Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2346560" data-attributes="member: 697">Wow! That post is a blast from the past. Thanks a ton for digging it up. I've had plans to archive a bunch of my essays and forum posts on my web site. That's one I would've overlooked.It's interesting to look at Gamma World in light of my comments about Shadowrun. My first version of Gamma World was 3rd edition. I had a very similar experience with that game as I did with SR - I tried to create "adventures" that mimicked the weird solo adventure booklet that came with that set.It seems to me that Gamma World's core story is essentially the same as D&D's - characters meet up, go into ruins to fight cyborgs, recover possible dangerous artifacts, and return to town. Next week, they do it all over again.The interesting thing is that you can easily design a Gamma World that handles both the serious and wahoo sides of things. A lot of designers get so caught up in the surface elements of a game - the art, the setting - that they forget that gamers are smart enough to bend games into what they want.If I had a chance to design Gamma World d20, I'd draw on D&D's CR and treasure by level system to make the game work. Each artifact would have a level rating that would work a lot like a D&D magic item's GP value - it serves as a guide to help you place an appropriate balanced treasure. Same with CR - you can create all these weird mutants, but if the CRs are right the GM will only use them when the PCs are ready for them.The real key is for a whacky, random game, you can just tell the GM to ignore those guidelines. If anything, you encourage a wildly over the top game by showing the GM which monsters and items are really powerful and easy to toss into the game to shake things up.The CR and treasure by level systems are, IMO, continually ignored by most publishers and designers. They are very handy tools that you can use to regulate the flow of resources to the PCs, regardless of the game. In D&D, it might be magic items. In an SF game, super high tech weapons. In cyberpunk, advanced cybernetics, and so on.In a properly designed d20 system, there's no such thing as an item that's too powerful. Such an item (or feat, or spell) is simply undercosted.(How's that for a tangent!)</blockquote>

Verification