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Gamma World Science Fantasy Role-Playing Game
Gamma World is a post apocalyptic role-playing game set in the far flung future.
98 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
James M. Ward
116 books55 followersJames M. Ward (b. 1951) is an American game designer and fantasy author.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 15, 2022
Original Review 3/12/2017: After the phenomenal success of “Dungeons & Dragons,” TSR put out a number of other role-playing games for different worlds and scenarios. This was one of the first and one of the most successful, although never on the same level as its predecessor. It was also, if I remember rightly, the second RPG I played after D&D.
The basic premise, was the ever popular post-apocalyptic sci fi survival scenario. Although it was published during the Cold War, it avoided dated political references by not assuming that the world had been destroyed in a thermonuclear conflict between the USA and USSR. Instead, it posits a cataclysm in the early twenty fourth century brought about by a non-governmental terrorist organization – a premise that may actually resonate more now than it did at the time. This has the advantage of allowing for the survival of very advanced technology, like ray guns, robots, androids, etc. Because of the high level of radiation, new mutations abound in Gamma World, and players can roll up randomly mutated humans, and animals, while the referee may create new mutated species, both animal and plant, or pick from a list of about 40 or 50 “monsters” that have been prepared for the game. Players wishing to avoid the defects that often come with mutant characters can choose to play “Pure Strain Humans” whose genes have proved resistant to radiation and have some advantages learning the technology of the Ancients.
The combat system is similar to D&D, with matrices comparing attack and armor type, although these are somewhat simplified by the lack of character “levels” affecting combat ability (more on this in a moment). There are other matrices for mental combat with psychic powers, and for poison and radiation exposure. Probably the most famous (or infamous) technical innovation of the game is a series of flow-charts for arbitrating the PCs’ process of figuring out complex devices of the Ancients and how they work (these were also used in the D&D Module S3, and, I believe, in Gamma World’s predecessor game, “Metamorphosis Alpha). I rather liked this idea in theory, but found that players were impatient with it, and would rather role play, “I push the big red button, what happens?” than use such an abstract method.
The mechanics of the game were, at least in comparison with the Advanced D&D standard, thus relatively straightforward and easy to learn. But, Gamma World never really caught on to the same degree, at least among my friends at the time. I think this is because it didn’t really support campaign play as well as D&D did: you could come up with a good adventure or two, but it was hard to keep it going. For one thing, this is a matter of world-building, and perhaps some referees did a better job than I or my friends in constructing an interesting post-nuke culture for their players to interact with. But the rules offer fairly little advice along these lines. It’s difficult to understand what the players’ motivation is, beyond “survive another day and try to find some cool tech,” and this doesn’t hold up well over time. Instead of describing a world of villages, towns, and empires, they only describe some shadowy “Cryptic Alliances” that apparently operate as secret societies (but in what context? it’s not clear). Partly, this is also a flaw in game design. D&D very wisely set up a system of rewards for advancement with levels that increased hit points and abilities as you went. A Gamma World character gained experience comparably slowly and all they got at a new “level” was a small bonus to a random ability score. Thus, there was little sense of accomplishment. Gamma World also lacked a system of character classes, which weakened it as a game of team cooperation. Each player was pretty much the same as the others in the party, aside from randomly determined mutations and ability scores, and that made working together more difficult, and at times less appealing than selfish action. That sort of thing can also be fun, but it tends to be short lived.
In the game’s favor, its creators do have a whimsical imagination, particularly for bizarre mutant species, which looking back today were often rather silly, but in a fun way. I also enjoyed some of the Cryptic Alliances, which suggest the darker humor that later showed up in the RPG “Paranoia.” In the end I would rate Gamma World as a good idea that wasn’t quite fully realized.
Update: 12/14/2022: I find myself mostly in agreement with the above, on re-reading the rules, but noted one particular tension that was rather awkward. While the robots and weapons of the ancients that are scattered about the world are decidedly of 24th-century stamp, the “treasure list” at the end of the book includes a number of unlikely 20th-century objects, apparently intended to give “character” to your campaign. These include obviously antiquarian objects like cuckoo clocks and "old fashioned” dresses, but also objects like typewriters and parking meters, which are hardly likely to have 24th-century equivalents (indeed, it’s hard to pay for parking without a Smart Phone in 2022!). Although there would be no internal logic, it makes me wish for a game in which technology proceeded with level – first level characters would find crossbows and barding, third level characters six guns and compasses, fifth level characters Uzis and Macbooks, and by the time you got to ninth or tenth level you would be in the full glory of Mark VII Blasters and powered armor.
