On the way to Oskar, the world began to glow.
I’ve played Gamma World before on several occasions – always one shots, as I recall – but somehow I never wound up in a radiation field. When I came to the adventure this time I knew I wanted to have one. Like everything in Gamma World, radiation involves the ACT and random tables. A character rolls their Constitution on the ACT and the results determines if they mutate and how long the mutation lasts. Then they roll up the nature of the mutation on those tables from character creation.
As the party proceeded through the field, they couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. At first they thought the glow was coming from them; then they looked around to see its source; finally they just gave up and continued. It ended up giving each one of them an extra mutation lasting between a few hours and several days.
The most notable one was Johnny, who gained a defect called a Hostility Field, just in time for entering Oskar. Arriving at the gates of the little village, it was indeed the platypus who stepped up to address the guards. Standing on top of a turret were a couple of badders – mutated badgers – and a bof – mutated buffalo – who took very badly to him, almost to the point of aiming their large gun at the party.
Finally, by mentioning Mindkeep the party gained an audience with Timon, the mutant wolverine leader of the village. There is quite a bit of text devoted to Oskar in the module, detailing the expansionist tendencies of Timon, the social organization of his army and so on. The basis of an interesting campaign is there, although the module takes itself a bit too seriously with passages such as this one:
And the party members should make no mistake about it, Timon is gearing up for war and will most likely win if the other societies in the Flower Lands [...] are not warned [..]. Once Timon controls the Flower Lands he will keep expanding. Any analogy to Hitler and World War II is purely intentional and the Gm should keep this in mind.
Our heroes, in any case, received nothing but aid from the potential dictator, in the form of supplies and a grappling hook gun. They promised to return the gun to Oskar, at which point Timon would have interrogated them about Mindkeep.
Encouraged by the endless stream of assistance and worried by the red shade of their weather predictor, the party made haste early the next day, and by nightfall came to the edge of the Mindkeep Plateau. After setting up camp for the night, they began their climb towards the keep in the morning. I chose to forego any further random encounters.
In the morning they began their climb to the plateau. They had a short encounter with a chotslith hiding in a bush, skirted the small acidic lake around the keep and finally using their grappling hook to cross the broken bridge over it. Surveying the little island, they spotted the entry to the keep and headed straight towards it, overpassing a still-functioning infrared sensor.
Again, there was a gap between my goal-inclined players and the assumptions of the writers. The module goes to great detail about the surroundings of the keep, filled with wreckage, old artifacts, the local wildlife (always aggressive) and even a sort of puzzle where the characters could obtain a working vehicle by combining fuel and parts from multiple sites in the vicinity.
Retrieving all of these would require a different mindset, centered around exploration and perhaps a desire to “fill in the map” and check out every corner of the site. It came to me that this is a notion still preserved in how I play computer RPGs. Somehow my tabletop gaming has become more plot oriented.
In any case, the party had moved across the infrared sensor, and across the island, on the other side of the keep, mechanisms began to whirr and electronics to flash as a security robot came to life. As they were standing at the entry pondering their next move, the party heard these noises behind them and rushed in.
The party began to frantically search the rooms of the first floor for something to help them, but found nothing better than a terl floating through one of the rooms. The sound of the robot approaching and ringing out calls of “INTRUDERS EXTERMINATE” pressing upon them, Jack pulled out their hi-tech gun and aimed it at the robot, only to find out both of its charges had been used up against the chotslith; the group then decided to tactically retreat into a nearby elevator.
With a Red (that’s color-chart speak for “particularly good”) Intelligence roll, Johnny recognized the elevator as a nuclear powered SA21-N, figured out that it’s not currently powered and gave the group a lecture on the history of elevators throughout the ages. Still the party could do nothing but hide. They stood in the dark of the elevator and heard the robot make some rounds of the facility and dispose of the terl. After a few moments of silence, they left the elevator to find that the robot had returned to its position outside the Keep.
Going through the first level, the group found themselves face to face with a sre’froth, some expanding mushrooms and a friendly omintar that they took as a pet. In one of the rooms they had found another bracelet similar to Ermon’s, which Johnny handled with the same expertise and grace that he had the first (another 3 or so on the Artifact Examination chart). In another there was a large batch of documents explaining some of Mindkeep’s goals, hinting of another complex to the south, and implying that the main computer would be on the 12th level. Find some handholds along the central shaft, the group set out towards the mysterious 12th level of Mindkeep.
They slowly climbed down, until finally around the 9th level shots were fired at them, and they had a small encounter with Jeremiah, Ermon the ‘Ermit’s insane brother. Jeremiah collapsed just after they got to him, finally beaten by the worm in his brain that had driven him insane. The friendly mutants continued down to the 12th level.
