I Got The Altered Morphology Blues II

A decade ago, on January 12th, a plague struck the world. A flu-like plague which seemed resistant to the then available treatments. Fortunately nobody died, but eleven days later, on January 23rd, all of the symptoms vanished and everyone recovered. Only later did people realise the significance of what became known as ‘Ghost Flu’ as months later, sufferers began exhibiting powers and abilities only found in mankind’s wildest imaginings and biggest cinema screen franchise. The ability to fly, phase through walls, read the minds of others, control gravity, flatten or enhance the emotions of others, and read or even enter dreams. Literally, people had superpowers. This manifestation becomes known as the ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ or ‘SME’, and in the next ten years approximately one percent of the population will manifest SME. In response, there was no rash of costumed heroes or villains, though a few tried. The most photogenic of SME suffers became celebrities, sportsmen, television and film stars, or politicians, others found jobs related to their newly gained powers, for example, a firefighter who control flames or oxygen, a transmuter who could literally turn lead into (industrial) gold, or a healer who work as a medic or doctor, and the most popular sports found ways of incorporating them into their play. Some though turned to crime, and of course, there were criminals who exhibited SME, and whilst the Heightened as they became known were mostly assimilated into society, they could still be victims of crime and they were also victims of a prejudice all their very own. For example, the Neutral Parity League campaigns against ‘Chromes’ (from ‘Chromosome’) as the Heightened are nicknamed, often violently, whilst organisations like the Heightened Information Alliance campaigns for the protection of their rights. In general, the Heightened have become one of society’s accepted minorities and most just get on with their lives.

When one of the Heightened is involved in crime—whether as victim or perpetrator—the police will investigate and handle the matter just as they would any other crime. However, most big city police forces have established a unit to specifically deal with such cases. This is the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU), staffed by Heightened members of the police force and tasked with investigating and solving SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk. The law has also adapted to take account of the prevalence of Heightened abilities. Thus investigative powers such as Observe Dreams and Read Minds require consent or a legal warrant, the use of X-Ray Vision ability must follow strict health and safety guidelines as its emits radiation and can cause cancer, the wrongful use of Impersonate is fraud, and several powers, including Radiation Projection, Invisibility, and Read Minds are deemed inherently dangerous. Such powers fall under Article 18 which regulates their use and may even see their users being monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressives is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the set-up for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative roleplaying game, originally designed by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2009. It uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System, designed to play investigative games which emphasise the interpretation of clues rather than their discovery, and which has been used with another genre in a number of roleplaying games from the publisher, including horror in The Esoterrorists, cosmic horror in Trail of Cthulhu, space opera in Ashen Stars, and time travel in Timewatch. In Mutant City Blues the other genre is the classic police procedural of Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue. The combination though is specific. The Player Characters are police officers with powers, not superheroes who are cops. So not DC Comics’ Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s hometown, Metropolis, or indeed, Wildstorm’s Top 10. This is very much not a ‘Four Colour’ superheroes setting. The action and the investigation of Mutant City Blues also takes place in a real city, whether New York or Toronto, or a city the Game Moderator is familiar with. Although Mutant City Blues has the feel of a setting that is North America, it would be easy to set a campaign elsewhere, and there are notes on adapting it to the United Kingdom.

To help the Game Moderator adapt Mutant City Blues to the city of her choice, the roleplaying game comes with a number of elements which mapped onto that city. This includes a future timeline which runs from the outbreak of Ghost Flu to the present day, a guide to the future city’s politics and leading figures, as well as its new institutes and businesses. First and foremost amongst them is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the Player Characters to be slotted into. Lastly, there is a ready-to-play scenario, ‘Food Chain’, which introduces the history of the Mutant City Blues setting as well as providing a case for the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit to investigate.

