Thoughts on a game: Eco Mofos

I came for the name, I think I’ll stay for the game.

When I decided that I was going to start talking about RPGs and running them, this was not the first post I imagined. I’d thought maybe something nostalgic that looked at the roleplaying experiences of my youth or even a bitter polemic about my pet hate, sexy vampire games. Instead, I’m talking about a quirky indie game that ticks many boxes and is probably a pretty good illustration of where my game tastes have settled on this, the last day of my 50th year on the planet.

It had me at “mofo”

“Motherfucker” is one of my absolute favourite words. It’s multi-purpose and can carry the weight of extreme positive or negative usage. It even works as an expression on its own. So flagrant use of motherfucker and its derivatives will always get me. Make it alliterative, Eco Mofos, and I’m there!

Eco Mofos is an indie game; rules light and built on the bones of Into the Odd. Right now, it’s in the throes of a Kickstarter campaign. When you hit its campaign page Eco Mofos describes itself as:

…a mid-future ecopunk ruin-delving survival game, as player characters (PCs or Punks) seek a safe homestead to start a new community, Weirdhope not Grimdark.

I’m digging this stuff right now - games like Ultraviolet Grasslands, Troika, Itras By, and OG Into the Odd are firing up the imagination. I love the quirkiness of these settings and the space they give you to go weirder or dial back on the wack. And with a free Beta version available, I thought I’d dive in and see how Eco Mofos stacks up.

System

If you’re familiar with OSR style mechanics, there are no big changes here. GM sets the DC for things, and you need to get equal or under the number to succeed. The game calls these “saves” - and as a D&D player who was dungeoneering when ol’ E. Gary still walked amongst us, I always find using save as a term for any check a bit weird. But there is the familiarity of advantage and disadvantage and the usual polyhedral dice suspects getting slung about to help me overcome my grognardism. 

Eco Mofos also has pared combat right back. Like Mausritter, for example, attacks always hit, and it’s a matter of rolling damage and mitigating this with armour and your “hit protection”. This is what hit points are called in the game, and when you’ve run through those, you start to eat into your stats (usually your Strength). When that’s gone - so are you. All easy breezy, and wilfully ignorant of crunch and tactics. 

Because this isn’t a game about combat. It’s about exploring the odd and meeting those who dwell there. 

However, there are consequences to many failed checks in the form of Burdens. These burdens have several effects. Firstly they take up an inventory slot; secondly, they stack, and after 3 burdens, a character starts losing Strength. Burdens can be removed, but specific conditions need to be fulfilled to erase them. You don’t want to be getting burdens. 

Burdens can also be taken on to activate some powers or magic. Sometimes the burden is automatically gained; other times, a save of some sort is required. The exact nature of a burden can be randomly determined or chosen from a list. In my opinion, one of the weaknesses of Eco Mofos is the limited number of burdens in the system. The game is very generous with other tables, but a choice of only 6 burdens is a bit disappointing, given their importance to the system. Maybe in the final version, we’ll get some more.

Characters

Characters are also nice and pared back. You’ve got just four stats: Strength, Dexterity, Willpower and Luck. These cover 2 physical aspects, one mental and…everything else. There are no classes, but there are adaptations. These give you a certain selection of powers and starting equipment. Adaptations are granted by absorbing orbs into the body or eating certain substances. You can start with an adaptation at the beginning or play a sort of funnel/mini-game, which can leave you with a random and unique starting build, something unusable or dead. 

The adaptations are wildly varied with standards like mages and fighters but also gunshots, fungalist (who can transform into a gooey fungus) and the awesomely named “Tea Monk”. During the course of your adventuring, you can find other substances which give you new adaptations. 

Magic

Magic is present in the world of Eco Mofos. Amidst all the strange technology and references to the familiar (one of the items of treasure you can find is a full set of Magic the Gathering cards!), there’s magic too. It feels like a bit of a non sequitur here, but who doesn’t love magic! Magic can be found as an adaptation, absorbed into the character as an orb or as shards. Shards are single-use spells, like a scroll in other games. There are exactly 100 spells in Eco Mofos, and if you are a rules lawyer and a detail freak, beware. Spell descriptions are one or two sentences. Which leaves plenty open to interpretation. This is standard operating procedure for an OSR-style game, but for someone coming from something like D&D or Pathfinder, they can be a bit vague. That was me at first - then I learned to embrace the ambiguity.

Point to point

Adventures in Eco Mofos are point crawls generated from an extensive collection of random tables. There are heaps of tables in Eco Mofos, and I love ’em! I do have a weakness for random tables, so I really love this about Eco Mofos. The Kickstarter promises pre-written adventures as Stretch Goals, but the base game has none. Just the way I like it.

There are plenty of tables to help generate the components of an Eco Mofos point crawl Locations, Terrain, Hazards and Loot. Using these and the game’s time scale of Week, Day and Rounds, you can whip up an adventure in no time or, better still, do just enough to keep ahead of the players. Using these tables, you can generate anything from RP, combat or just plain weird encounters. There is a bestiary of monsters that includes everything from eldritch tentacle horrors to trad RPG foes and various wasteland factions (hell is other people, after all). And they provide a varied and interesting journey as the players search for a new glade to replace their ruined starting glade.

This search for a new home is the impetus behind Eco Mofos. The game begins with your players uprooted from a previously comfortable existence and thrust into a journey to find a new, safe haven in a wilderness that is weird at best and hostile at worst.

Stuff for solo

A small section at the back has additional tables and oracles for solo play. I struggle with solo play myself (I like the idea but always miss the interaction with people), but if this is your thing, Eco Mofos has got you – and more solo tools are promised in the stretch goals.

Overall thoughts

I like Eco Mofos. I like the randomness and just enough of a world to give you a starting point but not so much that it gets in the way. I love its hodgepodge of ideas from trad fantasy, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic dystopia. And I love how there’s not much system to get in the way. People who want lots of lore, lots of adventures and structure might not jive with this kind of game. I say, “Loosen up and give it a whirl”.

I have a grumpy old man nag with it describing itself as eco-punk and weird-hope. That may be the intention and philosophy behind it, but it’s not a driving force, in my opinion. Surrealism sure is a driving force and genre mash-up, but those slightly high-minded aims aren’t driving the game. And maybe that’s a good thing because it’s one less “thing” in the way of a roleplaying group. You bring what you want to the table.

Will I actually get Eco Mofos to my table? Quite possibly. It’s easy to roll something up fast and dirty and use it to hook players in. It’s not a huge investment in time and should repay any investment with a good time at the table.

And if that doesn’t hook you in, maybe the word “Mofos” will.