Having reached the bottom of Mindkeep, they found a level arranged differently than the others. Instead of the circular row of doors that characterized the upper floors, the 12th had but one massive, locked door, controlled by a panel. Examining the panel, Johnny the Pltaypus used his great expertise of ID bracelets to recognize that one would fit well into the panel. Unfortunately the panel was an early model that required the bracelet to be in one piece. The group looked around, and finally used an old Star Wars tactic and bashed the panel in. Unfortunately, the door failed to open.
Rising back by the ladder to the 9th and 10th levels, the group looked around and found Jeremiah’s quarters, a lavishly furnished floor including a small shrine to his forefathers and a safe. Upon cracking the safe they found within more documents and gladly, another bracelet. Oxford kept hold of this one.
At the 12th floor again the group found that the panel was now more suitable for one of the broken ID bracelets, and so they rose to the 11th floor, similarly shaped with a panel still whole. They inserted Jeremiah’s ID bracelet and enterred into the Alpha Factor Generator.
A large computer, still operational with lights blinking and magnetic drives softly spinning, filled out the majority of this floor. As the group enterred, the computer’s voice boomed,
“I AM AF1, THE ALPHA FACTOR GENERATOR. DO YOU WISH ACCESS?“
replying affirmatively, the computer continued,
“PLEASE PREPARE THE SUBJECT.”
and opened the doors of a small lab observable from without by a large glass panel. Further attempts at communication failed, as the computer repeated the phrase “PLEASE PREPARE THE SUBJECT”; finally, the brave Stormy Weather stepped forth and enterred into the lab. Immediately the doors closed, and a barrage of gizmos and contraptions began to whir around him. “ZOOLOGICAL SPECIMEN. RANDOM BOMBARDMENT” cried out the computer, and a few moments later light filled the room, washing Stormy Weather over with a purple glow. The squirrel cried out in pain, but the light quickly stopped, and as the doors opened he found himself capable of (*roll* 3; 26; 20 *roll*) Electrical Generation.
While Weather marvelled at his new powers, the rest of the group attempted to communicate with the computer further. Friendlier now that its task had been completed, it gave them some cryptic answers about Mindkeep and finally agreed to open the doors to level 12. As an encore, the group placed their friendly omnitar in the examination room. “MINERAL SPECIMEN. RANDOM BOMBARDMENT” announced the computer and began to bombard the crystal with radiation. Absorbing more than it could bear, the poor creature began to vibrate at a high pitch, and the group ducked out of the room just in time to avoid the rain of shards that flew out of the room.
Hurrying down, they entered another large computer room on that bottom floor. But where before there had been an experimental lab, stood a large cubic receptacle, just the size and shape to receive the flier’s soul. Jack stepped up, placed it inside, and with a flash of light, our adventure was concluded.
At this point I had actually planned to do the big reveal on Gamma World being the Starship Warden, a generation ship that suffered a great malfunction, but I hadn’t really built to it and it seemed like a hollow revelation. Still, I am hoping we’ll see Jack, Johnny, Oxford and Stormy Weather again when we return to Amazing Engine: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega.
Conclusion!
How was the game? Not our best but pretty nice. Note to self: connect your dots ahead of the session next time.
How’s the setting? There’s not a lot of setting to speak of in the basic Gamma World game. Alpha Factor implies at all these events and the search to build a starship, but perhaps it’s better to talk of the implied mode of play: exploration, gathering of tech, raiding of ancient facilities. It’s basically D&D: Mutant Edition. It didn’t really grab me, perhaps because I already have a vision of what Gamma World should be about. I think a kind of Fallout meets Paranoia is the right tone for the genre, with a lot more society-after-the-fall and a lot less slaughtering-random-mutants, and with tongue firmly in cheek.
How were the rules? Outdated. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the ACT, it’s basically a way to get the probabilities you want without a fancy dice mechanic. But it requires constant lookup with every action, and that gets old fast. Aside from that, the system is missing modern amenities like skills, and suffers from the concept of character level that was shoehorned into it.
What would you take from the rules? Ah, that’s a tough one. Nothing truly jumped out at me, but I’ll go with the Artifact Examination Chart.I like this little minigame within the game that the players are playing, and I thought that it helped me narrate the process of working out the technology quite well. It needs to be more interesting and it needs more player input, but I could see making a chart like that for casting spells or hacking into computer systems.
Would you play it again? Probably not. The concept behind Gamma World is nice, but this particular execution of it is mediocre. I have an issue of Polyhedron with a short d20 game called Omega World, basically GW with the serial numbers filed off, including character and mutation generation and a bunch of critters (like badders). If I ever do another one-shot of GW (and I’m not likely to do much more) I’d probably use it.
That wraps it up for our triumphant return from the cold. It’s been a month since the game, and it’s high time for the next one. Swords, sorcery and steam all around next week with Castle Falkenstein.
