Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Spawn Of Devastation Drive In A Free Pdf For Mutant Future - Review And Commentary



Justin S Davis of A Field Guide To Doomsday has finally released the long awaited monster/mutant fest Spawn of The Devastation Drive In.
This is a 106 page pdf of celluloid inspired monsters from across the spectrum of grade Q movies. These critters date from the 50s right through the 00s.  The monsters fit a wide variety of genre types. These are the type of films that are on at 4:00 am on low rent cable or available at some back alley video store in China Town. The monsters range from the Deadly Spawn To Maximum Overdrive and well beyond.
The Pdf is free and many others have written about it. The entries are well organized and pretty well balanced for a Mutant Future style game. There are artifacts, diseases, and more mutants then you can shake a vibro club at.
You can download the pdf right over HERE

 Using Spawn of The Devastation Drive In Your Science Fantasy game 

All right so I've downloaded and printed the pdf out and I've been combing through the book for about 3 hours. At least 70% of the monsters are usable for a space based game. They might need some adjustment for a game like Terminal Space or say X plorers. The hit points are for Mutant Future in which PCs have a tendency to be on the strong side. For a game like Labyrinth Lord their pretty perfect and with little conversion necessary.
 The PDF is very useful for a Star Ships and Space Men game where the usual monsters are to well known to players or the DM has a special episode encounter in mind. Many of the monsters are specifically linked for the type of wasteland encounter a DM might think of as special. DMs should be familiar with the movie that the monster is from. This is both a strength and weakness not of the book but the genre. If you take your Mutant Future rpging seriously this isn't the book for you.
This is hard core post apocalyptic fun at its finest. The section on Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive comes to mind. There are built in encounters and apocalyptic revelations from the movie in the actual entry.
Many of these monsters are entities all their own. Most of the others are uniquely within the Mutant Future game.
For a Stars Without Numbers game the stats will need some adjustment but could easily be trimmed into the game. There is a cautionary note here though. Many of the entries are only a cross section or the menace from a movie boiled down to basic tenants. A DM may have to really look into the movie itself. A good example of this is the Phantasm entry which doesn't nearly have enough of the film's charm but its most dangerous monster. A DM really needs to look into the movie unless he wants the Ball to appear in his game as a one off encounter.  The entries are quite well balanced and the definitions of the monsters are very concise. The monsters could even be used as a cross over encounter in a Labyrinth Lord game.
 All in all it's a great free pdf for the Mutant Future or any science fantasy based game.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, Needles...you are just too kind. Thank you VERY much for the thoughtful, generous review.

    I'm really glad you enjoyed the material. Seriously, man...your enthusiasm (and that of others) made it all worthwhile.

    I truly hope you find something useful and usable for your sci-fantasy game of choice.

    Much love, brother!

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  2. All back to you for taking the time to enjoy this stuff as much as I do and to present it. Very cool stuff. Very nice comments and much love back my friend!

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