A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - Saints, Gods, and Relics & Clerical Matters

 When it comes to clerics, it's easy to quickly dismiss the classic PC class. If the original Heavy Metal magazine had shown me anything it was the fact that clerics are warrior priests first and foremost. The role of the cleric is given a complete overhaul within Saints, Gods, and Relics from Night Owl Workshop

.

The role of cleric here is on point with the militant warrior priest of the Original Dungeons and Dragons rules. Here were given an OSR twist and this supplement  takes this PC class in a direction where and when that can be used with Stars Without Numbers and other Science Fantasy  games. Why?! Because Saints, Gods, and Relics revamps the cleric as follows:"

 if a character remains a believer in good standing, their faith means that the following changes apply when a cleric of the same god casts spells upon them: • Cure spells cast on them heal an extra +1 HP per die. However, cure spells cast by any other cleric heal at -1 per die. Reversed effects are unchanged. • The benefits of Bless and Prayer spells are doubled. • They have no saving throw to resist Quest spells cast by a cleric of the same god, but +3 to save against Quest spells cast by any other cleric. • Raise Dead, Restoration and Resurrection cast by a cleric of other than their patron god do not help you at all. • Reversed effects (Curse, Cause Light Wounds, Slay Living, etc.) are unaffected. • Also, if a character has the same patron god as an NPC cleric, the latter will typically offer a 50% discount on any normal charges imposed for cures, raising dead, commune, or similar divine favors, but may also occasionally be sent by their god to get you to do them favors in the interest of their faith. Players may wish to offer a similar discount. If a character reaches 9th or higher level whilst having a patron god, he or she may be assumed to have attracted the personal interest of that deity, who will be likely to try and use them in schemes to support the god’s interests..." 

  Let's say for a moment that Stars Without Number takes place in the same universe as Wretched New Flesh Post Cards From Aviladad. Mankind is just starting to crawl out from under the effects of the Scream. And it is open to all kinds of religions and cults taking it back to the masses. The role of the cleric becomes clearer. Now we're probably thinking that the role of clerics has been talked about to death before. What if the cleric's order is also the provider of culture for many of these interstellar colonies. The cleric is trained to be warrior, counsel, and giver of both religion as well as culture. This of course is in addition to fighting against the blackness of the vile darkness thier rolls become that much clearer. Again this goes right back to the warrior cleric of original Dungeons and Dragons. 
And these styles of cleric's roles would not be out of character for Warriors of the Red Planet. 

The cleric becomes the plug and play warrior missionary on the post apocalpytic  red  planet. Why? Because the colonist on Mars need all of the help they can rebuilding. And the whole planet is ripe for exploitation by the forces of darkness. 
And that alieness of the Outer Darkness is something we see play out again and again the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith, H.G. Wells and many others. 
The roles of warrior priest should never be underestimated and the resolve of such characters is something that will and should come into play during old school or OSR campaigns. 
Clerics are also the arm of darkness as well as those as light. And this means that clerics of the gods of darkness  can cause all kinds of havoc. 
The forces of light must always be on guard and Saints, Gods, and Relics can be augmented with the spells of Trails and Tails Games Faith is My Weapon. 

Tonight my mind was on the cultclassic film Krull. The idea that the 'backward' world of Krull might in point of fact have been a failed interstellar colony in the ancient past. And that it might have been destined to rejoin the interstellar scene once the hero and heroine's son grew to manhood. Makes me think about the idea of the cleric trail blazer leading worlds back from the darkness of technological de- evolution into the light of interstellar FTL flight. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - Matters of Magick & Loathsome Horrors

 We're just getting back from grocery shopping and at the grocery store I ran into one of my players of our regular games. And she and her husband wanted to know how the Stars Without Number/Decaying Orbit game campaign  was going. 

