This is a module for Mutant: Year Zero that I worked on in Tad Leckman’s Adventure Design course, set in a post-apocalyptic UC Santa Cruz. My team designed what this future version of the campus would look like, inspired by our experiences and the native wildlife. We ended up with a land of two main factions, the mutant owls of the library, and the malfunctioning robotic “Chancellor” AI that still thinks the school is running and wants to remove all of the “wildlife”.
It was a lot of fun coming up with twists on locations and features on the campus that we knew, like making a creature based off of a mural at one of the dorms of a hybrid slug-deer-turkey, or the mutant owls who protect the knowledge of the university libraries.
It was also fun to watch people play through the start of our adventure - it did not quite go as we expected! The players initially sided with the robot attempting to capture a young owl scout, and we expected the exact opposite. While we accounted for players siding with either faction, my surprise at this definitely revealed my bias - something to keep in mind when I design future adventures.