Tim Sattley began self-publishing 3rd-party Mutant Crawl Classics adventures in 2022 and has been busy! His publications include Get Me The Juice, Tribal Games - Tournament of Champions, and Badda$$ Bunnies! Now he’s got a new Kickstarter for a level-2 MCC adventure called Horror at the MERCC.

How’d you get into DCC/MCC?

As a kid, I was a ravenous reader, especially horror, fantasy, and space-age science fiction. I also played AD&D as a kid when it first came out. Once I hit high school and college, things like sports, work, and family took on more importance, so gaming fell by the wayside.  I had fond memories of gaming with friends, but none of us really continued with the hobby past early high school. Somewhere around 2015, I started reading fantasy fiction again, which led to me picking up some of the DCC stuff. It really spoke to me as I always loved the randomness of rolling characters with 3d6, top down, no changes.  There is just something awesome about a character that has a major flaw, like the strong and agile warrior with crap constitution, or a thief with average dexterity, but tremendous luck. It just makes them seem so much more realistic than a pre-planned min-max hero build. 

So tell us about Horror on the MERCC! The Holy Medicinal Order tasks the PCs with recovering some unique healing artifacts from a group of mutant rodents who live in a strange facility. How did the idea originate and how did that changed during creation/playtesting?

I’m so glad you described it the way that you did. It shows me that I created an adventure setup where the party has no idea what it is walking into. As a horror module, this is one of the many, scare tactics I am leaning into – a fear of the unknown. It also incorporates death, dismemberment, disease, and the foreshadowing of impending doom. My original vision was to build a specific encampment and major encounter locations based on things gleaned from my time in the military. When the adventure was about 80% complete, I decided to completely revamp the encounters, turning it into a horror themed adventure. The biggest task I took on was to create an all-new horror/insanity mechanic system where PCs track their stress levels during the adventure and roll personality effects on random tables when they get too freaked out by the things happening around them. Were it not for this major change of direction, this adventure module would have been completed and released a while ago. 

Looking at the adventure itself, it is a believable location within the MCC metaverse, and something that makes sense from a “why is it here” type of vibe. During play testing I found it interesting that each test was completely unique as the parties made very different choices, triggering different reactions and outcomes within the environment. Overall, I’m pretty excited to see how other people play the adventure and hear their experiences.

You have a content warning for this adventure. I find that people don't include those unless the adventure can get quite dark. Did the content warning come from something a player said in a playtest or was that something you knew that you needed to include because you knew you were tackling some difficult issues?

That’s an interesting, but not unexpected question. As a part of the horror/insanity mechanic system within this adventure, I delve into the concept of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and some of the potential personality side-effects people may experience due to sustained exposure to life and death situations. This may be a touchy subject to some people, so I felt a content warning was a prudent way to proceed. 

Also, serving 13 years in the military helped to give me a finely honed gallows humor combined with a healthy sense of sarcasm. It may seem weird to some people, but laughing in the face of death and danger is a coping mechanism, not a lack of empathy or malice. When you think about the encounters found in most RPG content, our PCs are exposed to close combat situations similar to military personnel. As such, these PCs have a heightened chance to develop some of the same PTSD symptoms seen in combat veterans. To me, this all seems very realistic and expected, which is something I would like to lean into while role playing. Not all wounds are visible. 

Instead of a content warning, I really wanted to do a throwback to the 1990 Dudley Moore movie “Crazy People,” and an advertisement they created for a fake scary movie called “The Freak.” Unfortunately, that would have been a little over the top, so I decided to use a content warning. 

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On the Kickstarter page, you say this is apart of your "Recharge Run" of MCC modules and that is adventure can be a standalone adventure or a follow-up to Get Me The Juice. I imagine that also means that you have plans for more MCC adventures. Care to share any hints for what the future may hold?

Stefan, I think you and I noticed something similar – that players and judges like to work their way through an adventure path through multiple adventure modules. They also want it to make sense. Similar to the “MCC Adventure Path” article that you recently posted on your substack, I wanted to give judges a path of adventures to follow. My goal was to create a series of adventures that could be followed in a logical progression, all tied into a central theme. At the same time, I didn’t want them stuck in a pre-defined world setting of my creation. Every judge has a different “world” in which their campaign resides, so I wanted something they could drop anywhere and still have it believable.  