Anyone whose been paying  attention to this blog knows that when your 'the forever DM' there are only so many hours in the day. 
And the last time we talked we were bringing back the post apocalytic Mars campaign.
What I didn't realize was the fact that Night Owl Workshop has created “Beasties Loathsome Horrors,”.
And I wasn't even aware that this monster book even  was out! 
And “Beasties Loathsome Horrors,” fits  the Stars Without Number/Decaying Orbit vibe so damn well! 
Horrors, weird creatures, etc could easily be found in the Beyond or on a post apocalyptic Mars.What does it mean though?! 
For those who have Warriors of the Red Planet this book gives new teeth to the wizards of the Black Gate some brand new teeth. 

And for the Stars Without Number rpg crowd it means that we have a huge number of horrors that can be added into the mix for  The Codex of the Black Sun: Sorcery for Stars Without Number's wizards and magic wielders even more options or problems. For a post apocalpytic Mars game this really does turn the tied a bit. The NPC races and wizards now have even more horrors to add to the PC's fortunes or is it misfortunes?! 
There are certain nation states  of Mars who supposedly practiced the blackest of magicks. And this lines up right with some of what Clark Ashton Smith wrote in his Mars cycle. It also lines up with some of what the PC's have been doing in Aviladad. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes- The Solar Sagas Option

 So the otherday we were screwing around with Stars Without Number & Orbital Decay from the Red Room. And it got me thinking about an old mini came that we ran using Worlds without Number & this blog entry is going to pick right up from here. 

Imagine if you will that there's a far future Earth and it's inhabitants are a hivemind actively trying to prevent thier timeline from being destroyed. Now imagine that this is a classic 1950's saucer style set of Grey invaders. And this alien hive mind is desparate to do anything to prevent itself from being earsed from history. And this lines up with ATTACK SQUADRON: ROSWELL from Zozer Games which  uses the Mongoose Traveller RPG engine. Now imagine that there's a whole urban Hellscape that our party has been fighting across for decades as a rebel unit of adventurers. They've been fighting the forces of darkness across various alternative Earth timelines and the Beyond.

And one of the things that I love about Kevin Crawford's design and writing work is how adaptable the rpg systems are. And last night I was reading through the rpg pub's forums when I came across this thread and it was something that member Stable Wyvern had written that made me pursue this;"I picked up SWN because Kevin Crawford, plus I was running a Traveller game at the time and thought I might find something useful in it. I didn't end up using anything then, but I did recently convert the SWN psionics system to Mythras as part of my Dark Sun Mythras conversion."

"I picked up WWN because Kevin Crawford, plus I am running an ACKS game at the moment, and tend to run fantasy in general, and was sure I'd find something useful in it. So far, I have used some of the generation tools for fleshing out some of the regional politics in my ACKS world, as well as using some of the ideas from the magic items to inform my own items."

If I wasn't planning to run Dark Sun with Mythras, I'd almost certainly do a conversion to WWN instead."

Also, yes, prima facie, SWN is OSR D&D + Traveller."

So basically you've got adventurers on alien worlds who have been fighting balls deep against Greys and other monsters while grabbing artifacts and ruined technologies from a million worlds. 

And if you think that this can't be a long term sustainable campaign then your dead wrong. Zonetec from Avilidad is not only aware of this timeline but has advisors in the mix.

And this comes down to the fact that the 'Invaders' are a cancer across the planes. And yes we've run a varaiton of this campaign years ago with Stella Gemma publishing's These Stars Are Ours campaign setting. The Reticulans of that setting's royals and rulers are 'the invaders' those infected with the parasitic entities that enslaved the Terrans within that timeline. 
There's a lot more going on below the surface then most folks know. 
We're going to be sticking with Stars Without Number if possible.  Why Stars Without Number? There's an excellent series of videos Legion of Myth did  on the  Stars Without Number.rpg  

We don't want to add to many rpg irons in the fire but Solar Sagas is another excellent rpg resource for this campaign. 

A 70's Sci fi Inspired Beta Max Black Stars Without Number Revised & Red Room's Decaying Orbit Campaign Notes - The Center Cannot Hold

Tonight it poured as thunder and lightning played outside meanwhile the Stars Without Number rpg found it's way into my hands again. And over the course of reading I started thinking about revamping our 'Post Apocalpytic Mars' game. The one we did used a combination of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu, Worlds Without Number, Warriors of the Red Planet, and a healthy dose of public domain Barsoom. 

