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INTRODUCTION
A
re you a savage tribesman sifting through the ra-
dioactive ruins of Lost Lemuria, or of a futuristic
age yet to come? Is your faithful mount a wing-
less dragon, a dinosaur, or a gigantic mutated lizard? Is that
trusty weapon strapped to your side an arcane construct
from a bygone mystic age of magic and wonder, or is it the
imperishable product of an advanced technological civili-
zation long since fallen to ruin?
These questions have never bothered you overmuch — they
are a needless distraction from the task at hand. You must
survive. You must survive against all odds, be it surviving
in the mad hothouse jungles populated by Darwin’s most
fevered nightmares, or in the glowing deserts and decaying
ruins of the once-was. Whether your leather-bound footfall
crosses blast-glass or intelligent slime, you must survive.
And to do so will require all the cunning, luck, and capac-
ity for violence that you can muster. Fortunately, you’ve
always had these things in great abundance.
What Is thIs?
The Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is both a
supplement to Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Clas-
sics RPG as well as a complete game in its own right. You
can use these rules to run your own post apocalyptic role
playing game, or simply as a way to spice up your existing
DCC RPG campaign with the addition of mutants, articial
intelligences, and futuristic technology. These rules are de-
signed to be 100% compatible with the DCC RPG rulebook,
and characters and monsters from either system should
mesh seamlessly into your campaign with little or no adju-
dication required.
THE SETTING: TERRA A.D.
T
he characters in the Mutant Crawl Classics RPG
live in a primitive world dominated by the bizarre
side-effects of an ancient holocaust known only as
the Great Disaster. Millennia after this cataclysmic extinc-
tion event, the world — now known as Terra A.D. (After
Disaster) — has regrown into a lush tropical wilderness.
The lifeforms that survive and ourish in Terra A.D. did so
because natural selection rewarded their ancestors for pos-
sessing either very plastic or very hardy genomes. Plants
and animals with wild and unstable mutations permeate
the ecosystem and the food chain. Though some species
have settled down into relatively stable body plans and are
capable of reproducing true to form, there is still the chance
in any given birth of a new mutation arising.
Of these mutations, the advent of intelligence and sentience
are by far the most pervasive. Never before in the history of
the world has it been home to so many competing sentient
species. Many animal and plant species now possess rudi-
mentary reasoning abilities, and more than a few walk up-
right, communicate with each other, and make use of tools.
These sentient species are collectively known as Manimals
and Plantients.
What few members of mankind that survived the Great Di-
saster meanwhile descended into barbarism and savagery,
and eventually split into two separate species: Pure Strain
Humans and Mutants. Rather than surviving the Great
Disaster by virtue of constantly mutating genetics, the ge-
nome of Pure Strain Humans became hardened against ra-
diation and other mutagenic environmental effects, leaving
them an especially hardy and intelligent race. The Mutant
species of mankind meanwhile evolved along an opposite
path, never breeding true to form even within small tribal
gene pools. A mutant is always born with at least one no-
table cosmetic mutation, and upon reaching post-adoles-
cence, mutants will typically manifest a diverse set of un-
predictable additional mutations, making them among the
most bizarre and horric of all Terra A.D. creatures.
No existing sentient species or culture on Terra A.D. has
managed to rise above the Neolithic stage of civilization.
Stone tools and a tribal hunter-gatherer society dominate,
with even rudimentary agriculture being a very rare occur-
rence. Metallurgy and even writing are unknown to most
sentients.
the ancIent Ones
It is generally accepted among the denizens of Terra A.D.
that there once existed a legendary race of an unknown
type that ruled and ordered the world with an arcane force
known as technology. While nearly every sentient species
makes an apocryphal claim to be directly descendant of
these protean techno-wizards of millennia past, the evi-
dence for their existence is inarguable. Though long since
passed out of all memory, the imperishable artifacts and
ruined haunts of the Ancient Ones were manufactured of
such incomprehensibly durable substances and with such
super scientic knowledge as to be virtually immune to the
ravages of passing centuries. Many such devices and plac-
es may yet be discovered relatively intact by those brave
enough to plumb the taboo lands of Terra A.D.
terra a.D. as a
campaIgn settIng
The setting of Terra A.D. is clearly post-apocalyptic, but
exactly which apocalypse are we talking about? Was the
Great Disaster the fall of Lost Lemuria or Ancient Atlantis,
the Ragnarok of the Norse gods, an atomic holocaust, or the
death throes of a Vancian Dying Aereth? These questions
are intentionally never answered in these rules. Taking its
cue from its elder sibling, the world of Mutant Crawl Clas-
sics RPG is an undiscovered country — wild and mysteri-