Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord—Are they still around?

[doctorhook]

I always thought Mutant Future looked like an awesome game, and I’m finally looking into running it. However, it hasn’t been updated in a decade, and the forums for Labyrinth Lord and Goblinoid Games as a whole looks kinda… dead.

Any news about Mutant Future? Where did all the Labyrinth Lord players go, and is Mutant Future compatible with something else? Is there a “spiritual successor” I should check out?

If anyone can point me in the right direction, I’d be grateful.

 

[doctorhook]

Goblinoid Games is leaving a ton of money on the table by ignoring the wave of new B/X gamers that OSE is bringing to the market. Their web site hasn't seen any updates since 2019. Though many of their books are available as POD from both Lulu and DriveThruRPG, I'd love to see some quality offset print runs. I don't understand why they're doing nothing to capitalize on the market's growth.

I wonder too. Maybe the company ownership is gone?

 

[LoganRan]

That’s good to hear. Got any good Gamma World-type recommendations?

Sorry, no. I only played TSR Gamma World a few times and it never really resonated with me so I have not paid attention to any clones created for that game.

 

[Retreater]

Any news about Mutant Future? Where did all the Labyrinth Lord players go, and is Mutant Future compatible with something else? Is there a “spiritual successor” I should check out?

I don't think it's compatible with Gamma World, but have you seen Mutant Crawl Classics by Goodman Games? I have some friends who enjoy it.

 

[Mannahnin]

Good to know! Glad I backed their recent KS then. How compatible is anything from Labyrinth Lord with OSE?

Generally compatible, as most of the TSR era rules are. But less so than some.

OSE is a direct reproduction of the B/X rules with almost no changes to the actual mechanics (option of ascending AC being the most obvious), mostly just phrased more clearly, tightly edited and reorganized.

LL incorporates a lot of little tweaks and some additional content from AD&D. Like giving Clerics casting at 1st level, altering the XP charts and expanding the level range to 20, and the spells to 9th level (B/X caps out at 6, as I recall), adding more weapons and armor options from AD&D. And tweaking some monster names. Like Thoghrin instead of Thouls.

 

[pandres]

I hear both Pacesetter Games and the OSE guy are working on Gamma World / PA versions of their games.

But meanwhile there is only Mutant Future, I play my current campaign in it and it's great. It is fully compatible with B/X and allows higher level play.

 

[Reynard]

The mutant abilities and super-tech in Mutant Future are bolted on top of the B/X system anyway, so you should be able to use MF seamlessly with OSE.

 

[aramis erak]

I wonder too. Maybe the company ownership is gone?

they dumped a bunch of effort into the 2E of Starships & Spacemen. Many fans of 1E were beyond unplussed, since they migrated it, thanks to their echo chamber, to Mutant Future, which, mechanically, is a nasty bolt on added to a LL base and incompatible with S&S 1E. There have been some 3rd party/community content add-ons for S&S2e.

I expect they simply ran out of cash. No cash, no new products.

 

[jdrakeh]

I expect they simply ran out of cash. No cash, no new products.

Possible. They bought up a LOT of old RPG properties over a short period of time.

 

[aramis erak]

Possible. They bought up a LOT of old RPG properties over a short period of time.

Few of them panned out,

 

[jdrakeh]

Few of them panned out,

To my knowledge, the only one that seemed to gather any kind of noteworthy fan community around it was Cryptworld (effectively a Chill clone, using the old Pacesetter House system which Goblinoid Games purchased). And after publishing two supplements for that, they effectively dropped it like a hot rock to pursue other, less popular, projects. Not a great decision, IMO.