Why I like Gamma World even more than D&D
Apr 2, 2008 20:26:47 GMT -6
howandwhy99, Malcadon, and 3 more like this
Post by geoffrey on Apr 2, 2008 20:26:47 GMT -6
I appreciate 1st edition Gamma World's simple and straightforward rules. Gamma World, much more so than D&D, closely approximates my taste for 1920s and 1930s weird tales. Without further ado, and in no particular order:
1. Gamma World characters do not have levels. The players don't have to wait (years, sometimes) to have a chance to have some of the cool powers. Any power can possibly (if the dice are kind) be possessed by a beginning character. This makes a lot of sense in GW especially since the setting is so deadly that most PCs wouldn't survive long enough to reach a very high level.
2. Ability scores are limited to 18 in Gamma World. I don't like the ability score creep in D&D. First 18 was the highest possible, then 18/00, then it was noted that gods had ability scores of 20.
3. There is no alignment in Gamma World. My style of play does not include having shining white knights and holy priests. I like my campaigns to have humans who are so strapped just trying to survive that they don't have the luxury or the time for alignment. That describes Gamma World.
4. Gamma World's XP system encourages running away more. In GW you get most of your experience for treasure (1 gp = 1 xp). You also get some for figuring out artifacts, plus you get a pittance for killing opponents (1 xp per hit point of the opponent). By giving so remarkably few xp for killing opponents, GW players quickly realize that trying to gain experience by killing things is a sucker bet. They learn the virtues of sneaking around and stealing things rather than going toe-to-toe. Besides, GW is so deadly that if you make a habit of getting into stand-up fights, you'll be rolling a new character quite often.
5. Gamma World AC ranges from 10 to 1. With only ten armor classes, the to hit tables are kept compact. With D&D's armor classes ranging into the negative, the to hit tables have to be larger.
6. Gamma World hit points are almost completely constant. In GW you start with 1d6 hp per point of constitution. Your hp total never increases unless you get a very unlikely increase to your constitution. GW abilities are rolled 4d6, drop the lowest die, in order. Players can't pick and choose and put their highest score for their constitution. Therefore, in practice, your average GW player character has 42 hp. This is enough to give him a fighting chance, but it's nowhere near demi-god level. Huge hp totals are often the refuge of the incompetent. Also, by GW characters starting with a respectable amount of hp, the referee doesn't have to give any thought to "balancing" his adventures. He can feel free to use any mutant from the book (or from his own fevered imagination) at any time.
7. Gamma World has no gods and no clerics. Sure, you can worship something if you like, but it's not going to do you any good. Think of the "gods" in REH's Conan, and there you have it. They didn't play step-and-fetch for their priests in the Conan stories (if they existed at all). I like the cold, bleak feel this helps lend the GW setting. You are on your own.
8. Gamma World mutants are more interesting than D&D monsters. In Gamma World the referee is expected to create most of the mutants in his campaign. He starts with any real-world organism, then mutates it according to his whim. There is nothing in any fiction I've ever read as horrific and bizarre as the microscopic life infesting this planet. Get a book full of color photographs of microscopic life, or protists, or insects, or deep sea life, and realize that even H. P. Lovecraft's creations aren't as creepy. Now make these real-world organisms much bigger and give them whatever insane powers your whim devises, and there you have your Gamma World menagerie. There's no need to spend much time making mutated deer and bears. The little creepy crawly things are so much more promising. Compare that to the mixed bag that are the D&D monsters, many of whom are quasi-humans with slightly-strange attitudes. I found myself dumping more than half of the D&D monsters in the lists in my campaigns. I much prefer the GW nasties (though there are some exceptional D&D monsters).
9. Gamma World mutations are individualistic, unlike the magic and psionic systems of D&D. In GW your character either has mutations or he doesn't, the same as critters. There aren't levels, spell slots, psionic points, etc. Each mutant can be as specially tailored as the referee desires. If he can think of it, he can plug it in without doing any sort of serious write-up. With spells, thought has to be given to the proper level of the spell, the effect it will have on the campaign, the consequences if the players gain it, etc. I don't even want to mention the book-keeping required for D&D psionics. It's so refreshing to have self-contained mutations that just exist by themselves without being part of a system.
10. Gamma World has high-tech artifacts. My tastes run in the vein of science-fantasy, and I've long thought it more evocative for a character to find a mysterious laser rifle than a magic wand. GW artifacts are so mysterious and dangerous that there is no guarantee that the players will ever discover how to use a particular item found, plus there is always the chance that in fiddling with it they will get killed or seriously injured. In D&D there is much less danger and mystery associated with magic items. In GW I wouldn't blame a player for choosing to have nothing to do with a random artifact. For a D&D player, though, that would be a poor choice.
