What drives your Gamma World campaign?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Man, I haven't played Gamma World in so long...it was a lot of fun when we were playing it.

It was driven by three things:

1) Inherrent silliness. I played a floating mutant mushroom.

2) Seeing familiar places deconstructed.

3) Finding weapons and armor of insane destructive capability. I forget the name of the boxed set that dealt with the mech-armor, but we loved that.

 

[Shallown]

I'm working on a D20 adaptation of Gamma world. I know its been done but not like the classics. I ran a GW game about 2 years ago using some make shift rules and it went well. It was interesting in that none of theplayers had ever played it or any game like it so the bizarreness of the setting was new and fresh to them. After having played D&D for a while its hard to get that freshness recaptured again.

As far as motivation I kept it small and personal. Thier Job was to find out why the merchant who visited twice a year had quit coming. Was he killed off or did he move on to greener pastures. Also if he was gone to establish a new trade route since the village lacked in a few areas that required trade. I ran them against some knights of genetic purity and than to the Famine in fargo module with the Gallus Gallus 5-13s. One eyed mutated chickens.

One of the high lights was while penetrating the genetic knights fort the were sneaking through the animal/horse pen when the horses started talking to them. It threw the players for a loop even though they had a sientient frog, wasp and rhino. It was fun to watch them talk to the hyperactive cross between a horse and snake.

I think the unpredicatablity and lack of genre conventions makes Gamma world a blast. You never know quite what to expect.

Later

 

[KenSeg]

I am thinking of running a GW/Appocolypse/AD&D crossbred campaign that has been knocking around in my head for a bit.

The premise is that as of a certain mystical conjuncture, our world and that of the ancient legends come back together, bringing with it all of the creatures of myth. In addition, the inherent conflict between science and magic background for the two dimensions cause functioning power sources to begin to fail, nuclear plants, electric plants, etc. High level magic has troubles as well. Simple kinetic machines, guns, etc. continue to operate but the plants that created them and all of the interconnecting items no longer run.

I am going to start them off as a group of friends gaming around the table, just as we will be doing. Engrossed in their game and somewhat isolated out in the countryside, they miss the first hour or so of the ensuing chaos until it comes breaking down the front door and eating the dog. How will these people survive the initial chaos? How will government, religions, etc. survive without the technilogical wonders we have all come to depend upon while at the same time under assualt from mythical creatures, undead, changes landscape, etc.

What do you think?

-KenSeg
Gaming since 1978