reasonable, if unnecessary, the second more or less ensured that every demi-human PC from then on would have absurdly high ability scores. In my opinion, AD&D already had a problem with ability score inflation; these changes only further encouraged such bad behavior. The article also opened up for play several new demi-human races, such as deep gnomes and drow, both of which, in my opinion, are too powerful for use in an "ordinary" campaign.

Throughout the article, Gary makes a couple of asides that suggests that he himself doesn't much care for these rules changes but is allowing them because "the gamers have spoken." It's very odd and makes one wonder why, if he really was so opposed to these changes, he nevertheless went ahead and presented in them. The tone throughout is strange and he ends the piece by not only saying that these are the final, ultimate, never-to-be-changed-again, for-real-this-time alterations to demi-human level limits but also by suggesting demands for further power escalation are inevitable:

To put a cap on things, let us get something straight. Any statistics beyond those shown, for levels and ability scores alike, are virtually impossible. Spells and magic, even artifacts and relics, will not increase statistics beyond what is shown, and no further word is necessary. If some deity likes a character so much as to grant a higher statistic, then that deity should also like the character sufficiently to carry him or her off to another plane. (Rules for quasideities will, I suppose, now be in demand . . . sigh!)

Even more than a quarter-century later, I find Gary's tone odd.

What Makes a Setting? (Part I)

What Makes a Setting? (Part I) by James Maliszewski

More Questions to Ponder

Read on Substack

Fight On! Issue #17 (Fall 2025)

The latest issue of the legendary OSR 'zine, Fight On!, has been released in both print and electronic formats. Dedicated to the memory of David C. Sutherland III, it's filled with a terrific selection of articles and art from a wide variety of old school creators. I myself wrote a longish piece for this issue, a hexcrawl set in the Eshkom Distict of the Secrets of sha-Arthan setting, which serves as a little preview of some of what I've been working on (though you can check out my Substack for lots more of that, too).

It's good to see Fight On! continuing to release new issues. I consider it a foundational product of the Old School Renaissance, one that quite literally helped to bring this weird little part of our hobby to wider attention. Check it out!

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Other Gods

Written in August 1921 but not published until November 1933 in the pages of The Fantasy Fan, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods” provides an earliest and revealing glimpse into the ideas that would later coalesce into his distinctive cosmic mythology. Brief though it is, the story articulates with remarkable clarity a vision of the universe that would come to define Lovecraft’s work. In it, the cosmos is neither ordered for human benefit nor governed by sympathetic or intelligible divinities, but instead dominated by vast, indifferent, and alien powers. In this vision, human ambition is not merely misplaced but positively perilous, for to seek forbidden knowledge is not to advance toward enlightenment, but rather to step, unwittingly, toward obliteration.

The story concerns Barzai the Wise, a venerable sage from the city of Ulthar, who has devoted his long life to the study of the gods. Unlike the fearful or superstitious masses, Barzai is driven by intellectual pride and a desire for direct knowledge. When he learns that the gods of Earth are said to descend upon the summit of the distant mountain Hatheg-Kla in the land of Mnar, he determines to climb the mountain and behold them with his own eyes. Accompanied by his young disciple Atal, Barzai ascends the cold, alien slopes and reaches the peak, where ancient stone seats and mysterious carvings suggest a long-forgotten cult.

At the summit, Barzai performs an invocation to compel the gods to show themselves. What answers this summons, however, are not the gentle, familiar deities of Earth, but the Other Gods, who are vast, formless, and terrifying cosmic entities that exist beyond human thought and earthly divinity. As Atal watches in horror, these beings blot out the moon and sweep down upon the mountaintop. Barzai is carried away into the void, leaving only terror and silence behind. Atal alone survives to stagger back to the world below, forever changed by what he has witnessed.

The strength of “The Other Gods” lies less in its action, of which there is not much, than in what it implies. Here, Lovecraft makes a distinction between the parochial gods of Earth and the greater, indifferent forces that actually rule the cosmos. The story marks a turning point from earlier, more folkloric/Dunsanian fantasy toward the fully developed cosmic horror for which Lovecraft would later become famous. Like many of the stories that would later be deemed part of his dream cycle, "The Other Gods" is a transitional piece, standing at the boundary between wonder and horror. 

