You made an error regarding skills. Those percentages are not your chance to use the skill, but rather whether your character has that skill or not. So if you have a 50% in Swim that means you have a 50-50 chance that your character knows how to swim. If they know how to swim, then they can always swim no problem. If they don't know how to swim, then they cannot swim. Also, attribute checks are not the first thing you reach for... the GM is supposed to determine when a non-combat task succeeds or fails based on the narrative, not a die roll. When the GM can think of an interesting story result either way, THEN he may decide to leave it up to an attribute check, but generally you don't reach for the dice when a character wants to do something... you just tell him if it works or not.
A quick look and I see you're 100% right, I'd assumed they worked like the thief abilities in AD&D (as Gamma World kind of resembles it), I'll pin this to the top so people can see where I slipped up.
I still wish that D&D could Incorporate this world as well as Alternity and Dark Sun in a more unified system. I'd like to take my Greyhawk Paladin into this futuristic post-nuclear world. Somebody let that happen. Ride in on a Spelljammer.❤
It would be very cool if they'd really create a D&D multiverse, with all the old licences (Gamma World, Dark Sun, Red Steel, Spelljammer, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, etc) as settings. Sadly I don't think we'll ever see a bunch of these used again :(
Thanks for the review! You break down the rules for this quite well and answered a lot of the questions I had. I'm running two 6th edition games using the 3.5 D&D rules (D20 Modern), because I'm familiar with the system. The books were really janky for that sys but I've been able to "port" a ton of supplemental material from GW4e and fill in the gaps where needed. It's a fan favorite and I can see why! Very elegant. All of the 4e books are available as reprints on RPG drivethru as well so you can still grab these and play!
Thanks for the positive comments, glad to know I helped out a little, and glad to hear you're enjoying Gamma World, a system and setting which seems to be kind of forgotten these days.
I house ruled AD&D 2nd edition non weapon proficiencys into my gamma world game and based some skills on class along with new skills for the game that fit the post apocalyptic world . Characters could learn any skill but learning skills from other classes costed a bit more to learn . Every player started with 10 skill points to buy skills with some skills costing up to 4 points to learn due to the difficulty and players rolled a d6 + intelligence modifyer added to the 10 points to determine skills at first level . Players gained 4 points + intelligence modifyer in skill points a level and characters could save up to half of their skill points to use the next level . Adding skills made the game much more interesting and allowed the players to take temporary jobs in towns and cities to earn extra money in between adventuring
Sounds like a great addition to the game, building characters and the world around them. I can definitely see how that would work and improve your game, great work.
I loved your review, keep up the good work. My favorite edition is GW 2e; but I do enjoy GW 4e. I do admit that I like playing GW4e is nice because you can easily adapt things from AD&D 2e, Buck Rogers XXVc RPG and from D&D 3e/d20 System games due the similarities between them to add to the games.
Cheers for the kind words. I've only got 4e, so I'm taking other peoples word for that they like it best, but then again I've not heard bad things about any version, so could be that GW just knocked it out of the park for every edition.
It's a derived attribute based on your PS for Melee, or DX for Ranged at character creation. When you level up, you get 1 point per level to add to a derived attribute (or Mutation score, Class Skill, or Hit Points), so you can add that point to your Melee or Ranged Thac among others. Page 25 of the rulebook, hope that helps.
So big disagree with consensus. 4e was the most adnd 2e like which made it more likely to get picked up. It wasn't the best gamma world. That goes to 2e. I recommend checking it out and comparing
@RPGGamer so mostly I really like the fact it's a classless system. It fits gamma world and it's asthetic better. Also it's really closer to it's own game rather than just an adnd clone.
