Post-Apocalypse Android Action! Take 2!
And this time Baby, we're going radioactive!
I mentioned Paul Kidd in my last post, the author of "Tank Vixens". I've got a fair bit of the material he's produced over the years. A talented man, he's produced comics, authored books and designed roleplaying games amongst other things.
I collect RPGs, built up a fair selection over the years. Not played that many of them to be honest, but I've enjoyed reading through them, using the worlds they present as a framework for my own imagination to build on. I'm selling them off bit by bit now, freeing up shelf space and getting some useful cashy money in the process. Some I'm not getting rid of, the Traveller RPG stuff, or some of the gems of the collection like my 2nd editon "Bunnies and Burrows", Chaosioum's "Ringworld" (plus the Companion volume) and Games Workshop's "Golden Heroes". Paul's games are among the ones I'm keeping, "Albedo", based on the hard sci-fi military furry comic of Steve Gallacci and the wonderful "Lace & Steel", a swashbuckling English civil war era romp on a fantasy world with centaurs, harpies, satryrs, pixies and magic mixing along with rapiers and muskets, illustrated by the most excellent Donna Barr, the author and artist behind the "Stinz" series of comics, now in graphic novel format and well worth seeking out.
Anyway, while in Forbidden Planet the other day my attention was caught by a book on the shelves, "Red Sails in the Fallout", a "Gamma World" novel by Paul Kidd. I'd not heard about this, so I promptly grabbed it. It tells the tale of Xoota, an anthropomorphic Quoll (Australian marsupial bush cat) and Shaani, a similarly anthro white lab rat and their adventures on Gamma Earth, the setting for the latest incarnaton of the "Gamma World" RPG.
Gamma World has a long history, being one of the first post-apocalyptic RPGs to come out. It's one I've never picked up myself, despite having quite a few other similarly themed RPGs in my collection, "Aftermath", one of the first RPGS I played while at Uni, "The "Morrow Project", and "Twilight 2000". I had a bit of a survivalist phase a a few decades ago, picked up lots of books on the subject, including several of the truly dreadful "Survivalist" novels by Jerry Ahern, with their long detailed descriptions of every weapon the hero picks up in what can only be described at "gun porn". Anyway, I got over it, but I'd picked up these games during that time. Never got Gamma World though.
I read the book. Oh, it's fun. Very, very silly and hey, cute ratgirls in goggles! (The furry community have already picked up on this). I found the setting quite intriguing as well, was Gamma World really this wacky? So I did a bit of digging, Wikipedia ho! Gamma World was actually quite silly, post-apocalypse Dungeons and Dragons basically. It's now in a new, 7th edition from gaming giant Wizards of the Coast, using stripped down 4th edition D&D rules. The various incarnations of Gamma World have varied between silly and serious (though still with black comedy running through it), but the current incarnation definitely leans toward the former, bigtime. The back story is that in 2012 the Large Hadron Collider is ramped up to full power and causes "The Big Mistake" where hundreds of alternative realities come crashing down onto this one creating Gamma Earth. Since the Cold War went nuclear in 68% of the realities large areas of the Earth are now radioactive desert (in 3% of the realities France fires its entire nuclear arsenal onto the town of Peshtigo in Iowa because "It had to be done", no other explanation is given). Naturally there are mutations, indeed the game is based around these, during combat you can develop temporary "Alpha Mutations" that give you new and strange abilities before they fade away at the end of the fight. The world is also scattered with "Omega Tech", alien or super technology from alternative timelines which will work for you once or twice before burning out and turning to junk.
Character creation is a hoot too. You roll two random origins and then rationalise them. You could end up with a cyborg yeti, a robot plant, a telekinetic bug or a psychic hawkman (the characters in the novel are a hypercognitive feline (Xoota) and a radioactive electrokinetic (Shanni), they are joined by Wig-wig, an emapthic swarm of earwigs with a collective mind). You get the option of playing an enhanced human if you roll the same for both origins.
This was all highly amusing, and the art was good too, so I naturally went out and bought the game. Before my wife kills me I would like to rapidly point out that the game has the basic set and two expansions. That's it. Gamma World is notorious for bringing out a new edition and a supplement or two before the company abandons it until a new edition is brought out some years down the road which retcons everything in the previous editions away. The best example being the "Alternity" edition which had only the core rulebook produced before going under. This one is true to form but, to be honest, that's all you need, it's a fast, simple fun game that lends itself to endless modifications. In a nice touch the two expansions are takes on the first two expansions of the original edition, "Famine at Far-Go" and "Legion of Gold". With the core set and these you don't need any further expansions save your imagination. I like that in an RPG.
Paul's book, besides being an excellent read in its own right, perfectly captures the madcap world of Gamma Earth, I would recommend that you pick it up. Alas that there are unlikely to be any more, he got a bit stiffed by the company who paid peanuts and then cut out all of the amusing footnotes that would have filled in a bit of the world background for people new to the whole Gamma World thing, without Paul's knowledge or consent. A pity, seeing as how I bought the game on the strength of the novel, and others may well do likewise and would certainly have picked up more were they forthcoming.
Ah well, we have the game and the novel, we can build on that at least. Let's see, Xoota would have quite a high Dex, while Shanni a high Int score. Now what Charisma would a mutant earwig swarm likely have...
