Mutant Chronicles RPG

Mutant Chronicles is a pen-and-paper role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world, originally published in 1993. It has spawned a franchise of card games, miniature wargames, video games, novels, comic books, and a movie based on the game world. A collectible miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games was released in August 2008.

Mutant Chronicles was developed by the Swedish company Target Games as a successor of their earlier Mutant RPG series. The rights to the game are now owned by Paradox Entertainment.

Intially, Mutant Chronicles filled the void left by the lack of a Warhammer 40,000 RPG. The setting of the Mutant Chronicles was obviously influenced by Games Workshop's sci-fi setting, but it also managed to carve its own niche with a fairly unique approach to the various genres that it incorporated. The main failing, if it can even be considered a failing, is only in comparison to Games Workshop's more established universe. Mutant Chronicles simply did not have the opportunity to work out all of its various kinks in the manner of Warhammer 40,000 (which has retconned itself many times over its 20+ year history). In contrast to Warhammer 40,000, Mutant Chronicles had a much grander approach in terms of marketing and gaming; Target Games developed an integrated RPG, CCG, Miniatures Wargame system. Other companies have gradually developed various formats for their material, but only Target Games had the forethought to develop all simultaneously.

Unfortunately, Mutant Chronicles has not really been given the opportunity to develop a truly cohesive and coherent universe, because of its many licensing problems over the years.

The game takes place in a distant future, where the Earth is a long since plundered desert, and humanity has spread to the worlds of Venus, Mars, Mercury, Luna (the first settlement following the exodus from Earth), and the Asteroid Belt.

Over the centuries, the traditional nation-states of the world have merged into huge corporations, of which five are large enough to be called megacorporations: Bauhaus, styled after the culture of continental Europe, the American-influenced Capitol, the Japanese-themed Mishima, the British-inspired Imperial, and Cybertronic, all of whom use private military forces to fight for resources. Luna itself is considered to be neutral ground and is home to the massive city-state known as Luna City. The other major power of this universe is the Brotherhood, a fanatical religious organization formed to meet the threat of the Dark Legion, an ancient evil comprising five "Dark Apostles" and their horde of hideous mutants. In this effort, mankind has somewhat organized under the banner of the Cartel, which fields the multi-corporational Doomtroopers.