Speaking of the back of the book, one other thing I failed to comment on before is the lovingly crafted, though at times tantalizingly limited “Monster Listings” (actually random encounter tables) given in the back. These include some very detailed listings for “tribesmen” and “cryptic alliances” – some of which make me wish for full monster descriptions in the main text, and some of which could be excellent adventure hooks. Consider, for example the following brief description:
“Tribesmen (81)...AT: 2 claws do 1d6 damage each, plus intensity 12 poison; MU: heightened strength, infravision, sensitive to light. These are night-dwelling carrion-eaters, often razing small village; at dawn they meld their minds…and erect an opaque energy field (30m diameter), which has the following powers: delivers a 4d6 electrical bolt to any within 5m, absorbs 100 points per melee round and possesses chameleon powers so as to make it almost undetectable at any great distance.”
This group of nearly 100 powerful nomadic mutants has great potential as a high-level threat to the civilized area the players might be based in (and could be increased if need be), but little use as a random “wandering monster” unless the purpose is simply to kill off all of the PCs. But, apart from listing their hit points, we get nothing more about them in the text. I hope, at least, that some creative GM somewhere has taken this idea and run with it.
The basic premise, was the ever popular post-apocalyptic sci fi survival scenario. Although it was published during the Cold War, it avoided dated political references by not assuming that the world had been destroyed in a thermonuclear conflict between the USA and USSR. Instead, it posits a cataclysm in the early twenty fourth century brought about by a non-governmental terrorist organization – a premise that may actually resonate more now than it did at the time. This has the advantage of allowing for the survival of very advanced technology, like ray guns, robots, androids, etc. Because of the high level of radiation, new mutations abound in Gamma World, and players can roll up randomly mutated humans, and animals, while the referee may create new mutated species, both animal and plant, or pick from a list of about 40 or 50 “monsters” that have been prepared for the game. Players wishing to avoid the defects that often come with mutant characters can choose to play “Pure Strain Humans” whose genes have proved resistant to radiation and have some advantages learning the technology of the Ancients.
The combat system is similar to D&D, with matrices comparing attack and armor type, although these are somewhat simplified by the lack of character “levels” affecting combat ability (more on this in a moment). There are other matrices for mental combat with psychic powers, and for poison and radiation exposure. Probably the most famous (or infamous) technical innovation of the game is a series of flow-charts for arbitrating the PCs’ process of figuring out complex devices of the Ancients and how they work (these were also used in the D&D Module S3, and, I believe, in Gamma World’s predecessor game, “Metamorphosis Alpha). I rather liked this idea in theory, but found that players were impatient with it, and would rather role play, “I push the big red button, what happens?” than use such an abstract method.
The mechanics of the game were, at least in comparison with the Advanced D&D standard, thus relatively straightforward and easy to learn. But, Gamma World never really caught on to the same degree, at least among my friends at the time. I think this is because it didn’t really support campaign play as well as D&D did: you could come up with a good adventure or two, but it was hard to keep it going. For one thing, this is a matter of world-building, and perhaps some referees did a better job than I or my friends in constructing an interesting post-nuke culture for their players to interact with. But the rules offer fairly little advice along these lines. It’s difficult to understand what the players’ motivation is, beyond “survive another day and try to find some cool tech,” and this doesn’t hold up well over time. Instead of describing a world of villages, towns, and empires, they only describe some shadowy “Cryptic Alliances” that apparently operate as secret societies (but in what context? it’s not clear). Partly, this is also a flaw in game design. D&D very wisely set up a system of rewards for advancement with levels that increased hit points and abilities as you went. A Gamma World character gained experience comparably slowly and all they got at a new “level” was a small bonus to a random ability score. Thus, there was little sense of accomplishment. Gamma World also lacked a system of character classes, which weakened it as a game of team cooperation. Each player was pretty much the same as the others in the party, aside from randomly determined mutations and ability scores, and that made working together more difficult, and at times less appealing than selfish action. That sort of thing can also be fun, but it tends to be short lived.
