Review 7: Home for the Holideath
Nothing quite says "holiday cheer" like sending mutated characters into an ancient abandoned holiday supercenter and watching them get torn to pieces, melted, or smothered by haywire gift-wrapping stations or radioactive tree ornaments! The next adventure that I'll be reviewing is one of my favorite traditions, and I've run it every year since I picked it up. "Home for the Holideath" is a Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC) adventure written by my friend the maniacally unhinged Julian Bernick, with cover art and cartography by Stefan Poag.
Like most of the adventures published by Goodman Games for their systems, this one is truly modular-- it can easily be placed in any remote location in an ongoing campaign, or else it is perfect for an annual holiday-themed one-shot, as is the case for my table. The premise is that the PCs are tasked with recovering the gifts that were stolen by a malfunctioning security robot, who has brought them to an abandoned facility of the Ancients, dedicated to the AI known as XMAS (eXtended Mercantile Artificial Salesperson). Over the thousands of years since the great disaster, all of the high-tech yuletide cheer has become corrupted and dangerous, which means that it's a damn typical MCC adventure-- in other words, awesome.
Getting it to the Table
Being a Goodman Games adventure, it is presented in their "house style" which does tend to be a little text-heavy for my taste. However, compared to some others that I've run, this one has a comparatively small amount of background information which is fine by me. That is always a fine line to walk-- it's good to have some context for the GM to help set the mood, but too much of it is just wasted paper, as it is often unlikely to be learned by the players. A beautiful isometric map appears at the beginning of the room key (hooray), along with a handy random encounter table. I am especially happy that this is included, because many of the DCC/MCC modules omit them. When used properly, random encounters can make a place feel more alive, especially when they are able to be used in a more dynamic fashion; there are notes on the more unique encounters and how meeting them might alter the exploration.
The room key itself is organized well, with clear and concise descriptions and all relevant stat blocks for both the hazards and the ancient gifts that PCs can play with. I am always appreciative of modules that give you this information where and when it is needed, rather than forcing you to flip back to an appendix. The shopping facility itself is also laid out as a series of large floors with plenty of things to interact with, so it was pretty easy in terms of preparation as it is a fairly contained environment. The bit that took a little bit more thought in preparing was all of the gadgets and devices that the PCs can interact with-- there are a ton of buttons and levers to mess with, and keeping track of what things can potentially do can be daunting to someone picking this up for the first time. My method of keeping track was to essentially make a list for each room that included all of the interactive bits. This not only allowed me to have a quick reference, but it helped me to remember to mention all of them! This is a good technique in general for running things "theater of the mind", which is my preferred format. There are definitely some cause-and-effect type things in certain areas, and the results of some actions might be fatal if certain steps have not been taken. I haven't yet had a TPK from the PCs piloting a robotic sleigh at high-speed into a solid hard-light hologram that wasn't previously deactivated, but I hope to one day.
What Worked?
- Fiendish, cruel, and hilarious interactivity. This one is truly ideal for a one-shot because it is deadly. There are so many places where a PC can disintegrate, smother, or launch themselves thousands of feet into the air. I highly recommend having a big stack of pregens and just letting PCs die left and right.
- Stat blocks where you need them! 'Nuff said.
- Encounter table interactivity. There is a large "set piece" encounter that can potentially be met randomly, and this could make for a fun game of cat and mouse as it hunts you through the tables full of shiny paper and tinkly music drifts down from above.
What Didn't Work?
- Goodman Games "house style", ie lots of paragraphs. This one is only 20 pages, so it is not overwhelming, but it could definitely be reduced down to bullet points and streamlined a bit.
- I want more floors! More fiendish presents! This could be a great funnel adventure with a little expansion and more stuff to do.
Final Thoughts
I run this one every holiday season for a reason-- it is fun. Mutant Crawl Classics is one of my favorite systems because it is wildly unbalanced and many unexpected things can happen during the course of play, and this adventure really plays into that in a big way. I have a dedicated folder of pregenerated characters that I use when running this, and they've all got cringe-worthy names like Rudolph the Red-Skinned Mutant, Frosty the Shaman, Missle Toe the Sentinel, Thag Rinch the Mutant, Francoise the French Hen Manimal, and Deuce, the two-headed Turtle Dove. This is a great adventure for a night of beers and Christmas cookies, and each time I've run it there have been some hilarious deaths and heroic moments.
You can get "Home for the Holideath" at the Goodman Games web store. Thanks for reading!