A collection of eighteen issues of the Crawling Under a Broken Moon zine for Dungeon Crawl Classics, this is a meaty tome.  This material would later go on to be reorganized and polished up by creator Reid San Filippo and turned into The Umerica Survival Guide and its follow-ups.  I decided I wanted to explore the setting material in its more raw, more DIY-vibed form, so I grabbed this omnibus.

I would say that there are two major inspirations for the setting.  I mean, there are many, and over the course of the eighteen issues, a lot of things are drawn upon, reference, and paid homage to.  But I think the two core concepts that underpin things are the classic TSR roleplaying game Gamma World and Ruby-Spears cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian.  San Filippo was obviously not the only person whose imagination was traveling down that road, as Goodman Games has also released Mutant Crawl Classics, which obviously draws a great deal of inspiration from Gamma World.  Each is doing their own thing, however, and each has its own merit.  

As this is a collection of zines, it is not organized in the way a finished book might be.  Each issue has its own interesting places, monsters, items, or what have you.  Sometimes the issues have a theme, sometimes not so much.  They all work together to give you the building blocks of your own mutant filled insanity.

I have a few particular favorite bits.  There’s a faction, the Zombie Monks of the Cyberhive, as well as the Cyberhive itself, that I really like.  There is some imagery associated with them that I think is very evocative, and they’d make a wonderful bit of strange color to add into a game, even if the players don’t pursue them.  Though there’s a lot of fun that could be had if they do.  Funny enough, in the DCC game I’ve been trying to put together over the last year or two, I have a lich with a floating fortress, too.  It wasn’t a cyber lich, though.  May have to think about that.  Another thing I really liked was the issue 14 & 15 hex-crawl setting inspired by Jurassic Park.  There’s so much that could be done with this, either as the center of a greater campaign, a place to search for a MacGuffin, or the origin of a big villain.  Because it also involves some level of dimension travel/shifting, there are a lot of things you can do.  

Some of the creatures are amusing, but not things I see myself using.  Same with some artifacts and such.  However, there’s lots of good inspiration.  The Masters of the Universe inspired issue, too, has some great stuff.  I’m not sure on the new classes.  I’d love to be able to run the game enough to start having folks play new classes from this or the Gongfarmers series.  Sadly, the only time that’s happened in one of my games, someone’s PC came back as a Skeleton Warrior (I don’t remember which Gongfarmer’s Almanac, that was from), but he got obliterated almost immediately, so we never really got to explore how the class would function in an ongoing game. 

If you’re looking to take your DCC game to some weird, post-apocalyptic places, or if you want some more material to mine for your MCC game, this one is definitely worth checking out.  I’m certainly curious about the more professionally produced Umerica line that came from this.  But for now, this will have to do.  

Take a look at my unboxing here.

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