Gamma World: Floating Castle of the Wasp Women

Friday night I ran a group of six friends through a draft of my Gamma World scenario Floating Castle of the Wasp Women in preparation for the Gamex con next weekend. (UPDATE: Read about the con session here!)

The game was pretty much insane… Because I don’t want to reveal too much about the scenario yet, I thought I’d simply describe a few Kodak Moments from the session:

A 15-foot tall humanoid deer was standing on the battlement of a floating castle when he grabbed two 8-foot long human-faced wasps by their necks and fried their brains with electrical shocks emitting from his fingers.

A flying go-kart was careening through space, crashing through a swarm of angry wasp women, while the driver – a gigantic stink beetle – was desperately trying to spray his hymenopteran aggressors with paralyzing flatulence.

A winged woman with radiation-seeking antennae broke down a door to find herself being fired on by a seven-year old boy with a laser blaster. Luckily a flying hedgehog girl was able to wrestle the laser blaster away with her telekinetic powers.

An "average guy" named Bob strolled into a giant wasp brood chamber to find hundreds of tiny maggots with baby faces. Being the average guy that he was, Bob began to mentally leech the life force out of the squirming babies while worker wasps were frantically dog-piling him.

A giant sticky (and delicious smelling) slug with a pulsating Mole of Confusion on his forehead fell from the air and began frantically spitting mucous spit bombs as he was stung to death by the wasp women.

Sadly the slug character was turned into a puddle of mucous during the game. However, Bob The Average ended up with almost 200HP after walking into the middle of the wasp nest and Life Leeching them all. At the last moment, the flatulent beetle character saved the day with one very well placed fart.

A beautiful experience - I can’t wait to again relive the joy and wonder that is Gamma World...!

A few technical comments:

At cons it’s sensible and standard to have pre-generated characters. However, I think one of the most pleasing aspects of Gamma World is the weird and unpredictable mutation combos you get popping up in PCs. In order to keep this fun and unpredictable element in a one-shot game I’m using mutation cards where the players have their mutant abilities printed on little cards in front of them. I achieved this during playtest by photocopying the mutation tables from the first edition rulebook, and having the players excise the bits describing their mutations. This worked great – it sped things up, and no one had to look in the rulebook during play. Before the con next Sunday I hope to make an actual Mutagenesis Deck that players can simply draw cards from. Also, for the session I had players draw lots for their starting weapons and I made up super-simple digest-sized Gamma World character sheets. I’ll post the character sheets for download here in a few days in case anyone’s interested.

A word from James Ward:

Interestingly, after the game the dude who played the mutant slug asked James Ward (the original Gamma World designer) if he thought the Life Leech mutation was too powerful. If you'll recall, Bob the Average's Life Leech played a huge role in the players' victory over the wasps. Here's what Mr. Ward said:

Lifeleech, one of my best inventions.

Over the versions editors (those nasty organizers) have tried to calm down the effects of this mutation. I must admit the ability to keep sucking life points away is powerful. Of course the editors rarely consider that life leechers are the ultimate target of every enemy. Leechers can't take robot hit points. There are really lots of balancing effects to be used on such mutants. I can remember in the games I ran for Gary Gygax and his friends that Gary would kill leechers on sight and not allow them in the village of vigalists. In one group I gamed with they invented anti-life leech paint made from special nanos.

I'm glad you had fun with the game.

James M. Ward

Although right after the game I was having mixed feelings about how powerful Life Leech was, in retrospect the game was hyper-fun and I wouldn't change a thing. Gamma World is not about playing a highly balanced strategy game, after all, it's about mutant insanity! I agree with Mr. Ward - the trend to weaken mutations in later editions was a wimp out...

Naughty Erol Otus - Banned Illustrations

1982 saw the release of a high school-themed RPG called Alma Mater. Many game stores banned this product for its sex, drugs, and violence. Although I've often heard about this game, I've never personally seen a copy of it.

From what I understand, the game is a pretty straight-up old school RPG. The character classes are Loser, Average Kid, Brain, Jock, Cheerleader, Criminal, and Tough. The game takes place over four years, and players score points in categories like Social Success or Academic Success, with the goal of meeting class-specific victory conditions. There is a skill system that includes stuff like Drinking, Cheating, and Studying. There are also simple rules for dealing with various challenges like acne, pregnancy, and dope addiction.

Probably the most remarkable aspect of this game are the zinger illustrations by Erol Otus. Enjoy:

(CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

I thank Kellri for posting these scans to The RPG Site a few years back.

Erol Otus' Gamma World

I’m immersing myself in Gamma World in preparation for the con session I’m running during Memorial Day weekend. I played this game back in the early/mid-80s using the second edition set in the burgundy box. I have fond memories of grid crawling through a trashed post-apocalyptic world, munching on Cheez-Its, listening to Iron Maiden cassettes late into the night. Playing Gamma World was pretty weird and cool - mutated humanoids digging through piles of rubbish to find goodies, cults of talking animals hiding in the hills, and secret bunkers hosting fundamentalist pure strain humans.

In reading about other folks’ Gamma World (and Mutant Future) games on blogs and forums these days it’s interesting to note the divergent aesthetic approaches to the game. The aesthetic represented in the official published material is pretty dark, gritty, and Mad Max-like. This approach seemed to become stronger over time through the various editions (at least the ones I have seen, I lost track around edition 4 or 5). More evident in the earlier editions, and in the current retro gaming world, is gonzo zaniness reminiscent of Thundaar the Barbarian and Dave Trampier’s first edition illustrations. I love Thundaar, so of course I'm biased towards this latter vision.

