Let's Make A Gamma World 1st Edition Character

[Music] why hello there and welcome back to let's make us a character however before we begin I do have a bit of sad news while I was working on this video James M Ward creator of metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World as well as countless other contributions to tabletop gaming passed away and if you are watching this video there is a pretty good chance that there are quite a few things you enjoy that wouldn't be the same or just wouldn't exist at all if James M Ward had not thought that it would be cool if there was a Sci-Fi version of D and and ended up having to be the one to make it so I would like to dedicate this episode to his memory and Lasting Legacy of weird and wacky games that he left behind games such as Gamma World a property consistently ignored and mistreated by two successive Publishers over the course of 45 years and seven yes seven editions with a release history that when compared to Dungeons and Dragons could be described as spotty at best and only totals like 35 products in all a sad fate for a game that is usually the first name that comes to mind when you say postapocalyptic tabletop roleplaying game and as mentioned in the previous video gam world is essentially a spiritual successor to metamorphosis Alpha which introduced many of the concepts that Gamma World would then standardize as the defining elements of the Gonzo post-apocalyptic genre like it would not be an exaggeration to call Gamma World the most important tabletop role playing game that you've never played so to begin in this video I will be going over how to make a character Persona a term that is used in the book and therefore as you can understand I just had to as well for Gamma World first edition from 1978 which is notably one year after advanced Dungeons and Dragons however unlike that which was a 128 page hard cover book with a separate monster manual Gamma World was released as a box set with a map Dice and 56-page allinone rule book and I'm not really going to get into the setting here because as I mentioned whatever you think of when I say weird post-apocalypse has likely been influenced directly or indirectly by Gamma World so without all the way let's make us a gamma world first edition character characters have six attributes mental strength intelligence dexterity Charisma Constitution and physical strength so compared to metamorphosis Alpha the attributes have been standardized to be more consistent with those in Dungeons and Dragons and we roll 3d6 for each attribute although according to the book it is advisable to instead roll 4 D6 and take the three highest results as quote player characters represent an elite with a desire the initiative and the ability to venture outside the boundaries of the village town or tribal lands and as such should reasonably have above average stats kind of weird how old school games keep disagreeing with annoying Old School gaming enthusiasts about how old school games were supposed to be played and then we have three options for a character type pure strain human humanoid and mutated animal mutated plants are still a thing but are now specifically stated to not be appropriate for use as player characters and there have been some notable changes here from metamorphosis Alpha pure strain humans now get a plus three bonus to Charisma instead of nothing which is quite useful given that Charisma determines whether or not someone is going to help you or stab you with a poison spear but this is a gamma World video and you want me to talk about mutations so we will not be going with pure strain human mutated animals have also been updated and now have human level intelligence by default instead of needing to spend one of your mutations on it possibly because there is now an intelligence attribute versus metamorphosis Alpha where creatures were either just intelligent or not however as in Metamorphosis Alpha the rules state to figure out all the animals base abilities as logically and reasonably as possible before the start of the game to prevent later arguments without providing any kind of guidelines on how to do that and I do generally like to avoid having to fill in too many gaps myself in these videos so let's just go with humanoid who have not really undergone any changes from metamorphosis Alpha and in a weird way you could say that the humanoid mutants are kind of like the human option for Gamma World they are the basic default which is you know weird when one of the other options is literally human and as a mutated human we do of course start just as a regular human but before we get into any muttin let's take a look at our attributes and what they do mental strength is used in making and resisting mental attacks just like in Metamorphosis Alpha you reference the attacker and defender's mental strengths on the mental attack Matrix to determine a twoh hit number for the attack so for example with a mental strength of 12 if we were mental attacking a creature with a mental strength of 10 we would need to roll an eight or higher on a D20 to succeed and notably that is a change from metamorphosis Alpha where it was 3d6 instead which was presumably changed for reasons of consistency and also that being kind of weird also you do still increase your mental strength by one for each five mental attacks successfully resisted but now also for every five successful attacks made intelligence is used in determining if a character is able to operate artifacts gaining a minus one adjustment for every point of intelligence above 15 or plus one for every Point under seven two attempts to do so so at intelligence 17 we get a minus two adjustment also the process for doing that has become moderately more complex and will be explained later dexterity determines who acts first in combat and also grants a plus one for each point above 15 or minus one for each point under six to two hit rolls in physical combat neither of which applies to us Charisma is weirdly important here compared to the universal dump stat that it sometimes is seen