Our version of Mars wasn't a peaceful place at all but instead a burnt up ruin of a planet where the player's PC's were on a mission to get off planet. We had PC's literally crawling across radioactive Sarmak walkers & mecha ruins to grab any power and psi crystals they could. 
Eventually the player's PC's made it off planet and then the real fun began with the PC's dealing with the crawls across the galaxy. Mars was thier home base and they returned back it time and again. 
But why Stars Without Number? There's an excellent series of videos Legion of Myth did  on the  Stars Without Number.rpg  
Angry Golem Games also did an excellent series of supplemental books for Revised Stars Without Number here. 
And it's this alien dungeon asthetic that suits the mood here. And this plugs back into the dungeons of yore. Exploring the bowels of weird planar craft and ancient alien ruins. 

It's this 70's Science Fantasy  spirit that flows into our game campaigns. The Red Room's Decaying Orbit  fits deeply into this OSR combination by being another part of this OSR puzzle campaign. 

Decaying Orbit fits the asthetic of this campaign idea and it's been one I've been working on for the last two months. What Decaying Obrit brings to the table top is that 70's Science Fiction vibe with the usual Red Room twist! And in this case it's Wretched New Flesh Post Cards From Avilidad 
And it's the horror factor that twists it back to B/X Dungeons & Dragons. 
The idea of exploring ancient ruins and point crawls into the bowels of the ancient alien dungeons. And given some of the history that we see in Stars Without Number Revised there's reasons why Lovecraftian horrors and the like are oozing through the cracks of reality. 

Salvage 1 Television Series & Salvaging The Further Reaches of Space For Stars Without Number rpg

  

“I want to build a ship, fly to the moon, salvage all the NASA stuff up there, bring it back to the earth, and sell it.”
–Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith)

Salvage 1 was a great television show that came out in the 70s. While everyone else is remembering Andy Griffith for The Andy Griffith Show & a whole chunk of television history. I remember Salvage 1 & its cast off odd ball characters!

The plot was great & the pilot movie generated some decent rating. The plot is as follows from Wiki :

Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) owns the Jettison Scrap and Salvage Company, and is a specialist in reclaiming trash and junk in order to sell that as scrap. His dream is to recover equipment left on the moon during Apollo Program missions. He invites former astronaut Addison "Skip" Carmichael (Joel Higgins) and NASA fuel expert Melanie "Mel" Slozar (Trish Stewart) to assist him in this effort. He builds a spaceship dubbed Vulturecompletely made of reclaimed salvage and powered by a chemical called monohydrazine. The main body of Vulture is composed of a Texaco gasoline Semi-trailer with cement mixeras the capsule. This is augmented with three shorter rocket boosters placed 120 degrees around the main tank. Estes Rockets made a prototype of a model rocket version of the Vulture. It was never brought to market.^[1] Broderick and his ragtag crew complete their mission and go on to further adventures in the subsequent series.
 

Salvage One & The OSR?

 

If your not seeing the connection here with a group of rag tag characters creating their own space craft going to the Moon to salvage junk & then having adventures then you might be missing the point. The Vulture is a pretty good example of a lower tech. level space craft that adventures can use. In a future science fiction setting the craft would have certain advantages! Lower cost, less expensive to run, zero weapons, & she's got a low profile. All of the star destroyers & such wouldn't be looking for something like her.

I'm reminded of a line in Alien Resurrection, the party asks Ripley if she knew how to fly the Betty. "Are you kidding this thing is older then I'm" or words to that effect. So there you are a very nice little technology level 3 rocket ship for your party.  The  Estes Rockets made a prototype of a model rocket version of the Vulture. It was never brought to market.

The science behind this is pure junk but there you are. 

 

 With the advent of  outfits like Space X & the ideas we've seen for mining asteroids & the success of such shows as Pawn Stars. Could this style of adventuring have its day? We'll see because I'm using a variation of this group in an upcoming Stars Without Number game!
The revised version of Stars Without Numbers rpg  would put the Salvage one crew at the lower teir of the technology scale. The Vulture one itself would be available as a standard rocket ship in the game. 