In the game’s favor, its creators do have a whimsical imagination, particularly for bizarre mutant species, which looking back today were often rather silly, but in a fun way. I also enjoyed some of the Cryptic Alliances, which suggest the darker humor that later showed up in the RPG “Paranoia.” In the end I would rate Gamma World as a good idea that wasn’t quite fully realized.
Update: 12/14/2022: I find myself mostly in agreement with the above, on re-reading the rules, but noted one particular tension that was rather awkward. While the robots and weapons of the ancients that are scattered about the world are decidedly of 24th-century stamp, the “treasure list” at the end of the book includes a number of unlikely 20th-century objects, apparently intended to give “character” to your campaign. These include obviously antiquarian objects like cuckoo clocks and "old fashioned” dresses, but also objects like typewriters and parking meters, which are hardly likely to have 24th-century equivalents (indeed, it’s hard to pay for parking without a Smart Phone in 2022!). Although there would be no internal logic, it makes me wish for a game in which technology proceeded with level – first level characters would find crossbows and barding, third level characters six guns and compasses, fifth level characters Uzis and Macbooks, and by the time you got to ninth or tenth level you would be in the full glory of Mark VII Blasters and powered armor.
Speaking of the back of the book, one other thing I failed to comment on before is the lovingly crafted, though at times tantalizingly limited “Monster Listings” (actually random encounter tables) given in the back. These include some very detailed listings for “tribesmen” and “cryptic alliances” – some of which make me wish for full monster descriptions in the main text, and some of which could be excellent adventure hooks. Consider, for example the following brief description:
“Tribesmen (81)...AT: 2 claws do 1d6 damage each, plus intensity 12 poison; MU: heightened strength, infravision, sensitive to light. These are night-dwelling carrion-eaters, often razing small village; at dawn they meld their minds…and erect an opaque energy field (30m diameter), which has the following powers: delivers a 4d6 electrical bolt to any within 5m, absorbs 100 points per melee round and possesses chameleon powers so as to make it almost undetectable at any great distance.”
This group of nearly 100 powerful nomadic mutants has great potential as a high-level threat to the civilized area the players might be based in (and could be increased if need be), but little use as a random “wandering monster” unless the purpose is simply to kill off all of the PCs. But, apart from listing their hit points, we get nothing more about them in the text. I hope, at least, that some creative GM somewhere has taken this idea and run with it.
October 29, 2023
Updated review 10/29/2023: For this new review of GW 3rd ed, I am going to actually take the time to review each booklet, which might easily have each been assigned a separate isbn and sold separately, though I guess that never happened.
The Rule Book is 64 pages long, as compared to the 56 pages of the previous edition, but unlike that one, it contains nowhere near enough information to play a game, despite small print and the removal of almost all illustrations. It is also perhaps the most boring RPG book I have ever read, despite the creativity of the setting. As I mentioned in my first review, this is partly down to the use of huge amounts of real estate to describe “conditions” (such as coma, blindness, allergies…) that may afflict your character. The rules do state that GMs should be selective and not try to apply all of these, but then why put them in the main rulebook in the first place? Much of the rest of the book is given over to describing the mutations, but there are editorial problems here, including several plant mutations that are in the table but not described in the text. The dullness of the book is exemplified by some of the early section headings, such as “How to move,” “How to have encounters” that seem to emphasize the lack of imagination at work. The “Example of Play” takes this to such an extreme as to make use of the hackneyed “Caller” in order to minimize player discussion, although such a technique was already pretty well abandoned by 1986, if it was ever really used at all. I found as I read the book that I was consistently confused by the difference between “Result Factor,” “Result Shift,” and “Modifier,” which I believe are meant to reflect movement along the horizontal rows or vertical columns of the ACT, although I think this is actually used inconsistently in the text – I’m not sure, because as I say I was constantly tripping over my own uncertainty which we were talking about. It would have been simpler to apply all modifiers to the dice rolls themselves and only worry about Result Factors when they shifted the result from one color to another. The section on robots is interesting, but an unnecessarily complex code is used for things like power, senses, and control, when it wouldn’t have required much more space to simply write these things out. Also this section says things like “Artificial life comprises droids and borgs because they are formed by deliberate manipulation of genetic code” when nowhere else in the text do we learn what a droid or a borg is or how to distinguish them from each other. I will add also that it seems to me that robots as player characters would have been a welcome addition to the game, giving more diversity to play and options for adventuring.
