A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Gamma World
My excitement about Gamma World has been inescapable for Robot Viking readers, the many people who watched the unboxing video, friends and family, random strangers, etc. Maybe I was a little too excited, since I ended up not liking Gamma World as much as I thought. The good news is, there’s a lot of awesomeness in that weird green box, and the stuff I didn’t like is easily fixable.
The first thing that needs addressing is the cards. There’s been a lot of angst about the cards. I hear a lot of snide comments about cards infiltrating RPGs, about being forced to buy the cards to play the game and other typical nerd rage. The thing is, the cards are the best part of Gamma World, but also, people are kind of right about the cards in some ways. Let me explain.
You get two decks of cards: Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech. The decks are kept separate, so why they have identical card backs, I have no idea. It’s definitely a pain when they get mixed up. Each encounter, and whenever you roll a natural 1 on a D20, a player turns in an Alpha Mutation card and draws a new one. At higher levels, you can have more than one at a time, but the important thing is that you’re constantly swapping them out. It’s fun and exciting gaining some kind of ludicrous new power for every battle, seeing how they synergize with the other party members’ powers or your own origin powers.
Omega Tech is handed out pretty liberally, certainly at a higher rate than magic item parcels in D&D. You don’t get to keep Omega Tech (which are awesomely powerful weapons) forever. After each encounter, they have roughly 50/50 chance of burning out, although at higher levels you can salvage them into mundane bits of gear. You’ll get to grab a new piece of insane tech after almost every encounter. That’s fun, just like the Alpha Mutation thing. It’s actually a lot more fun than D&D’s magic item system. Have you ever run into magic item burnout, where you finish a battle and don’t really care what magic items you find because it’s such a pain to write them down, figure out what they do, decide which character can make the best use of each one, how much they’re worth if the party wants to sell it, and on and on? Drawing a card with a sweet new item on it is so much easier, so much more immediately gratifying, and so much more fun.
Now here’s the thing that’s kind of aggravating about the cards. You can easily use just the ones that come in the box, or buy a few booster packs to add some new twists now and then, by simply keeping only two decks (Alpha and Omega), both controlled by the GM. Fine, no problem there. But the rules specifically call for the each player to build his or her own decks of cards, even including rules on deck construction (only three of each card in a deck, for instance). There are times when you get a random draw from the GM’s deck, but other times when you get the presumably better draw from your “tuned” deck. Back at Gen Con, Bill Slavicsek directly stated that the cards were not meant to be “something where you have to go out and collect every rare to build the best deck.” The Gamma World rule book directly contradicts that statement. Bottom line: use the cards as you will. I’ll be keeping randomized GM-only decks. No deck tuning, no separate decks for players. Random and fun is the spirit of this new Gamma World after all.
Character creation is hilariously fun, especially when you have your whole group do it together. It can be a bit of a pain since there’s only one book unless for some reason everyone bought their own boxed set, but taking your time to go through everyone’s origins and powers lets people collaborate on the bizarre stories behind their bizarre characters. Our group had a speedster yeti who carried around another player, a living collection of telekinetic walking stick bugs. We had a hawkman, a levitating magician and a robot.
The one flaw with character creation is the character sheet included with Gamma World. I made a bunch of copies of it for the group, and the thing is borderline useless. It’s cramped, poorly laid out, doesn’t have enough room for certain crucial bits of info, and omits some vital stat categories entirely. I’m sure someone will (or already has) made a better version, and you’d do fine to just jot your character down on a blank sheet of paper. Besides, your psychic plant will probably die pretty soon and you’ll just have to make a new one (rolling up a new character is quick and easy once you’ve done it).
Mechanically, the game is identical to 4E D&D, with a few exceptions. The cards, obviously. Also, line of sight is never blocked by dudes. Friends or enemies, you can shoot through and around them, no problem. There might be a few other minor tweaks to the rules, but I can’t remember them so they probably didn’t have much impact. Sometimes, combat moves along quickly and fluidly, the way 4E combat does. Sometimes it gets bogged down and feels terribly boring, the way 4E combat does.
