From:	ANANDA%BSU.DECNET@*****
Subject:	Re: Mutants
Date:	Wed, 22 Apr 92 23:51:00 CST

At first, I thought that the whole concept of mutants just too bizarre to be
considered. But after reading Brian's post, I thought about what the word
"mutant" really means. I rolled up a Gamma World character for a friend, and
it is not that different from one of the Shadowrun metahuman races. In a
sense, SR metahumans _are_ mutants. Another friend's TMNT&OS character is a
mutant housecat. And it looks rather similar to a couple of my npc's
(full-body fur job, vat-grown furred tail, bodyscultped face). [Yes, I stole
the ideas from Cyberpunk.] So I might be amenable to the possibility of other
animal-style mutants...
but...

I can imagine one heck of a lot of problems arising from the possibility of
having completely non-human characters. How do you determine which animal
types are allowable? If you've got munchkin players, guess how many of them
may want to play a mutant _paranormal_ animal. How do you keep Seattle -- or
at least the shadowy side of Seattle -- from turning into a veritable zoo of
mutant animals? Another thing -- the source material I've seen to date doesn't
do a particularly good job of explaining of how society deals with the various
metahuman races. (e.g., What percentage of buildings have ceilings high
enough, and furnishings big enough, to accomodate trolls? How have businesses
changed their operations to deal with people who are active more at night than
during the day?) How is society going to deal with intelligent mutant animals??


--Ananda

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