Using Anomalous Subsurface Environment

A week or so ago I finally got around to picking up Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1 and 2-3 by Patrick Wetmore (blogging here: Henchman Abuse).   I'm not going to write a review of a pair of modues (one of which is about 4 years old) but I do have to say it's good stuff.  I enjoy the mix of standard D&D fantasy and wahoo post-apocalyps.  I suspect the humorous elements may have kept me away in the past byt reading what other have done with the modules over the years inspired me to pick them up finally and I'm glad I did.

I'm surprised how well it fits in with my MOG campaign stuff , which while not as humorous doesn't go for being overtly serious. I spent the last couple hours copying and pasting from both modules, David Bowman's Dismal Depths Bestiary and my own undercity monster collection to make a combined monster doc for when I get around to running a campaign with this (along with MOG as it fits so well); i'll be copying in a few more monsters for other sources.

I'm wondering on how to setup the campaign to shove together MOG and ASE, I'll likely start out with bog standard races and in a couple sessions add in the variants from my MOG stuff and then the options from ASE 2-3. First characters would be Fighters to Clerics along with elf, Dwarf, Halfling to have Cyclops, Pygmies, and Amazons added into the mix and then Insect-Men, Moktars, Robots, and Scientists. I undoubtedly going to use house franken-rules over rigid adherence to any one set of published rules ( I already edited the moster doc to have S&W style AC to make ready for this).

High Tech weapons are a little too wimpy in damage and pricey in custom ammo costs in ASE so that will change but not too radically, I already have/had firearms in my old MOG campaign and they didn't actually dominate play with few shots at all being fired after the 3rd round of most fights.

Certainly going to pepper in spells from Space Age Sorcery .   I had many of them in the spell lists for MOG but I think they should be moved from direct PC knowledge (i.e. not in PC magic listings) and be used as unusual findings for PC spell casters who otherwise will have limited access to a more bog-standard old school spell selection. Ink and Alchemy tables similar to my old ones should be reworked to involve more of the features of the mixed post-apoc setting.


My Gods of Mog certainly work mixed in with the Gods from ASE but I'm also tempted to make use of Petty Gods...but that work assumes a different nature of dieties than does ASE, but maybe many of those Petty Gods would work well as NPC Wizards.

The biggest problem I'm having reading Anomalous Subsurface Environment is all the darned ideas it keeps giving me as I read it. Good creative stuff inspires more creativity.