Now the idea of a salvage team that might be descended from the original Salvage one team is an option. An option that might be in line with an older an version of the Stars Without Numbers rpg. I'm thinking about a scavenger fleet named 'Salvage One' based on some of the plot elements of the original TV show. But these elements would be really stretched & played with using 

Mandate Archive: Scavenger Fleets. 

But to do an actual updated & highly useful Salavage One campaign I'd turn to 

Civilian Starships  From  Stellagama Publishing  this book has the sorta of civilian vessels that could be used as a stand in for a slavage mission & a viable alternative for some of the vessels that we see in the standard SWN game. Salavage One could become a down home & back water planetary campaign. 

  The PC's having to deal with many of the greater & dangerous menaces that a standard Stars Without Number rpg campaign has. But with the wit & gravitas that comes with good players & a solid interstellar game campagin foundation. This isn't the type of campaign that needs to go into the overly complicated over arching cosmic campaign that that  Suns of Gold: Merchant Campaigns for Stars Without Number goes into.. 

All the Time in The World ~ A Review & Commentary On George Pal's Time Machine DVD For Your Old School Time Travel Campaign

 George Pal's 'The Time Machine' is for me a film that is both timeless & a source of so much inspiration. Its beyond iconic for me as a fan of science fiction or at this point science fantasy. The original blog post was from 2013 & my finance shares my passion for this film. It was her that grabbed me this DVD copy. There's now an extensive bluray that's since come out and its the definitive version. I'll review that coming up but here's the original blog entry from December 1st 2013 with some additional annotations.   

Tempus Fugit, times flies and don't I know it. This past Thanksgiving holiday I was blessed to spend a week with my fiance. She brought me a gift in the form of a copy of one of the my most beloved movies, George Pal's Time Machine. As I write these words she's back in London and I'm sitting here writing about this film.

Here's some basic information on the film from Wiki : 

A 1960 science fiction film based on the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells in which a man from Victorian England constructs a time-travelling machine which he uses to travel to the future. The film stars Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux and Alan Young.

George Pal's  "The Time Machine" came out in 1960 to theaters but I saw it in 1980 on Channel 11 out of New York on the Million Dollar movie over my grand parents house on cable and became fascinated with time travel, H.G. Wells and all things George Pal. It was also the movie that got me to read the paper back that my father had given me back in 1975 when I was five years old.

This a used DVD from Warner Brother that comes with a digitally remastered copy of the Time Machine as well as the Dolby remixed stereo sound, and with the

comes with the 1993 behind the scenes documentary "The Time Machine The Journey Back" which made this package worth the price of admission right there.  This behind the scenes film stars Rod Tailor, Alan Young, Whit Bissell and many others.

 

 According to the Wiki Entry on The Time Machine The Journey Back: 

It was hosted by Rod Taylorand produced and directed by Clyde Lucas. The film was made about the Time Machine prop, not the movie, but during filming, Bob Burns surprised director Clyde Lucas by having Gene Warren, Sr. drop by. Warren, the award winning effects creator for the original movie, consented to an on-air in which he discussed creating the special effects for the film. This led to an with one of Warren's partners, Wah Chang, in Northern California. Chang and Warren shared more details about creating the effects and how the little Time Machine prop was made.

Lucas contacted the original screenwriter, David Duncan, who agreed to write a mini-sequel to George Pal's film. The mini-sequel reunited George (Rod Taylor) with Filby (Alan Young). Lucas first filmed Whit Bissell for the opening, recreating his role as Walter. It would be Bissell's last acting performance.

The film won a Saturn Award and a Telly Award. It was included as a "special feature" on the DVD for George Pal's film The Time Machine, released by Warner Bros. and was featured in Starlog Magazine.

You can find out more right at the series official site

HERE

The packaging is kitsch and garishly coloured as those wonderful 60's movie posters. The book sitting next to the DVD is featured in the documentary on the movie. I haven't seen the movie in over a year and I do confess that there were scenes in it that I had not remember seeing. 

