This Sunday I’m thankful for fifty years of Metamorphosis Alpha.
This post on Grognardia got me thinking again about how much I really like this game.
It’s one of the only settings that can mine pretty well any and every science fiction genre and remain true to itself. You want mutant humans, animals and plants? Obviously. You want robots, androids, cyborgs and holograms? You got it! You want cold-sleepers and clones? No problem! You want aliens and AIs? Done. You want nanites and neanderthals? Who doesn’t? You want dinosaurs? You get dinosaurs; hell, make it dinosaur–people! You want time travelers? Spool up those chronometers! You want Chaos warbands? WARBAND! You want Thundarr?
The Warden is the thing that makes all of this possible. It’s so vast that any trope you can think of can be stored away in an unexplored back corner of a deck no party has got to yet.
And the technology isn’t just larger than life, it’s cyclopean 1970s. This thing is Mycenae in space. Yes, it’s whiz-bang. But it’s also capable of handling all of this with a mostly straight face. It can make sense with very little effort. You can create stories that will get a chuckle when they first manifest — because the setup of getting your chocolate in my peanut butter is always amusing — but will get an “Ah-ha!” later when the pieces start falling into place.
This is a game about a huge ship that deserves big books.
A small party explores the vast Warden.
And I now use the Warden as the default setting for my Sci-Fi skirmish games, especially at conventions.
Props add an extra layer of fun to any game, and the Color Bands are just that ticket to ride. I think of a bonus, trait, skill or ability each Band could grant, and give it to whichever figure finds it.
For me, the Warden has moved on from being a pseudo-science fiction environment that made me chuckle. These past 50 years have brought with them both science and fiction that have made most of MetAl’s assumptions now merely implausible. It has become an emergent setting that can handle with a wink anything I throw at it.
[Edit: Looks like November it is.]
