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Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #15 on Apr 7, 2008, 6:27am »
The citystate just seemed too large, too sophisticated and too rich. A city state that large needs 10 to 100 times it population within 3 days (or so) of travel to support it and that just doesn't feel right. Ultimately it's really just a matter of taste in campaign styles, i know I've still enjoyed playing that module a number of times.
Joined: Dec 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 813 Location: The Echo Chamber Karma: 24
Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #16 on Apr 7, 2008, 8:12am »
Quote:
The citystate just seemed too large, too sophisticated and too rich. A city state that large needs 10 to 100 times it population within 3 days (or so) of travel to support it and that just doesn't feel right.
Fair enough. Personally, I'd always assumed that the Barony of Horn possessed enough recovered Ancient technology to be able to support itself without the need for vast numbers of peasants. There's some evidence of this in the module itself, given the weapons and robots available to the Baron's forces. Mind you, I like that style for Gamma World -- "neo-medieval" or "techno-feudalism" or whatever you wish to call it. GW always billed itself as a science fantasy game rather than a science fiction one, so I was never bothered by its incongruities.
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Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #17 on Apr 8, 2008, 7:40pm »
Alas, I wish I could like the Legion of Gold module. Not only do I not like how stable human society is in it, but I don't like the cutesy names thing. As early as the 2nd edition of GW, the game rules themselves started getting infected by that "Pitz Burke" (Pittsburg) junk. Unfortunately, this sort of thing got started in 1981 in the Legion of Gold module--"Lake Mitchigoom" and such. Taking real-world names and giving them cutesy twists doesn't help the game at all.
The original rules strongly imply that the pre-holocaust world was gone. Not merely cities but even topography (whole mountain ranges, even) was obliterated and utterly changed. It's now an alien world, unrecognizable and inhuman. Humans are on the way out, and various mutated animals and plants are on the ascendant. Look at the mutations tables. Humans roll a mutational defect about 28% of the time, while animals roll a defect only around 18% of the time, while plants a mere 7% of the time. Run those numbers long enough, and you have human extinction. Animals and especially plants are doing better than mankind in the irradiated environment. There isn't going to be any resurgence of civilization, unless it's a non-human civilization. Sure, the ancient high-tech can help even the playing field for humans in the short term, but nobody is making that stuff anymore, and every time a laser ray is fired, mankind is that much closer to totally running out of laser rays (and all other high-tech items). To produce that sort of high-technology requires an advanced and technical global economy. The Restorationists can try all they want. All they're going to do is hold back the darkness for a bit before the last human dies a wretched and meaningless death.
But I love Erol Otus's art in that module! I wish he had done the art for the rulebook, too.
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Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #18 on Apr 8, 2008, 9:03pm »
I used to love the "cutsie renaming of stuff" when I was younger. Now, I completely agree with geoffrey as to what Gamma World was really about. My Gamma World is much less Mad Max and much more Lovecraft now.
As early as the 2nd edition of GW, the game rules themselves started getting infected by that "Pitz Burke" (Pittsburg) junk. Unfortunately, this sort of thing got started in 1981 in the Legion of Gold module--"Lake Mitchigoom" and such.
Hiero's Journey had a bunch of the cutesy names, which might be the precedent.
My Gamma World is much less Mad Max and much more Lovecraft now.
Exactly so. I do not like the Mad Max-style of play. In my Gamma World games, nothing from our familiar world exists. You'll find no baseball bats, no tins of sardines, no combustion engines, street signs, etc. The only pre-holocaust stuff that remains is of the high-tech sort in the artifacts section of the rulebook: laser pistols, robots, etc. Only some pure strain humans (thanks to technology) remained un-mutated. Everything else is mutated. There are no more mundane pine trees, squirrels, dogs, cats, grass, etc. It's all twisted now. Not even the topography of my Gamma World resembles that of Earth of today. The energies unleashed by The Apocalypse were not merely of the nuclear bomb sort. They were the bleeding cutting edge experiemental science of the days immediately before all the lights went out. Gamma World is an unrecognizably alien world of mutants and scattered high-tech artifacts. The only certain sign that the Gamma World is the planet Earth is that the heavenly bodies are all familiar: distinctive moon and sun, the constellations, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc.
