How compatible should Gamma World be with Dungeons and Dragons?

[aramis erak]

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.

Which is why I didn't cite Dune. But some of the elder Herbert's work, unlike Dune, avoids the hero's transformative journey. Destination Void comes to mind.

It's beyond just a justification, tho' - as it's also why I personally dislike Class & Level for sci-fi, because the kind of sci-fi I prefer lacks magic without technological basis, excepting Trek, Star Wars, and the mecha anime I like (Gundam and Robotech - both of which have both magic and the monomyth)... all of which have magic of the type called Psionics or Mentalism in gaming... Star Wars' Force is well beyond my ability to accept as Sci-Fi, but nicely fits my tolerances for fantasy. I disliked Alien Resurrection specifically because it introduces telempathy in the resurrected Ripley..

Campbell asserted the monomyth was universal; Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, Niven, and Card all showed that it's not needed to have the monomyth to have a successful novel. And all of those also have other novels where the monomyth is very in one's face.

Bujold uses it for some arcs in the Vorkosiverse, and not for others. When Cordelia is introduced, she (and Aral, for that matter) are quite competent; Bothari's already broken with no where to go... and Miles isn't yet extant. (The Cordelia based novels were written first, but released after The Warrior's Apprentice.)

Howard's heroes (Kull, Kane, Conan) are likewise quite competent... when written by Howard. I'll note that in the Conan movies, Conan's not on the hero's journey, but the rest of the party seems to be... but the opening flashbacks force the monomyth onto Conan...

I know a number of my friends feel similar about the monomyth elements of C&L vs Sci-Fi and Space Opera — and many of us do distinguish the two as low-overlap.

 

[Reynard]

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.

I don't buy it. It's just selection bias.There are as many stories about inherently competent fantasy characters as there are about zero-to-hero sci-fi characters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't buy it. It's just selection bias.There are as many stories about inherently competent fantasy characters as there are about zero-to-hero sci-fi characters.

But that's not how D&D has played from day one, and that's set expectations. And it still does. Contrast a 1st level D&D character (and it almost doesn't matter what edition you use) to the breadth and depth of most SF games in how they start characters.

 

[Reynard]

But that's not how D&D has played from day one, and that's set expectations. And it still does. Contrast a 1st level D&D character (and it almost doesn't matter what edition you use) to the breadth and depth of most SF games in how they start characters.

What "most SF games" are you thinking of?

 

[Thomas Shey]

What "most SF games" are you thinking of?

Before I start, are we going to play a game of "Never heard of it" or "that's not a real SF game"?

 

[Reynard]

Before I start, are we going to play a game of "Never heard of it" or "that's not a real SF game"?

Nope. But when I think SF RPGs I think of Stars Without Number and Starfinder, both of which are class and level based.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Nope. But when I think SF RPGs I think of Stars Without Number and Starfinder, both of which are class and level based.

Okay, just wanted to save myself trouble here. Examples:

GURPS Space,
Star Hero
Coriolis
Later versions of Traveler (early versions for various reasons tended to be so stingy with any sort of skill rank that it was only rarely going to be outside of primary profession)
Fragged Empire
Cyberpunk 2020 (honestly, most cyberpunk games; true mostly of Shadowrun and and others too)
Eclipse Phase

None of these tend to drop basic characters that are newbie/basic characters. If what you've seen are all SF games derived from D&D games, of course those will do that--its part of the problem with using that as a basis, that zero-to-hero tendency is baked into the basic game assumptions in most levelled games. And class based games don't tend to too much slack on what capabilities reach outside whatever profession(s) the class represents (modern ones tend to be a little better here, but I think they're still afraid rather than spreading out people will just double down--and overpower--that basic functionality).

 

[aramis erak]

Okay, just wanted to save myself trouble here. Examples:

GURPS Space,
Star Hero
Coriolis
Later versions of Traveler (early versions for various reasons tended to be so stingy with any sort of skill rank that it was only rarely going to be outside of primary profession)
Fragged Empire
Cyberpunk 2020 (honestly, most cyberpunk games; true mostly of Shadowrun and and others too)
Eclipse Phase

None of these tend to drop basic characters that are newbie/basic characters. If what you've seen are all SF games derived from D&D games, of course those will do that--its part of the problem with using that as a basis, that zero-to-hero tendency is baked into the basic game assumptions in most levelled games. And class based games don't tend to too much slack on what capabilities reach outside whatever profession(s) the class represents (modern ones tend to be a little better here, but I think they're still afraid rather than spreading out people will just double down--and overpower--that basic functionality).

Traveller actually doesn't make it hard to get skills unless the player fixates on attributes. It's one of those "a few players made claims based upon their very limited experience and bad decisions then made widely believed false claims." Plus, the average is about 1.6 skills per term through 7 terms.
MegaTraveller (MT) is about 2.something per term. TNE and later get bigger still. Mongoose actually gives FEWER than MegaTraveller...

Anyway, I expect WotC to go fully D&D 5 compatible... but I won't buy unless they move it significantly away from 5E AND my players ask for it. But they want Fallout...

Edit to add: They don't have any nostalgia for GW as it existed, but they do with Fallout.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Traveller actually doesn't make it hard to get skills unless the player fixates on attributes. It's one of those "a few players made claims based upon their very limited experience and bad decisions then made widely believed false claims." Plus, the average is about 1.6 skills per term through 7 terms.

I think original Trav was fairly chintzy about that if you weren't willing to stay in until your 40's. Someone with 2-3 cycles should probably be more capable than they typically are in some of the specializations involved. Of course you can argue that's more an artifact of the randomization than the actual skill ranks given.

MegaTraveller (MT) is about 2.something per term. TNE and later get bigger still. Mongoose actually gives FEWER than MegaTraveller...

Megatraveller was actually where it felt like it got relatively reasonable, given the inevitable compression given the scale.

 

[aramis erak]

I think original Trav was fairly chintzy about that if you weren't willing to stay in until your 40's. Someone with 2-3 cycles should probably be more capable than they typically are in some of the specializations involved. Of course you can argue that's more an artifact of the randomization than the actual skill ranks given.

Term 1 is a guaranteed 2 rolls, and in half the careers in Bk1, guaranteed 3.
Plus the chance for 2 more. Go, look it up. (I demoed CT at a local con late in 2022. I started with CT. You have fallen for negative hype by the disgruntled.) Sure, it took the totally new to Traveller crowd about an hour for all 6 to get characters done... not a one had less than 4 skill levels on sheet, including the 1 term wonder: Navy, 1 term, commission, promotion, failed to reenlist. Which got him 1 for term, one more for term #1, one for commission, one for promotion.

Really, it's not stingy at all, especially when one runs it with minimal rolling, and anything routine simply requires skill 1 to succeed at.
Vacc Suit 0 is good enough to get in, use, and do basic work in a vacuum. The rolls called for are to get in it in a hurry, or to patch it when it's pierced...
Most of the non-combat skills are that way. Heck, even the combat skills: routine maintenance requires only skill 0. Which, unless one's a Barbarian (from Sup4), all PC's have for all civilian firearms.