In actuality that is the set-up for Mutant City Blues as published in 2009. In 2020, Pelgrane Press published a second edition, this time by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Robin D. Laws. Mutant City Blues still retains the same set-up and flexibility in terms of where it can be set, but it also introduces a number of changes, not least of which is a new scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’. The majority of these changes have been implemented to make the game faster and easier to both set up and play.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues are defined by various abilities, either Investigative or General. Investigative Abilities are further divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. As a superhero roleplaying game, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues also have superpowers or Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used. In the first edition of Mutant City Blues both Investigative and General abilities are represented by ratings or pool of points. For Investigative abilities, if the Player Character has the ability, he can always use it to gain core clues during an investigation, and his player could always spend more points from the Investigative ability pool to gain more information. For General abilities, such as Health, Infiltration, and Preparedness, a player expends points from the relevant pool and uses them as a modifier to a die roll to beat a particular difficulty. This is on a six-sided die and a typical difficulty is four, but can go as high as four. In the second edition of Mutant City Blues, a Player Character still has pools of points for his General abilities, including mutant powers, but not for Investigative abilities and powers. Instead of ratings, a Player Character either has the Investigative ability or power, or he does not. During an investigation, a Player Character will always pick up a clue related to an Investigative ability. If a Player Character wants more information, he can Push.

The Push is the major rule change in the second edition of Mutant City Blues. Replacing ratings for Investigative abilities, a Push is primarily used to gain more information or overcome obstacles preventing progress in an investigation. For example, it might be used to speed up the investigative process, such as getting the results back from the laboratory quicker than usual for Forensic Anthropology or Ballistics, to add an expert in the field as a friend using Art History or Occult Studies, or even use Cop Talk to impress the media or a Player Character’s superiors. A Push can also be used to sidestep or lower the difficulty of a General ability test. However a Push is used, a player only has two to expend per session, and they cannot be saved between sessions.

To create a member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, a player receives three pools of points to spend on his character. These are standard for both General abilities and Mutant Powers, but will vary for Investigative abilities, the value depending upon the number of players. To ease the creation process, the second edition of Mutant City Blues includes templates that model particular police departments, such as the Forensic Science Division, Gang and Narcotic, Robbery, and Special Weapons & Training. Each template has a cost in points, with any excess being used to purchase other Investigative abilities and purchase and increase General abilities.

Whilst choosing Investigative and General abilities is relatively straightforward, selecting Investigative and General Powers is more involved. In standard superhero roleplaying games, a player is free to choose what powers he likes, in any combination, often to model particular superheroes from the comic books and films. Now that option is possible in Mutant City Blues, but that diverges from Mutant City Blues as written. Mutant powers in Mutant City Blues are clustered together genetically, so that if a Heightened has the Transmutation power, he is also likely to have the Disintegration, Phase, Touch, Reduce Temperature, and Ice Blast powers. He may also have the Wind Control, Healing, Radiation Projection, and Self-Detonation powers, but not Pain Immunity or Gravity Control. All this is mapped out on the Quade Diagram—as devised by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade of The Quade Institute—and in addition to using it to select powers during the character creation, the Quade Diagram serves as a forensic tool in the game. HCIU officers can use it to determine the powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters. The point here is that mutant powers are known quantities and do not vary, and in addition, where in the comics, a superhero will often tweak or adjust his powers from one issue to the next, this is very difficult to do in Mutant City Blues.

Our sample member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is newly appointed Grace Bruckner who transferred across from Robbery where she specialised in art theft. She has become adept at identifying forgeries from merely touch alone. Her tendency towards Disassociation means she has few friends on the force, her colleagues seeing her as cold and unfriendly. This is despite the fact they know her genetics.

Detective Grace Bruckner, 1st Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 4, Composure 10, Driving 2, Filch 2, Health 10, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Preparedness 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 5, Shooting 4, Surveillance 6
Investigative Abilities: Architecture, Art History, Bureaucracy, Bullshit Detector, Charm, Document Analysis, Evidence Collection, Fingerprinting, Forensic Accounting, Forensic Anthropology, Languages, Law, Negotiation, Photography, Research, Streetwise
Investigative Powers: Touch
General Powers: Disintegration 1, Healing 3, Phase 5, Transmutation 3
Defects: Disassociation