11. Gamma World has more interesting character races. In addition to the plain human, GW characters can be human mutants or highly intelligent non-human mutants. If non-human, the player chooses any real-world animal then roles on the mutations charts. As with reason 8 above, there is no reason to feel that one has to pick mundane animals to play (such as a bull or a wolf). Imagine playing a large mutated centipede, or a giant mutated microorganism. If you don't want to play a human, such alien mentalities are much more interesting than playing another dwarf or an elf. ("Let's see, I'm a dwarf. I like to drink ale, I'm crusty, I hate goblins, I don't like riding on boats..." Etc. )
12. Gamma World has a compact, 45-page rulebook. Even the 1974 D&D rules can't beat GW when it comes to concision.
13. The Gamma World is a world in which you have to struggle simply to survive. The implied world of GW is such that civilization is a thing of the past. You have a hard lot just trying to make it through the day, and the Devil take the hindmost. The implied world of D&D is, at the very least, not quite so dangerous as that, and (at worst, in my view) it can be taken in a Ye Olde Englande Ren Faire direction.
14. Gamma World characters have no classes and no skills. You're either a human (mutated or not) or a mutated animal. Period. Now you try to survive and in the course of the game if you try something, the referee rules on your chance and you take your chances. That's similar to the 1974 D&D rules, only more so. I generally don't care for the proliferation of character classes with their special abilities, etc. There's a reason GW is only 45 pages.
15. There are no saving throws in Gamma World. If, for example, your character is trying to figure out what a neutron bomb is and accidentally sets it off, he and everyone within a 500 meter radius just took 100 points of damage. No saving throw. (That is an almost certain death, since no GW player character can even possibly have more than 108 hp, and that is astronomically unlikely.) The only things that don't automatically give you full damage are poison and radiation. The higher your constitution, the better you'll do when poisoned or exposed to radiation (which makes more sense to me than the sometimes-arbitrary saving throws).
16. Gamma World has no treasure types. It is completely up to the referee what treasure (if any) mutants have. He is beholden to no tables or norms.
17. Having mutations in Gamma World is risky. If you choose to be a mutant, you stand a good chance of rolling some mutational defects. I don't blame players at all for not wanting anything to do with mutations. Compare that to D&D spells, in which there are only good spells and better spells. There are no spells that it actually hurts you to have.
1. Gamma World characters do not have levels. The players don't have to wait (years, sometimes) to have a chance to have some of the cool powers. Any power can possibly (if the dice are kind) be possessed by a beginning character. This makes a lot of sense in GW especially since the setting is so deadly that most PCs wouldn't survive long enough to reach a very high level.
2. Ability scores are limited to 18 in Gamma World. I don't like the ability score creep in D&D. First 18 was the highest possible, then 18/00, then it was noted that gods had ability scores of 20.
3. There is no alignment in Gamma World. My style of play does not include having shining white knights and holy priests. I like my campaigns to have humans who are so strapped just trying to survive that they don't have the luxury or the time for alignment. That describes Gamma World.
4. Gamma World's XP system encourages running away more. In GW you get most of your experience for treasure (1 gp = 1 xp). You also get some for figuring out artifacts, plus you get a pittance for killing opponents (1 xp per hit point of the opponent). By giving so remarkably few xp for killing opponents, GW players quickly realize that trying to gain experience by killing things is a sucker bet. They learn the virtues of sneaking around and stealing things rather than going toe-to-toe. Besides, GW is so deadly that if you make a habit of getting into stand-up fights, you'll be rolling a new character quite often.
5. Gamma World AC ranges from 10 to 1. With only ten armor classes, the to hit tables are kept compact. With D&D's armor classes ranging into the negative, the to hit tables have to be larger.
6. Gamma World hit points are almost completely constant. In GW you start with 1d6 hp per point of constitution. Your hp total never increases unless you get a very unlikely increase to your constitution. GW abilities are rolled 4d6, drop the lowest die, in order. Players can't pick and choose and put their highest score for their constitution. Therefore, in practice, your average GW player character has 42 hp. This is enough to give him a fighting chance, but it's nowhere near demi-god level. Huge hp totals are often the refuge of the incompetent. Also, by GW characters starting with a respectable amount of hp, the referee doesn't have to give any thought to "balancing" his adventures. He can feel free to use any mutant from the book (or from his own fevered imagination) at any time.