The “Rules Supplement” might almost have been called the “Errata and Missing Rules Supplement.” It was hastily thrown in to make up for glaring deficiencies (like those missing plant mutations) and needed clarifications, such as the distinction between Result Factors and Result Shifts. It gives a bit more information about each of the Cryptic Alliances and how to run them, and there’s a brief section outlining “Skills” without enough detail to really use them. The end of the book covers equipment and vehicles, The vehicles are given and overly-detailed one-page reference chart. There are some very creative and interesting high-tech devices included with the “equipment” section.
That the “Reference Book” is called “The Reference Book” is one of the signs of flagging creativity that hangs over the whole project. It could (and should!) have been given a cool name like “The Mutant Manual.” It is a listing of all of the traditional Gamma World beasties with a few welcome new additions. Unlike the rest of the game, it is fully illustrated, with each creature depicted next to its stat block, before its description. One complaint is that the stat block does not include a “size” statistic, and this is not clarified in every case either from the picture (which never includes another object for scale) or the description. In at least one case a creature’s mutations includes the ability to transform into “the form of a bird of their own size” without giving a clue what that size is! In some cases, the art isn’t as good as what was in the older version (see, for example, the Yexil), but it is so nice to see any illustrations that it hardly matters. For some reason, mainly reasons of space I suppose, rules for Medical Equipment and “Talents” that should have been in the rules/supplement are tacked on here. The rules for Talents are better then those for Skills, though the distinction is foggy. I would probably just make all skills into talents and have all skills increase as the character increases rank, to keep things simpler.
Finally, we have the “Adventure Book, a 32-page choose-your-own-adventure-style solo adventure (or you could play it as a group with no GM), which clearly took a lot of work to build. I broke the rules this time and read through the whole thing sequentially, taking the time to follow various branches in order to get a sense of the narrative as well as the bigger picture. I did find one instance where a branch led to the wrong entry at a fairly critical point – I never could figure out what was supposed to happen if you talk to the giant alien brain – but, on the whole, the adventure is quite complete, with lots of opportunities for different kinds of success or failure. Only one entry actually reads “The End” – in general you end the adventure either by dying in combat or by returning to your village with a horde of weapons. There is even a scoring system to judge how well you did at the end. It seems like most of the combat situations are pretty tough: your party of four with 100 hit points each should be able to survive one or two with the starting weapons you are given, but you’re going to need to start collecting high tech weaponry and finding ways to get healed after that. I think the critical thing about this book is that it does give a sense of what the designers imagined the world of Gamma World to be like – lots of powerful creatures and weapons of the Ancients almost everywhere you go.
Original review 5/17/2017: The third edition of “Gamma World” kept a lot of the spirit of the first edition, in terms of the mutations and technology, but changed much of the structure of play. The first, most obvious change comes on the inside cover, where the history of “Gamma World” is described: instead of a detailed chronology of the catastrophe that brought an end to an advanced civilization, we get the oral history mythos of the inheritors of that world. Which makes sense – the survivors of apocalypse are unlikely to have such detailed records of the collapse as those provided in the original game, but somehow this version leaves one hanging, leaving more of the world creation up to individual game masters, for better or worse. It just isn’t as compelling a piece of science fiction as the original intro, either.