The artifact rings featured in the movie are one of them. Another was 

 The Atomic wars of 1966 places the film in an alternative universe timeline and there is so much of the magic in the movie it really takes me back. The restored version is much crisper to the versions I've seen on VHS over the years. Pal really seems to hit the highlights of the Wells novel but definitely puts his own stamp on the cocepts. All in All I was quite pleased with the menus and the behind the scenes documentary. Its a really lovely package and if you haven't got it I recommend picking it up. 

One thing that I did notice was the attention to detail that Warner Brothers put into this one. You see its almost as if the graphics department 'got it' on this one!

The interior of the DVD features some great artwork as well. 

One part that I didn't remember were the 'Talking Rings'artifacts. These things would make a great inclusion in post apocalyptic campaign or a D&D science fantasy campaign

Using HG Wells Time Machine For Your Old School

Campaigns

Artwork Saunders 1946 

You can download HG Wells The Time Machine 

HERE

 

For me George Pal's Time Machine and HG Wells have always been interwoven. The Morlocks have been a part of my gaming since I first started OD&D back in 1977. The Eloi and Morlock dynamic of technology cannibalism has also smacked of post apocalyptic gaming as well. 

 The film places itself squarely in an alternative universe with the on set of the Atomic Wars of the 1960's. These were a series of protracted wars stemming from a failed economic and political recover after 1945 as it spun into the post war years of the 50's and 60's. 

 There are many retroclone games which use the Morlocks these days. Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord have profiles on the beasts. 

The Morlocks have always smacked of Lovecraftian degeneration and weirdness. They've appeared in Call of Cthulhu and various Mythos related products as well. I've always felt that the  Timer Machine by Wells was a great sequel to the Nightlands by William Hope Hodgeson. Hodgeson's book has always seemed to be the future of the Morlocks and Eloi. A place where the Great Old Ones have risen and man's evolution has been tainted by the inheritance of the Outer Gods. The doorway was opened by the Morlocks and hell on Earth has resulted as the entire human race becomes one degenerate evolutionary nightmare as madness and mutation run wild.

 The trappings here are almost in the realm of the Gothic novel rather then the science fiction romances of Wells.  A rather useful article called TIME MACHINES GO BOTH WAYS available right HERE.

Many of these ideas were incorporated into a meta campaign using elements from many of the retroclones and Hodgeson's Nightlands. Much of the material also incorporated some of the elements from the Mutant Future Wiki articles on the Eloi.

Here

The Eloi have always bothered me in a way. They almost appear to be the too perfect product. Prepacked, pretty, and generally the perfect stock animal.This indicated genetic or artificial evolution.  When the Mutant Future article on The Morlocks hit it became clear both races did not evolve but were rather made.Read HERE

 So who created them and why is this biological dynamic in play? I've had PC's encounter isolated Eloi & Morlock subterranean domes ala Logan's Run. The PC's were surprised to find them worshiping the Great Old Ones.

The Morlocks have also appeared as enemies of the Derro from "I Remember Lemuria" competing for Eloi food stocks and human villages. The PC's were trying to recover artifacts from both races while avoid being killed at the same time.

Many of the buildings, ruins, and land marks are easily adaptable to any number of retroclones and once again remind me of the Last Redoubt from The Night Lands.

George Pal's wonderful film remains an incredible achievement and he always wanted to direct a squeal but died before it could be completed. 'The Time Machine The Journey Back' remains about as close as we're going to get.

Get the DVD if its not already in your collection.

This blog post is dedicated to my fiancee who not only encourages my hobby but continues to inspire me every day. 

World Without End A Post Apocalyptic Time Travel Movie For Your Old School Science Fantasy Games

 For the past 2 weeks I've been looking into a post apocalyptic movies that really doesn't get a lot of air time these days .  World Without End came out in 1955 and had a pretty solid cast to it. We've got time travel, retro future rocket ships, mutants, shiny underground survivors, science councils,etc. All of the fixings for a post apocalyptic buffet. 

