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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 49727" data-attributes="member: 1054">A quick note on 'wackiness'.Just because many people (myself included) greatly enjoy the feel of 1st and 2nd edition GW, does not mean it should be played as a joke. The AE desecration of Metamorphosis Alpha shows what happens when the designers have contempt for their source material. The wackiness of GW was not imposed by decree, but evolved organically from the material. No one (I hope) sat around and said, "Hey, let's do this -- it's really silly!". (Also look at the disaster that was fifth edition Paranoia for a similair failure)Let Gamma World be Gamma World. Don't try to punch it up, or contemptuously treat the materials as fodder for bad jokes. Play it straight, let audiences take the strangeness of the world as just the way things are.(Look at Astro City or Marvels as a way to do it right, even though the genre differs. In the 80s, we had deconstructionist superheroics -- Watchmen, Dark Knight, Miracleman. They asked "What if superheroes existed in the real world?", and got grim answers. The works I mentioned earlier take a different tack. They say "What if the over-the-top world of superheroes was the real world, and people just lived in it and accepted it as matter-of-fact?" Gamma World should be like that. Giant rabbits, death machines, "sword and raygun" tech, and that's "just the way it is".)</blockquote>