The last of the After the Bomb books is Mutants in Avalon (1991) (not counting the Rifts/AtB sourcebook Mutants in Space, which I covered previously). Unlike every other AtB book to this point, it is by James Wallis instead of Erick Wujcik, who had left Palladium. The book does an excellent job of taking its core idea to its logical conclusion. Whether that core idea was a good one or that the end point is one worth reaching, I am thoroughly undecided.

So, during the apocalypse, the UK suffered an EMP incident, destroying all their electronics and shunting the country back, for all intents and purposes, to a medieval level of tech. And dress. And general culture. But with guns. The country divided itself into a number of separate kingdoms and was on the brink of civil war at any given moment, until the French, er, the human SAECSN (pronounced, conveniently, Saxon) started to have designs on the island. In the face of invasion, a man named Arthur with wings and, if the cover (by Kevin Fales) is to be believed, a giant mutant battle snail, rises to unify the kingdoms, defeat the invaders and usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. Merlin is in it, too, shaken out of his prison in the Crystal Cave by events in the scenarios. But post-apocalypse Arthur is not old King Arthur reincarnated. And it is just coincidence that he is surrounded by people who share the names and temperament of characters from the legends (except Merlin, he’s legit Merlin).

Pendragon this is not. The convenience of a medieval post-apocalypse bugs the hell out of me, which is weird reaction from me for a game about mutant animals, I admit. But the core Arthurian story is pretty solid, supported by a decent bibliography and forms up the longest, most robust After the Bomb sourcebook, complete with a lengthy series of scenarios. I also really like the interiors by Larry MacDougall. So I don’t know. This is dumb, but the best possible kind of dumb?