7. Gamma World has no gods and no clerics. Sure, you can worship something if you like, but it's not going to do you any good. Think of the "gods" in REH's Conan, and there you have it. They didn't play step-and-fetch for their priests in the Conan stories (if they existed at all). I like the cold, bleak feel this helps lend the GW setting. You are on your own.
8. Gamma World mutants are more interesting than D&D monsters. In Gamma World the referee is expected to create most of the mutants in his campaign. He starts with any real-world organism, then mutates it according to his whim. There is nothing in any fiction I've ever read as horrific and bizarre as the microscopic life infesting this planet. Get a book full of color photographs of microscopic life, or protists, or insects, or deep sea life, and realize that even H. P. Lovecraft's creations aren't as creepy. Now make these real-world organisms much bigger and give them whatever insane powers your whim devises, and there you have your Gamma World menagerie. There's no need to spend much time making mutated deer and bears. The little creepy crawly things are so much more promising. Compare that to the mixed bag that are the D&D monsters, many of whom are quasi-humans with slightly-strange attitudes. I found myself dumping more than half of the D&D monsters in the lists in my campaigns. I much prefer the GW nasties (though there are some exceptional D&D monsters).
9. Gamma World mutations are individualistic, unlike the magic and psionic systems of D&D. In GW your character either has mutations or he doesn't, the same as critters. There aren't levels, spell slots, psionic points, etc. Each mutant can be as specially tailored as the referee desires. If he can think of it, he can plug it in without doing any sort of serious write-up. With spells, thought has to be given to the proper level of the spell, the effect it will have on the campaign, the consequences if the players gain it, etc. I don't even want to mention the book-keeping required for D&D psionics. It's so refreshing to have self-contained mutations that just exist by themselves without being part of a system.
10. Gamma World has high-tech artifacts. My tastes run in the vein of science-fantasy, and I've long thought it more evocative for a character to find a mysterious laser rifle than a magic wand. GW artifacts are so mysterious and dangerous that there is no guarantee that the players will ever discover how to use a particular item found, plus there is always the chance that in fiddling with it they will get killed or seriously injured. In D&D there is much less danger and mystery associated with magic items. In GW I wouldn't blame a player for choosing to have nothing to do with a random artifact. For a D&D player, though, that would be a poor choice.
11. Gamma World has more interesting character races. In addition to the plain human, GW characters can be human mutants or highly intelligent non-human mutants. If non-human, the player chooses any real-world animal then roles on the mutations charts. As with reason 8 above, there is no reason to feel that one has to pick mundane animals to play (such as a bull or a wolf). Imagine playing a large mutated centipede, or a giant mutated microorganism. If you don't want to play a human, such alien mentalities are much more interesting than playing another dwarf or an elf. ("Let's see, I'm a dwarf. I like to drink ale, I'm crusty, I hate goblins, I don't like riding on boats..." Etc. )
12. Gamma World has a compact, 45-page rulebook. Even the 1974 D&D rules can't beat GW when it comes to concision.
13. The Gamma World is a world in which you have to struggle simply to survive. The implied world of GW is such that civilization is a thing of the past. You have a hard lot just trying to make it through the day, and the Devil take the hindmost. The implied world of D&D is, at the very least, not quite so dangerous as that, and (at worst, in my view) it can be taken in a Ye Olde Englande Ren Faire direction.
14. Gamma World characters have no classes and no skills. You're either a human (mutated or not) or a mutated animal. Period. Now you try to survive and in the course of the game if you try something, the referee rules on your chance and you take your chances. That's similar to the 1974 D&D rules, only more so. I generally don't care for the proliferation of character classes with their special abilities, etc. There's a reason GW is only 45 pages.
15. There are no saving throws in Gamma World. If, for example, your character is trying to figure out what a neutron bomb is and accidentally sets it off, he and everyone within a 500 meter radius just took 100 points of damage. No saving throw. (That is an almost certain death, since no GW player character can even possibly have more than 108 hp, and that is astronomically unlikely.) The only things that don't automatically give you full damage are poison and radiation. The higher your constitution, the better you'll do when poisoned or exposed to radiation (which makes more sense to me than the sometimes-arbitrary saving throws).
16. Gamma World has no treasure types. It is completely up to the referee what treasure (if any) mutants have. He is beholden to no tables or norms.
17. Having mutations in Gamma World is risky. If you choose to be a mutant, you stand a good chance of rolling some mutational defects. I don't blame players at all for not wanting anything to do with mutations. Compare that to D&D spells, in which there are only good spells and better spells. There are no spells that it actually hurts you to have.
