D&D Gamma World (AKA the new edition)

My every other week, Tuesday night group wrapped up the Gamma World adventure earlier this evening. I've mentioned the game on here before, but to recap, the DM, Dave, ran the adventure in the back of the rule book. We played through all the encounters over the course of 3-evenings. At the end of the session tonight, we had just hit 3rd level. None of the PCs have died yet, but most of us have had to make a death save or two. All 5 of the players have over 2 years of experience playing 4e D&D, so all the mechanics of the game came pretty naturally.

A few comments? Sure...We all had fun, as far as I can tell. The combats didn't seem to drag as much as what we were experiencing with late heroic and early paragon tier 4e D&D. Everything does a lot more damage, so it's easier to kill things fast (and potentially easier for PCs to die, too). The adventure, which Dave ran pretty close to the book, was fun. Basically we entered the crazy warehouse and stopped the baddies from building a robot army. Honestly, I think this edition of Gamma World is pretty great. It's got all the tactical finesse of modern D&D without getting too bogged down. I truly wish 4e came out a little more like this game.

It's been said already, but I'll just put it out there again...If you HATE 4e outright, no matter what, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you have some unnatural attachment to earlier editions of the game and feel that any updating should be a crime, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you hate "goofy" and/or "random" crap happening constantly, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you hate fun, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you are a munchkin or powergamer, you might not like this game.


Personally, I still like 4e for what it is, I've never actually played an earlier edition (but I want to), I love when goofy and or random crap happens if appropriate, I like fun, and I'm not a munchkin, so I like this game....a lot.

For anyone playing or interested in playing D&D Gamma World, there are a couple of cool things out on the web to check out.

• WoTC released a FREE character generator. It has all the possible mutations for both the core rules and the Famine in Far-go expansion. Character generation was already pretty fast, but this made it a snap!
• Critical Hits has unleashed the Junkulator on an unsuspecting world. The Junkulator should work just fine for any edition of the game. Essentially, random junk makes up a lot of the treasure in a Gamma World game. It's up to the player to figure out how to use a wireless mouse, remote control, or a portable table saw in the game. The Junkulator pulls junk for your game from a random list of nearly 900 objects compiled from all editions of GW and its supplements! Wicked. Very wicked.