Certain powers and clusters, however, also have ‘Genetic Risk Factors’ associated with them. For example, Heightened with the Night Vision and Thermal Vision powers have tendency for Watcher Syndrome, whilst those with Telekinesis and Force Field, suffer from Sensory Overload. As she has both Phase and Disintegration, Detective Grace Bruckner can suffer from Disassociation, which means that she has a tendency to emotionally withdraw from people, and if the condition worsens, to see the world and her actions as unreal. Genetic Risk Factors need not come into play though, but it all depends upon the mode in which the gaming group has decided to play Mutant City Blues. The roleplaying game has two modes. In Safety Mode, Genetic Risk Factors are seen as potential risks to the Player Characters and may occasionally be topics of conversation, but in the main do not enter play except when they might affect Heightened criminals. In Gritty Mode, Genetic Risk Factors can express themselves in the members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, and in play, are one source of Subplots.

Subplots are plots extra to the main investigation, the ‘B’ plot to the ‘A’ plot, and are typically personal or tied to another case. The players are encouraged to suggest them and the Game Moderator can add them, but in Gritty Mode they can also take the form of a personal Crisis which will affect a particular Player Character, and they can be triggered by the expression of a Genetic Risk Factor or an event which occurs in the line of duty. The latter can affect all police officers, not just members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, but those triggered by a Genetic Risk Factor is specific to the Heightened. Mechanically, a Crisis requires a test and if failed, earns the Player Character a Stress Card. Similarly, if a Player Character exhausts the points from a power, but manages to refresh it by testing his Genetic Risk Factor (done against its resistance ability, which is different for each Genetic Risk Factor), he also gains a Stress Card due to the strain. Mutant City Blues lists over fifty, each with a tag like Addiction or Home Life, and Deactivation or Discard conditions, these being ways a Player Character effectively forestall the effects of a Stress Card or get rid of it completely. Should a Player Character acquire three or Stress Cards, then he is forced to quit or is fired from the force due to stress and his consequent actions.

Crises and Stress Cards are obviously storytelling and roleplaying tools, but they are also ways of enforcing the conventions of Mutant City Blues’ genre. In effect, Crises and Stress Cards are a way of handling a Player Character’s story arc over the course of a campaign. Just as in the television shows which inspire it, characters in Mutant City Blues leave, resign, take a new assignment, or are killed. Similarly, the use of the two modes—Safe and Gritty—model the two types of police procedural. Safe Mode represents a police procedural which focuses on the powers and the cases, and less on the personal and home lives of the Player Characters, whereas the grimmer Gritty Mode brings into play the personal and home lives of the Player Characters as well as the dangers of using their mutant powers. Of the two, the Gritty Mode more strongly enforces its genre than the Safe Mode. And this is in addition to the grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of the job, the Player Characters’ superiors, the media, and the criminals.

The two genres for Mutant City Blues—police procedural and superheroes—will be familiar to most, but not necessarily together. The roleplaying game’s authors provide plenty of advice to that end. The rules and advice cover collecting clues and using Pushes and their benefits, action at non-lethal, lethal, and superpowered levels, including combat, shootouts, chases, and more. There is a lengthy discussion of how the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit operates, including an orientation manual (with annotations from a member giving an explanation and opinion on how things are actually done), handling interrogations and court scenes, how the presence of the Heightened has changed the law, and running cases of the week and big plots. Plus there is a guide to the future world of Mutant City Blues, its politics, cultures, sports, and notable figures that the Game Moderator can map onto the city of her choice. Plus that mapping need not be onto a city in the near future, but could be the here and now, and there is advice for doing that too. The players are not left out here with advice on selecting their characters’ watch commander, using subplots, and suggesting some interview techniques, since after all, few of the players are going to be trained police officers. Lastly, there is an adventure, ‘Blue on Blue’ which does a good job of introducing the setting of Mutant City Blues and its various elements as they are affected by the Heightened, and takes the story of SME all the way back to the beginning. That said, it very much has the feel of a North American city and the Game Moderator will need to make some adjustments to set it elsewhere.

