The New Gamma World is Awesome and I Want to Play

[The Other Dave]

But on the other hand I know the Nagoya area's RPG plate is pretty full, and scheduling is generally difficult. Still, it's awesome and I want to play, so here's a pitch. (Those of you who read such threads may know that I've offered to run a demo-type game at Primarch's Winter Blitz event in January. If what follows sounds appealing to you, think about coming!)

So, Gamma World. Awesome. Right. You all remember Gamma World, right? The gonzo post-apocalyptic setting with the mutated animals and robots and bat-winged fungus with radioactive eyebeams? I played the heck out of 1st edition in my faraway youth, and this new version seems to capture that weird future feel very well indeed.

Here's the setting: 150 years ago, back in 2012, an experiment was performed at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Nobody now knows exactly what it is, but it's known now as The Big Mistake. Whatever they did, it caused many - perhaps thousands, maybe all - of the quantum potential / alternate realities surrounding Earth to condense into being at once. This would have been confusing enough - although some alternate realities weren't too different from our own (the outcome of the 2008 World Series didn't do much to change world events), you suddenly had realities where the dinosaurs never went extinct, realities where the Nazis won WWII with uplifted gorillas and super-science, and realities where they grays weren't shot down over Roswell in 1947, leading to a new age of interstellar cooperation and high technology, all happening in the same place at the same time. On top of that, though, it seems that the Cold War went nuclear in about 87% of potential realities, so huge tracts of the Earth's surface were summarily transformed into mutated, radioactive wastelands. Hooray!

Now, 150 years later, things have calmed down a bit, although the world-lines aren't anything like stable. Humanity survives in isolated settlements, beset on all sides by aggressive mutant badgers, insects the size of Volkswagens, and strange creatures from other realities altogether who just want to devour their manufactured clothing (it's delicious, apparently). Reality is kind of fluid, and some people and creatures are affected by Alpha Flux, in which the mutations and psychic abilities of different potential "selves" manifest more-or-less at random. Lucky adventurers can also find Omega Tech, super-technology from alternate world-lines far in advance of "our" pre-Mistake 2010. And use it to inflict flaming fusion death on their foes, of course.

The System: It's based on a streamlined version of 4e, let's get that right out of the way. Playing, though, requires no particular system knowledge or mastery, and certainly won't require anybody but the GM (me, presumably) to buy anything, in part because character creation is pretty much entirely random, in the best Old Skool style. You even roll 3d6, in order, for your non-favored stats. (You're guaranteed to be good at your shtick, since attack rolls using your special abilities are all based on your favored stats.) Character creation is fun. Entirely by accident the other day, I rolled up a literal burning bush - a charismatic pyrokinetic plant creature - and a swarm of Cranium Rats with a hive intelligence and a vicious mental attack. You might also end up with something more-or-less human, too, I guess. You get two origins, each of which gives you access to a suite of powers, bonuses and abilities, and add a fluctuating Alpha Mutation on top of that.

So, the final pitch: The new Gamma World is fast-playing, gonzo, old-school-styled post apocalyptic awesomeness. If that sounds like your cuppa, I invite you to come to the Winter Blitz (thread here) and try it out. In the best of all possible worlds, I'd like to play regularly, but I realize that might be tough in Nagoyaland. So I'll take what I can get!

[Admiral-Badruck]

Gama world seams to be a bit like After the Bomb with a touch of Rifts... Have you though about running it over skype? I would be keen to join any roll playing game that could be played over skype. I also would not mind runing a game of Rifts over skype is anyone is up for it.... Gama world would be loads of fun. I wish I was going to the Blitz I would be very keen to play.

[The Other Dave]

I'm feeling a lot of Thundarr in it, too, heh.

If I ran it online, I'd want to use a mapping application or something in addition to Skype - it's heavily in the 3e / 4e DnD paradigm, and while you could run it without a grid and tokens, you'd lose out on a lot as movement and positioning is pretty important.

I've been fiddling with MapTools a bit, and if there's interest in playing online I might just spend a bit more time and figure out how to use it.

[Admiral-Badruck]

I am really hoping for an online game group... My group that I play with is moving back to the sates soon and the time zone is going to kill it.. Right now we play Blood Bowl and DOW over Skype but we could easily play some kind of True RPG... in a small group of 3 gamers and one GM...

[The Other Dave]

I might be up for that, if there's interest.

[Moyashimaru]

Ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ　Ｉ’ｄ　ｃｏｎｓｉｄｅｒ　taking part in ａｓ　ｗｅｌｌ．

[Admiral-Badruck]

That three of us I reckon I could get by buddy Sam to join up as well.

[The Other Dave]

Beauty! This idea is going to depend heavily on my learning how to use RPtools to manage a session, though, which may take a little bit - but knowing there's folks interested in playing will give me a reason to try.

The site for the game host is here: http://rptools.net/ It's free and looks powerful, but like many free and powerful things, not particularly well-documented. I did find a dedicated Gamma World framework for it, which helps a bunch. I'll keep folks posted.

There's also a site here http://gw4echargenerator.zzl.org/char_edit.php for rolling up random characters. Woo!

[Moyashimaru]

If this goes somewhere, please PM and let me know the details (when, how often, stuff like that). With any luck I'll be able to join in.

[Admiral-Badruck]

Who is GMing I have not the back ground to do it... is it you TOD?