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What is a Kleptoreview?
A significant number of gamers buy new role-playing books not so much because they are interested in playing the game the book describes, but to mine for ideas that can be stolen an incorporated into their own games. A kleptoreview is a review of a product when viewed through the lens of using the product for this purpose. That is, it doesn't (necessarily) judge the product for what it is, but for how much it offers for inspiration or crossover use into another game system.
Reviewer Bias
The Gamma World Player's Handbook has been reviewed in a more standard way several times on this board. The review by Buzz most closely matches my feelings on the book on its own. As far as the types of games in which I would use material borrowed from this book, I am not a fan of the d20 system, so specific d20 rules introduced in this book will rarely be worth borrowing for me, though the ideas behind them may be. I tend to run games more interested in ideas and narrative than game mechanics.
Worth Borrowing
Material worth harvesting for use in other games tends to come in four categories:
- Instance details (things like maps, complete dungeons, details of a specific bar, individual NPCs or monsters, magic items, etc.)
- Rules (game mechanics for handling something specific, perhaps additional spells, etc.)
- Background (things like histories, pantheons, political cabals, etc.)
- Concepts (big ideas behind things)
The Gamma World Player's Handbook offers next to none of the first and very little of the second. From what I understand, the rules systems were written without the greatest understanding of the d20 Modern system, so even if you use d20, there may not be much here for you. Some decent background material forms the best part of the book and a few surprising concepts are worth looking at.
History
In spite of the fact that it supplies players with far more information than their characters are likely to ever discover, the history of the world is well done, interesting, believable and contains at least germs of ideas for integration into nearly any sci-fi campaign. It also has an interesting presentation gimmick, transcribed in microseconds by an AI about to be sacrificed in war, providing a pretty good feel for playing AIs. While many of the ideas used in the history are not new, this is not your average "this is how the world ends" story. I found myself thinking differently about certain things after reading it (particularly genetic engineering), which is all anyone can really ask of writing of any kind.
Rational Mutations
One of the more unbelievable (but neat) aspects of Gamma World has always been it's "get exposed to radiation, gain magical powers" mind-set. This edition, for the first time, offers to explain how an individual can mutate within its lifetime and surprisingly succeeds rather well. Rather than change the laws of physics, the history of the world changes the environment. Characters, just by virtue of breathing the of the world, are constantly bathed in nanotech, viruses and chemicals, most of which are inert and harmless. Occasionally, however, something (say, radiation) triggers some kind of reaction in this gene-tech soup and you end up with your DNA being re-written and/or new organs being constructed from old ones.
In addition to explaining an otherwise goofy game mechanic, this idea actually provides some neat storytelling opportunities. Essentially, it means that the characters and everyone else on the planet are potentially in jeopardy all of the time, just by existing. You could get a lot of milage out of this concept, even in fantasy campaigns (substitute "spirits" for "nanotech").
Artificial Life
The approach and tenor taken with artificial intelligences in general and using AIs as PCs works pretty well (though, as mentioned, the mechanics might not). Much of its charm might only work in post-apocalyptic campaigns, however, where they would be interesting and challenging to play, for largely social reasons. Taken out of that setting (and put into, say, Ebberon) the style for AI might not work as well. I particularly love, however, the idea that a lot of AI's went nuts due to being trapped into the, say, the body of toaster.
Communities
A large section of the book deals with communities. While, again, you could argue that this information is the wrong book (seems more like GM information to me), the ideas behind it are intriguing. The basic idea is to treat the community as if it had the stats of a PC, with some adaptions. As detailed in the book, these adaptions have solid intentions behind them, but fail to deliver on their potential. Still, they could easily inspire you and there is a good deal to pilfer here.
Also, the realization of the importance of the community to telling a good story is not present in a lot of games. While it doesn't fit in all (or perhaps most) genres, it's a good thing to think about in your own games.
Fiction
I tend not to read much of the "fictional blurbs" at the start of chapters that are so trendy these days, but some of them in this book did give me ideas for other games. I found the "little whiskers" one, in particular, gave me a whole new perspective for how to run a non-human type of game.
Overall
While the Gamma World Player's Handbook does have a couple of features worth borrowing for campaigns in other games, there is not quite enough there to justify its purchase solely for inspiration.
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