In fact, one kid threatened to leave the game if he wasn't allowed to re-roll his flaming bird swarm character (which I personally thought was very rad). On the other hand, kids are jubilant whenever they roll a mutation with any mind-effecting capabilities. It seems that them and I somewhat diverge on our aesthetics of mutation -- their mutations are basically the X-men with a touch of the grotesque, while my mutations are the sort of thing created when you take a boxful of body parts and pour out a dozen random parts and no, I'm not making this analogy out of personal experience.
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| Full spectrum of the mutant experience, from handsome women to killer bunnies. |
I find the above discrepancy strange, because, as a rule, kids love animals and, in normal fantasy, go out of their way to play talking animals or animal-people. Among the most popular races are dragonborn (whose name in Hebrew sounds much cooler), minotaurs, gnolls and shifters (whom I describe as cat people and dog people, respectively). When kids do make up races, they usually describe them as part X, part Y, part Z plus an almost humorlessly overpowered special ability which has nothing to do with any of the above...
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| Lion paw, doppelganger foot, devil tail, squid arm, bat ear... and an impenetrable energy field. |
One of the most popular games I ever ran was an all animal adventure I ran in a convention once (described in this article, along with some more of my best kids games). And yet, as far as mutations go, animals are a big no-no.Coincidentally, this Choose Your Own Adventure game is the only article of mine that survived the great Wizards purge of '11 and if you fancy taking on the role of a young leopard leading a gang of ever-bickering wildebeests against a poacher with a surprising leader, you are more than welcome to do so here...
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