Let's Make A Gamma World 1st Edition Character 

I was not emotionally prepared for your flumph-sona's mouth to move. Like literally, it prompted a shocked utterance.

holy shit this is the basis for Caves of Qud, I had no idea it was based on an old TTRPG

Gamma World was the major inspiration for Mutant and later Mutant Year 0. Old Mutant took ideas like tech identification, a mutation table including negative mutations, bunker-crawling and four distinct "races" of non-mutant humans, robots, psionics and mutants. Any time you found a widget you had to play a little minigame. It used the BRP license like other Äventyrsspel games. They made their own version of murderous bunnies. The psionics resistance worked roughly the same, using equivalent BRP stats. Items had a durability system. They also started to make humans the social class. Humans made up the upper class of the rising world with tech and organizational skills from the dying enclaves. I like that humans have some "hidden" advantages. Robots will treat humans as humans and generally follow Asimov's laws while they can swing wild with mutants, treating them from honorary humans to pests to talking animals. All medicines, vehicles, armour etc is made for pure-strain humans and might fit badly or do odd things with mutants. Robots had an advantage to interact with the old world.

2e Gamma World was my first RPG experience back in 1984. GW will always have a soft spot of nostalgia for me. R.I.P. Mr. Ward.

I like your use of the Magenta and Yellow Radiation Symbol. That version of the Symbol is overlooked. I used it for the Icon of a Post-Apoch game I've been running.

After looking at Metamorphosis Alpha this looks like a huge improvement. There’s still major clunk surrounding non-human mutants but everything else has been streamlined in a major way.

I love that you are doing Gamma World characters for all the versions. I adore Gamma World =D

The Last TTRPG that james M. Ward made was GiantLands from wonderfilled.

I think I unironically ADORE those artifact use flowcharts. Like.. WOW.. What an utterly unique system for 'figure out the weird doodad'

As a major Gamma World fan, I am SO HAPPY you are doing a character creation series for all the Gamma World editions. It was also a wonderful touch doing it in honor of Mr Wards passing. Great video (honestly I really enjoy all you Let’s Make Us A --- Character series).

You could just transpose the gamma world rule changes into Metamorphosis Alpha. 3d6 gives much more consistently average rolls than 1d20 so that one is basically preference. i kind of like 2d10 as there is still a 1% chance of rolling a 2 or 20 with an average of 11.

Thank you for such a fun and informative exploration of this game! Gamma World is such a weird and wacky game, full of jank, but also charm. Also, I absolutely adore the character art you do for these videos (and the changes to their appearance)!

Very fond memories! Thanks for the show!

In my early gaming days, our GM bought nearly every game out there. So I did play 1e Gamma World back then. I played a mutated raccoon. I currently have 4e Gamma World and whatever modules were released for that edition. I use the mutation tables in my Numenera game for those who want to play a mutant and I use their weird system for figuring out how to use tech in my Numenera game for when players find new cyphers and other numenera.

Me foaming at the mouth as venom is repeatedly called poison.

Your Flying Spaghetti Monster mouth is terrifying

Enjoying these! I would actually love to see you do rolemaster 2nd edition, it's a suprisingly slick system in play but character creation is comically involved.

The Apocalyptic Mutant Furry TTRPG Grandaddy of them all .

Gamma World was the inspiration for Makaitoshi Saga a.k.a. Final Fantasy Legend for the gameboy (just as Final Fantasy is inspired by D&D). instead of classes you had Races: Human, Mutant/Esper, and Monster. Monsters were mostly large intelligent animals and plants rather than traditional fantasy fair. No experience at all, each race had it's own ways to increase stats and abilities. Humans needed potions (meds). Mutants randomly changed after each battle. Monsters would randomly change after eating another monster's meat (more Japanese yokai inspiration). Weapons and equipment were a mix of traditional medieval and high tech; and all had limited usages. Some specifically from Gamma World would be the electric whip, Parasuit, and grenade crossbow.

Woo! Was wondering when you were gonna drop this! I have been interested in running a GW 1e game, so this is a great way to learn how it works.

Thanks for walk down memory lane! Now I need to dig out my GW 1st Ed. rulebook and read through it again.

not sure if it has been mentioned before, but i think the poison matrix shown has a misprint, in that it has no 3 dice of damage category, it jumps straight from 2 to death, for 11 constitution only, which seems kinda oddly specific to do on purpose

Zigmenthotep never fails to impregnate me with quality content :D

Requesting an eventual video on creating a character in the HERO System, please.

Great series. Played all versions of this game, my rating is first place 7th ed, second place 3ed, third place 2nd ed. 7th ed was a fresh breath of incredible ease of play and alot of fun generating a character.

