D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game

WTF?

With all the blather about Ravenloft, Ravenloft, RAVENLOFT!!!!

... we failed to notice this new "D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game," which appears to actually be a boardgame.

www.wizards.com/dnd/Product.aspx?x=dnd/p...cts/dndacc/254600000

"The D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game offers hours of rollicking entertainment in a savage land of adventure, where the survivors of some mythical future disaster must contend with radioactive wastes, ravaged cities, and rampant lawlessness. Against a nuclear backdrop, heroic scavengers search crumbled ruins for lost artifacts while battling mutants and other perils."

The flavor text makes it sound very much like a different flavor dungeon crawl that might otherwise be similar to Castle Ravenloft.

$40 USD price... check
standard square modern boardgame box... check
maps, chits, decks of cards... check check check

However, it also has a 160-page rule book. So it seems that it might be an rpg after all.

Oh wait, there are booster packs of cards. Um, why are there booster packs? Apparently the cards give the heroes more options for character creation.

www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20100913

I loved the original. We played a hell of a lot of Gamma World back in the day. So, since I'm way out of touch with the RPG scene these days, is this supposed to be a sort of hybrid RPG like the Warhammer RPG Fantasy Flight publishes?

Yeah I'd seen some Gamma World coverage from RobotViking.com but I didn't realize it incorporated so many board game/ccg elements.

We played a pile of Gamma World when I was younger. In fact I just stumbled across my old maps I used when I GM'd. Outskirts of Chicago.

In the day it was Roleplay alright, and the reasons it failed were two-fold. The first is that there was no good way to advance your character. D&D's strong suit was character growth and none of the others could manage that. Traveler, Gamma World, Met Alpha, Top Secret . . . your characters were largely static save for the trinkets they picked up.

The other drawback was TSR's inability to really upsell their clients. The basic book was sufficient and the add-ons just weren't terribly compelling. No sales means no reprints.

My guess is that they're doing what the other RPGs have done and replaced your pencil and paper with a card that shows you what your hopper looks like and how fast it can carry you. You can sell cards, pencils and paper are just lying around all over the place.

I'd consider buying if they fixed item 1 above. I'd like to spend a bit of time role-playing and with three boys coming into age I may have a captive audience. My 10yo just bought his first starter box of Warhammer figs, so I may be out of luck.

S.


--- Update: This video community.wizards.com/microbless/blog/me...video&vid_id=1277795 shows the unwrapping and it pretty much looks like a bad idea. Here's a question -- if you're playing a role-playing game and you are GMing a group and you'd really like them to have a fuze rifle, why would you not just print out a copy from the Internet and tape it on top of a card you have three copies of? I mean if it's just a CCG using the Gamma World theme that's fine, but if it's really an RPG why on Earth would you work around a card you don't own?

Thanks for the link to the video:

Wow, it looks horrible and dull. TSRs art and graphics design departments must be going to hell quickly because this is boring and gaudy.

Mixing 'collectible' cards with a role-playing game is a recipe for disaster. TSR apparently just doesn't get it anymore as they believe that role playing gamers don't want awesome modules and core materials, but rather want endless player character handbooks, dungeon master guides, and power card packs instead.

A good friend of mine went with me to the FLGS recently and he (and the FLGS owner) mentioned that Pathfinder is mopping up the floors with D&D because of the fouth edition fiasco. Apparently distributors are dumping 4th ed product too.

I wonder if this is a case of the parent company having unrealistic expectations for the D&D product line, the parent company with unclear or conflicting expectations for TSR, or just some really major mistakes made by the staff with their fourth edition product plan and expectations of their fanbase.

Uncommons and Rares? Hey Wizards of the Coast. FUCK YOU.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd another piece of my childhood has been banished to the scrapheap.

I echo Hex's sentiments entirely.

Hey, WOTC, while you're at it why don't you pick up the Mutant Chronicles franchise. Make it a board game with miniatures the size of SW action figures, and make it blind collectible! I'm sure you're going to rake in the dough.