The biggest letdown for me is Gamma World itself. The world barely exists. There are a few paragraphs explaining how different time streams and alternate realities have merged together, creating a blend of all these different weird technologies and shifting mutations. The book doesn’t include much information on specific locations, NPCs you might meet, storylines or campaign arcs, or any of the stuff that’s made recent 4E books so engrossing and useful. A few places are mentioned, along with a couple of “Cryptic Alliances” and adventure hooks, but it’s seriously skeletal. Surely they plan to flesh out the world in future releases, but it would have been nice to get some more background in the core box. The included 1st level adventure is a perfunctory slog through a bunch of combat encounters with precious little story and no obvious areas to build in some actual role-playing.
There’s also an emphasis on “wacky” fun. That’s fine in certain doses, but it’s not really enough to base a whole post-apocalyptic world on. In fact, as described, Gamma World feels less like a post-apocalypse and more like Loony Tunes. I just didn’t enjoy the flavor of the world. The monsters are the same way – a few cool baddies like Yexils and Gamma Moths, but there’s an awful lot of silliness. Mutant humanoid rabbits, fish, frogs, badgers…badgers?!
So I’m left with a Gamma World that provides a fun framework and takes the 4E rules into a new direction, which I’ve been clamoring for. I like the cards a lot, despite Wizards not being entirely truthful about their “intended use.” I love character creation and the chaotic aspects of it. The things I don’t like? Not really a big deal. I’ll make a better character sheet. I was probably going to design my own world to play in anyway (something similar to the Fallout games has a lot of appeal, and my brother has pointed out how easily it could be adapted to a superhero game, albeit a weird one). The lack of decent monsters is no problem at all, since there are lots and lots of perfectly awesome monsters available in the 4E monster manuals and other sourcebooks. I think my version of the post-apocalyptic world has lots of undead in it, with a few horrific demons (<cough>mutants<cough>) and bizarre beasts like owlbears and even dragons thrown in.
That means that, despite this review being filled with complaints, I highly recommend Gamma World. Your game group will get a lot of fun out of it.
October 14th, 2010 3:21 PM
I agree with most of what you say. My thought playing Gamma World was “this is fun for a quick one-shot, but I wouldn’t want to make a campaign out of it”.
Now, obviously that could be due to the included adventure, but I really had a hard time getting a feel for my first character. Playing a speedster yeti kind of sucked. I didn’t feel all that speedy, and I only hit things extra hard once per fight. Maybe it is because my racial powers, my defining features if you will, were once per encounter, while everyone else seemed to be able to display their individuality at-will. My telekinetic android seems more fun to play, but that could easily be because all of his powers are at-will. Actually, that most definitely IS the reason since I can show my telekinetic-androidiness mechanically every round instead of just making silly Chewbacca sounds from time to time once my encounter powers are spent. I don’t understand the point of giving some species at-will powers and others encounter powers that are hardly as interesting.
That said, to amend my initial statement, an engaging campaign world can obviously make any game more pleasurable.
October 14th, 2010 7:14 PM
Interesting to hear how it actually runs in practice. I might try giving a try as a one shot with the campus rpg club since the learning curve’ll be pretty easy.
October 15th, 2010 7:47 AM
How compatible is it with 4e? That is, could I pick up the rules for a laser gun & put it in a suspiciously UFO-shaped dungeon in the Barrier Peaks? Could I use a mutation as a power for my Warlock who worships Jubilex?
I too wish it was a LITTLE more serious, or that seriousness was an option. Though I confess I see TMNT & Other Strangeness as its major influence…which is awesome.
October 15th, 2010 8:10 AM
mordicai, short answer is: yes. Fully compatible. Powers might have to be tweaked a little because the levels are scaled differently, and you might need to be careful with Omega Tech because they’re pretty powerful too, but for the most part, it’s plug n play.
October 15th, 2010 9:03 AM
I could see it played “straight” as it is put in Paranoia terms. After all, comedy is just fluff anyway. Just change the way you look at the game world. Your regular Alpha Mutation manifestations could be a gruesome, painful process. Like any adventure, it can be as dark or serious as you want to make it. Obviously, it is easier if your fellow players buy into that, too.
October 15th, 2010 12:15 PM
A couple of things that occurred to me… first, if its really all that plug-n-play with 4E, I don’t suppose it would be all that hard to use some of the existent D&D material (the Delves stuff, or perhaps the Chaos Scar adventures) and just re-flavor them, would it?