My personal favorite approach to Gamma World, however, is best illustrated by Erol Otus’ illustrations in the first edition supplements. Beautiful technicolor weirdness more along the lines of early Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated magazines than Saturday Morning cartoons.

In particular, look closely at Otus’ colorful ref screen illustration. The sky is clear and blue – not a dark and gritty scene at all. Green tress, mountains, dragons, mushrooms. I like the punked out warrior babe with the Dead Kennedys amulet and the crazy techno-wand - I want to be her friend. The mutants are really weird and fantastic. Soooooooo awesome! I’ll take Otustown over Bartertown any day!

(CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

Dungeon Mistress: Homebrew D&D With Seven Girls

My teenage niece who is running an all-girl homebrew D&D campaign (I wrote about here) has started her own D&D blog called Dungeon Mistress!

I forwarded her the link to the blog post I made about her game, and also to the ensuing discussion at Dragonsfoot, and she was very entertained and encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reactions. I think her blog will provide a novel perspective on gaming that isn't represented in the usual blogs and forums.

My niece is also intending to make video posts of game sessions in the near future. This should be pretty cool and interesting!

Running Gamma World at Gamex 2010

This is just a little advertisement that I will be running a session of 1st edition Gamma World at Gamex 2010, one of L.A.'s biggest gaming conventions. The con runs over Memorial Day Weekend, May 28-31. My Gamma World session will be Sunday, May 30, 2-6pm. Here's the description for my session (and the image that inspired it):

The Floating Castle of the Wasp Women!

After the apocalypse your village found peace and safety on a sky island floating far above the radiation-soaked world below. No time to relax, though, my mutated friends! Your village is under attack by wasp women seeking to purloin your precious gravitron matrix generator – the ancient device keeping your village afloat! Can you and your small band of mutant warriors fend off the wasps, rescue the gravitron, and save the sky island? This will be a fast-paced session of TSR’s classic 1978 game GAMMA WORLD!

This should be a great con for RPGs! Robert Lionheart is going to be running a bunch of old school games of Traveller and Tunnels and Trolls. Also, the L.A. Dead Gamers Society will be out in force with high-quality World of Darkness weirdness, including some supernatural WWII-themed sessions run by Steve Ramirez!

UPDATE: Click here to read the final session report!

1978 Greyhawk Homebrew Spells

For my day job as an entomologist I often find myself collecting butterflies in strange and remote places around the world. Unlike most collectors, however, I do not favor fresh and pristine specimens. I prefer ragged individuals whose wear and markings tell a story about how old the butterfly is, if it has been attacked by birds or lizards, or if it's hosting some kind of interesting parasite.

I'm the same way about collecting books and manuscripts, including gaming material. I love finding old modules and rulebooks that have been well used and annotated by previous owners. Old scribblings can tell you a lot about how someone played the game long ago - what kind of narratives they dreamed up, what kind of monsters they contended with, and what kind of riches they enjoyed.

This is why I was very pleased to find some homebrew spells listed in  a copy of OD&D Supplement I: Greyhawk I bought off eBay a while back. Greyhawk was originally published in 1976, and the copy I have is a 9th printing from May 1978. Check out these penciled-in spells appended to the Page 20 magic user spell list:

Of particular interest are the "Noose of Flesh" and "Forlorn Incistment [sic]" spells. Anyone recognize these?

"The Noose of Flesh" is a spell originating from Michael Moorcock's The Vanishing Tower. It's a pretty nasty and powerful piece of magic that causes a circular wall of quivering pink flesh to grow from the ground, eventually folding over the target(s), crushing them. In the original book the sorceress Myshella uses the spell to destroy an entire army.

"The Charm of Forlorn Encystment" is a spell from Jack Vance's Eyes of the Overworld. This spell encapsulates its victims far below the surface of the earth, forever... Or at least until the reverse of the spell is cast. There was a post about homebrew use of this spell in AD&D at Mule Abides, where tavis discussed speculation it may have been the source of Gygax's Imprisonment spell.

So this marked up Greyhawk provides a pretty nice example of a typical player - not an author - exploiting pulp fiction for homebrew D&D in the 70s. This is something a lot of us probably do routinely these days - I certainly do - but it's cool to see direct evidence of Vance and Moorcock influence on a D&D player back in the day.

What I am DYING to know is, what in the world is that 9th level "White Puff Ball Spell"...? It must be pretty damn weird and cool!

The Suspended City of Wiggin's Drop

The World Oranj whitebox campaign had a significant change of scenery when the party merged with a Human Door. In addition to finding the wizard Morton's secret workroom and spellbook, they also found their way to a location I Am the Door insisted was a beautiful city called Wiggin's Drop. When transporting to the Wiggin's Drop coordinates the group was surprised to find themselves in a dark and dusty space behind an underground shrine of an unknown race. Exploration eventually brought the group to a crypt where six dessicated corpses of tall gaunt lily-white humanoids were laid out.

At the urging of the magician Scunibro the group moved quickly to find any way DOWN. Eventually they came to a large silver spherical chamber filled with obliviously spinning ghosts. At the bottom of the chamber was a ladder leading down, down, down. The party slid down the side of the sphere, climbed down the ladder, and found themselves on a swaying walkway - The Great Walkwork - suspended high over an underground sea:

The entire cavern was glowing a diffuse amber due to the carpet of phosphorescent fungus covering the ceiling. I Am The Door pointed off into the distance to a gigantic ceramic teardrop-like structure suspended over the sea and said it was Wiggin's Drop City. End of Session.