at in Dungeons and Dragons it determines our maximum number of followers in our case with a Charisma of eight three morale adjustment which is minus one and reaction adjustment which is just normal and basically the way reaction works is when an NPC's reaction to the character is unsure the GM rolls 2d6 and consults the reaction table to determine their attitude adding that reaction modifier to the role if applicable and just because that wasn't complicated enough all those Charisma based stats are further Modified by character type modifiers so as a humanoid we take minus 2 minus1 and minus1 to our Max followers reaction modifier and morale respectively when dealing with Pure Stock humans or mutated animals Constitution determines hit points so with a constitution of 11 we get 11 D6 so 43 hit points and yes rolling up that many hit points at first Lev is very satisfying Constitution also determines the effects of Poison by cross referencing the character's Constitution versus the strength of the poison so with a constitution of 11 we would be unaffected by poisons of seven or lower take one or two dice damage from strength eight or nine poisons respectively and die from anything stronger yeah poison is just as brutal as it was in Metamorphosis Alpha although now antidotes have been simplified a bit more so that they work on the strength of the poison so if we are taken out by a strength 12 poison all we need to be saved is a general strength 12 antidote as long as it's administered within two rounds but the big change here is that Constitution now also determines radiation resistance since there is no longer a dedicated radiation resistance attribute as there was in Metamorphosis Alpha and it is basically handled the same as poison cross referencing your Constitution and the radiation level on a matrix so with 11 Constitution we take 3 to8 D6 damage per round for intensity 3 to8 radiation gain a random mutation on a 9 or 10 and die on anything above that although there is still a 20% chance of just gaining a negative mutation instead of dying uh but some of those are very very bad also radiation has gotten a bit more deadly just in general for examp example with a constitution of 11 and level 11 radiation in Metamorphosis Alpha we would take 1d6 damage in Gamma World we would die and finally physical strength which grants a plus one bonus for each point above 15 or minus one for each point under six two damage in physical combat which at 10 is another no adjustment for us and that is what the attributes do on paper at least of course you can also use them as a rough measure of a character's abilities so you know a character with strength 15 can reasonably just lift more stuff than a character with strength of five or you can test them if desired my preferred method is a D20 roll under but as I said in the metamorphosis Alpha video that is a thing that is really only a feature if you already know which additional mechanics to use overall is just one of those games were designed and written differently in 1978 type things that to me very much screams old school game design having attributes that do a specific thing each rather than all attributes doing a standardized thing which may then be applied to other specific things but now that we've gotten all that out of the way we can talk about what you came here for the wacky mutations so just like in Metamorphosis Alpha We Roll 1 D4 each for our physical and mental mutations and two and two and there are two options for generating mutations either we can select them in which case additional defects are added in our case it would be one mental or physical defect for having two of each mutation type or we can roll for the mutations which does not add any additional defects however the defects are now just on the regular mutation table so hypothetically we could roll more defects than just taking the one or we could roll no defects or we could roll all defects but we all know that I love rolling so we are going to do that also notable is that there is now a single shared mutation table list for both humanoid and animal Mutants versus metamorphosis Alpha where there were a handful of mutant animal exclusive mutations although there is still a wide selection of plant exclusive mutations so let's roll and ultravision which lets to see ultraviolet emissions radiation mental Powers electricity and other such things not normally visible to the human eye and new body part which allows us to have some kind of new body part of our choosing and just to get the most out of our ultravision let's say eye stocks for enhanced eye mobility and now for mental mutations multiple damage which makes us psychosomatically take double or triple damage and since I'm technically the GM here I'll just say double yeah uh these are the sorts of things that can happen when you let the dice decide and finally cryokinesis which allows us to manipulate temperature to freeze things within 25 M and unfortunately I could not find a set of rules for rolling up additional aesthetic mutations like I did for metamorphosis Alpha but then I did remember that I literally wrote up Gamma World style mutants as a Pathfinder player race back in 2014 uh including a set of tables for additional aesthetic mutation so I'll just use those and there we go that is one muant mutant and since this was 1978 and also a 56-page rule booklet in a box set starting wealth and Equipment isn't exactly a standardized thing uh you just kind of get whatever the GM gives you so let's just say the character is wearing Furs or skins which gives an AC of eight and this is descending AC where the lowest is 10 and the highest is one and I think she could reasonably have a dagger which has a weapon class of two which is like an armor class but for weapons and Deals one D4 damage against man-sized or smaller targets and 1 D3 against large also I think we really need to bring back man sized as a size reference and speaking of equipment let's talk about artifacts because I said earlier that I would explain how they worked later and now it is later