Friday, May 17, 2024
Random links for 5/17/2024
- I like posts about gladiators.
- Gamma World, baby.
Retrospective: TSR's Gamma World
I really liked 2nd edition when I was a kid, but I started with 1st edition. 2nd edition was a much better toolkit for running the game, but also made the world feel safer, more developed, and tech more like general equipment. 1st edition scared me a bit when I was a kid, and I love it to this day. I'd mine the hell out of 2nd edition if I ran a game there, though. The ruins of Pitz Burke are a great sandbox.
- There is a draft of the newest edition of Labyrinth Lord available.
- We're set to game Sunday, into the Olympus Gate. It's 100% assured to be a multi-session delve.
- Medieval art inspiration for Spelljammer? Apparantly yes.
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I started Gamma World in 3e, my GM had 1 and 2, but 3e came out just as our current D&D campaign was wrapping and he always liked swapping games between runs of D&D (often several games sometimes). So we started a 3e Gamma World game with a lot of things drawn from 1 and 2...
ReplyDeleteThat said I'm a big fan of the 7th editions world setting, but that's probably because it's basically the world setting I've been using for my GURPS post-apoc fantasy/gamma world games since the mid 90s... so any excuse to "play in my own world" so to speak is welcome. Even if it is D&D rules.
I'm only vaguely aware of Gamma World 7th edition - as in, I know it exists and that's about it.
DeleteGW 1, 2, 3, and 4 all have the same basic "lore/history". The nukes drop, etc. (Because they were all TSR written)
DeleteGW 5 goes askew with an alien invasion and nuclear response, but is otherwise still basically GW. (This was a Jeff Grub, Andy Collins collab for the Alternity system for WotC.)
GW 6 goes back to the old "nukes drop". but also added in world wide nanotech gooing (IE mutants are due to rampant rogue nanotech, not radiation) and tries to be "serious business" instead of the more gonzo affair GW has always been. This was a Swords and Sorcery publication, but got yanked from them before they could put out a whole lot.
GW 7 is a "go gonzo greater" background with WotC dropping the nukes and embracing "Hadron Collider Oopsie" - so when the LHC went online it broke the barrier between dimensions and worlds collided, hence a big mash of everything including the kitchen sink. It was written for D&D 4e and embraces the "roll for random everything" nature of the first three editions. It also tried to draw in the 'card deck' thing other games were doing (random card draws for loot, power-ups, etc)... it works fine mixed with D&D 4e though, to it's credit.
And as much as I hate D&D "levels and classes", it's probably the only non-GURPS GW I'd be really interested in playing because it's set up to handle the truly weird. Like playing a swarm of telepathic kittens. A psychic blueberry muffin. Or even, *gasp* a pure strain human. In the same party - in ways that even GURPS would admire.
PS: It was a me above, for some reason Blogger was not properly logging my comment as from a me.
I enjoy the mishmash that is GW, but I prefer "bleak with weirdness" to "gonzo psychic muffins." My tastes were formed by my very early exposure - probably age 10-11 - to GW 1st edition.
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