The Technology Knowledge Virus
One of the odd things in Mutant Future is the capacity of everyone to understand, repair and potentially modify technology. Everyone as a Technology Roll score. It may be negative due to a Low Intelligence score, but that still doesn’t reduce the easiest checks to zero (just down to 10%). And some mutations increase it without providing an Intelligence bump.
As it applies to everyone no matter their race or background, the capacity to repair and modify technology must be more than education. My interpretation of this is a knowledge virus, a disease that spread across the globe during the cataclysm and gave all species that have minds the ability to create and use technology. So plants without brains of any sort may be carriers but they can only use the virus’ contents if they mutate and gain some sort of intelligence. Animals, even worms and jellies, have the capacity to understand tech even if they don’t have the mental processing power to use it without mutation.
To say this is mindblowing is an understatement. I have played around with hidden communities of animals that have culture and technology that is fairly alien to humans, but never on this scale. The problem with restoring the old world isn’t about a lack of information, but rather how so many species use it. Fighting over the resources of ruins becomes more dangerous and vicious. Who knows if the mice in the walls of a building to explore are intelligent enough to turn the artifacts within into death traps. Or a planar transportation ring that will blow up the city 5 minutes after it is activated.
It isn’t just urban areas that can be lethal. Semi-intelligent plants with the right mutations could drag machine parts from buildings or dig them up from landfills and turn forests or swamps into weird, “haunted” locations.
Throw in Ordered Matter (http://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/ordered-matter-mutant-future ) and Goo Pools (http://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/goo-pools-mutant-future ) to provide more resources and the world really has gone mad. Or into the pits of Hell depending on how much violence this incurs.
