The Random Esoteric (ahem) "MUTANT" Generator

After seeing an entry at the Green Skeleton Gaming Guild blog expounding the mutagenic goodness of The Random Esoteric Creature Generator by James Raggi IV and published by Goodman Games, I knew I had to get my hands on it. I've been sitting on my copy for a while now, but I never really took it for a test-run. So, right here, right now, I'm going to create a new Mutant Future creature using the rolls as they happen. Once I've worked my way through the tables, I shall post the end result as a new entry. Let's get to work:

BASIC BODY SHAPE - Rolled 13 - Quadruped. My creature walks on four legs. Good start.

BASIC CHARACTERISTICS - Rolled 20 - Crustacean. So I've got a hard-shelled creature with a set of claw-like pincers. Rolling on the CRUSTACEAN subtable, I come up with Horseshoe Crab. So now we know what kind of creature this thing was before it got dipped in the mutagen. I'll up the legs to six, like to keep it more "crabby." I've also turned to the Giant Crab entry in the MF rulebook for my basic stats.

SIZE - Rolled 17 - Enormous. Gets double HD, add an extra die to damage, and gets an additional 20 feet movement. Giant Crab has 3 HD, so this is a 6HD creature. That seems way too low for something so massive, so let's TRIPLE it to 9HD. Giant crab claws normally do 2d6, so we up it to 3d6. And movement is now 120' (40). Whew, if a Giant Crab is the size of a small car, this creature is the size of a bus. Keen.

MOVEMENT - Rolled 16 again - Swimming. So this thing moves as fast in and under the water as it does on land.

ATTACK METHODS - Since the claws have been established, the table says to use any attacks already suggested and flesh them out instead of rolling. Good idea. The entry for Claw says to add +1 damage per attack die. So my creature just got a +3 damage bonus. Yipe.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES - Rolled a 47 - Prehensile Tongue. A monstrous crab with a tongue strikes me as odd. But how about some cthulhoid tendrils instead? And just big enough to merit a "hold" special attack, so they'll certainly be useful for grabbing a victim.

SPECIAL ABILITIES - Has a 50% chance of something special...and rolled a 75. No Special Abilities.

COMBAT STRATEGY / MOTIVATION - Rolling on those tables gives me a monster that will always attack whomever inflicted the most damage on it in the prior round (it's a survival instinct) as well as territorial, so it will only attack those who wander into its home area. It will break off the attack once they leave the area.

And that's about it for the generator. But it wouldn't be Mutant Future without a few mutations, eh? So the dice reveals that there are 2 Physical Mutations and 1 Mental Mutation. Let's see here:

PHYSICAL MUTATIONS - Since we've used the Giant Crab as our template, we'll just allot gigantism as one of the mutations. Rolling a 9 gives me dermal poison slime. This is one big, poisonous, hard-shelled crab.

MENTAL MUTATIONS - Wow. Just rolled force screen. So not only is this thing armored, it's got a force field around it too. You'll need a tac nuke to scratch this creature.

And there you have it. The Random Esoteric Creature Generator is that easy to use and, as you've seen, some interesting monsters can result with just a few random rolls. Granted, this isn't as bizarre as it could have been, but with the addition of some Mutant Future mutations, we have a creature that will be more than a handful for your PCs.

Stay tuned. This creature will lumber out of the ocean's depths in a few moments...