I know of Gamma World but even my old self haven’t played it. In Highschool our go to Post Apocalyptic mutant setting was TMNT After the Bomb. My friends back then were very Palladium pilled at the time so we also played a lot of Heroes Unlimited and, of course, Rifts. It took until college for me to really realize just how bad the Palladium system is. Seeing how much more streamlined D&D got with 3rd edition and comparing it to Palladium was laughable and Palladium was one of the few companies that refused to jump on the D20 craze(which is fine) but also actively sent letters to any fan made conversion websites because they didn’t like the idea of people messing with their mess

I loved Gamma World. I still have my 3rd ed books that use the ACT / FASERIP I really enjoyed playing it in high school

Thinking back... there's Traveller can take some time to create a character, not as bad as F.A.T.A.L. Empire of the Petal Throne, an SF/fantasy mix. Japanese role playing games Bushido and Chivalry & Sorcery's Land of the Rising Sun. Tunnels & Trolls was popular at my games club. And one I remember from DragonCon, Bunnies & Burrows, a loose take on Watership Down.

I’m interested in seeing you cover the classic traveller

It really needed to have been made compatible with dnd from the start. For one thing, the hp looks great - but that is pretty much all you will ever get, and the amount of damage the enemies do just keeps going up. So having levels would have helped with long running campaigns rather than one shot sessions. My experience was mostly one shots, and it was a lot of fun for that purpose, but it just needed more work with playtesting to make it a deeper game. I remember a lot of the games of that period really rewarding the rerolling of characters until you got someone who was overpowered. They then died in the first combat, of course.

Great video thanks!

oh boy six editions!

If you're looking for game suggestions, I recommend a few superhero games: - Superhero 2044 (the first superhero RPG, as far as I know) - Villains & Vigilantes (a classic supers game) - Marvel Superheroes (also known as the FASERIP version) - Champions (4th edition HERO was the last superhero-specific version of HERO. 5e and 6e were redone as generic systems (like GURPS))

Game looks sick!

Nice!

Please tell me those radiation dice exist, I NEED THEM IN MY LIFE!

1D…3?

I always like to compare to the other end of the spectrum, the extremely anti-gonzo Twilight 2000. The game of calculating how many service hours a jeep with radio needs. Without Gamma World there would be barsoomian sword and planet science-fantasy and T2000.

There's no way the Caves of Qud devs haven't played this - tons of those mental mutations are in it, down to having an ability called Mass Mind.

I'd be tempted to run "double damage" as meaning double dice rather than straight doubling the result; seems like the text shown could support either interpretation.

Wait - did the flumps mouth start being animated?

Could you try a mutated animal when doing 3e

For some reason all of my GW characters ended up looking like a potato.

Damn. Why is After the Bomb out here catching strays? What did ATB ever do to you?

were is that pathfinder race thing you made?

3:25 I can chime in on this one, at least with a theory (I could, of course, be wrong). The annoying old-school enthusiasts you're referring to aren't actually thinking about how "old-school games" as a whole were played, they're thinking about how very specifically the old-school game _they_ grew up playing was played, and _also_ they're usually thinking of the way they were _taught_ the old-school game they grew up playing which is very frequently not the actual way the rules were written but was in fact based on whatever random way that person learned how to play or half-remembered the rules and said "yeah I think that's how it works". Unfortunately these memories are formative and result in an ironclad belief that *this is the one true way and everything that would stand against my half-remembered ways are invalid and for babies.* These people are truly insufferable for multiple reasons and should not be engaged with. Everyone has their favorite way to play, of course, but the true historian knows that there was never one true way for things like attribute scores, they were always varied and spread across tables via word of mouth and the telephone game. Hell, DnD 2nd edition (which sure, many people don't consider old-school but fuck them I do) had _six different ways_ to generate attributes, and some of them were very strange but very interesting! Here's a fun one: All your scores start at 8, roll 7d6, you can add each individual die and its full point value to whatever score you want as many times as you want, nothing can exceed 18 (which must be made exactly, no going over and "wasting points").

Hey...what's wrong with using 3d6 for Checks :/

why is the flumph moving?

Why don't you just get 3 instead of due on 10 str Poison be 11 con?? Why is that one the only different one?!

The Old School players the host is talking about are the new old-school people. The *NEW* Old-school people ether started with newest editions and then went back to the old editions. Or Are people that started with D&D 3e or 3.5e and claim they started earlier. Both groups believe the myth not the reality and they want the prestige of starting earlier or being more hardcore and more truer fans of the hobby.

Please make your thumbnail girl less sexy next time I'm trying to stay pure this year