Games - Gamma World

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	Games - Gamma World

Gamma World is a science fiction role-playing game produced by TSR, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons
and created by James M. Ward.

Description

This post-apocalyptic game takes place in a far future world, where technology, psionics, mutations, and radiation interplay and mix in a ruined world that has reverted to anarchy.

Likely sources of inspiration for this game are the sci-fi/post-apocalypse stories, books, and films of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Later supplements and editions reflect later visions from the sub-genre, such as Mad Max (1979) and the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian (1980). Gamma World is descended from the earlier TSR game Metamorphosis Alpha (1976), which involved the mutated crew of a generation starship named Warden. A component of this starship appears in the old Dungeons & Dragons module "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks". Metamorphosis Alpha is probably inspired by the Robert A. Heinlein novel Orphans of the Sky (1941).

The mechanics of the first and second editions are similar in many respects to the original D&D game system. The third edition (1986) resembled TSR's Marvel Super-HeroesRPG, replacing the myriad resolution mechanics of D&D with a single percentile-based mechanic referring to a color-coded table. The Fourth Edition (1992) was closer to second-edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) and several of the new mechanics from it and its deviations from second-edition AD&D were used as a starting point for the later Alternity and D&D 3rd Edition (d20) rules systems. The Fifth Edition was based on TSR's Alternity system—a system which was canceled a month before the Gamma World book was released.

In September 2002, a version of Gamma World called Omega World written by Jonathan Tweet was published in the pages of Dungeon magazine issue 94/Polyhedron magazine issue 153, using the d20 system.

In late 2003 Sword & Sorcery (a White Wolf Game Studio label) released a new edition of Gamma World. This edition, like Tweet's Omega World, uses the d20 System adapted from the Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Books

The current sixth edition Gamma World line consists of six books, and no more books are scheduled to be produced:

Gamma World Player's Handbook
Gamma World Game Master's Guide
Gamma World Mutants and Machines
Gamma World Beyond the Horizon
Gamma World Cryptic Alliances and Unknown Enemies
Gamma World Out of the Vaults

Trivia

Some editions of the Gamma World rulebook include details of a racist militant organization calling itself The Knights of Genetic Purity, which exists soley and explicitly to be a mustache-twirlingly evil enemy for players of the game to fight. The science-fiction television program Andromeda produced an episode in its second season entitled Immaculate Perception which featured the Knights, using the exact name and having them play exactly the same role in the general scheme of things.

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Games - Gamma World

Description

Books

Trivia

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