Specifically, with MCC, I had the belief that battery power would be a major part of any technologically advanced society, as was Terra BD (Before Disaster). Think about how often we need to charge our phones, ipads, ear pods, laptops, etc. today. The futuristic Terra BD would need this service even more so. With this being the way – I envisioned a fictional corporate behemoth named Power Cell Storage, Inc., whose function was to keep the population supplied with a readily available source of batteries. They would have had locations scattered throughout the land, with more than a few of them “surviving” into the days of Terra AD (After Disaster), and the post-apocalyptic, mutant world that is the MCC genre. This fictional company provides me with a great way to link adventures and have artifacts from one adventure create interesting situations when used at another location. Hence, the Recharge Run series was created. “Get Me the Juice” was the 1^st level adventure and “Horror at the MERCC” is the second adventure in this series. RR1 & RR2 if you will. Spoiler alert – yes, there is something from PC Storage, Inc. within the “anomaly.”  

Going forward, I already have the outlines and some of the artwork together for both the 3^rd & 4^th level adventures in this series, with at least one of them requiring a trip into space for a “save the planet or die trying” escapade. I would love to be further along with them, but I was tasked by (someone who shall remain nameless) to work on a project that is still pretty hush-hush for now. We can talk about that one at a later date. 

I think most people gravitate towards “fantasy” games, but I think nearly all your work so far has been for MCC. What is it about the post-apocalypse that keeps you coming back?

I started out reading and playing in fantasy RPG, but I have always loved sci-fi. When it comes to what I like about MCC, I think it has to be contrast between people with a prehistoric mindset interacting with sci-fi objects from a technologically advanced civilization. It gives me a whole “The Gods Must be Crazy” vibe and makes me laugh. Throw in some crazy mutant powers, sentient plants & animals who walk upright and you are left with something totally awesome, IMHO.  

I am also a finance guy at heart, so I tend to think in a very analytical and logic-oriented manner. Give me data to chew through and I am a happy man. MCC provides me the opportunity to fantasize about what things could be like in the future and to come up with crazy ways in which we could bring that civilization to an end. Even more fun is when I head to the other end of the spectrum and start thinking about the situations where a caveman found one of these advanced items or had to interact with a specific type of robot. Take all of this and throw in some humorous references to people, places, movies, celebrities, and pop culture icons – viola, you have something fun to play. In the end, that is what this whole thing is about, playing a game and having fun. 

You started publishing in 2022, but are already on your 4th self-published product and have also contributed to Gary’s Appendix: Issue 2 and Scientific Barbarian #5. Any advice for folks to help them be as productive as you?

That’s a little flattering to hear. Thanks. It has been a process, that’s for sure. Years ago, I used to think of myself as an “idea guy.” Where I always had ideas floating around in my head, but never really did anything with them (aka a dreamer). At some point I realized that it was more fun to create things than it was to just imagine (then forget) them. With that in mind, I started jotting down my ideas and random thoughts into a notebook. Nothing organized, just random bullet points.  

For instance, I love role-playing combined with random tables. I find that they typically lead to a good laugh at the table, and for some reason the random roll almost always comes up with something appropriate to fit the existing situation. Many of my first ideas are random table entries.  Needless to say, a lot of my content ends up being centered around these random outcome tables.  

I am a bit of a work-a-holic and a person who stays up late. This fact usually leaves me with a couple hours alone every night without much to do. One can only watch so much TV and play so many video games, so I write, and I challenge myself to learn new things just to keep from getting bored.  

How I got started publishing RPG content was a little different. I’m typically the guy running the MCC games for my normal Monday night DCC/MCC group. While running a campaign I noticed that there were some holes in the system. Don’t get me wrong, these are not problems with the system, just places that could use some additional fleshing out. Kind of like we did in the early days of AD&D when we would create our own dungeons from scratch. 

With that in mind, I created an MCC rules variant and some random tables for things that could happen when seekers return to their village from a mission. Being a stickler for accuracy, I sent a message to my favorite MCC expert asking if he thought it was thematically correct to the MCC genre. I think I said something to the effect of “Seriously, if you think they suck, just say so.” The result was the exact opposite. The response that I got back was a request to publish the content as an article in his zine. Prior to that moment, I had never considered publishing any of my content.  

Thanks for chatting with me Tim! Anything else folks should know? Where can people find you online?

Thanks Stefan. I enjoyed your questions. I also appreciate all of the different things you are doing withing the DCC/MCC community. Knowing what it takes to pull projects across the finish line, I respect the things you are doing to make this corner of the RPG world a more fun place to play.  

Personally, I don’t have much of an online presence. My full-time job is in finance, plus I also teach investing and finance at a local college in the evening. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for promotion of and marketing. The only real presence I have online is my publisher page on DTRPG.

This is where anyone can get digital or print-on-remand copies of my adventures. People can also pick up my adventures at Goodman-Games.com and Jim Wampler’s site, Mudpuppygames.com. 

Thanks again and keep up the great work Stefan.