Got to participate in Gamma Ray Day sine Gamma Ray Games ran an event. I went in knowing pretty much what to expect. 4E with crazy critters and psychic powers, right? Well...sort of. It is most DEFINITELY 4E at its core, but all the gritty and slow cover and movement rules are not left up to the maps but to the GM. If the GM says you can have cover, you can have cover. Their is less hand holding and the system is more streamlined. Less crunchy and min/maxy and more about insanity in a post apocalyptic amalgamated universe. With some "lucky" dice, one of our party had a +18 to Interact (the catch all social interaction skill) at creation. Of course, that was the ONLY skill he was trained in, so he was not very good at anything else (except psychic blasts!). I wound up playing a plant with electrokinesis. All weapons are based on trappings of your choosing. You pick 1 or 2 handed light, medium or heavy melee and the same for ranged, but with the option of a ranged weapon that does not use ammo or a ranged gun that could run out of ammo. I chose a heavy 1 handed melee that I called a "No Parking" sign on a metal post and my heavy 1 handed ranged was my inborn ability to throw lightning bolts. Was a lot of fun. Much more fluid than 4E and regular old attacks are often just as good as your special abilities.
Oh, we also were "required" to buy 2 packs of boosters to play by WOTC, but the shop did not care. Still, to support them, most of us did. Got some fun cards! Also got a promo Alpha and Omega card for playing.

We played a game Friday night. Our DM recommended bringing two characters -- and killed both of mine in about an hour. it was crazy and fun. I liked it a lot!

Wow, what a blast from the past. I tried to make the original into a space-opera type game in 1980, with no success.

Yeah, the other group had two fatalities. We NEARLY had two as well, but saved at the last minute. Strangely, I was a damage sponge but never quite went down!

One group had a TPK, while ours survived. (The store totally sold out of cards and games too.)

It was interesting to see how the characters sort of came out of the rolling. We got two roaches (Roach Android, Roach Speedster) which wound up being our front line defenders (in 4e terms). We had two Felinoids,,, and they wound up being the strikers. Then we got two brains, one was quite destructive, and the other was me. Empath\Hypercognative which naturally was the leader. He had healing and an 14 Interact. I rolled well for my other stats so I was able to be of use in combat. I threw hammers and bashed in heads with sledge hammers. (Combined with my usual dice rolling.. downright murderous.) I also saved 3 characters who were bleeding out.

An easy campaign to run would be to shut off the Hadron Colider and save the world. Think about finding a computer cache and figuring out what happened, then getting all the way over to Europe. (I think taking a space elevator up and some drop pods down would be cool.)


Pall_S: This Gamma World is totally in the vain of 1e Gamma World. It is quite flexible in terms of how it comes together and how it runs. You can choose to run it just like you would have in the old days... or you can run it in the zanny fashion it is presented. If you were to try to do a space opera, I'd have to say that its a little rules light for it. It literally functions on a generic damage table for basic weapon attacks, like guns.

Well, its more about basic attacks than the "At Will", "Per Encounter" and "Per Day" effects. You roll D20, add your attack bonus and compare to AC just like 3rd. Special abilities target one of the other stats (Reflex, Will, Fortitude?). Pretty simple in this iteration.

Gamma World Game Day went well at our shop...one PC had a parking meter as a weapon..whenever it was used to hit something, its display flashed red with a *ping!* "VIOLATION"

Gamma World in a nut shell...


I'm sorry.. this picture isn't working. Move along now.