The rules have changed a lot as well. The mid-1980s was a period in which the overcomplicated rules systems of the previous decade were beginning to be streamlined, and this edition of GW reflects that. Only six-sided and percentile dice are used, eliminating most of the exotic polyhedrons associated with D&D. All actions (including combat) are resolved using a single colorful “Action Table” (or ACT). The ACT is a matrix of columns and rows – with the columns representing ability scores and the rows the result of a percentile die roll. The cross-reference of these two will fall within a band of color – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white, or black. Red is a critical success and black is a critical failure, the others are varying degrees of success or failure. Bonuses or penalties will either adjust the column you use or shift you from one color band to the other. It is an attractive-looking system, but sort of an odd choice for streamlining. I don’t know this, but I suspect they may have used color as the basis of the system as a copyright-defense: color copying was much more expensive in those days, and this would insure that most people would have to buy a copy of the new edition to use it, not just photocopy the ACT.
To my mind, many of the problems of the original game remain, and the streamlining is less successful than intended. There is still no clear sense of the “world” that the players inhabit in terms of economy, government, society, etc., most of that is left to the GM. Mutations are rolled for randomly (using percentile dice) but now there are so many possible mutations that you have a 1 or 2 percent chance of getting any one of them. This means that there are no “common” mutations that show up all the time, and it also means that you have an equal chance of getting a super-powerful mutation or a relatively weak one on each roll. The chance of getting defects has been significantly reduced (5% for each roll). The experience point system has been adjusted, so that rising in “rank” does add hit points and also improves combat ability, so that at least has been moved closer to the successful model of D&D.
Where the game becomes over-complicated is in the tremendous list of combat effects. Literally as many pages are devoted to this list as to the types of mutations. Everything from coma to frostbite to concussion to allergic reaction is detailed, in some cases with charts that refer to the different Result Factors on the ACT. Expecting players and GMs to track several of these per character after one or two combats was asking a lot, although for players who like realism, this would add something to the difference between a 3 hit point injury and a 20 hit point injury. I noticed a lot more editorial errors in this section of the book (page 25 alone has these plums: “If the result is less than orange, no happens and the cure fails to heal any damage” and “Furthermore, all red results are always have a critical effect”), and I wonder if it wasn’t hastily added at the end of production.
*Added: Speaking of rushing to production, apparently the "Rules Supplement" is not listed on goodreads as a separate book (it is one), but it is really indicative of the level of chaos at TSR in the mid-80s. Sixteen pages of material withheld for "space" was put into a booklet and included with later printings, because parts of the rules still referred to these sections, indicating really poor editing. It is here that we get details of the "Cryptic Alliances" as well as plant mutations, as well as rules on barter and details on armor types, robots, and vehicles. Some of that probably was more or less "icing" and not necessary for the game (except those plant mutations!), but it still looks bad to have to slip in an extra booklet because of editorial breakdown.
The Rule Book is 64 pages long, as compared to the 56 pages of the previous edition, but unlike that one, it contains nowhere near enough information to play a game, despite small print and the removal of almost all illustrations. It is also perhaps the most boring RPG book I have ever read, despite the creativity of the setting. As I mentioned in my first review, this is partly down to the use of huge amounts of real estate to describe “conditions” (such as coma, blindness, allergies…) that may afflict your character. The rules do state that GMs should be selective and not try to apply all of these, but then why put them in the main rulebook in the first place? Much of the rest of the book is given over to describing the mutations, but there are editorial problems here, including several plant mutations that are in the table but not described in the text. The dullness of the book is exemplified by some of the early section headings, such as “How to move,” “How to have encounters” that seem to emphasize the lack of imagination at work. The “Example of Play” takes this to such an extreme as to make use of the hackneyed “Caller” in order to minimize player discussion, although such a technique was already pretty well abandoned by 1986, if it was ever really used at all. I found as I read the book that I was consistently confused by the difference between “Result Factor,” “Result Shift,” and “Modifier,” which I believe are meant to reflect movement along the horizontal rows or vertical columns of the ACT, although I think this is actually used inconsistently in the text – I’m not sure, because as I say I was constantly tripping over my own uncertainty which we were talking about. It would have been simpler to apply all modifiers to the dice rolls themselves and only worry about Result Factors when they shifted the result from one color to another. The section on robots is interesting, but an unnecessarily complex code is used for things like power, senses, and control, when it wouldn’t have required much more space to simply write these things out. Also this section says things like “Artificial life comprises droids and borgs because they are formed by deliberate manipulation of genetic code” when nowhere else in the text do we learn what a droid or a borg is or how to distinguish them from each other. I will add also that it seems to me that robots as player characters would have been a welcome addition to the game, giving more diversity to play and options for adventuring.
