Jim Wampler

"The Museum at the End of Time" by Jim Wampler may be my favorite module to run. Set in the post-apocalyptic world of Terra A.D., the adventure follows young tribe members setting out on their Rite of Passage, a dangerous journey to find technological artifacts from the pre-cataclysmic society and return them for the good of the tribe. The PCs stumble across the titular museum and must face it’s wonders and dangers if their are to succeed in their quest.

The module does a great job of presenting a sandbox location for players to explore. Railroading is kept to a minimum and exploration is encouraged as players encounter historical displays to interact with and indecipherable artifacts to play with. This also means there are only a few pure combat encounters in the whole adventure — which isn't to say the museum isn’t deadly. Only the craftiest and luckiest of PCs will survive as the technology found in the museum can prove to be as lethal to clueless PCs as any monsters. This includes my favorite encounter in the module which, without spoiling anything, features a surprising twist on the TPK.

I’ve run the museum multiple times at cons and for friends, and it never fails to delight and surprise even veteran players by highlighting what makes Mutant Crawl Classics so distinctive: a heavy reliance on bizarre random effects, placing PCs in situations in which ordinary (to the players) objects become alien and unknown, and clever references to a variety of classic science fiction stories and tropes (Museum directly references 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune, and Critters, among others).

"The Museum at the End of Time" is a level 1 adventure and was the first module released for the Mutant Crawl Classics RPG in 2016. It can also be used as a zero-level funnel for 16-20 PCs. It can be comfortably run in four hours.… (mehr)