Throughout the pages of Mutant City Blues, there is another option discussed. That is instead of the Player Characters as members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, they are Private Investigators. This gives the players and their characters greater flexibility in terms of how they approach investigations, as well as less responsibility and also less authority. However, they are still private citizens and they will need to be equally as careful, if not more so, in their use of their powers than members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit. Rather than the set-up and organisation provided by the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, the players and their characters will need to work out the details of their agency ahead of time. The scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’ does have notes to enable it to be run using private investigators, but it is really written to be played using Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit officers.

Physically, for a book published in 2020,Mutant City Blues is surprisingly done in black and white. In some ways, that is thematic, and to be fair, it does not detract from the book in any way. In general, the artwork is excellent, the book is well written, and the layout clean and tidy, and best of all, easy to read.

If there are any issues with Mutant City Blues, it is in tone and setting. Some players may well find its strongly implied setting to be too North American, but the police procedural is very much a North American television staple, which for others it is that its superpowers are too low powered, to be not quite Four Colour enough. Yet even the roleplaying game’s Safe Mode is not Four Colour, although it is much closer than Gritty Mode, and after all, it is written to be a police procedural with superpowers, rather than it is a superpowered police procedural.

The GUMSHOE System was always designed to ease the process of playing investigative roleplaying games, but its iteration here in the second edition of Mutant City Blues has gone even further, switching from the previous edition’s pools of points to a simple binary yes/no for its Investigative abilities. Combined with the equally as simple Push mechanics and Mutant City Bluesmakes investigations even easier, shifting any prior complexity to the game’s action when General abilities—mundane and mutant come into play. And really, they are not that complex.

Inspired by two genres—police procedural and superheroes—Mutant City Blues still remains underpowered for handling either separately, but merged together, the result is an appealing combination of familiar genres that are consequently easy to roleplay. And that is made even easier by the streamlining of the GUMSHOE System and the cleaner presentation in this new edition. Mutant City Blues does what it says on the badge, present police procedural and investigative roleplaying in a near future that is almost like our own world, and make it accessible and engaging. The combination is very specific, but there can be no doubt that Mutant City Blues does it very well.

The ‘I Got The Altered Morphology Blues’ Trio

Despite there being being some well-known and highly-acclaimed comic book series about the policing of superheroes—including Alan Moore’s Top 10, Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers, and Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s Gotham Central—it is surprising that few superhero roleplaying games have explored the subgenre. One notable exception is Mutant City Blues, superpowered roleplaying game written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2008, and powered by the GUMSHOE System.

Mutant City Blues posits a near future in which following the outbreak of ‘Ghost Flu’, approximately 1% of the population exhibits ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ (SME) and subsequently manifests strange and wondrous powers and abilities. Most of these individuals go on to lead normal lives, some of course, become celebrities and politicians, whilst others turn to crime. In response, most big city police forces establish a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar department, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between these mutants and ordinary folk, both civilians and fellow police officers. The result is a roleplaying game which more an investigative Police Procedural—such as NYPD Blue or C.S.I.—with and about powers rather than a ‘Four Colour’ affair. Sadly, Mutant City Blues received just the one supplement in print, Hard Helix. There is though, another scenario anthology, one which only appeared in PDF.

Brief Cases presents a trilogy of cases to add a Mutant City Blues campaign or a change of pace—with some adjustment—in another superhero campaign. All three cases involve plenty of investigation, just about the right amount of combat, and lots of roleplaying. None of the three scenarios should take more than a good session or two and would work as single cases or scenarios to slip in between longer investigations.

The trilogy opens with ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ and the chance discovery of a bomb-making workshop. Closer investigation reveals a plot against an anti-mutant rally. This cleverly puts the loyalties of the characters and the members of the HCIU to test as they have to protect someone who hides their anti-mutant prejudice under a veneer of respectability and concern. This is Adria Dawson, a former celebrity chef, who is now the motherly face of Families First and passive anti-mutant prejudice. Mutant opposition to her means that there are plenty of suspects and opportunities for the player characters to keep the peace and handle the press. The scenario though calls for solid forensic skills and good use of the Quade Diagram, the means of selecting powers for characters and NPCs alike and of HCIU officers determining what powers are used at a crime scene. The Game Master has some fun NPCs to portray and there is a nicely constructed clue trail for the players and their characters to follow in what is a really enjoyable investigation that in 2018 has some parallels with the prevailing social climate.

