October 25, 2010

I Opened Up My Gamma World Box

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still COMPLETELY EXCITED to play Gamma World this Friday with people. I mean, totally excited.
But man, the main rulebook leaves something to be desired.

I swear there is a chapter missing in this thing. The book makes references to things like “worldlines” and all kinds of crazy stuff, but there’s no section in the book which actually describes the setting. Now, I’m not a lore person, but still, you have to give me, as DM, something more than nothing so that I can create a setting that is thematically appropriate. All you really get is “crazy, destroyed world with mutant powers.” I guess that’s enough, but goodness, it seems a little questionable, especially when you have all these other elements showing up in your descriptions of monsters and gear which refer to things you haven’t referred to.

It also seems weird that, by using the rules in the box, you can’t create several of the player characters that the pictures in the rulebook show you. For example, there are several pictures of a mutated rat person, but following the rules, you can’t be a mutated rat person. You can be a swarm of rats. An entire swarm of them. But not a rat person. It’s just odd.

Still, I really like the card mechanic in general. I am looking forward to seeing how that adds random fun to the game. It should add some! I think that’s neat. I’m not so hot on the booster thing, but if it works fantastically well and everyone is interested? Well, who knows. Maybe. I still feel like they should have been stand-alone expansion packs of powers or loot, but I guess I don’t get to make the business decisions at Wizards, huh?

It’s pretty obvious to me, though, that Wizards has a potential hit. It does seem to be handled pretty badly, though. Hopefully they can turn it around. It’s still going to make for damn fun role-playing this Friday, though. I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes. There will be pews, pows, and things of that nature! Believe it! Like a Naruto!

“You can be a swarm of rats. An entire swarm of them.”

SOLD!

Comment by CJ — October 25, 2010 @ 12:30 am

Gamma World? Is it 1986 again?

Comment by Cris — October 25, 2010 @ 12:34 am

Leave a comment