Doc Feral

[Bood Samel]

I saw that Doc Feral was mentioned in a HU book. How many books has he popped up in, and what book has his most current stats and info?

[Rali]

"Doc Feral's Dynamic Dimensional Doohickey" -- Transdimensional TMNT (1989), was the last book that included the good doctor.

I don't have the book with me, so I can't verify that it included any updated stats for him.

[Rali]

Nope. The only stats for Feral appeared in the original TMNT&OS book. The only adjustments were in TMNTS Guide the the Universe where they listed him "as augmented by the Menta Wave Device" and all that was printed were the special powers he gained while using the device, not his full stats.

[BookWyrm]

He also made a appearance (albeit cursory) in a Rifter article, but with my issues put away at this time, I can't recall which one.

[Rali]

That was in the last (?) swimsuit issue, #43. But it was more about the werecats he created than about Feral himself.

[Bood Samel]

It's cool that he still gets mentioned after all these years. He has a nostalgic appeal. I first played TMNT in 1990 when I was 11.

[Rali]

I've been kicking around several ideas to submit for an AtB game that included Feral, but never settled on one I liked best.

In a game I played with Erick, our group bumped into a computer that had an AI Doc Feral programmed into it. Never found out if that was going to be the extent of the Doc's existence in AtB, but I highly doubt it.

I've considered Feral as: a reclusive scientist continuing his experiments far away from civilization; a resident of Cardania or a member of the Academic Underground conducting studies of the mutant animals in secret; a victim of mutation himself now searching for a cure; Emperor Christian's secret personal physician; a "brain in a jar"; an army of cloned mad scientists conducting experiments all over the world; or hiding in cryogenic hibernation waiting to be released upon the world.

What do you guys think would be the best way of using Doctor Victor Feral in the AtB setting?

[Soldier of Od]

a victim of mutation himself now searching for a cure

That one.

[BookWyrm]

Rali, all of those ideas are good ones. I've always thought that Doc Feral would have been a good 'secret partner' for Desmond Bradforn in the Rifts-Earth Lone Star facility, providing his own unique lip-service to the Dr.'s already considerable ego (cloned brain-in-a-jar, AI personality copy or just a simple ghost).

[mr.phillup]

I am looking at running an AoB game based on mad science which after looking through all of the TMNT books I see this as the “The legacy of Doctor Feral”. In the books each of times he pops up it’s at a different site and different mad science. So I am playing around with having some of this tech like LPA show up in game. With hints at other sites leading players to search for all of this lost tech. And something at the end (big Bad) so the players need some of this tech to win. Any thoughts as jump off point.

[Rali]

I don't know why it didn't hit me right away, but there are striking similarities between Mr. House in the recent Fallout: New Vegas game and Dr. Feral in Erick's last After the Bomb game. The following is spoiler for anyone who hasn't finished New Vegas:

Spoiler:

In the AtB game Erick Wujcik ran at the '07 Palladium Open House, while exploring a mysterious bunker, we bumped into a presumably AI version of Dr. Feral. Nearby we found a large locked vault door, but never found out what was behind it. Speculation was pretty wild: time machine, the main AI computer, Feral's frozen remains, among others.

In New Vegas, I think I found the answer.

One of the factions you can side with is that of Mr. House, whom your only interaction is though a computer screen, leading to the speculation of is he man or machine. It turns out that contained behind locked doors and buried deep beneath the Lucky 38 Casino Tower is the withered body of Mr. House preserved in some sort of life support tube. Could this have been what was locked behind the large vault doors in Doctor Feral's bunker?

Sounds like a perfectly plausible explanation to me.

[mr.phillup]

thanks for those thoughts I think I have flow for what will happen in the game now.

[gordyzx9r]

I've been kicking around several ideas to submit for an AtB game that included Feral, but never settled on one I liked best.

In a game I played with Erick, our group bumped into a computer that had an AI Doc Feral programmed into it. Never found out if that was going to be the extent of the Doc's existence in AtB, but I highly doubt it.

I've considered Feral as: a reclusive scientist continuing his experiments far away from civilization; a resident of Cardania or a member of the Academic Underground conducting studies of the mutant animals in secret; a victim of mutation himself now searching for a cure; Emperor Christian's secret personal physician; a "brain in a jar"; an army of cloned mad scientists conducting experiments all over the world; or hiding in cryogenic hibernation waiting to be released upon the world.

What do you guys think would be the best way of using Doctor Victor Feral in the AtB setting?

Combination. I've always had Doc Feral make some form of appearance in my AtB settings. Once I had used a trio of clones each with deformities who had some form of psionic connection with one another that kept them alive, they had formed an Army and were out to conquer a particular area. According to stolen EoH archives the real Doc Feral was purported to be in a cryogenics continuity of government (CoG) site that was now some kind of quasi medieval labyrinth akin to an old D&D module called Tomb of Horrors. The players had to fight their way through a group of savage mutant animals to gain entry to the CoG site/Tomb and then make their way through the traps until they got to the technological portion of the site, gain entry, and revive the Doctor to help (hopefully anyways) take out the trio of clones.

I like the idea of the AI Doc Feral, I hadn't thought of that before and that would make a good plot twist. Maybe a dormant AI that recognizes and identifies the real Doc Feral's voice transmitting over a radio after he's been revived and feels threatened.

[Mechanurgist]

Doc Feral might find the Empire to be too strait-laced when it comes to the amazing mutation experiments he's so fond of, though his attitude towards animals would be congruent with theirs. Even if he was an official member of the Empire's scientific elite he'd still probably have a secret lab in the wild where he could do the "really fun stuff".

[G]

Century Station (2000) page 50 mentions him being a known felon, mad-genius & criminal mastermind - not nothing much more, other than a bit about the "Bio Spawn Gene Institute".

I like to think he used a dimension traveling device (transdimensional TMNT gives him a time machine, and has dimensional travel in the book) to leave HU (where he was possibly born) and travel to TMNT/ATB/etc where its easier for him to continue his work.

...and he got some sex kittens in a rifter, as mentioned.