The second scenario, ‘Blastback’, starts with an interesting premise, a mutant-only gym and sets a murder there. Playing upon the concept of the Danger Room from the X-Men comics, the Danger Room is a gym where mutants go to practise and exercise their powers and now one of its customers has been killed, stabbed to death by a knife machine despite his having the Blade Immunity power. This is more of a labyrinthine investigation, delving back into the history of both the gym and mutant culture. Getting to one NPC is a bit awkward and could have been better handled as he important clues to pass on, and although lengthy, the investigation is not as satisfying as ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’. The climax is more challenging though, involving organised crime and illegal mutant fights. This is should not be a problem for player characters with combat related skills, but for a group with more investigative skills the final scenes will need police backup and that may not be quite as satisfying an ending.

The third scenario, ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, takes the investigators back to school when a lawyer falls out of the sky and lands on a car in the local high school’s carpark. It looks like there might be an unidentified mutant in the school, either a student or a teacher. There are plenty of suspects, some of whom are hiding their powers, some of whom they are not. Good interview and interpersonal skills are required to identify suspects and further leads despite a red herring or two, and as the investigators close in on the culprits there are some nicely paced action scenes. Unlike the previous two scenarios, the investigators will be dealing with more mutants than just the one or two perpetrators and as they stick together, getting them to crack is a bit more difficult. The scenario comes to a bit of a clichéd ending, but the consequences to the player characters’ investigation are interesting and have gaming potential in themselves, especially if the HCIU decides to do an outreach programme.

Physically, Brief Cases comes as a thirty-four page, black and white, 5.41 Mb PDF with a good full colour cover. The internal illustrations are few in number and do not always quite fit the scenario. There are no maps, but then none of the scenarios have scenes and locations which are not familiar from television cop shows. Of course, that just makes each of the scenes in the trilogy of scenarios easy to frame. The writing is clear and the scenarios are easy to understand throughout bar the awkwardness of the investigators getting to one NPC in ‘Blastback’.

As an addition to a Mutant City Blues campaign, then the trilogy of scenarios presented in Brief Cases is thoroughly useful. All three are good scenarios and enjoyable investigations which may also be a useful source of ideas for other superhero roleplaying games.

The 'I Got The Altered Morphology Blues' Quartet

The RPG, Mutant City Blues posits a near future in which following the outbreak of ‘Ghost Flu’, approximately 1% of the population exhibits ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ (SME) and subsequently manifests strange and wondrous powers and abilities. Most of these individuals go on to lead normal lives, some of course, become celebrities and politicians, whilst others turn to crime. In response, most big city police forces establish a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar department, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between these mutants and ordinary folk, both civilians and fellow police officers. Written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2008, and powered by the GUMSHOE System, Mutant City Blues was not a superhero RPG in the traditional sense, but rather an investigative Police Procedural—such as NYPD Blue or C.S.I.—with and about powers rather than a ‘Four Colour’ affair. Sadly, Mutant City Blues received just the one supplement, Hard Helix.

Hard Helix is an anthology of four scenarios for use with Mutant City Blues designed to follow on from both the setting and the scenario in the core book and involve the player characters, members of the city’s Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, in the politics of SME and the city. The collection opens with ‘The Hard Helix’. This throws them into the political deep end when they have to investigate the death of Sidney Dorris just before he is to speak at a conference on Anamorphological Research, this the study of the morphology of those who expressed SME—like the investigators. Dorris is a controversial figure because of his radical theories about SME and he was set to announce a new theory at the conference. So suspects include Lucius Quade, the father of Anamorphology as well as members of the anti-mutant and mutant rights movements. This is a good opening scenario that calls for the characters to use their Investigative Abilities more than their superpowers. It also brings them further to the attention of the leading figures in both SME politics and research—and they may be useful contacts to have in the long term.