IMO, Gamma World out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft. Find some recent biology books with lots of color photos of insects, spiders, annelids, microscopic organisms, fungi, etc. Then imagine those organisms much larger and mutated. That's Gamma World, and I dare say that's creepier in a Lovecraftian way even than the extraterrestrials in such classics as At the Mountains of Madness and "The Shadow out of Time".
Exactly so. I do not like the Mad Max-style of play. In my Gamma World games, nothing from our familiar world exists. You'll find no baseball bats, no tins of sardines, no combustion engines, street signs, etc. The only pre-holocaust stuff that remains is of the high-tech sort in the artifacts section of the rulebook: laser pistols, robots, etc. Only some pure strain humans (thanks to technology) remained un-mutated. Everything else is mutated. There are no more mundane pine trees, squirrels, dogs, cats, grass, etc. It's all twisted now. Not even the topography of my Gamma World resembles that of Earth of today. The energies unleashed by The Apocalypse were not merely of the nuclear bomb sort. They were the bleeding cutting edge experiemental science of the days immediately before all the lights went out. Gamma World is an unrecognizably alien world of mutants and scattered high-tech artifacts. The only certain sign that the Gamma World is the planet Earth is that the heavenly bodies are all familiar: distinctive moon and sun, the constellations, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc.
IMO, Gamma World out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft. Find some recent biology books with lots of color photos of insects, spiders, annelids, microscopic organisms, fungi, etc. Then imagine those organisms much larger and mutated. That's Gamma World, and I dare say that's creepier in a Lovecraftian way even than the extraterrestrials in such classics as At the Mountains of Madness and "The Shadow out of Time".
Don't your players have a hard time relating? Back when I was playing Gamma World, it was some of the best times when you could get those "Planet of the Apes" moments where all of this crazy stuff was happening on a future Earth and the players got to realize they'd just spent the last 5 weeks exploring the collapsed Sears Tower or something.
I'm having a hard time buying into your world, it seems you might as well be playing Buck Rogers or the nightmares of Erol Otus or something. Having some grounding for your players makes the contrast of those things that AREN'T Earth as we know it even more powerful.
Hiero's Journey had a bunch of the cutesy names, which might be the precedent.
Correct. Like D&D, Gamma World evokes a number of specific literary inspirations, Sterling Lanier's books being chief among them (as is Andre Norton's Starman's Son). One of the features of these precursors is that, while they do treat the post-apocalyptic world as unique in its own right, they also do so by reference to the pre-apocalyptic world. The pre-apocalyptic world provides context, irony, and an opportunity for commentary and/or satire, not to mention their very plots.
While I think it's fine to treat Gamma World as pure fantasy, I think IMHO that it's not what Jim Ward was trying to do with the game. Interacting with the old world and even coming to understand and learn from it is an important element to the game, as it was with Metamorphosis Alpha. I just don't get the Lovecraftian, otherworldly vibe from a game whose treasure tables include numerous 20th century items -- including RPG books -- as a source of mystery and amusement. If you do, more power to you, but, for me, Gamma World will always be the game where you strapped on a stop sign as a shield and football gear as armor as you battled mutants who worshiped a sentient mainframe in an ancient military base.
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Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #23 on Apr 9, 2008, 12:07pm »
"The nightmares of Erol Otus"--I like that!
Granted my style of Gamma World play isn't for everyone. I was always non-plussed by the sort of adventure in which you realize, "You, you mean this is all one giant pizza parlor?"
For me, Gamma World is most evocative as pure science-fantasy:
The "science" part is the high-tech artifacts.
The "fantasy" part is the whole "mutants and mutating radiation" thing.
Coke bottle caps and Nike shoes ruin it for me.
(For what it's worth, I think it was Gary Gygax rather than Jim Ward who compiled those lists of junk found in the back of the rulebook.)