A second thing is that it sounds like it would be a really good system for sort of a Grimjack-style game, perhaps reminiscent of Torg, Rifts, or Nexus: the Infinite City. Rifts seems like an obvious fit, if only to find yet another way to piss off Palladium’s Lawyers.
October 15th, 2010 12:55 PM
Yeah I have to say Gamma World was fun but not really post-apocalyptic. The cards, particularly the omega tech were quite cool, but the alpha mutations seemed to to come a bit too fast. I would prefer that they came after an extended rest to make the mutations a little more stable. There were several mutations that I had that i couldn’t actually use before the end of the encounter and i wished i had them in a following encounter.
I do kinda like the concept of a persoanl alpha deck that you could build to flavor to your character. Mr. Gone’s big clown feet felt a little too much like ‘cool world’ when they happened.
October 21st, 2010 9:26 AM
Hi Ed, I’m new to the site, drawn here by your recent GW posts.
I’m excited about the game but skeptical about the cards, fun as they may be. I’m guessing, though, that your disappointments with the game may have something to do with the fact (?) (I’m assuming) that you aren’t all that familiar with the earlier editions…
Mutated Badgers (Badders!) have been a GW staple since the beginning. And it’s always had a bit of a gonzo feel to it, which makes it a lot of fun, in my opinion. Of course, the GM can make it as serious as he or she wants to with a little tinkering. It was my sense in the earlier editions that there was a more well-defined milieu though–post-apocalyptic (or something, what really happened was never defined precisely) America, teeming with mutants, secret societies (Cryptic Alliances) and lots of cool gadgets. As with current GW, no character classes, and unlike current GW, no levels. Characters could increase their skills (but not HP–PCs began with pretty high HPs to begin with) but not their mutations. They could, of course, get lots of good loot and ancient artifacts to boost their power. Old GW also had “races” of sorts–you could be an unmutated human, a mutated human, a mutated animal, and in later editions a robot or a mutated plant.
In any case, we never played it as more than a one or two session game but had a lot of fun with it. On the other hand, a friend of mine has been running a Mutant Future (OGW retro-clone) campaign for over a year now and it has been fabulously successful.
In any case, thanks for your review(s). I look forward to playing it (despite my loathing of the 4E system…especially combat.)
Grobula, a.k.a Tony
October 21st, 2010 12:16 PM
You’re definitely right, my expectations would have been different if I were more familiar with older Gamma World (I know of it and read some of the books, but never played it). Still, my impression was always that it was a bit more gritty, with some outrageousness added on top. The new one just feels a little too, “Oh man, crazy stuff happening ALL THE TIME. SEE HOW CRAZY THIS IS? SEE?!?!?!”
October 21st, 2010 3:18 PM
I might enjoy this. I tend to be a fan of more crazy than YOUR BODY HAS ROOM FOR! and would definitely run this as a one shot because I enjoy 4e as a tactical game, I see it similar to Necromunda or Final Fantasy Tactics the Miniatures Game. Adding some wacky to that formula sounds like Munchkin on the tabletop instead of a card game, or possibly the World of Darkness: Dudes of Legend expansion. Also, Badgers have become a recurring theme in my campaigns. Side effect of the awesome Celestial Dire Badger mini I have. Also, Owlbears rule. I had an Owlbear worshiping cult in my summer campaign. “The might of the Bear. The wisdom of the Owl.”
October 21st, 2010 3:32 PM
It was definitely an interesting distraction from D&D. I’m in agreement with just about everybody on a point or two. It would be nice if the cards looked different from the back. It would be nice to keep mutations a bit longer (Though I like having to switch on a critical miss.) It would be nice if the attack powers were more evened out so somebody wasn’t stuck with only encounters or at-wills; maybe with the option to choose between two or three powers per background. It would be great if the character sheet didn’t, pardon my vulgarity, gobble balls.
As you said, these issues can be taken care of with a little ingenuity. It’s a fun game, and with some tweaking I could see it being more playable for the long term. I understand that the randomness is part of the fun, but only for a couple sessions. I suppose that could be the point, though. Slap together a quick, amusing, throw away character; have some fun fighting weird mutants, die, do it again some other time.