The “Rules Supplement” might almost have been called the “Errata and Missing Rules Supplement.” It was hastily thrown in to make up for glaring deficiencies (like those missing plant mutations) and needed clarifications, such as the distinction between Result Factors and Result Shifts. It gives a bit more information about each of the Cryptic Alliances and how to run them, and there’s a brief section outlining “Skills” without enough detail to really use them. The end of the book covers equipment and vehicles, The vehicles are given and overly-detailed one-page reference chart. There are some very creative and interesting high-tech devices included with the “equipment” section.
That the “Reference Book” is called “The Reference Book” is one of the signs of flagging creativity that hangs over the whole project. It could (and should!) have been given a cool name like “The Mutant Manual.” It is a listing of all of the traditional Gamma World beasties with a few welcome new additions. Unlike the rest of the game, it is fully illustrated, with each creature depicted next to its stat block, before its description. One complaint is that the stat block does not include a “size” statistic, and this is not clarified in every case either from the picture (which never includes another object for scale) or the description. In at least one case a creature’s mutations includes the ability to transform into “the form of a bird of their own size” without giving a clue what that size is! In some cases, the art isn’t as good as what was in the older version (see, for example, the Yexil), but it is so nice to see any illustrations that it hardly matters. For some reason, mainly reasons of space I suppose, rules for Medical Equipment and “Talents” that should have been in the rules/supplement are tacked on here. The rules for Talents are better then those for Skills, though the distinction is foggy. I would probably just make all skills into talents and have all skills increase as the character increases rank, to keep things simpler.
Finally, we have the “Adventure Book, a 32-page choose-your-own-adventure-style solo adventure (or you could play it as a group with no GM), which clearly took a lot of work to build. I broke the rules this time and read through the whole thing sequentially, taking the time to follow various branches in order to get a sense of the narrative as well as the bigger picture. I did find one instance where a branch led to the wrong entry at a fairly critical point – I never could figure out what was supposed to happen if you talk to the giant alien brain – but, on the whole, the adventure is quite complete, with lots of opportunities for different kinds of success or failure. Only one entry actually reads “The End” – in general you end the adventure either by dying in combat or by returning to your village with a horde of weapons. There is even a scoring system to judge how well you did at the end. It seems like most of the combat situations are pretty tough: your party of four with 100 hit points each should be able to survive one or two with the starting weapons you are given, but you’re going to need to start collecting high tech weaponry and finding ways to get healed after that. I think the critical thing about this book is that it does give a sense of what the designers imagined the world of Gamma World to be like – lots of powerful creatures and weapons of the Ancients almost everywhere you go.
Original review 5/17/2017: The third edition of “Gamma World” kept a lot of the spirit of the first edition, in terms of the mutations and technology, but changed much of the structure of play. The first, most obvious change comes on the inside cover, where the history of “Gamma World” is described: instead of a detailed chronology of the catastrophe that brought an end to an advanced civilization, we get the oral history mythos of the inheritors of that world. Which makes sense – the survivors of apocalypse are unlikely to have such detailed records of the collapse as those provided in the original game, but somehow this version leaves one hanging, leaving more of the world creation up to individual game masters, for better or worse. It just isn’t as compelling a piece of science fiction as the original intro, either.
The rules have changed a lot as well. The mid-1980s was a period in which the overcomplicated rules systems of the previous decade were beginning to be streamlined, and this edition of GW reflects that. Only six-sided and percentile dice are used, eliminating most of the exotic polyhedrons associated with D&D. All actions (including combat) are resolved using a single colorful “Action Table” (or ACT). The ACT is a matrix of columns and rows – with the columns representing ability scores and the rows the result of a percentile die roll. The cross-reference of these two will fall within a band of color – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white, or black. Red is a critical success and black is a critical failure, the others are varying degrees of success or failure. Bonuses or penalties will either adjust the column you use or shift you from one color band to the other. It is an attractive-looking system, but sort of an odd choice for streamlining. I don’t know this, but I suspect they may have used color as the basis of the system as a copyright-defense: color copying was much more expensive in those days, and this would insure that most people would have to buy a copy of the new edition to use it, not just photocopy the ACT.