All that said, I suspect that Jim Ward probably played Gamma World games with Harley motorcycles, Nerf footballs, Snickers Bars, and all the rest. That's just not for me.
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 1,556 Karma: 87
Re: Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D « Reply #24 on Apr 9, 2008, 12:13pm »
I suppose my style of Gamma World is rather like that of "sword and planet" books. In these books, the protagonist (whether John Carter, or Maskull, or Flash Gordon, or whomever) explores a planet that's wholly alien to him.
My Gamma World games start with the characters knowing only what's in their village and perhaps a few miles out. Since the whole planet is a howling wilderness, people don't travel around unless they are adventurers (i. e., insane). My Gamma World's ecology is chaotic. The flora and fauna in one area might be totally different from the flora and fauna just a couple miles away.
All that said, I suspect that Jim Ward probably played Gamma World games with Harley motorcycles, Nerf footballs, Snickers Bars, and all the rest. That's just not for me.
And that's fair enough. I'd never criticize anyone, especially round here, for making the game their own and enjoying themselves with it. My only point was that, Legion of Gold is a very good evocation of Gamma World, as it was originally conceived, which was more or less D&D in the post-apocalyptic ruins of North America, with super science and mutations taking the place of magic. It's not to everyone's taste certainly, but it's a very fine evocation of its source material.
(As an aside, it's interesting to remember that, according to various timelines Jim Ward worked on for the game, Gamma World begins about 125 years after the destruction of civilization -- long enough for survivors to have died off but not so long that the old world would have receded completely into myth)
(As an aside, it's interesting to remember that, according to various timelines Jim Ward worked on for the game, Gamma World begins about 125 years after the destruction of civilization -- long enough for survivors to have died off but not so long that the old world would have receded completely into myth)
Good point. In the 1st edition rulebook, 149 years elapse between The Apocalypse and the present. Thus it makes it possible for old greybeards to say stuff like, "I remember when I was a small child, and my grandmother would tell me stories of the way the world was when she was a little girl. It used to be a paradise before everything changed. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what she used to say. She'd never talk at length about it because she'd start crying instead."
In the 1st edition rulebook, 149 years elapse between The Apocalypse and the present.
149 years is a lonnngggg time. Escpecially so in GW settings. I think we overestimate how much information would be available about the "good old days" because we oursleves have ready access to so much information compared to any other era in history.
2008 - 149 years is 1859, I don't recall my grandparents ever mentioning stories about what life was like before the civil war. Seven 21 year spanning generations. That really is a long time.
This is true and I think part of what makes Gamma World work as a game is that the distance between the Apocalypse and the beginning of the campaign is large enough that connections won't be obvious but they can still be there. GW, as presented, thrives on people in the setting knowing just enough about the past to be wrong about and behave accordingly. That's the real genius of it in my opinion.
(Remember too that there are plenty of reliable sources of information about the pre-apocalyptic world in the form of AI, androids, and robots. Sure, some of them would have no reason to share this information with humans or their mutant descendants but not all of them need be implacably hostile either. So, while records may not be as easy to come by in GW as they are in 2008, neither are they so inaccessible that the past is completely erased)
In the 1st edition rulebook, 149 years elapse between The Apocalypse and the present.
149 years is a lonnngggg time. Escpecially so in GW settings. I think we overestimate how much information would be available about the "good old days" because we oursleves have ready access to so much information compared to any other era in history.
2008 - 149 years is 1859, I don't recall my grandparents ever mentioning stories about what life was like before the civil war. Seven 21 year spanning generations. That really is a long time.
Yeah, 149 years is a very long time. Even assuming people have their kids at 35 each generation, that's still more than 4 generations with kids probably not ever knowing their Great Grandparents who would have to live to be 105 just to see Great Grandkids being born. And it's much more like 7 or even 9 or 10 or at the outside 11 generations considering we're talking about small tight knit populations that die off easily and probably return to breeding much closer to "natural" which is starting around 13 or so.
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