Where ‘The Hard Helix’ is primarily an investigative ‘murder mystery’ affair, ‘The Vanishers’ is a more physical scenario and involves more traditional crime. A jewellery robbery proves to be hiding something more, but getting to this means playing through a couple of fun scenes, including one straight out of an 80s action cop movie! The clues here reveal that old organised crime is up to its old tricks, but is making it new by mixing it up with new super-powered crime. The cops not only have the opportunity to use their powers in this scenario, they also have the chance to go undercover and this means double roleplaying for the players! The GM does not miss out on the roleplaying though as he is given a fun mix of NPCs to portray in ‘The Vanishers’. These NPCs are a whole lot tougher though and ‘The Vanishers’ is a dangerous investigation.

In the wake of an anti-mutant riot in Helixtown—home to the majority of the city’s enhanced activities—the HCIU is called in to investigate a death. There seems to be nothing out of the ordinary about the victim—he was not part of riot, nor is he a mutant. So why exactly was he killed and who did it? Investigation points to a gang member gone rogue, but why is the Street Interdiction Task Force, a team set up to take down the city’s drug gangs, warning the investigators off? This is the set up for ‘Super Squad’, a grimmer scenario in which the investigators have to investigate fellow police officers. This is much harder and grittier scenario than the previous two because as much as the player characters’ suspicions are raised by the Street Interdiction Task Force, its members seem to be in the good graces of their bosses. This may result in the scenario being a scenario being an exercise in frustration, but this is perfectly in keeping with the type of investigation it handling, ending as it does in a big shoot out as the bad guys make their escape.

The last scenario is ‘Cell Division’. It opens with a bit of comedy and small mutant crime before switching to the big time—mutant supremacists mount a terrorist attack at a tourist site in the city. They are fanatical to the point of suicide, but there seems little to go on until the Mutant Revolutionary Front claims responsibility for the attack. Its announcement also promises further attacks, which causes panic and uncertainty across the city. This combined with political pressure leads to a fun scene for the player characters where they have to calm the public under the questions of a television show host! After this comes the second attack, a major scene in the scenario and one drawn from a similar real world event. The fanaticism of the antagonists in this scenario makes this the most challenging scenario in the anthology and whatever the outcome, relationships between mutants and the public are likely to altered forever…

Physically, Hard Helix is well written and decently presented with some excellent greyscale artwork. Each of the four scenarios comes with a full list of the NPCs involved and included at the end of the book is a summary of the Clues and their values to be found in each of its four scenarios.

One problem with Hard Helix is the setting, or at least the implied setting. This is a city where the police are armed and the criminals have access to heavy firearms. What this means is that these scenarios are easier to place in some cities than others, for example, in the United Kingdom. Of course, Mutant City Blues and these four scenarios are set in the future, so policing could have changed… Perhaps in response to SME?

Hard Helix presents four scenarios that showcase the type of investigations and police stories that can be run in Mutant City Blues. ‘Hard Helix’ is a classic murder mystery, ‘The Vanishers’ feels like an 80s action movie, and both ‘Super Squad’ and ‘Cell Division’ are grittier scenarios of the 90s and 00s. All four involve mutants and superpowers to one degree or another, but at same time they also involve subjects for police investigation—the Mob, the Police themselves, terrorists, and so on. So there is the sense of progression through the themes and elements of genre mash-up that is Mutant City Blues. Ultimately, whilst Hard Helix is a fun quartet, it seems a shame that it was also the last support for Mutant City Blues, itself a fun and engaging twist upon superheroes and the real world.

I Got The Altered Morphology Blues

Next January 12th, something strange is going to happen. People around the world start suffering from a flu strain, bad enough that they have to go Casualty. Thankfully, the pandemic proves not to be fatal, and on January 23rd, the symptoms all but vanish. The first manifestation of strange and wonderful abilities will occur several months after the disappearance of the “Ghost Flu.” People are suddenly able to fly, move objects with their minds, and more. It will take a while for people to tie these manifestations back to the “Ghost Flu,” but when they do it will become known as the “Sudden Mutation Event” or “SME.”

