SewerSide
Are you Slimy Enough for the Sewers?
SewerSide is a fairly silly RPG
available as a PDF from RPGNow.
It costs $4.99 (regular price $6.99!) and is 154 pages long. It
includes a full rulesystem and an “appropriately”
detailed setting (i.e.- vague).
Here's
the premise! A long time ago, the mayor of some town decided that he
really disliked overweight people. Especially his grossly obese and
irritable spouse. He'd have divorced her in a minute (and moved in
with his secretary) if not the for sticky point that he'd married her
for her money and the house and all that was still in her name.
Rather than hiring a hit man like a proper politician, he hit upon
the politically expedient tack of declaring her to be a dangerous
mutant and legally no longer human at all! He kicked her out of their
house and home, and everyone lived happily ever after. Except for his
ex-wife, of course, but she wasn't human and didn't count. The folks
in his town actually kind of liked this idea, and soon all of the
really ugly or overweight citizens had been kicked out on the streets
as “mutant scum”.
When
they ran out of places to put all of these homeless “freaks”,
the mayor encouraged folks to just find the nearest manhole cover and
dump them into the sewers. Unfortunately, it turned out that the
local nuclear power plant had adopted that very same technique for
handling its nuclear waste awhile back, and so... it began.
Nowadays,
the sewers are filled with hordes of disgusting, malformed mutant
freaks who make the original folks look like fashion models. While
they're mostly ignored by the advanced, enlightened human
civilization living on the surface (by “enlightened”, of
course, I mean that they have lots of electric lights), there's a
bounty on mutants that some people try to collect. You can bring in a
mutant corpse for cash, or you can sell it to some scientist as a
guinea pig. If that's still too ethical for you, there's still the
slave trade (technically, it's not really slavery since
they're not human, right?) and if all else fails, the sausage
factory. It's not a particularly nice world out there.
And
it's even worse for you, because all of the player characters
in SewerSide are hideous mutant scum trying to survive
on the waste products of the civilization above them. And trying to
avoid getting made into sausages.
As
you can probably tell, SewerSide does not take itself
seriously. Which makes it a little difficult to review... it's
supposed to be a funny game, so what's the best way to show
off the sort of humor it's full of? Let me think. No, too much
trouble. Let's just make a character instead.
SewerSide doesn't require randomized
character creation, but they do give you a bunch of tables that you
can use if you're indecisive. So let's see exactly what we get...
The
8 strains of mutant are Bloaters (the classic phenomenally
overweight and bloated mutant), Bugs (insectoid
monstrosities), Furries (humanoid animals prized as slaves by
kinky folks; they tend to look a lot like Anime cat-girls, even when
they aren't Asian and aren't cats), Goops (big balls of
boneless slime), Hissies (reptilian mutants), Psychos
(big-brained mutants with a knack for psychic powers), Skinbags
(incredibly skinny mutants whose skin sags around them like some
sort of cloak) and Sushi (fish people).
Since
I dropped a 3, then bumped the die repeatedly until it came up 4,
we'll start our example with a Goop. These folk are so shapeless that
they wear clothes to keep themselves in a humanoid shape; without
them, they're just blobs. I'll call this slimy fellow Harry.
The
starting stats for a Goop are Muscles 3, Feets (speed) 3, Fingers
(manual dexterity) 1, Smarts 4, Wiles (charm) 2 and Zaps (powers your
mutations) of 5. All characters get 12 additional stat points to
distribute, with a max of 5 going to a single stat.
Since
Harry is a mutant freak, let's bump his Zaps up to 10. We'll also
bump his Feets up to 5 and then every remaining stat up by 1,
spending all 12 points. That gives Harry Muscles 4, Feets 5, Fingers
2, Smarts 5, Wiles 3 and Zaps 10. Hope he rolls some good mutations,
otherwise that Zaps stat is going to be pretty useless.
All
Goops get the bonus mutation of Jelly Flesh for free. This means that
Harry can squish himself through any opening that's at least 6 inches
wide, although he might need help getting out the other side.
Unfortunately, as a Goop, Harry is also stuck with an automatic
“Bogus Mutation”: he has no skin. Goops don't get
resistance rolls vs poisons or drugs and even touching such a
substance gets treated as though they ate it.
Since
I don't want to decide whether to take a 3 minor mutations, 1 basic
and 1 intermediate, or just 1 major one, I'll roll on the next chart.