 The real plot is very similar to  HG Wells Time Machine. Wiki had this to say: 

"In 1957, Commander Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), engineer Henry Jaffee (Christopher Dark), radioman Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor) and scientist John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), are returning to Earth from a trip around Mars when their spaceship is somehow accelerated to incredible velocities. They are knocked unconscious, and crash land on a snow-covered mountain. When they venture out, they discover that they have become victims of time dilation and are now in Earth's future. They theorize, from seeing time-worn gravestones and after their ship's instruments register heightened residual radiation, that a devastating atomic war had broken out in 2188, and that they are at least 200 years past that date. (They later learn that the year is 2508.) Jaffe is particularly hard hit, as he realizes that his wife and children have long since died.

After surviving an ambush by giant, mutant spiders, they are attacked by one of two competing remnants of human society. The "mutates" (as the astronauts label them) are violent, one-eyed surface dwellers who live in a primitive hunter-gatherer society. They have mutated due to generations of exposure to radioactivity and have enslaved the normal humans who dwell among them.

Seeking shelter from the mutates in a cave, the four men discover the entrance to an underground city, whose residents are the descendants of those who fled there from the atomic war. These people live in a high-tech, sophisticated culture. They are a peaceful group, led by Timmek (Everett Glass), the president of the ruling council. Underground, the men have grown feeble and nearly sterile, while the women remain physically vital and ready for romance. Elain (Shirley Patterson), admires a shirtless Herbert Ellis, commenting that the astronauts are "more masculine than our men". Deena (Lisa Montell), rescued from the surface as a child, falls in love with Ellis.

The astronauts try to persuade the underground people to arm themselves and return to the surface, but are unsuccessful. They are content with their comfortable existence.

When Timmek's daughter Garnet (Nancy Gates) shows she is attracted to John Borden, Mories (Booth Colman), a member of the council, becomes jealous. He retrieves the astronauts' confiscated weapons, but has to kill a man when he is caught in the act. Mories plants the guns in the astronauts' quarters, then blames the murder on the newcomers. On finding the weapons in their quarters, Timmek orders the astronauts expelled, but Deena testifies that she saw Mories hide the guns. Mories flees to the surface, where he is quickly killed by the mutates.

With Timmek's full cooperation, the astronauts have a bazooka manufactured and head back to the surface. Fleeing the deadly bazooka fire, the mutates take shelter in the caves. Borden offers to fight their chief, Naga (Mickey Simpson), in single combat for leadership of the mutates in order to save the non-mutated surface dwellers from Naga's threatened slaughter. Borden slays Naga and orders the remaining mutates to leave. The astronauts then establish a thriving settlement, including members of both groups." 

Using World Without End For Your Old School Science Fantasy Games 

 World Without End has a all of the trappings of a classic with weird mutants, science councils, etc. The film is actually rather tight and well done for the time. There's lots to mine here. The major cities of the world and their environs are perfect relic hunting grounds.  There's also any number of unseen mutant species and races running around. Plus the usual vault survivors and the science councils who seem to be all knowing and very dangerous themselves. 

 Then there are the ladies! Those show girl like examples of the human female. This has always bothered me, where the hell do those pretty females come from in these movies? For that matter what is up with those damn science council members? Why are they also such scumbags? The answer is actually pretty simple, their all created Eloi.

 The Mutant Future wiki has an excellent example of the Eloi. From The Mutant Future Wiki: The Eloi are a race of meek, delicate humans, who are the descendants of the social elite. Generations of having every and all needs taken care of has resulted in them becoming vary docile and hedonistic. They are also not really smart, nor are they considerate of others. In their isolated, well hidden communities, they live in a perpetual bliss of drug-induced fantasies and sexual orgies. In the wild, they are just helpless animals to more savage creatures, who see them as easy pray. Some industrious creatures (like Morlocks) would provide all their needs -- from food and shelter, to drugs and protection. The only price is that they are nothing more then human livestock. Do to their unearthly beauty, docile nature and willingness to preform any carnal act, they have become highly valued sex-slaves.