In the next ten years approximately 1% of the population will SME. There will be no outbreak of costumed heroes, but the most photogenic of SME suffers will become celebrities, sportsmen, TV and film stars, or politicians. Others will find jobs related to their new found powers, whilst others will just get on with their lives as members of accepted minorities. Which includes the criminals; because 1% of the population also means 1% of the criminals, and that means that some kind of task force is going to be needed to deal with their crimes. To that end, most big city police forces will have a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar within a decade after the events of January 12th, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk.

The decade spent assimilating the super abilities of the SME suffers also gave time for the legal ramifications of Power use to be considered. Not just using them to rob a bank, but using them in the course of an investigation. For example, Technopathy allows someone to extract information from digital storage devices, but you need a Search Warrant for it to be admissible in court. Some powers have side effects too. For example, X-Ray Vision lets you see through objects, but because it admits small amounts of radiation, users have been sued because they are thought to cause cancer. In addition, this radiation can wipe camera film, much to the consternation of the paparazzi. Some powers, such as Radiation Projection, are considered illegal and anyone possessing has to be registered under “Article 18,” though not necessarily monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressive is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the setting for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative RPG by Robin D. Laws that is published by Pelgrane Press and which uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System as seen in The Esoterorists and Trail of Cthulhu. The emphasis on investigation makes Mutant City Blues more of a Police Procedural than a traditional superhero RPG, more NYPD Blue, C.S.I. , or Southland with powers rather than the comic book Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s home town, Metropolis. Of course, both cities and their respective versions of HCIU would serve as excellent sources for a Mutant City campaign, and there is nothing to stop the inventive GM running an unpowered game set in either Gotham or Metropolis, but really the focus of Mutant City game is on superpowered cops in a real city. This could be Chicago, Toronto, or the GM’s home city. That said, the feel of the book is very much upon North America, so any GM wanting to set his game in the UK or Europe will have to put a little extra effort in getting the feel right.

For ease of play, Laws provides a complete set of elements that can be added to any large city to push it forward the decade into the world of Mutant City Blues. This includes a look at sport and the arts, a timeline for the GM’s “Mutant City,” new slang and jargon, and new institutes and businesses. The most well known new institute is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the player characters to be slotted into. Although many of its members tend towards being clichés, this is a police procedural game after all, and the various HCIU officers are more interesting than some of the NPCs described elsewhere. Lastly, there is “Food Chain,” a complete scenario ready to play, an against the clock race to stop a murder cult. Again, this all feels very North American.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, characters are defined by various abilities, each a pool of points that is spent throughout the game. These abilities are either Investigative or General, with Investigative Abilities divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. Mutant City Blues being a superhero game, characters also receive points to assign to various Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used.

An HCIU officer is an experienced detective and he knows what to look for at a crime scene. If he has a relevant Investigative Ability or Power, such as Forensic Psychology or Translation, he gets the basic or Core clue. If he wants further information, he can spend points from the Ability or Power’s pool, usually one or two points. What the GUMSHOE System is doing with its Core clues is moving the emphasis to be found in most investigative games away from finding clues to analysing them.

General Abilities and Powers, such as Infiltration or Fire Projection, are more proactive in nature, requiring that their points be spent and added to a roll of single six-sided die against a target if the officer is to be successful. It should be noted that both Health and Stability – the RPG’s equivalent of a character’s mental health, are General Abilities, and so need to be bought. They also need to be spent to withstand some attacks and effects.

The points given for General Abilities and Mutant Powers do not vary. The number of points a player has to assign to Investigative Abilities will vary according to the number of players. Choosing General and Investigative Abilities is straightforward, choosing your Powers is not. What limits them is the fact that certain Powers appear in the same cluster, so that if a mutant has the Powers Invisibility and Light Control, he is likely to have Light Blast, X-Ray Vision, Illusion, and so on, but not Radiation Immunity or Cure Disease since they do not appear in the same cluster of genes. The dispersal of Powers is tracked by a Quade Diagram, and this is used out of the game to help a player select his Powers and the GM to choose the Powers for his NPCs. It is used within the game by the HCIU officers to determine The Powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters.

