What drives your Gamma World campaign?

[Driddle]

I haven't played Gamma World in who-knows-how-long. Used to adore it as a kid. I fell in love with the concept of playing a -- yes, I'll admit it -- X-man-like mutant, even on an grungy post-apocalyptic world. I was able to grab a game or two in college, but the strongest memory I have before that was trying to convince my high school friends that their PCs couldn't simply ingest every random mutagen they stumbled across. Very frustrating. Piles of dead PCs didn't matter to them; and I lacked the skills necessary to move the game along.

So I'm curious what shape your GW (or GW-like) games have taken. Have you been part of an ongoing campaign, and if so, what was your overall motivation to keep your PC moving?

 

[DMH]

Lets see-

NYS turned into a swamp, Ice Age that covers to the deep south, Created civil war, reinvasion from human colonies in the system, mutant octopi invading land, humanless plague lands, sky dwelling humans and mutants on floating cities, underwater androids that try to keep a volcano from erupting, and mutant plants that war with animals. The one I really want to run follows 2 or 3 families down through the ages starting before the Cataclysm and ending whenever the players get tired.

Oh and a Cthulhu/GW crossover. That was disturbing- obbs and blights fighting hunting horrors. Humans didn't even figure into any battle.

 

[HellHound]

What drives them?

Silliness, really. We run Omega World, which is the wildest of the GW variants published to date.

I mean, really... we have a giant ladybug who is stupid (Int 4) and incredibly strong... a character that blinks out of existance whenever stressed (and hyperventilates)... and a little guy with an exposed brain (very sensitive to damage, but fairly smart) who can travel ethereally...

Of course, in the first fight, the blinky character blinks right out of existence, the brainy guy goes ethereal, and the ladybug kills things. Then she gets hungry. When blinky got back from her temporary time warp, she found the ladybug crying over the 'corpse' of the ethereal brainy guy... by the time brainy guy came back from scouting around, his body was tied to a spit and the fire was being set so the ladybug could have dinner.

 

[scourger]

I ran a game using the d20 rules from Omega World (OW--the real d20 Gamma World game from the Polyhedron Side of Dungeon #94) and the Alternity Gamma World (AGW) setting and adventures (in the back of the AGW book). I had the original gamma world boxed set back in the day; the one with the ruined city on the front. OW had the right nostalgic feel for me and is truly an awesome application of the d20 rules engine. AGW has a great story arc that you can only pick up by reading all the flavor text fromt he first few pages through the last page of the mini-campaign it presents. I had a lot of fun running that game.

My biggest advice to you is to pick up OW. I liked it so well that I bought an extra copy in addition to my subscription and one for a friend. That friend went on the run an OW game using an old Gamma World adventure titled Legion of Gold. We haven't finished it yet, but I keep hoping he will conclude it. OW is so good that it is one of the few things I seriously consider keeping when pondering getting rid of all my d20 stuff. It really gets done in about 40 pages what many sourcebooks struggle to do in 4 or more times as many pages. It is a complete campaign setting with great stuff for DMs to actually run a game.

Anyway, you can get a back issue of Dungeon with OW here:

http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/v5748btpy72wv

 

[Dextolen]

In our games (80's - high school) it was all about getting a cool base of operations. I've never cared about the castle/follower aspect of higher level AD&D and other games but for some reason it was the end all be all of our GW games.

 

[mmadsen]

I owned (and tried to run) the original Gamma World as a kid, but I didn't know what to do with it. I also bought the Omega World issue of Polyhedron and really liked it, but what caught my fancy was not the crazy mutations; it was the post-holocaust imagery.

I'd love to be able to play a D&D-esque game without telling the players it was post-holocaust, but I doubt I could pull it off. The "magic items" would too obviously be current technology.

 

[diaglo]

our GW campaign ended in 1983.

 

[VorpalBunny]

our GW campaign ended in 1983.

Mine too.

 

[Driddle]

It seemed to me (back then) that gamers were "seriously" invested only in their D&D genre characters -- eat, drink and sleep dragons, elves, magic, etc. -- and any other games were played for humorous amusement only. And by humorous, I mean that no one ever expected to see their red-shirted ensign survive to a second game night. Heck, they proactively drove non-D&D PCs to the most outrageous deaths possible.

 

[Henry]

We had a fairly long-running Gamma World / D&D campaign mix back in the late 80's, using 1st edition GW rules and Gary's conversion from the DMG. There were:

--A Boot Hill gunfighter
--A Gamma World Mutant with Chlorophyll skin who has some sort of rage ability (he called it "Hulking out")
--and me, a Kender Thief with a telekinetic Arm and a Force Field.

We had a good time for about a year, alternating between silly scenarios and deadly scenarios in the same game.