To my mind, many of the problems of the original game remain, and the streamlining is less successful than intended. There is still no clear sense of the “world” that the players inhabit in terms of economy, government, society, etc., most of that is left to the GM. Mutations are rolled for randomly (using percentile dice) but now there are so many possible mutations that you have a 1 or 2 percent chance of getting any one of them. This means that there are no “common” mutations that show up all the time, and it also means that you have an equal chance of getting a super-powerful mutation or a relatively weak one on each roll. The chance of getting defects has been significantly reduced (5% for each roll). The experience point system has been adjusted, so that rising in “rank” does add hit points and also improves combat ability, so that at least has been moved closer to the successful model of D&D.
Where the game becomes over-complicated is in the tremendous list of combat effects. Literally as many pages are devoted to this list as to the types of mutations. Everything from coma to frostbite to concussion to allergic reaction is detailed, in some cases with charts that refer to the different Result Factors on the ACT. Expecting players and GMs to track several of these per character after one or two combats was asking a lot, although for players who like realism, this would add something to the difference between a 3 hit point injury and a 20 hit point injury. I noticed a lot more editorial errors in this section of the book (page 25 alone has these plums: “If the result is less than orange, no happens and the cure fails to heal any damage” and “Furthermore, all red results are always have a critical effect”), and I wonder if it wasn’t hastily added at the end of production.
*Added: Speaking of rushing to production, apparently the "Rules Supplement" is not listed on goodreads as a separate book (it is one), but it is really indicative of the level of chaos at TSR in the mid-80s. Sixteen pages of material withheld for "space" was put into a booklet and included with later printings, because parts of the rules still referred to these sections, indicating really poor editing. It is here that we get details of the "Cryptic Alliances" as well as plant mutations, as well as rules on barter and details on armor types, robots, and vehicles. Some of that probably was more or less "icing" and not necessary for the game (except those plant mutations!), but it still looks bad to have to slip in an extra booklet because of editorial breakdown.
December 30, 2023
Continuing my tradition of bulking up my retro rpg collection every winter.
Despite having my first two ttrpgs back in middle school be Werewolf the Apocalypse and 2e DnD, I never even heard of Gamma World until a few years ago when I started following OSR adjacent stuff. I wish I had because this is better than either of those and I am sure we would have had a lot of fun with it. It appealed to me since I am currently running an ongoing post-apocalyptic (using the Shadow of the Demon Lord/Punkapocalypse system) campaign. Naturally, I got the edition with the best cover art.
While I have no interest in using this system (though it is not difficult to learn), I did find, as is so often the case in these old books, that it has great ideas for idea-harvesting. The factions list and some hex materials are particularly interesting to post-apocalyptic leaning GMs as are some of the monster and character options.
Despite having my first two ttrpgs back in middle school be Werewolf the Apocalypse and 2e DnD, I never even heard of Gamma World until a few years ago when I started following OSR adjacent stuff. I wish I had because this is better than either of those and I am sure we would have had a lot of fun with it. It appealed to me since I am currently running an ongoing post-apocalyptic (using the Shadow of the Demon Lord/Punkapocalypse system) campaign. Naturally, I got the edition with the best cover art.
While I have no interest in using this system (though it is not difficult to learn), I did find, as is so often the case in these old books, that it has great ideas for idea-harvesting. The factions list and some hex materials are particularly interesting to post-apocalyptic leaning GMs as are some of the monster and character options.
May 4, 2022
Imagine being a teenager in the early 70s, at a book store with a stack of pulp fiction novels. In walks a burley biker dude that makes you nervous. Standing in line at the check out line, the burley biker stands behind you with the exact same stack of books, and makes a comment about your taste in literature and then invites you to his home to play a new game. That teen is James Ward, and the biker is Gary Gygax. The rest is history.
March 4, 2024
I love this RPG its my favorite and the first 2 editions are compatible with the first 2 AD&D editions. If you like fallout you will love this game.
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August 23, 2008isbn,original
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