 Then we've got the science council here as well. They're a group of Hyper Eloi if there is was one. These folks are also from the Mutant Future Wiki 

Hyper-Eloi are a class of Eloi who have developed a degree of "super conscious." They are considerably more intelligent then normal Eloi, and they consider their own judgement and morality to be superior of all other races, but they are actually quite arrogant, aloof, and self-righteous. They may ignore the plight - the starvation; the brutality; the human-condition - of the outside world, but those that don't, would ether force outside to conform to the methods that allowed is type of Eloi to become Hyper-Eloi, or to exterminate the "animal-like savages" like vermin. In the later, they would rather breed a race of super-soldiers to carry-out the extermination, then to do it themselves."

You can find all you need to know about the Eloi over at the Mutant Future Wik Right Here 

 About those mutates? Simply another variation on the old Morlock template 

Here's a template for using the Morlocks as PCs right over Here 

 Please watch for inter party conflict Morlocks aren't known for  their charisma 

Among the savage species of the Earth of 2508 is the giant mutant spider 

 You can bet your life if there is one mutant species there is a who bunch of others.  World without End makes an excellent end cap for a Mutant Future/ Star Ships and Space Men second edition game.

A Quick Note On Gear

 

The gear of World Without End looks straight out of WWII surplus. Could there be another reason for this?  I've seen at least 8 movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that had this strange retro vintage look.  Perhaps these are worlds where conflict had already been a way of life. Much of the same gear is seen in the PD movie Rocketship XM. You can read about that one right over Here

Much of the gear is standard in both the Mutant Future game book and the second edition Star Ships and Spacemen book. 

 World Without End's Time Line

 There's something really odd about the timeline of World Without End.  As you've problaby noticed the time line of World  Without End is steeped in Cold War paranoia and fear. This is the same fear that echoed throughout the 50s through the 90s. Yet to me its one that might be glimpsed in HG Wells The Time Machine and the Geogre Pal movie later. Could this actually the world we've seen in movie/book Things To Come another Well's Creation? Could this time peroid be another alternative of  the same timeline? Details of  my thoughts about Things To Come can be found right here

 One interesting bit is that we've got a number of primitive nuclear rocket drives being used by those astronauts in these 50s & 60s movies. I'm reminded of Edgar Rice Burroughs Lost Continent. There were some really odd echoes between ERB and Wells in that one.  Could there be an entire post apocalyptic timeline that PCs might explore? Sure there could and you can see some of my musings on that one right Here 

 A random encounter chart for World Without End might look something like this.

World Without End Encounter Chart 1d10 

1. Tribe of Morlocks and mutants looking for trouble. 1d6 1st level fighters 
2. A group of survivor scientists 2nd level NPC eloi and 1d4 1st level fighter handlers 
3. 2 hit dice dire lions on the prowl for lunch. 
4. 1d4 mutant warriors looking for easy pickings. 30% of an artifact or relic
5. 1d6 hunter gather cavemen looking for food and pickings 
6. A group of 1d4 adventurers armed and on a mission to some ruins. 40% of a time displaced astronaut among them 
7. 1d8 scientist/warriors on hover bikes on patrol and scientific inquiry 
8. A group of Wings Over The World planes flies over. Forty percent chance of the planes 1d6 of them spotting your PC unless you hide. 
9. 1d8 Morlock raiding group looking for and about to go on a raid. 
10. A group of  1d6 psychic mutants looking for the ruins of a lost enclave.
    
     Using World Without End For Old School Games 
    
    
    Option number one uses the World Without End as a spring board for your imagination & use Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, & Mutant Future. Here you add in the magical elements & the mutant stuff. The war has forced the world  into a new fantasy age. The world has grown far more Moorcockian & the ages of Law are ending. 
                       There's lots to mine here. The movie  features conventional guns, weird technology such as the nuclear drive space craft  under the command of  the star ship Captain & a very strange twisted United States that none of the players will recognize.

    
    

    The Mega-dungeons are just waiting to be explored! There are possibly thousands of vaults and numerous  ruins full of weird tech, mutants, factions and God knows what else.