Roleplaying Games
4e is Best When It’s ‘D&D Gamma World’
In which you can play a Psychic Plant-Person with a Miniature Tank
“You are playing a male Demon AI. He has curving black horns and seams where the parts all connect. He owns a cellphone earpiece, a package of fruity gum, and jumper cables. He dresses in a naval officer hat and pool noodle armour and wields a pistol.” — Gamma World Bot
This game has gone by a few names. Officially it’s D&D Gamma World, but it’s also been called “Gamma World 4e”, and “Gamma World 4th edition” because it shares D&D 4e’s rules. It’s even been called “Gamma World 7TH edition” because it’s the 7th incarnation of the game.
Gamma World has always been a post-apocalyptic game, but almost every edition has a different explanation of how the shit hit the fan. This edition’s conceit is that a disastrous experiment with the Large Hadron Collider layered a bunch of alternate realities on top of each other for a split second. This was called The Big Mistake.
It’s now 150 years later and Earth, now called Gamma Terra, is FUBARed. Every nation has collapsed. Killer robots, mutant panthers, super-technologies, magical beings, and other nonsense populate the planet. This conveniently creates a environment suitable for “Adventurers”, so it’s basically D&D but in a post-apocalyptic, broken sci-fi world.
D&D Gamma World was sold as a boxed set. Besides the rulebook, it came with tons of tokens, some maps, and some blank character sheets. It also included some cards, but we’ll get to those later.
It’s almost purely a gamist’s game. It doesn't try to simulate anything real, and there are no narrative mechanics. The system is a stripped-down version of D&D 4e, and leaves out things like Feats, Skill Challenges, and Alignments. Gear is heavily simplified too. Gamma World has a grand total of 4 melee weapons, 8 ranged weapons (4 of which are guns), 2 kinds of armor, and 1 shield. That’s it.
But this next part will really blow your mind. Ammunition for guns is abstracted as a binary state. Either you have ammo or you don’t. If you use ammo in a combat encounter no more than once, you don’t expend it. But if you use it more than once, it’s assumed you’re emptying the clip and you will be out of ammo at the end of the encounter. Once you find any amount of ammo, you’re good again. And all guns use the same ammo. It doesn’t make sense but it keeps things simple.
Gamma World is notorious for its absurdly random characters. It has all the normal randomness in character gen, like with Ability scores. But instead of races and classes, Gamma World had 21 Origins. Origins range from Android and Cockroach to Telekinetic and Yeti. PC’s have two Origins and players roll both of those randomly.
Alone, the Origins are merely odd or cool or interesting. Combined, they ensure that every player character is a total, total freak. If there’s one reason Gamma World has such a cult following, this is it. After experiencing this kind of strangeness, Dwarven Clerics seem passé next to Android Rat Swarms.
“Here are a few examples of potential hooks for connecting two unlikely origins together.
Seismic and Hawkoid: You ‘re rocky, and you fly. You’re a gargoyle!
Giant and Cockroach: You’re big and insect-like. You might be a giant beetleoid.
Rat Swarm and Felinoid: You’re a swarm of small creatures, and you’re feline in nature. Either you’re a pack of kittens, or you’re a swarm of rats that climbs and clings together in a panther-shaped collection of individuals.
Android and Plant: Oooh, a toughie. Maybe you’re a robot deliberately designed to have vegetative camouflage. Or maybe you’re a robot constructed from some sort of bizarre biotechnology. You might even hail from a really remote worldline where psionic masters animate golem-like servants made of plant materials.”
— Gamma World, page 35
Engineered Humans are a weird exception. Or, they’re a NOT-weird exception. If you roll the same origin twice, your second Origin is the Engineered Human. They mash up with other Origins, but any Traits and Powers are interpreted as gadgets, special training, or more mundane talents. And they don’t look weird unless the player wants them to. Luckily a player only has a 1 in 20 chance of getting one, because they’re certainly not as fun as Radioactive Yetis.
“Most engineered humans possess heroic proportions and dashing good looks, because the genetic scientists who cooked the DNA generations ago were trying to build a better human … and, well, why not?”
— D&D Gamma World, page 56
The final and most gimmicky feature of D&D Gamma World is its use of cards. Not as a core resolution mechanic. The cards represent the randomness of mutant powers and super-technologies. Players were meant to build their their own decks because they were originally sold in blind booster packs, just like Magic: The Gathering cards. Gamers shit a collective brick when they heard about this. Because of this, some called the game “Gamma World: The Gathering”. The cards might have been more warmly received if they had real art.
Alpha Mutations are the random powers your character can borrow from an alternate-you in an parallel universe. Alpha cards come in three flavors.
- Dark represents dark matter and energy manipulation.
- Psi cards are psychic, Jean Grey/Professor X abilities.
- Bio mutations alter your physical form.
You can have 1 to 3 Alpha Mutations in play, depending on your character level.
The Omega Tech cards represent super-powerful-but-super-delicate weapons and whatnot. The card draw models the random nature of finding one. Omega Tech originates from one of three kingdoms that annihilated each other in the process of trying to conquer Gamma Terra.
- Ishtar tech tends to be light-based in the style of knightly stuff.
- Xi tech is AI, cybernetic, or just super-deadly.
- Area 52 tech is Martian-esque rayguns and classic sci-fi gadgets.
After an encounter in which you use it, you have to roll to see it it still has Charge left. If it doesn’t, you might be able to Salvage it and keep using it like more normal gear. Otherwise, it’s junk.
Note that Gamma World’s cards were not a radical outlier. WotC had also released Fortune Cards for D&D proper. They were basically special moves or lucky breaks the player could use in the right situation. Unlike Gamma World cards, they were a tacked-on supplement. No one used them, and if they did it was with a shared deck. If I had the money at the time, I would have used Fortune Cards on top of the Alpha and Omega cards.
But I can’t stress enough how much people HATED the cards. Gamers had already bounced off of the card-driven SAGA system, even though the loved Dragonlance and Marvel. But their hatred for the Gamma World’s cards was more than justified. Not only did the cards lock away a bunch of new powers and tech, but it made any financial differences between players more apparent.
While I never heard of anyone doing this, I can imagine there was a power gamer out there with a better job then their friends who bought an entire booster box, giving his character the best stuff. And the sort of person that would do that probably wouldn’t share. Yeah, you could trade cards, but that’s just an extra step. I’m sure most groups stuck with the cards in the box, which is enough. In the end, people who cared compiled all the Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech into a document for anyone to download.
A word about the mood. Gamma World is not “funny”. It’s more like “Cognitive Dissonance: The Roleplaying Game”. A mutant bear leading a pro-animal revolution is meant to be played straight. Sharks that “swim” underground are meant to be played straight. A giant cyborg tank-turtle with a shell spray-painted like The Partridge Family’s bus is meant to be played straight. Jokes aren’t necessary. The the setting’s ludicrousness is enough.
In addition to card boosters, two supplements were released. Both had additional Origins, maps, and tokens. One introduced Cryptic Alliance cards, which provided factions characters could belong to and special powers. The other added D&D 4e’s Skill Challenges and Feats. And thanks to the magic of PDFs, you can buy EVERYTHING mentioned here on DriveThruRPG, including all the cards.
Except for the D&D Fortune Cards. You can’t buy those as PDFs. I’m not sure why.