I am taking this year's Garycon at a fairly relaxed pace. After a morning walk and coffee, I dived into my one game of the day: a Gamma World hack of the D&D 5 e rules. Mike Mearls ran the game (and bought lunch for the table). This was my first interaction with him, and I must say he is a stand-up, easily-approachable dude. The game overall had a wacky vibe, which seemed to suit Mearls well; that said I would love to see him ru. A more serious game.
We generated characters on the spot. We did this by allocating 18 dice between the 6 traditional ability scores. You had to roll at least 1 die for each ability, meaning that if you nerfed all of your other scores, you could roll as many as 13 dice for the one you really want to be sky high.
I distributed my dice evenly, 3 per ability score. This automatically made me a human. As such, I had a higher tech level than everyone else, as well as some action points. I named my character Cledus. He was an ugly, freckled ginger with decent Dexterity and Intelligence, a crowbar named Lucy, and a handgun named The Judge.
The rest of the party consisted of an alien with an obnoxious stench (obnoxious enough to cause Disadvantage), a mutated bear (which given his empathy and sonic blast was essentially a Care Bear), a mutated triceratops, a mutated showdog with patchy fur, and a mutated snake. The mutant types and mutations were, I think, borrowed from a third party product, maybe Omega World.
We worked together to explore an artificial island off the coast of Sea-rattle. We fought a host of robots, mutated roaches, and rat men (all of which Mearls said were re-skinned D&D monsters).
One mechanic that seemed unique involved tech levels. Whenever a character attempted to use tech of a higher level than they were familiar with, they had to roll a d4 (for one TL difference), d6 (for two TL difference), or d8 (for three tech level difference). If that die generated a number equal to or greater than the d20 roll, the tech backfired... often in a catastrophic manner.
I asked Mearls if there were any plans for an official Gamma World adaptation of the 5e rules. His answer was that Garycon afforded him an opportunity to play with mechanics and ideas that might eventually show up in future products (which might or might not be Gamma World). I thought, in this age of product/release secrecy, that his answer was a pretty awesome one.
I am happy to field questions.
We generated characters on the spot. We did this by allocating 18 dice between the 6 traditional ability scores. You had to roll at least 1 die for each ability, meaning that if you nerfed all of your other scores, you could roll as many as 13 dice for the one you really want to be sky high.
I distributed my dice evenly, 3 per ability score. This automatically made me a human. As such, I had a higher tech level than everyone else, as well as some action points. I named my character Cledus. He was an ugly, freckled ginger with decent Dexterity and Intelligence, a crowbar named Lucy, and a handgun named The Judge.
The rest of the party consisted of an alien with an obnoxious stench (obnoxious enough to cause Disadvantage), a mutated bear (which given his empathy and sonic blast was essentially a Care Bear), a mutated triceratops, a mutated showdog with patchy fur, and a mutated snake. The mutant types and mutations were, I think, borrowed from a third party product, maybe Omega World.
We worked together to explore an artificial island off the coast of Sea-rattle. We fought a host of robots, mutated roaches, and rat men (all of which Mearls said were re-skinned D&D monsters).
One mechanic that seemed unique involved tech levels. Whenever a character attempted to use tech of a higher level than they were familiar with, they had to roll a d4 (for one TL difference), d6 (for two TL difference), or d8 (for three tech level difference). If that die generated a number equal to or greater than the d20 roll, the tech backfired... often in a catastrophic manner.
I asked Mearls if there were any plans for an official Gamma World adaptation of the 5e rules. His answer was that Garycon afforded him an opportunity to play with mechanics and ideas that might eventually show up in future products (which might or might not be Gamma World). I thought, in this age of product/release secrecy, that his answer was a pretty awesome one.
I am happy to field questions.
