Play Report: Gamma World
Tonight, my friend A. ran Gamma World for Toronto Area Gamers. Despite there only being two players, I have to say I had quite the hilarious time. So where to begin?
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Well, if you don't know what Gamma World is, it's a post-apocalyptic game full of whacky and weird creatures and inventions. In this world, the Great Britains (spelled differently) are conquering the world slowly. They wear animal helms to represent their fighting prowess (boars grunt and smash, wolves claw). My friend and I live in a small village occupied by the Britains for the last four years.
My character, Nim-we, is a pyrokinetic feline. Yes. I am a flamey cat of doom. So how it works is you pick one random trait. The first thing I picked from the random options was pyrokinetic. This gave me the ability to breathe fire and have a fiery aura at will. Then I chose my second trait, and by magic, I got feline. So instead of being a cat-person a la Doctor Who, I was like I'm totally a cat. I have no thumbs. Doors are my bane. So I'm looking at this pyro kitty and decide, obviously, that she is totally not the hero of this tale, but in fact, the speedster doppleganger is totally the hero (he's also all red) and that I'm his faithful (as much as a cat can be) companion.
Redwind (as is the doppleganger's name) buys some meat from me, some pushy boars steal it, I hide in a house (because the boars want to kidnap the Foyer Catsa (properly spelled Feuer Katzen) and ship them off to the island for amusement) and then get asked to heal some old lady's husband. Naturally I grab my friend and we go for a walk in the woods to get a healing potion. Four hours later we've explored a cave, gotten some ancient alien tech, lit a bunch of boars (and each other) on fire, got captured, freed ourselves, joined a rebellion, escaped an attack on the rebellion's camp, and then lead the leader of said rebellion to the Fire Cat camp. Unfortunately, my fire kitty kaboodle had been hunted by the wolf-headed Britons and so I mourned. We agreed to go meet the Fire Cat King and try to set up an alliance between the whacky rebels and the fire cats to save the day!
The system is kinda D&D 4.0 light. It's fairly easy and intuitive. During each fight you get a chaos card that lets you mutate randomly and do cool shit. My first one was stink glands. This delighted me. Another one let me heal constantly. These refresh automatically at the end of the combat. Fighting, with just two players, was brutal, and neither of us were fighter types. But the GM did some GM-fu and made it easier so that we could survive on our lonesome. I found it a super simple, fast, and fun system that I would totally add to my shelf. And since I hate D&D, I think that says something.
I can't wait to see other characters, as I've roped a couple of friends into playing with us, because Party of 2, while epic, kinda sucks. We play every two weeks on Mondays, but the next game I'll be in is towards the end of November. Foyer Catsa for the win!
Price: Unknown, GM bought it used at BMV
Players: I think 4 - 6 would be ideal, probably 5
Gm Work: Up there. It's like D&D, you need to prep that shit aka "Too much prep for me"
Dice: All of them. Seriously. It's D&D guys. Just not.
Materials: Character sheets. All the dice. All the cards. Maps. Tokens.... etc etc
Feel: Hilarious, whacky, apocalypse-y, random-ass
Rating: 3/5 stars
I would buy this game. I would run this game. It does have a lot of mechanics for my style, but they're based on D&D and therefore, I know them well enough by now that I can handle that level of crunch.
.jpg)
Well, if you don't know what Gamma World is, it's a post-apocalyptic game full of whacky and weird creatures and inventions. In this world, the Great Britains (spelled differently) are conquering the world slowly. They wear animal helms to represent their fighting prowess (boars grunt and smash, wolves claw). My friend and I live in a small village occupied by the Britains for the last four years.
My character, Nim-we, is a pyrokinetic feline. Yes. I am a flamey cat of doom. So how it works is you pick one random trait. The first thing I picked from the random options was pyrokinetic. This gave me the ability to breathe fire and have a fiery aura at will. Then I chose my second trait, and by magic, I got feline. So instead of being a cat-person a la Doctor Who, I was like I'm totally a cat. I have no thumbs. Doors are my bane. So I'm looking at this pyro kitty and decide, obviously, that she is totally not the hero of this tale, but in fact, the speedster doppleganger is totally the hero (he's also all red) and that I'm his faithful (as much as a cat can be) companion.
Redwind (as is the doppleganger's name) buys some meat from me, some pushy boars steal it, I hide in a house (because the boars want to kidnap the Foyer Catsa (properly spelled Feuer Katzen) and ship them off to the island for amusement) and then get asked to heal some old lady's husband. Naturally I grab my friend and we go for a walk in the woods to get a healing potion. Four hours later we've explored a cave, gotten some ancient alien tech, lit a bunch of boars (and each other) on fire, got captured, freed ourselves, joined a rebellion, escaped an attack on the rebellion's camp, and then lead the leader of said rebellion to the Fire Cat camp. Unfortunately, my fire kitty kaboodle had been hunted by the wolf-headed Britons and so I mourned. We agreed to go meet the Fire Cat King and try to set up an alliance between the whacky rebels and the fire cats to save the day!The system is kinda D&D 4.0 light. It's fairly easy and intuitive. During each fight you get a chaos card that lets you mutate randomly and do cool shit. My first one was stink glands. This delighted me. Another one let me heal constantly. These refresh automatically at the end of the combat. Fighting, with just two players, was brutal, and neither of us were fighter types. But the GM did some GM-fu and made it easier so that we could survive on our lonesome. I found it a super simple, fast, and fun system that I would totally add to my shelf. And since I hate D&D, I think that says something.
I can't wait to see other characters, as I've roped a couple of friends into playing with us, because Party of 2, while epic, kinda sucks. We play every two weeks on Mondays, but the next game I'll be in is towards the end of November. Foyer Catsa for the win!
Price: Unknown, GM bought it used at BMV
Players: I think 4 - 6 would be ideal, probably 5
Gm Work: Up there. It's like D&D, you need to prep that shit aka "Too much prep for me"
Dice: All of them. Seriously. It's D&D guys. Just not.
Materials: Character sheets. All the dice. All the cards. Maps. Tokens.... etc etc
Feel: Hilarious, whacky, apocalypse-y, random-ass
Rating: 3/5 stars
I would buy this game. I would run this game. It does have a lot of mechanics for my style, but they're based on D&D and therefore, I know them well enough by now that I can handle that level of crunch.