3 minor mutations, it is!
Now
each strain of mutant has a short list of mutations that they can
take. There's a lot of overlap between the different strains, but the
gist is that there are only 12 mutations that Harry can take. The
choices are Chameleon, Eye Stalks, Glowing Bits, Gooey Thread, Icky
Spit, Jaws of Doom, Liquefaction, Long Tongue, Pseudopodia,
Rubberass, Stretchy Body, and Vice-Like Grip. Actually, he's got a
little more choice than that; there are also 9 other mutations which
every strain can have, so there are 21 possibilities in all.
Consulting the magic table at the end of the mutations section and
rolling percentile dice... I get 47, Long Tongue on the Basic
Mutations chart. Then 61, Pseudopodia. I cheat on his last
roll and Harry gets I'm Invincible! instead of Really
Buoyant, 'cause I think it's more amusing.
Long Tongue doesn't cost any
Zaps to use. It just means that you have a really long and flexible
tongue that you can use as an extra appendage. It doesn't do much
normally, but it does net you a +3 to all “Marital Arts”
rolls. If you were thinking “Wow! Kung-Fu Tongue Fighting!”,
go back and read that bit again. That's not a typo. All of the skills
in SewerSide have humorous titles; luckily there's a table
that tells you what each skill would be equivalent to in a game with
more boring names.
Pseudopodia
lets Harry extend and use one primitive blobby limb for a scene
at the cost of 1 point of temporary Zaps. It can be used multiple
times, so if Harry really needs to play the piano, flute and
slide-trombone simultaneously, he could pull it off. Again, though,
they don't really have many really useful effects. They aren't strong
enough to be effective in combat.
I'm
Invincible! is Harry's only combat-based mutation. This mutation
allows him to stay conscious even if he's reduced below 0 hits in
combat, at a cost of 1 Zap point per round, up to and including
incineration and/or decapitation. Unfortunately, as soon as he runs
out of Zaps, ol' Harry will suddenly realize exactly how injured he
is and go splat! Still, it's kind of cute, and they recommend
shouting “I'm Invincible!” whenever you first turn it on.
Next we have to determine Harry's Knacks. These
are basically his skills. He gets 10 knack points to spend. You can
purchase a Knack at the novice level for 1 knack point, Expert for 3
and Master for 5. These determine the number of rerolls that you get
when using that skill. Let me toss some dice on his little
random-skill table...
Here
are Harry's knacks: Getting Lost, Dumpster Diving,
Extreme Lunacy, Head Banging, Breaking and Entering
(Expert), Capping Ass, Porky Pies, and Dammit
Jim. Got it? Well, perhaps some explanation is in order.
Getting Lost is a combo of Geography &
Streetwise and covers finding places.
Dumpster Diving combines scavenging and
searching skills. It's also commonly rolled to notice stuff.
Extreme Lunacy covers all forms of
driving, riding and skating.
Head Banging is the unarmed combat
skill.
Breaking and Entering is used to pick
locks and defeat security systems.
Capping Ass is the ranged combat skill.
Porky Pies is apparently Cockney
rhyming slang for “Lies”. It's the con-artist/fast-talk
skill. If you hadn't picked it up from the spelling already, yes,
the author is British. Probably.
And Dammit Jim is, of course... yes,
you guessed it. Cursing. Whoops, no, that's Political
Incorrectness. Actually, Dammit Jim is used to heal
injured folks and diagnose illnesses. (“You're a hideously
deformed mutant. That'll be $5, please.”)
So
when Harry wants to punch some dude, he'd normally roll his Feets and
add an open-ended d10 to it. This would be compared to the difficulty
to see if he hit them. But since he has Head Banging at the
novice level, he actually gets to roll 2d10 and take the better roll.
Since any die that rolls a natural 10 becomes open-ended (meaning
that you take the current total and add another d10 to it), getting
to roll multiple dice is really nice. An Expert skill lets you roll
3d10 and a Master can roll 4d10 and take the best.
Suppose
Harry wanted to pick a lock? He'd roll whatever stat the GM told him
to (almost certainly his Fingers of 2) and then adds the best roll
out of 3d10 to it, since he's got an Expert rating in the Breaking
and Entering knack. Let's say he rolled 6, 1 and 10, in that
order (that's important, I'll get to that in a second). He'd get to
roll another d10 and add it to the 10. If he rolled another 10, he'd
keep going. So let's say that he rolled a 10 and then an 8. His three
rolls would end up being 6, 1 and 28. So his final total would be 2 +
28, or 30. That'll probably open any lock in the game. In fact, the
rules say that if you get 3 tens in a row, it's an automatic success
so you don't have to bother rolling any more.
