Extreme Mutant Race for Gamma World and Mutant Future

Derek Holland is the author of Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord material in multiple Skirmisher Publishing LLC publications and co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement.

Mutants in Gamma World and Mutant Future are a rather diverse group. They can appear as their stock species with few or no changes because their mutations are mostly mental or they can be strange with all kinds of new parts and powers. What neither allow for are extreme mutants, those who are so mutated that one has difficulty telling what their ancestors were by looking at the mutants. I want to add a new race, one that uses the same rules as the standard mutants but starts with a different base. For example, one can play an extremely mutated snake instead of a boa constrictor. What the inital creature looks like is up to the player and Mutant Lord. Here are a few examples, most of them human but could really apply to almost any vertebrate species:

1) These mutants are a web of muscle and nerve tendrils covered in 2d12 eyes. There is a massive central eye that contain the majority of the organs as well as a few bits of bone, now useless. They glide along the ground very much like cinematic snakes and so are not slower than baseline humans.

2) These people are very short, have massive arms that act as legs and their torso and head have fused. Their former legs have vanished and their current legs have two new arms. One pair is normal and the other vestigial. The latter may become useful with the right mutations.

3) These mutants have no arms or legs and their torso has become elongated. Their bones have reverted to cartilage and their ears have become large, three spined fins that draw the body along the ground. Their nose has become a split trunk ending with primitive hands.

4) These mutants have become sponge-like and made of mostly brain tissue with small, abundant and redundant organs within. They move like oozes and can form weak limbs as needed.

5) These people are very tall and have elongated necks that have fused with their heads. Their arms have fused to the torso and the fingers are new limbs that emerge from the elbows. Each limb ends in a hand, including their legs.

It is difficult to come up with any general rules for them as a race for obvious reasons, thus I suggest that you stick with those already provided for mutant humans or animals and let the mutation rolls help fill in some of the blanks. The idea can also be applied to androids to make new, and strange, kinds of robots.