The point is that in the world of Mutant City Blues, Powers are not gained randomly and they are not the typical abilities of the tradition “Four Colour” game. Most Power use is taxing and there will be a limited number of times that a mutant will be able use his power before they are exhausted.
The sample character is Detective Devon Garkovich, 2nd Grade. He is a reluctant investigator who prefers to go over clues and background in the squad room, where he is known for his appetite and his delight in taking mandated department courses, in particular health and safety and fire safety. Were it not for his way around departmental paperwork and his ability to analyse situations, he would be dismissed as the HCIU boss’ stooge.

Detective Devon Garkovich, 2nd Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 3, Driving 2, Health 15, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 2, Medic 5, Preparedness 6, Scuffling 3, Sense Trouble 6, Shooting 3, Stability 10, Surveillance 4
Investigative Abilities: Bullshit Detector 4, Bureaucracy 4, Cop Talk 2, Data Retrieval 2, Evidence Collection 2, Flattery 2, Interrogation 2, Law 4, Negotiation 2, Reassurance 2
Powers: Cognition 3, Detect Influence 4, Precision Memory 4, Read Minds 5, Telepathy 4
Defects: Erotomania

One drawback or roleplaying opportunity – depending upon how you look at it and I look at it as a roleplaying opportunity – to selecting Powers is that in associating certain Powers and a mutant will suffer from a Defect. For example, if a mutant has Lightning Decisions and Speed he will be prone to Attention Deficit Disorder, while anyone who has Natural Weaponry and Limb Extension is likely to suffer from Arthritis. If a player character begins the game with a Defect, it is only latent. It will express itself or grow worse if the character is placed under stress, after having either failed a Stability check or suffered from a Forced Refresh for a Power that he has exhausted and really needs to use again, straining himself in the process. Defects can also be the subject of a campaign’s sub-plots, these being used in a scenario as a secondary plot that can keep everyone involved in the scenario.

While the police procedural will be familiar to many, how to combine with the superhero genre will not. Fortunately the author addresses this combination in no little depth. There is advice about playing a cop and on being a stand up cop, on HCIU procedures, how to handle interrogations, and a short analysis of the police procedural in comparison to real investigations. In particular, the latter looks at the speed of forensic analysis on the television versus the real world, on certain cops always getting high profile cases, and so. Of course, the world of Mutant City Blues is not meant to be the real world. There is also good advice on structuring a mystery story, needed in part because a GUMSHOE System is structured around a story’s clues more so and more obviously than in other RPGs. Finally, there are several more case seeds beyond the scenario included, and beyond that, there are sources aplenty as far the police procedural genre goes. A pity though, that no bibliography was included, for the police procedural or the superhero genre.

Physically, Mutant City Blues is a pleasing looking book. It has been given a blue wash throughout, including the artwork of Jérôme Huguenin. My initial reaction to that artwork was that it was nowhere near as good as his artwork for the excellent Trail of Cthulhu. Upon reflection this is still the case, but this due to the fact that the artwork in Trail of Cthulhu is just so damned good. Which makes the artwork here decent enough.

Mutant City Blues is not quite perfect. It suffers from being, if not too American, then too North American in its take upon the genre, and some players might find its superpowers to be too low powered to their tastes, but this is purely intentional. Mutant City Blues is a police procedural with superpowers, more than it is a superpowered police procedural. The players have to solve the crime using their Investigative Abilities and Powers before confronting the perpetrators.

Three questions have to be answered in summing up Mutant City Blues. First, has Robin D. Laws created a plausible police procedural? In other words, could you run this game without the superpowered aspect? The answer to that is yes, even though much of the advice is geared towards the staging and solving of superpowered crimes. The second question is, has he created to a good superhero RPG? If you wanted a relatively low powered system, then yes. The emphasis though, is very much on the police procedural. The last question is, has he successfully brought the two genres together? The answer to that is an unqualified yes. Mutant City Blues is a successful melding of two genres without one overpowering the other.