This could still be cool. D&D4E is one of the best minis games around. With a gamma world setting you'd have some really interesting combats. However I agree they missed the boat on several accounts.

-collectibility in a RPG? You're kidding right?
-this is probably pathfinder and not 4E (though I liked 3.5 quite bit. Gamma world 3.0 was awful though)
-If this does even moderately well, there will be minis. However, the diversity of mutants makes collecting really ..challenging
-not a fan of the small rulebook. I haven't seen one published yet that was incomplete or not fully fleshed out.

All that aside, I *love* Gamma World. I love the weird setting, the whole post holocaust meets buck rogers feel. The weirdness in general. I will have to try it whern it comes out.

I thought Gamma World 2 had some really good ideas in it. The chart was cumbersome and the game would have benefitted by going to a straight percentile system with gradations of success based on skill x.5, .25, .10.
I loved the variety of effects and how weapon damage was based on how well you rolled. The game really had potential but there were also parts that were a complete mess.

Steve"Whose 1st gamma world character was named Logon"Avery

As a 4E fan, and a Gamma World fan, I for one am looking forward to this immensely. The CCG part is iffy, and will have to buy a few boosters when I get the game next week to see if it really adds value to the game. Probably not. I am already scouring though some of my original Gamma World modules to possible convert to the new rule set. Stay tuned in the next couple weeks for a review, and if you're in the Austin area, let me know, come on over and you can know for sure how much it may suck.

The first role-playing game that I ever bought was actually Gamma World. It had a grim, drab cover, suggestive of both autumn and apocalypse:



The rules were difficult to grasp at first, given that I had no prior experience with RPGs. I struggled through it, then soon got my first chance to play D&D, which made Gamma World somewhat easier to learn afterwards. We never played it much compared to D&D or even V&V, but the sessions were memorable. A couple of the pre-made modules were even good.

This new edition seems misguided in so many ways. Labeling it as part of D&D is just plain weird, thematically and otherwise, but I blame that on WotC's marketing department. The cover art is indeed amateurish-looking. The booster pack idea seems greedy and not all suitable for an RPG. And overall, I get the impression that this boxed set is going to end up being an awkward, hybrid mutation of a game, not entirely an RPG or a boardgame. I would love to take a look through the contents, but I'm not willing to drop $40. Or even $20, given the space restraints that I face at home right now.

Stephen Avery wrote:

-not a fan of the small rulebook. I haven't seen one published yet that was incomplete or not fully fleshed out.

Wizards has just released the 4E rules in a smaller package. And they have done quite well in pulling out all the flavor text for "just the facts jack"..


I've never been all that keen for the flavor text anyway. That is my job as the DM. I add the flavor.

I just started playing 4E and it fucking rocks. I'm almost ready to say it's the best dungeon-crawl game ever (with just as much RPGing/storytelling as you want to add - just like all the previous editions). The Essentials line rocks; D&D Insider rocks; it's all good.

I have no interest in CCG elements though.

The CCG elements are an extremely lame idea. Especially for .50 a card. I'm holding out for collected decks at a more reasonable price.

The one artifact that the CCG push does create is the concept of random mutations. Your character is mutating once or twice per combat.

There are a couple of problems with 4e:
1. The initial rush of being able to do all of this does pale as characters increase in power.
2. Daily recharge powers feel a little forced. (GW drops dailies, and D&D essentials reigns them in a LOT. Rogues don't have them at all now, and most of their stuff is At-will.)

Try this out, guys. Whip out your old school box and play it, warts 'n all. Guess what? It's all still there and it works. We're playing Legion of Gold right now and having a great time. We wanted to get back to some simplicity after a long 3.5 campaign and Gamma World is just as fun (as long as you make it fun). All the wierd flavor is intact. You don't need a bunch of pseudo-fancy crap to have a good time scavving for broken junk in the ruins.