Gamma World, past and Future (Hold the CCG)

[LurkMonkey]

A lot of folks are saying they played 1E and/or 2E, with a few 3E's here and there. I wonder: why not 4E, 5E (Alternity) or 6E (d20) -- with 5.5E (Omega World) in there somewhere. Did you not care? Did you play other PA games, just not GW?

Again, just curious. I am looking at developing a adventure "set" for running at cons and maybe selling as a pdf, and am trying to decide between something like Mutant Future (not a GW retro-clone, per se, but definitely geared toward a 1/2E audience) or Exodus (d20).

I was recently running a PbP that used the D20 Apocalypse/5.5/6e rules (I know a lot of people didn't like the S&S books, but there's some good yoinkable bits stashed in there) but I stayed with the 1E flavor. I also threw in bits of Darwin's World into it as well, but I wanted more of the mutant gonzo feel rather than grim apocalypse. For instance, my apocalypse didn't involve nukes. The mutations in game were derived from nano malware and voluntary nano soma reconfigurations. Civilization dies from a thousand cuts (too many cranks with too much abilty to make terror strikes) crowned with a guided asteroid strike sent from some embattled L5 colonies.

One thing I have always found is it is important to give the players a defined goal in GW. For the game mentioned above I had them travelling as ambassadors to Nu Ork to attempt to enlist the Gangs of Nu Ork (A collection of nano-mutated tribes inhabiting the ruins of the old Manhattan Arcology) against the Wreckers (The Rectified Church of Later Day Martyrs- a Pure Strain religious group dedicated to 'purging' mutations from the Earth and destroying any 'soulware' AI-tech as well.) Although I had to shutter the game before they completed their goal, it ran like 18 months through my reimagined Western New England landscape. It was a lot of fun, and I was able to set them against a lot of different foes as they travelled.

 

[Richards]

I played (and GMed) both first and second editions of Gamma World. We had a good time with both, but overall I think I prefer the first edition. The artwork was much better, for one thing - no matter what edition I might ever play, my hissers and hoops will always look like they appeared in the first edition book.

Johnathan

 

[darjr]

I found my original box, and instead of the rule book it had the 88 GenCon/Origins convention event catalog, blast. I didn't even make it to GenCon/Origins.

I do still have the map, I think I'll use the box to store Metamorphosis Alpha or Mutant Future.

 

[WayneLigon]

We played the heck out of it 'back in the day'; the only edition I've ever played is the first one. Later editions just didn't stack up, and their use of cartoonish crayon-colored maps really fell short of the original with it's drowned coastlines and most of the massive and famous settlements of Man drowned beneath the waves or swaddled in radiation. It was an occasionally sobering thought in early Reagen-Era America to look at that map...

The thing I never liked about latter editions was the elimination of 'The Social Wars'. The idea that we'd solved all the material needs of our civilization which should have led us to a Star-Trek-like Utopia instead brought about the end as mankind became increasingly polarized on social/political/religious lines and one-true-way'd itself into oblivion.

We played it pretty straight, mutated animals notwithstanding. We drew a lot of inspiration from the Dragon magazine articles about Jim Ward's Met Alpha game and the subsequent descriptions in a couple later articles, with a heavy dose of Kamandi, Last Boy On Earth. The idea of androids as West-world-like implacable enemies of mankind was a good one. Yeah, there would be funny incidents as people would try to figure out what the heck a fusion cutting torch construction tool was, but some pathos upon finding religions or societies based on ancient pop culture items or ideas. Mutated animals declaring their superiority while making use of things Mankind invented and they just appropriated or got wrong. The radiation-crazed priests worshiping the 'Adam Bomb' as the source of all life we took right from Planet of the Apes and countless SF comics.

 

[Stormonu]

I must have played the 2E version, though my memories are very faint. I remember I played an intelligent rabbit* (not quite a hoop) and we had recovered a landspeeder (with a mounted gun of some sort) that we used to travel around. Our group did a lot of ruin-raiding, though eventually we became protectors for a local village. I don't remember many specifics, of our adventures, other than one incident of charging into a fight vs. pure-strain humans while our allies were tossing radiation grenades into fight (so the humans took damage and we got extra powers...).

Personally, I was too busy playing D&D to get into GW 3E, and 4E just seemed like a retread. At the time the 5E/Alternity came out, I skipped it, though I did come back later and buy it (I only tried it recently, but did like it). I picked up 6E because it was based on d20, and I mostly like it but I was a little disappointed by the WW "edge" they tried to build into it.

My problem always seem to be finding someone interested in giving the game a go. Prior to Fallout 3's release, I couldn't find a group interested in running Apocalyptic gaming since about the time of Road Warrior.


* At the time, I had just recently read Watership Down, so I was greatly influenced by that to make a "humanoid rabbit" character, also hoops have become my favorite gamma world critter.

 

[fanboy2000]

I started with Omega World, which was the best of the Polyhedron mini-games. In fact, I bought multiple copies of the magazine and the pdf of it, just so I could have additional copies of the random PC generation tables for people to use.

At one point, I owned the Alternity version of GW, but I never played it. I love Alternity, but the GW book just didn't inspire me.

I never owned the S&S books, I had no need for them.

 

[dm4hire]

I got in with 2e though it was a short game. Picked up different eds from time to time. Still have the Alternity version and just bought an extra copy a month or so ago.

 

[pawsplay]

I played the hell out of 2e and 3e, sometimes for marathon weekend sessions. 4e was interesting to me, but I decided the character advancement rules were kind of wack or something, if I am recalling correctly.

 

[OchreJelly]

I think I played 1E. I was pretty young, and I may not have actually played it, but I remember rolling characters and drawing pictures of my crazy plant guy.

I remember wanting to play it after seeing Thundarr the Barbarian cartoons. Even as a kid at the time I thought the show's premise was amusing -- back in the 80's everyone thought the world would end via nukes, not some environmental disaster. Ha ha ... erm, yeah...

Oh and the cartoon said the world basically ended in 1994.

 

[scourger]

I started with Omega World, which was the best of the Polyhedron mini-games. In fact, I bought multiple copies of the magazine and the pdf of it, just so I could have additional copies of the random PC generation tables for people to use.

I didn't know there was a pdf. Just bought it to go with my 2 print copies. I would really love to see Omega World reprinted as an OGL game.