and I am so let's say that we have found some kind of thing which is in fair condition and we want to try and figure out what is that thing we pull up the appropriate artifact use and operation chart and starting in the box marked s roll a d10 subtracting two for our high intelligence and then following the arrows to the next box and so on and so on and so on until such time as we reach the box marked F at which point we have determined what the thing is and how to use it and in this case it is a laser pistol however just because we figured out what it is and how it works doesn't necessarily mean that it does work as a fair condition item there is a 40% chance that it actually functions and yes so identification of items really just takes time what we did here would have taken like 2 hours in game that and of course the risk of hurting yourself or someone else nearby if you happen to get to that skull and crossbones which depending on the artifact in question could be bad for something like a laser pistol or very bad for something like a neutron bomb and if you think this system is complex yet pointless this is just chart a this is chart C and this is the advanced version from the dragon anyway our new laser pistol has a weapon class of 13 and Deals 5d6 damage and then also for finding and identifying and learning to use this laser pistol we gain 1,000 experience points and this character is done but now let's see what else this character can do like say if they happen to encounter a random fungus creature that I rolled up so in a combat scenario the first thing we do is compare dexterity scores to see who goes first and it is our character who will activate her cryokinesis which as a mental mutation is presumably a mental combat meaning that we need to cross reference our mental strength against the targets on the mental attack Matrix and we need to roll a seven which we do dealing 1d6 cold damage per round of undisturbed concentration which is just 1d6 now because this is the first round but it can go up to 10 dice at the 10th round unfortunately we are immediately disturbed by the abomination of fungal flesh launching a poison throwing Thorn and in a nice addition here there is now a specific attack Matrix for natural attacks based on creature hit dice so we reference the creatures 10 hit dice versus our AC of8 for a two hit number of eight which is a success and the throwing Thorn deals damage as a dagger which we have established deals 1 D4 damage versus mansiz targets so three damage except that we take double damage so six however poison Thorns also have poison unsurprisingly so we also need to pull up the poison Matrix and check our constitution of 11 versus the Poison's strength of nine and take two more dice of damage for another nine or rather 18 damage and given that the situation is not going exactly as we had hoped the only real reasonable course of action here is lasers so we reference the laser pistols weapon class of 13 versus the mush loon Armor class of seven and have a two hit number of eight which we easily hit dealing 5 D6 so 21 laser damage and because that drops the mush loon's hit points under half it must make a morale check rolling a d10 and fleeing on any result under five which it fails and is out of here and for our heroic victory over the creature we are awarded a number of EXP experience points equal to its total hit points so 36 and just for convenience let's say that that happens to push us over 3,000 total experience points which just happens to be the number needed to get our first bonus so we roll a d10 and plus one Charisma which increases our maximum followers by one and removes our morale penalty and of course there are some other things like fatigue rules that don't really come into play until the 11th round of combat at the earliest but for the purposes of this video that is gamma world first edition basically just a refinement of metamorphosis Alpha but one that I think is an improvement in pretty much every area I still prefer the uniqueness of the metamorphosis Alpha setting but I think what that comes down to is that something of a perceived lack of uniqueness in Gamma World from a modern perspective just comes down to how influential it was on the very specific genre of wacky post-apocalypse like without Cam world would we really have Fallout robot Holocaust or after the bomb okay I realized that last one might be better if we didn't have it but the others uh the others are good and it is a game that is that influential despite receiving almost no support from its Publishers like there were a total of four four first edition Gamma World products but somehow it managed to just keep coming back for another six editions three more from TSR and then the mess that Wizards of the Coast makes of everything so with six more additions to get through uh next time we will be making a gamma World second edition character because as stated previously that is how numbers work and thank you for watching with extra special thanks to my fighting flail snails broken unicorn Randy mahand and Toshi roko if you'd like to be cool like them check out my patreon where you can get early access to videos and fun stuff that I make for the patreon but if you want to do that that's cool too you can still hit all the lovely buttons like subscribe these other videos that either myself or the cold heartless YouTube algorithm have lovingly selected for you which I'm sure are lovely videos that you will also enjoy and I will see you next time

Channel: zigmenthotep

Views: 6,967

Keywords: tabletop rpg, character creation, tabletop games, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World character, Gamma World character creation, vintage ttrpg, dungeons & dragons, TSR, 1970s, 70s rpgs, tabletop rpgs, character cretion, rpg games, tabletop roleplaying, dungeons and dragons, dnd character creation, gamma world, Gamma World 1st edition, science fantasy rpg, post apocalyptic rpg, gamma world 1st edition, gamma world tabletop

Id: R0SGET4Vil4

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024