Lovecraft's admiration for Lord Dunsany is still evident, particularly in the tale's elevated, archaic prose and fantastical setting. At the same time, it's also clearly a rejection of Dunsany’s romantic treatment of divinity. Where Dunsany’s gods are beautiful, tragic, and ultimately part of a comprehensible cosmic order, Lovecraft’s Other Gods represent something colder and more disturbing. They represent a universe in which even the gods of myth are small and provincial compared to the true nature of reality.

The story is notable too for the way it explicitly references characters, places, and concepts that appear (or later would reappear) in previous stories. The city of Ulthar, the character of Atal, and the distinction between “earthly” and “Other” gods are all examples of this. Likewise, the story is an early meditation on one of Lovecraft’s most enduring themes, namely, that the pursuit of forbidden knowledge is not a heroic quest but a transgression of sorts and that the universe does not reward human curiosity with enlightenment, but only with annihilation.

How Weird is My Mutant?

I have a lot of experience with Gamma World. primarily its first edition, though I refereed a lot of second edition too. Consequently, my default perspective when it comes to generating mutant characters is very much colored by its rules. So, when the players of my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign started doing so, I simply assumed that MA's rules were similar to those of GW. As it turns out, they are – but similarity does not mean the same, as I soon discovered. Mutant characters, both human and animal (or "monster," as the text calls them), have enough differences in the way they're created that my players and I were often mistaken in our initial understanding of how the rules work (a situation made all the worse by the poor organization of Metamorphosis Alpha).

In both games, players can choose to be either a humanoid mutant or an animal mutant. Also in both games, mutants of both types begin play with 1d4 physical and mental mutations. So far, so good. However, in Metamorphosis Alpha, the player chooses these mutations from the frustratingly non-alphabetized list. Then, the referee (or "judge," as he's inconsistently called in the text) "roll[s] randomly for physical or mental defect (or one of each if the player has 5 or more total mutations)." There are a lot fewer defects to choose from, meaning that, if the group of player characters is large enough, there may be some that recur.

Gamma World, meanwhile, presents two systems for generating mutations, something I've discussed before. The standard system determines the mutations randomly through the use of percentile dice and the (thankfully now-alphabetized) list of physical and mental mutations includes defects among them. In this way, not only is there likely to be a greater variety of mutations among the characters but defects, when they are present, will also be more variable. Of course, Gamma World also includes a system very similar to that of Metamorphosis Alpha as an option, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who made use of it. Indeed, the random generation of mutations is, in my experience, considered a signature feature of the game and a big part – mistaken in my opinion – why the game is often considered "silly,"

The game's lack of organization has some bearing on character generation as well. For example, animal mutants must select Heightened Intelligence as a mental mutations or else they are deemed to have mere bestial intellect and are unable to communicate or react logically. This fact is only mentioned in the description of Heightened Intelligence, which makes it easy to overlook. Of course, the sample mutant animal character doesn't have Heightened Intelligence and yet still seems, from context, to be able to communicate via Telepathy. There's also a note that the character's animal species – bear – "can't normally talk," implying that animals might need the New Body Parts physical mutation to be able to do so (though, again, this isn't outright stated). It's all a bit of a mess.

What I noticed was that, since players can choose their character's mutations, certain ones became very popular, like Carapace and Life Leech. Furthermore, many mutations are quite potent when possessed by a single mutant. One of the characters, a mutant human named Mee D'Ochre – yes, it's that kind of group – had Heightened Strength, Heightened Balance, and Military Genius, which together allow him to deal 7d6 damage when striking with a sword! That combination would have an identical effect in Gamma World but the likelihood of rolling all three is much lessened, compared to selecting them.

 I'm fine with this, since, as I said yesterday, this campaign is intended as much as an exploration of Metamorphosis Alpha as it is a campaign in its own right. I suspect, as I did when I played OD&D and Empire of the Petal Throne for the first time, I'll house rule and adapt MA as we discover what works and doesn't work for our particular group and play style. That's part of the fun of these old RPGs: they're, in many ways, outlines for creating your own roleplaying game rather than complete and usable "out of the box." That's not a criticism, just an observation, and one with which I'm quite comfortable.

I'll have more to say on the rules of Metamorphosis Alpha in future posts. It's a rich topic for discussion.

Shackles

Shackles by James Maliszewski

Slavery in the Empire in Inba Iro

Read on Substack