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.

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.