Find the Kickstarter page right here.
Why is this mutant smiling? A rank and primrose path, both rootstock and scion, a chimeral garden in the after-after, full of us mutant fuckers. A tabletop roleplaying game after the gamma-soaked and world-ended predecessors, neither retro nor cloned, but stepping out of its own primordial soup with an eight-fingered foot.
Plasmodics is the tabletop roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic, gonzo sci-fi, where (sorta) humans, (kinda) animals, (mostly) robots, and (definitely) aliens join hand-in-mutated-hand.
You play the Plasmodics. The world and its debris are yours to play in. Uncover odd artifacts, wrestle with opposing factions and your cryptic alliances, and see what this weird world has to offer.
Plasmodics is a new school game inspired by Into the Odd by Chris McDowell and Cybermetal 2012 by Adam Vass, a demake of the first edition classic post-apocalyptic RPG Gamma World.
Get weird in the body and in the mind with mutations, from insect wings and waterwalking, to clonesense and gun control. Freakify your words and deeds, personality and perception with nuances, from improvisational firefighter and escape artist, to social contortionist and counts-as-a-small-gang. With a mosaic of both mutations and nuances, tied up in the factional double bind of your cryptic alliances, only one thing is for certain: it’s gonna get weird.
Inside this 118-page-book, you’ll find:
There are four categories of mutations: physical, mental, plant, and meta. Each mutation comes with a choice that makes it your own.
Rules: Nuances
Mutations are how you’re weird with your body and mind. Nuances are how you’re weird in your past and your personality. There are four types of nuances: body, mind, and skill.
Body nuances show us what your meat can do, mind nuances show us how you think, skill nuances show us what you’re capable of, and each background has six exclusive nuances, like the human-ish’s Revolutionary Spirit, the animal-ish’s Bug, Actually, the robot’s Undercover, and the alien’s Bodysnatcher.
Live by the 10 HP principle, play havoc with the trouble track, hit a salty runback to stay alive, and uncover the artifacts that’ll end the world all over again. Plasmodics includes everything you need to play, rules for strange artifacts, factions, crafting, and an adventure.
Rules: Trouble
The world’s in trouble, generally. Your world is troubled, specifically. In this game, that’s represented by the trouble track and the trouble dice.
Rules: Fighting
Every attack does damage, based on the attack’s weapon dice. Weapon dice represent the danger level of the weapon—a d4 is something small and reliable, while a d12 is something cataclysmic.
To fight, make a plan and roll two weapon dice, one at a time. Assign the first result to damage or fallout. Assign the second result to the other.
Damage is how hard you hit and fallout is the effects of the fight. The higher the damage, the sooner the enemy is out of commission or runs away. The higher the fallout, the sooner you’re fucked.
If you score too much fallout, the trouble can be world-ending. Getting fallout above 16 not only maxes out the trouble track, it’s game over. It’s okay, it’s not the first time.
Everyone in Plasmodics has 10 HP. When your HP reaches 0, you have a choice: become incapacitated or throw down a salty runback.
You’re mad. You shouldn’t die right here. You and the thing that made your HP hit zero both refresh to 10 HP and duel it out, one-on-one. No help. If you win, level up. If you lose, you’re dead forever.
Artifacts
Artifacts are rare, world-changing items found throughout the world from the beforetimes. Artifacts require a special process to uncover their secrets: artifact identification (artifact IDing). IDing an artifact is a minigame that happens while we play Plasmodics. It’s a mission we complete while doing other things—progress is only made in fits and spurts, but when it’s done, it may change the world.
Plasmodics is the system, and plasmods are the worlds. Plug the new storms of this world into the trouble system, whether they’re made of radiation, giant ants, stampedes of Caminos, or the disaster of your choice. Hook up the cables, like a modular synth, and mix system and setting and story together until the breaker shorts. Plasmodics comes with the King Tide plasmod.
The world is the bottomlands. A flood basin every other day or every few hours. The tide is our king here, visiting great waves upon our homes, then receding before the next. Like prizefighters with our peek-a-boo guard, we find our way through the pummeling, looking for an opening or the ringing of a bell. What remains of this ancient city could be taken away by the next swell, whether it’s your belongings, your community, or your life. But the wake giveth. Things appearing in the receding tide, things from across the world. Our messages in bottles, flotsam from whatever freshly powerwashed bunker of those who came before.
A Plasmodics adventure zine, filled to the brim with the bunkers buried below.
The cryptic locks unwind on a freshly surfaced bunker, designed and paid for by the billionaires of the lost era. Called cultures, they were designed to spec, reflecting their owners’ strange outlooks on the world and their own internal foibles: A bunker styled after an Eden, of arcane reptiles and chats with god. A bunker dedicated to middle management, styled after start-up accelerators. A bunker dedicated to a reality television game, surveilling everyone all the time. Each set to emerge and open once the time was right, which was also determined by the creator. World peace, an end of pain, the relaxing of the climate, the dust settling.
The time was never right, and here, 500 years later, and a factory reset brought all of these to the surface at the same time. Welcome to C-Day, the start of a new gold rush. These cultures hold untold riches and vital resources, and a connection to a world long lost. What do the denizens of the weird world do with these places--that is, if they’re empty. A few are still in operation, with an unbroken line of occupants. Others still are fermented, made strange by time.
Wanna see what’s inside?
Vermiculture is a zine filled with cultures for the Plasmodics to explore, a campaign guide with NPCs, factions, plans, and a basebuilding minigrame.
Final design subject to change.
Adam Vass, World Champ Game Co.
Tyler Crumrine, Possible Worlds Games
The Smiling Mutant edition extras include:
Final designs subject to change.
Will Jobst is an award-winning game designer, publisher, and editor, with previous projects including This Discord Has Ghosts in It, TORQ, Black Mass, and more. Find their games at goodluckpress.co.
Seb Pines is a writer, editor, and game designer that is currently and perpetually haunted. If they were a mutant they would like to be a big worm. Find their games at goodluckpress.co.
Zach Hazard Vaupen is an illustrator, cartoonist, and game designer based in NY. He's worked on official game books and modules for many TTRPGs including: Mothership, Liminal Horror, Triangle Agency, Fallen, and many more. When not making games and artwork, you can find him under the sink transforming into something unknown. Find Zach's work at https://emo-sludge.com/
Good Luck Press is a collaboration between Seb Pines and Will Jobst to create and publish experimental, cool, and strange games that explore the medium and push at what “games” can be.
