Gamma World: A Refreshing Role Playing Destination

In a nutshell, Gamma World is a steampunk/sci-fi mash-up of a role playing game, which follows D&D 4e rules, with some broadly artistic simplifications and a hedonist’s sense of shame. That is to say; it is shamelessly fun.

To be completely honest, I was skeptical at first. I need to be in the right mood to be “goofy,” and playing a game that involved randomly rolling for mixed origins from a list containing “yeti,” “android,” “precognitive,” and “cockroach” seemed interesting, but perhaps not enduringly reliable fun for a stiff like me.

However, this randomness, when coupled with a modern (commonly surreal) world setting, and a general lessening of rules about how and what your characters can be, do, use, feel, and shoot with eye beams, creates a wonderful cocktail of emotions toward the game and your character. This is something that D&D can rarely provide, due to its oft-silly need to be serious and “realistic.”

Character Creation
As stated, your character’s origin is random unless you foolishly prefer otherwise. The sole rule book contains a chart of 20 ridiculous backgrounds for your character, including animal types (hawkoid), conditions (radioactive), and powers (speedster). You randomly role two backgrounds – always a comical mix – and that’s where the madness begins.

In my first session, I was a radiated hawkoid version of myself from a different dimension. I decided that I preferred to be a turkey rather than a hawk, and that this multiverse version of Bill had always been a turkey [insert jokes here], and was irradiated while resting too often on a power line near a nuclear plant in my own dimension where, naturally, all people are birds. TurkeyBill is the Erin Brockovich of birds.

I spent the evening making quiet, deranged bird noises to the pleasure of my colleagues, and at one point, a grown man (who shall remain unidentified) found himself walking like a slow, off-balance turkey to get a beer from the fridge. Is this right? Is this wrong? All I know is that D&D has never caused this to happen.

Origins give your character powers and abilities, as well as resistances to damage types, etc, but Gamma World has no classes or established racial characteristics beyond the faintest hints of what it might be like to be telekinetic, or (intriguingly) seismic. It is so simple and random that it forces a different, broad creativity that can be shackled down by the preconceptions and thoroughly defined tropes of D&D.

Gamma World comes packaged with only one expectation of its adventurers – silly fun.

Equipment
Once you have your rad-turkey, or android yeti, or whatever the fates have in store; you need to equip yourself.

This is where Gamma World’s creators have made a small but masterful stroke. Weapons and armor are wildly simple. In addition to scroungin’ whatever items (ranging from mundane to absurdly fictional) your DM wants to populate the world with, your choices are simple: light armor (+3 to armor class) or heavy armor (+7), and generic ranged or melee weapons that are in the light or heavy class – dealing light or heavy damage accordingly. This may seem too simple, but it really offers the player an opportunity to improvise weapons and riff off of his fellows as well as the circumstances. If something seems heavy, it does heavy damage, and it could be something that your character picks up as needed, or carries with it. It turns out that TurkeyBill’s weapon of choice is a manhole cover, which he prefers to drop on mutants’ skulls from the skies - because in Gamma World, turkeys can fly.

Abilities
As I've alluded to, each origin offers a string of special attacks that manifest as you level. TurkeyBill started out big, not only with a nice little bird shriek that does burst damage, but with FUCKING LASER EYES. Gamma World, you had me at fucking; I stayed for laser eyes.

A last joy that I would like to share with you is something called an Alpha Mutation. Gamma World is an ever-changing place; saturated with mutations. To reflect this, it comes with a deck of cards that not only have special equipment and monsters (I think), but also these alpha mutations, which are drawn randomly at the beginning of each combat and lost at its end. I’ve only seen a few of them, but they can grant you a force field, enormous clown feet, or other zany things. They can also be “overcharged” to enhance their benefit on a D20 roll of 10 or higher, or will surely penalize your character on a lower roll. This allows each combat to be a little different from the last, and can be very enjoyable to visualize.

Conclusion
If you are a little tired of D&D, or have never been half one thing and half another, or if you enjoy fun; you should play Gamma World.