Anvil of the Sun Belongs in Gamma World 1e

 Michael Gibbons has a great blog called Metal Earth and it is chock full of his delightful thickly inked line drawings for his games and books. I fell in love with an evocative map he published early in the blog's history, a map I like to refer to as Anvil of the Sun. It screams 1e Gamma World and my favorite post-apoc comic from the seventies, Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth. Now that I am playing in a Gamma World 1e/2e campaign (as a PSH called Kamanja) I had a terrible jones to world build on the old blank United States of America map which was included in the original game.  

Many a wee lad had trouble like I did when first exposed to this vast blank map. While the outline of the USA was lovingly tortured by the early age of the global devastation which besets the campaign world, the map was empty. Where and what should middle-school kids put in this future earth? Where to start? DC, New York, Miami? I played the great module The Albuquerque Starport but never connected it to a greater Gamma World.

Metal Earth solves all this, for me. Last night I reviewed Anvil of the Sun and contemplated where I should set it on the original 1e map. The important feature of Anvil is that there are large bodies of water on either side of the land mass. This being the Atomic Ocean and the Stained Sea. A quick search of  the US map gives me only one logical place for this Metal Earth map and that is the Baja of Mexico, Baja California, which once enclosed the Gulf of California and the Sea of Cortez. Now I'm going to set up a scale to interpose the Anvil map onto the new and reduced Baja.

I've chosen 16 kilometers per hex on the Anvil map and extrapolated this to the 43.7 kilometers of the greater US map. I've actually changed the official Gamma World scale to 48 kilometers per hex because this neatly conforms to a 3x3 hex area on this new campaign map.

Here is what it looks like: Now I only need to populate the radioactive sandbox with my own original details as suggested by Michael's great map. I've decided Shaft 17 is home of a large PSH colony of Restorationists (I do love PSH's it seems) determined to restore their world into a New Earth akin to the past world which has been lost. The Tower of Zola has been tagged with being the shrine of the dominant religious belief on the Anvil with the Priests of Zola residing in the fascinating city Skull. Skull and the Priests of Zola are the dominant power of the region with the small nation-state of Szan and the Shaft 17 colony the next legitimate recognized powers of note. Notice the hex labeled "Ghostland" just east of Shaft 17 standing in the poison waters of the Atomic Ocean. What exactly is these water-based ruins and its relation with Shaft 17 is the first mystery of the campaign world I wish to resolve before I move on to the Tower of Zola. A forbidden, taboo site for the average Shaft 17'teener is my first obvious leap, but the devil is in the details they say :)
 

 

Gamma World 1st Edition Episode

This is episode 7 in the Detroit Suck City Saga. Unedited. This cut will get replaced with an edited audio version in a week or less. Seems to be my turnaround time. This session is worth a listen because it includes Dalaks and a satchel full of grenades!

Played a GAme of Gamma World Yesterday

Here is the edited audio of the adventures had. I felt this episode was a direct channeling of your favorite war movie. Auto fire, hand to hand, tanks!

1E/2E Gamma World Game Session: Detroit Suck City

I turned to the MeWe gaming crowd I've managed to keep together after the demise of G+ for players to fill my friends new 1e Gamma World game. The three other open seats filled fast with five people so it looks like the game may get some legs with a stocked roster of PCs. The bidding war was opened for first game date (it was this past Friday) to be picked, got it scheduled and slammed out our first group adventure (jiminey got a special introductory issue one-shot prior to this) with, what the GM said "were questionable tactics." :) You now can be the judge. Here is the unedited, unexpurgated game session. I thought we had solid plans all along?

Now you get to be the judge!

Shelter in Place with Gamma World 1e

I phoned a friend of mine today while sitting in the Falcon after the Kessel Run got canceled. He was finding some time off on his hands like the rest of the world and was perusing his old 1e boxed set of Gamma World. We quickly agreed we would hook up on line in a couple of hours and roll up some mutant humanoids and animals (no plants or PSH's, first house rule). With any good session zero, the character creation process started blocking out the campaign world. The apocalyptic event was recent and not in the misty past, so a lot of standing rubble and ruin. We picked Detroit out of the hat for the destroyed urban environment we would start in. Slag pits are what you climb out of when ascending the post-apocalyptic corporate ladder, and that is about it at this point. 

Building the game world around some random character creation is just such the right way to approach a classic Gamma World game. We all have so much Post-Apoc media influence the idea train shouldn't ever run out of track. 

I posted up a mewe group for the game so as to get others involved and start establishing some game dates. Come on over if interested. Don't need to be a player, lurkers are always welcome. At least head over to the group and poach the form-fillable 1e character sheet. Or not. It is easily found online. I'll think I will add it to my Summonings page anways.

Oh, here is the character I created, Jiminey the Unethical Mutated Cricket.

Gamma World Skill List for BRP

The (B)ig (G)old (B)ook for Chaosium's BRP is a decent touchstone for creating your own specific homebrew game world. The big advantage is the system is remarkably modular, allowing the Game Master to pick and choose levels of complexity, and the systems built in internal consistency. When coming up with your own game universe and setting it sure helps to be able to rapidly come up with a rules judgement without having to search through rule books for special cases. 