There's
another special rule, though... one of your d10s should be a special
color. That's the die that you always roll. If you have an
appropriate knack, you'll include extra dice, too, but that
oddly-colored d10 always has to be one of the dice rolled. That's
because if that particular die rolls a 1, you have “Screwed the
Pooch”, a technical term indicating a botch. To offset the 10%
likelyhood of botching, you can neutralize a 1 on that die by
discarding another die that rolled 10, but it's still a major pain.
The SB (the Game Master)is encouraged to think up something
“creative” that matches the situation.
Did
I mention that the author deliberately refuses to specify what SB
stands for? It probably starts with “Sadistic” and ends
with “Astard”, though.
We're
still not done with Harry. He hasn't got any knack points left to buy
a Trump (a special advantage like a Cute Pet or Black Market
Connections), but he can take Bogeys (disadvantages) to get some
extras. A quick roll on the random Bogey chart gives Harry one of the
bad ones... Tracking Device (5 knacks). Yes, Harry has been
caught and released by some unscrupulous scientist in the past and
now has a secret tracking device implanted in his body. But at least
he gets 5 more knack points, right?
A
quick roll on the random Trumps chart gives Harry a human
Sympathiser, a really wimpy normal human who actually likes Harry and
tries to help him out. We'll call this sympathetic ally Larry. Larry
won't fight for Harry (he tends to magically vanish whenever the
shooting starts) but he could be useful in other situations. If Larry
gets killed, Harry will get a replacement Sympathiser at the start of
the next session, so you'll forgive him if he thinks of Larry as
being a bit expendable. That costs 5 knacks and uses up his remaining
points.
Now
finally, we get to what might arguably be the most amusing part of
character creation. The random junk tables in the Scavenging section.
What sort of possessions does Harry start with? Let's see...
He
gets 4 rolls on the charts (he'd only get 3, but he has Dumpster
Diving at the Novice level).
The
first one gives him a set of Barb Wire Mittens (rather uncomfortable
to wear, but hey! Using them is considered unarmed combat!). Next he
gets another weapon- a War Spoon. It's pretty crappy, but at least
you can eat ice cream with it, right?
The
third item is a silk kimono off of the Clothing chart. No armor
protection, but another +1 to Marital Arts rolls. Number 4 is a set
of spare electronic parts, useful for repairing stuff.
So,
nothing wonderful, but at least he's not naked... or is he? Remember
that this is stuff he scavenged out of the sewers. Let's roll on the
reliability chart.
His
mittens are battered so they'll only do Muscles + 3 points of
damage in combat instead of the usual +5. The war spoon is worn
out, which means it only does 25% normal damage, reducing it to
Muscles +1. The kimono is battered as well, so it's rather tattered
but it doesn't have any armor points to reduce. Finally, the spare
parts are battered as well, so he'll only get 3 uses out of the set
instead of the usual 5.
So
we've got a giant blob of slime that wears a kimono and tries to
punch folks with gloves woven out of barbed wire. Yeah, I think we've
got hero material here.
Anyway, that's SewerSide.
There's a long equipment list, a fairly simple combat system, and a
basic setting. We get a load of amusingly named mutations
(Matriculation, for example,
lets the mutant slow down time and dodge bullets and such,
Matrix-style, and there's always Voluminous Flatulation
for the “adventurous”).
The PDF is fairly
well laid out. There are a few typos, but it actually makes good use
of the indexing capabilites of PDF and has both bookmarks (down to
every mutation having its own bookmark) and thumbnails for each page.
The art is... on the level of the cover. It's silly, perhaps
deliberately so, but nothing you'd want to use as wallpaper on your
computer.
I'd
say if you thought that the above excerpts were amusing and funny,
give SewerSide
a look. It's surprisingly complete for what it is.
I'll give it a 3 for Substance and a 3 for Style, but thats
bearing in mind that the whole 154 page package costs $5. If I were
paying $15 or $20 for a PDF like this, I'd probably feel ripped off.
Still, there were several bits where I felt compelled to go find my
wife and tell her about stuff like the “Eat Shit and Not Die”
mutation. Crude... but definitely funny in places.
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