I mentioned Paul Kidd in my last post, the author of "Tank Vixens". I've got a fair bit of the material he's produced over the years. A talented man, he's produced comics, authored books and designed roleplaying games amongst other things.
I collect RPGs, built up a fair selection over the years. Not played that many of them to be honest, but I've enjoyed reading through them, using the worlds they present as a framework for my own imagination to build on. I'm selling them off bit by bit now, freeing up shelf space and getting some useful cashy money in the process. Some I'm not getting rid of, the Traveller RPG stuff, or some of the gems of the collection like my 2nd editon "Bunnies and Burrows", Chaosioum's "Ringworld" (plus the Companion volume) and Games Workshop's "Golden Heroes". Paul's games are among the ones I'm keeping, "Albedo", based on the hard sci-fi military furry comic of Steve Gallacci and the wonderful "Lace & Steel", a swashbuckling English civil war era romp on a fantasy world with centaurs, harpies, satryrs, pixies and magic mixing along with rapiers and muskets, illustrated by the most excellent Donna Barr, the author and artist behind the "Stinz" series of comics, now in graphic novel format and well worth seeking out.
Anyway, while in Forbidden Planet the other day my attention was caught by a book on the shelves, "Red Sails in the Fallout", a "Gamma World" novel by Paul Kidd. I'd not heard about this, so I promptly grabbed it. It tells the tale of Xoota, an anthropomorphic Quoll (Australian marsupial bush cat) and Shaani, a similarly anthro white lab rat and their adventures on Gamma Earth, the setting for the latest incarnaton of the "Gamma World" RPG.
Gamma World has a long history, being one of the first post-apocalyptic RPGs to come out. It's one I've never picked up myself, despite having quite a few other similarly themed RPGs in my collection, "Aftermath", one of the first RPGS I played while at Uni, "The "Morrow Project", and "Twilight 2000". I had a bit of a survivalist phase a a few decades ago, picked up lots of books on the subject, including several of the truly dreadful "Survivalist" novels by Jerry Ahern, with their long detailed descriptions of every weapon the hero picks up in what can only be described at "gun porn". Anyway, I got over it, but I'd picked up these games during that time. Never got Gamma World though.
I read the book. Oh, it's fun. Very, very silly and hey, cute ratgirls in goggles! (The furry community have already picked up on this). I found the setting quite intriguing as well, was Gamma World really this wacky? So I did a bit of digging, Wikipedia ho! Gamma World was actually quite silly, post-apocalypse Dungeons and Dragons basically. It's now in a new, 7th edition from gaming giant Wizards of the Coast, using stripped down 4th edition D&D rules. The various incarnations of Gamma World have varied between silly and serious (though still with black comedy running through it), but the current incarnation definitely leans toward the former, bigtime. The back story is that in 2012 the Large Hadron Collider is ramped up to full power and causes "The Big Mistake" where hundreds of alternative realities come crashing down onto this one creating Gamma Earth. Since the Cold War went nuclear in 68% of the realities large areas of the Earth are now radioactive desert (in 3% of the realities France fires its entire nuclear arsenal onto the town of Peshtigo in Iowa because "It had to be done", no other explanation is given). Naturally there are mutations, indeed the game is based around these, during combat you can develop temporary "Alpha Mutations" that give you new and strange abilities before they fade away at the end of the fight. The world is also scattered with "Omega Tech", alien or super technology from alternative timelines which will work for you once or twice before burning out and turning to junk.
Character creation is a hoot too. You roll two random origins and then rationalise them. You could end up with a cyborg yeti, a robot plant, a telekinetic bug or a psychic hawkman (the characters in the novel are a hypercognitive feline (Xoota) and a radioactive electrokinetic (Shanni), they are joined by Wig-wig, an emapthic swarm of earwigs with a collective mind). You get the option of playing an enhanced human if you roll the same for both origins.
This was all highly amusing, and the art was good too, so I naturally went out and bought the game. Before my wife kills me I would like to rapidly point out that the game has the basic set and two expansions. That's it. Gamma World is notorious for bringing out a new edition and a supplement or two before the company abandons it until a new edition is brought out some years down the road which retcons everything in the previous editions away. The best example being the "Alternity" edition which had only the core rulebook produced before going under. This one is true to form but, to be honest, that's all you need, it's a fast, simple fun game that lends itself to endless modifications. In a nice touch the two expansions are takes on the first two expansions of the original edition, "Famine at Far-Go" and "Legion of Gold". With the core set and these you don't need any further expansions save your imagination. I like that in an RPG.
Paul's book, besides being an excellent read in its own right, perfectly captures the madcap world of Gamma Earth, I would recommend that you pick it up. Alas that there are unlikely to be any more, he got a bit stiffed by the company who paid peanuts and then cut out all of the amusing footnotes that would have filled in a bit of the world background for people new to the whole Gamma World thing, without Paul's knowledge or consent. A pity, seeing as how I bought the game on the strength of the novel, and others may well do likewise and would certainly have picked up more were they forthcoming.
Ah well, we have the game and the novel, we can build on that at least. Let's see, Xoota would have quite a high Dex, while Shanni a high Int score. Now what Charisma would a mutant earwig swarm likely have...