The other place where BRP shines is character creation. You can follow the step by step character creation instructions and quickly customize the mechanics to develop player characters tailored to your desired setting. The most useful feature is the "Guide to Creating A Character" flowchart. On two pages there are 10 steps clearly illustrating how to build your PC. While all these steps are detailed within the pages like you would find in any other RPG rulebook, this flowchart allows you to readily apprehend the overall process. I find this pictorial representation allows me to make design choices immideatly as I craft a brand new game. I could literally sit at a table with players and ask what kind of game do you want to play? If they answer 1920's gangsters good to go. Ruthless pirates on the Spanish Main game on in twenty minutes. If I have sourcebooks from other games on my shelf for the desired genre I have ready made setting material at my fingertips. 

To keep things simple I took a stripped down approach to creating a Gamma World character. Specifically with skills. 250 point for skills. That's it. For powers there will be Mutations, of course. The guidelines for major and minor mutations will be taken. Four slots total, a major mutation will take 2, minor 1. Declare your selection and roll away on random tables!

The table of contents can give you an idea how versatile and organized the Chaosium approach is: Characters (covering basic attributes), Skills, Powers (further broken down into Magic, Mutations, Psychic Abilities, Sorcery, and Super Powers), System, Combat, and Spot Rules. The only thing left is your full on imagination.

But being a generic RPG rulebook there are going to be gaps. Gaps and holes. A common complaint against BRP is that it doesn't do Super Hero roleplaying well. That the normal to heroic human-centric baseline breaks down when designing super powers. By extension this critique can be applied to Sci-Fi, specifically vehicles. I think this is a legit complaint. The BGB even cops to this, and I quote; "a comprehensive listing of all vehicles or even most major types of vehicles would dominate this rulebook." Reading between the lines you realize that coming up with comprehensive vehicle rules and vehicle combat is an entirely new subsystem which needs to drafted for technologically advanced gaming worlds. 

The other gap, and one much more easily managed, is skill lists specific for the genre being played. The BRP character sheet lists all the skills common to the system as well as blank lines to add additional skills as needed for the specific game. What this creates is kind of a mess which players and Game Masters have to sort out during character creation. Short of drafting a custom character sheet for each genre I recommend a Game Master provide a Complete Skill List to the players for the game. For example; if I was going to run a "Gamma World" inspired BRP game my complete skill list would look like this.

Gamma World Skills – Complete Listing

COMMUNICATION

1. BARGAIN/BARTER
   
2. COMMAND
   
3. DISGUISE
   
4. FAST TALK
   
5. LANGUAGE, OWN
   
6. LANGUAGE, OTHER
   

MANIPULATION

7. CRAFT: JURY RIG
   
8. DEMOLITION: EXPLOSIVES
   
9. FINE MANIPULATION: PICK LOCKS, MECHANICAL
   
10. FINE MANIPULATION: PICK LOCKS, ELECTRONIC
    
11. FINE MANIPULATION: DISARM/SET TRAPS
    
12. REPAIR: PRIMITIVE
    
13. REPAIR: COMPLEX
    
14. SLEIGHT OF HAND
    

MENTAL

15. APPRAISE
    
16. FIRST AID
    
17. GAMING
    
18. KNOWLEDGE SKILL: THE ANCIENTS
    
19. KNOWLEDGE SKILL: SURVIVAL
    
20. MEDICINE
    
21. SCIENCE: THE ANCIENTS
    
22. TECHNICAL SKILL: COMPUTERS
    
23. TECHNICAL SKILL: DRIVE
    
24. TECHNICAL SKILL: PILOTING
    
25. TECHNICAL SKILL: POWER ARMOR
    
26. TECHNICAL SKILL: ROBOTICS
    

PERCEPTION

27. LISTEN
    
28. SCAVENGING
    
29. SPOT HIDDEN
    
30. TRACK
    

PHYSICAL

31. ATHLETICS (covers Jump, Swim, Throw, etc.)
    
32. CLIMB
    
33. DODGE
    
34. HIDE
    
35. RIDE
    
36. STEALTH
    

COMBAT

37. ENERGY WEAPONS
    
38. SLUG THROWERS
    
39. MELEE WEAPONS
    
40. RANGED WEAPONS
    
41. BRAWL
    
42. GRAPPLE
    

For Mutations you have rules and examples provided in the  BGB, and Psychic Abilities will most likely come into play. But the list is not altogether long. It has gaps. The Metamorphica, Being a Very Large Collection of System-Agnostic Random Mutation Tables by Johnstone Metzger is indispensable for building out your mutations list for a gonzo-tinged game of Gamma World. The BGB makes a distinction between Major and Minor mutations so random rolls on the the Metamorphica tables will take some work with the Game Master. I decided my Mutant Humanoid I'm rolling up will have one Major and two Minor Mutations. I rolled Hallucinations, Reverse Pedalism, and Bad Breath. Okay, so my Major is technically an affliction. The character would be severely plagued with Hallucinations. Not very gameable. So I will turn this into the psychic ability Emotional Control. The effect, and power of this ability is based on the Power attribute. As a Major mutation I decide the character's Power attribute is doubled when using this ability. Reverse Pedalism just means he has four legs. As a minor mutation I will increase his max movement by 50% then say double if it was a major mutation. No Gamma World character is complete without some type of negative mutation and this guy has got Bad Breath. Like nasty, gut wrenching bad breath. Why not say if he successfully Grapples an opponent they can paralyze them if the victim fails a resistance roll.     

So there you have it, a Hallucinating projecting, four-legged, foul-mouthed mutant humanoid striding the radioactive wastes!