Arms & Armour

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is a supplement designed for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship. The first Science Fiction roleplaying game and the first post-apocalypse roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard the Starship Warden, a generation spaceship which has suffered an unknown catastrophic event which killed the crew and most of the million or so colonists and left the ship irradiated and many of the survivors and the flora and fauna aboard mutated. Some three centuries later, as Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants, the Player Characters, knowing nothing of their captive universe, would leave their village to explore strange realm around them, wielding fantastic mutant powers and discovering how to wield fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, ultimately learn of their enclosed world. Originally published in 1976, it would go on to influence a whole genre of roleplaying games, starting with Gamma World, right down to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic from Goodman Games. And it would be Goodman Games which brought the roleplaying game back with the stunning Metamorphosis Alpha Collector’s Edition in 2016, and support the forty-year old roleplaying game with a number of supplements, many which would be collected in the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’.

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is written by James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha and simply gives descriptions of over one hundred and fifty weapons and armour. It also reveals a minor secret—or three—about the Starship Warden and the way it was stocked prior to it leaving the Earth. It is well known that as well as stocking the vast generational ship with assorted supplies and devices to ensure that the crew and their passengers would survive the long interstellar journey, the Starship Warden had whole cargo holds filled with everything necessary to help the colonists set up their new home on the destination planet. The colonisation was entirely peaceful and civilian-led, but what is not known is that a pair of secret holds were filled with powerful military weapons by Earth’s military. The locations of these secret caches are known only to the military command back on Earth and to the military commanders assigned to the Starship Warden. Like other high-ranking members of the ship’s crew, they remain in hibernation, their cryrogenic pods also hidden. Yet despite the locations of these caches remaining hidden, this does not mean that they cannot be found, and what happens if others find either cache before the Player Characters? What if a rival band of mutants found them and start attacking the Player Characters and their allies in their powerful suits of armour, wielding deadly weapons they have never seen before? Or robotic dogs and serpents that rampage across a deck? Well, either the Player Characters have to stop them, find their source, or steal them all for themselves—if not all three!

Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury details the content of both caches. In the Secret Military Armoury Cache can be found four types of weapons. These are Bio-Heavy guns, Gamma guns, Kinetic guns, and Plasma guns. They all include grenades, pistols, rifles, throwers, blasters, and artillery. The Bio-Heavy guns fire spheres of bio-material, which when it explodes paralyses and then kills anyone who breaths it in or is touched by it; Gamma guns fire spheres of radiation; Kinetic weapons fire pellets at high velocity; and the Plasma guns, balls of well, plasma. This is a somewhat underwhelming start to the supplement, the weapons being deadly if not all that inspiring and possessing a similar feel. How some of them are fired is slightly more interesting, such as the helmet which has to be worn to fire the Gamma Blaster. Similarly, the suits of mobile armour are not that interesting, although the inclusion of various types of drone provides more of a contemporary feel.

Fortunately, the contents of the Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache is where Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury gets interesting. Especially with the list of non-lethal weapons, because here the designer really has to get inventive. For example, the ‘Anti-Energy Sparkle Dust’ is thrown in the air and negates energy rays and blasts; ‘Battle Gloves’ let the wearer handle energy, radiation, and poison safely, and even provides a pressure-based force field for protection in space or the deepest of oceans; ‘Electric Bolos’ stun targets; ‘Slippery Marbles’ create uneven surfaces; the Blind Pistol’ fires pellets of manganese which explode blind targets; and ‘Tagging Pistols’ fire darts which can be tracked from a thousand miles away. There are lethal weapons, such as lasers and slug throwers, and even caltrops, but again not all that interesting. More fun perhaps will be had with the Player Characters attempting to figure out what the various types of grenades, from Slippery Grenades to Sticky Mist Grenades, and various types of claymore mines, from Freeze to Nano-Cutter versions, can be found in the cache. The Colonisation Weapons & Armour Cache also contains explosives and battle armour, as well as a selection of droids, such as the battering Droid, used for well, battering, and vehicles all the way up to a Force Sphere, which can transport forty troopers into space or the deep ocean whilst providing plenty of protection.  The Special Colonisation Equipment includes a very useful Emergency Hip Container, essentially a survival kit, and a bit with a robot dog.

All of the entries in Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury include a short description and ratings for damage, Armour Class, and Weapon Class as necessary. They also include an ICR or Item Complexity Rating to indicate how difficult an item is to understand. The tables explaining these ratings are reprinted from Metamorphosis Alpha, whilst the tables at the back of the supplement combine their rating with an index. All nicely done in one.

Physically, Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury is cleanly presented. The illustrations are decent, but the writing is sparse in places.

In a roleplaying game like Metamorphosis Alpha where there no Classes or Levels, and the only way in which the Player Characters get more powerful is through acquiring more mutant abilities or bigger and better weapons and armour, there is always going to be a call for a supplement such as Metamorphosis Alpha: The Warden Armoury. So there is no denying that the supplement is useful, although it does mean that the Player Characters may be capable of dealing out huge amounts of damage whilst wearing armour cable withstanding similar amounts, ultimately upping the scale at which combat takes place. So this may well be a supplement for later in a campaign when the Player Characters are ready to face bigger and deadlier threats.

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