How compatible should Gamma World be with Dungeons and Dragons?

[Thomas Shey]

There is no such thing as too much gonzo in GW!

While I like my post apocalypse a bit more fanciful than something like Twilight 2000, over time I've found there's an upper limit.

 

[Reynard]

While I like my post apocalypse a bit more fanciful than something like Twilight 2000, over time I've found there's an upper limit.

Oh, sure, there are lots of different kinds of PA. In general, I actually prefer something more on the Fallout scale of weirdness. I'm just saying that GW in particular is supposed to be gonzo, Thundarr level weird.

 

[the Jester]

Very. I want to be able to cross over easily and with minimal fuss.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, sure, there are lots of different kinds of PA. In general, I actually prefer something more on the Fallout scale of weirdness. I'm just saying that GW in particular is supposed to be gonzo, Thundarr level weird.

Fallout is about the top end of my tolerance, but a lot of that has more to do with the odd pseudo-fifties-but-SF esthetic. I'm just saying as I've gotten older the degree of gonzo in Gamma World (which I also think increased over time--I don't think it was as pronounced in the first edition if you accept that its a PA setting that comes from an already futuristic setting rather than a quasi-modern (for the time) setting.) has become a bit too much for me.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't understand this attitude, which yoiu see fairly common. I think it is based around the idea that sci-fi and classes don't go together, but I don't buy that either. 5E works just as well for sci-fi as it does fantasy -- which is to say, it works okay if you do what 5E is good at (ie low stakes action adventure).

Really simple:

Class and Level locks one into the Campbellian Monomyth or some subset of. Even Classless level based is invoking much of the monomyth.

Most Sci Fi presents competent heroes without adding Monomyth-style growth.

Star Wars goes heavy on the monomyth.

Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, Neuromancer, Hard Wired, CSI (franchise), Hawaii 5-O (both series), the protagonists are all presented as competent and don't get notably more so; they lack the growth paradigm inherent in the monomyth, and they also all tend to be about finding out specific things.

Also, while most don't think about CSI or H5O as Sci-Fi, the forensic tech was always ahead of reality, and H5O has some supervillain types in both versions.

Class and Level is axiomatically an implementation of the monomyth's tropes.

I'll note also: I find the monomyth as alien to Conan as to Trek or SG1. I'm willing to accept it in SG-1 if the base competence is high; we see mid to end monomyth with Dr. Jackson and with Te'alk. And lesser so in Cpt. Dr. Carter.

Star Wars is science fantasy, but the d20 Star Wars successfully argues that class-and-level can work with sci-fi. It would not have taken much to take that game and hammer it into a purely science fiction game.

It'd still be lockstep to the Campbellian Monomyth.

I think the class-and-level = fantasy thing is just historical inertia.

Not just inertia. The tie to the monomyth isn't even a good fit for all Fantasy, just that more fantasy uses the monomyth than SF or SO does.

(That said, I don't think everything should be built on a D&D chassis, just that WotC is probably more likely to do that with Gamma World than to sell a separate system.)

GW works fine with a monomyth approach.

I'll note that Star Frontiers can be seen as a Class and Level if you squint hard enough... but if so, EVERY character is multi-classed. And growth will be by adding more classes as well as the very few levels of the existing ones.
Zeb's Guide and the move to color table and many subskills being decoupled...

 

[Reynard]

I don't think class and level have anything to do with philosophy --they are gamist constructs meant to define the character and reward the player, respectively.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Most Sci Fi presents competent heroes without adding Monomyth-style growth.

That is an incredibly sweeping generalization and not one I think is particularly accurate.

Dune, to name a popular franchise once again in the public consciousness, is all about characters learning and growing and often having transformative growth in abilities and skills.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think class and level have anything to do with philosophy --they are gamist constructs meant to define the character and reward the player, respectively.

But they also demand a certain set of borders and a certain degree of chunkiness in advancement. Its theoretically possible to avoid that, but when you do to a large extent you're not really having them serve any purpose (this was true to a large extent with Alternity; it would have been possible to pry the class function off the system and have almost no one notice the difference, and the level function mostly served as a gate to certain abilities rather than doing anything else, since you still had to buy them with skill points).

 

[Reynard]

But they also demand a certain set of borders and a certain degree of chunkiness in advancement. Its theoretically possible to avoid that, but when you do to a large extent you're not really having them serve any purpose (this was true to a large extent with Alternity; it would have been possible to pry the class function off the system and have almost no one notice the difference, and the level function mostly served as a gate to certain abilities rather than doing anything else, since you still had to buy them with skill points).

What does that have to do with expectations of sci-fi that isn't also an expectation of fantasy, though?

 

[Thomas Shey]

What does that have to do with expectations of sci-fi that isn't also an expectation of fantasy, though?

A lot of traditional fantasy assumes a set of relatively narrow set of training and experience that makes it easy to justify class structures. Someone might carry a few skills in from his youth that run far afield, but they're liable to be somewhat limited, and that made classes relatively palatable until we got into the modern period and that sort of assumed medieval structure has stopped being the default; its why even in fantasy most modern class systems are far less rigid than ones of older years.

On the other hand, that sort of tight barrier never made much sense in modern to futuristic settings outside of some special cases. I mean, I spent most of my life as a library assistant and freelance editor, but in my youth I had a period where I apprenticed with a gemcutter as a gem assessor (I was theoretically going to train to be a gemcutter too, but my nerves and some of the problems I had at the time never made that more than theoretical) and also worked as a demolitions apprentice for a bit. That sort of wandering from thing to thing is a much more modern concept, and usually is difficult to represent in class systems.


Levels are a more complicated question. Honestly, they're a historical artifact; with the schematic way OD&D was designed they made advancement easy, and then the combination of the sometimes pleasing chunkiness of that advancement and the fact people got used to them all over the place with the uptake of D&Disms in computer games meant they defined how advancement worked for many people, even though there were other methods (used by any number of games over the last 40 years, some that were as well known in their day as anything outside of D&D was). Levels also tend to play a lot better with a zero-to-hero assumption, which is far, far rarer in SF than in fantasy (and isn't even as common in fantasy as you'd think from its prominence in fantasy gaming).

Essentially, class-and-level systems are a particular stylization that got its start with D&D, and was relatively easy to keep justifying in zero-to-hero narrow fantasy, but starts to fail out more and more the farther you get from that.