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WOTC released the 7th edition to the Gamma World franchise to a rather mixed reaction. Based on the 4E D&D rule set, it cleaves close to the D20 edition but with a change of tone. The premise is there's been a dimensional collapse, mixing and matching hundreds of divergent realities into a single mess. It returns to a less serious tone than the previous edition and tries to recapture a feeling of the first edition. So, grab your Black Ray gun, mount your Pinto [not the horse], and hope that the Obb targets someone else in the party. Gamma World is back and deadly.
It comes in a huge green box with decent artwork and a good heft. Most of it is filler though with the rulebook, sheets of tokens, a deck of cards, a booster pack, four character sheets, and two double-sided maps. There is a lot of wasted space and the packing could have been cut in half without loosing anything. On a positive spin, the box should hold the next two expansions with ease. The cards are of decent stock but lack any illustration which is a drawback as it would nice to show the players a picture of the technology or mutation in question. Maps are printed on flimsy paper, not hard card stock. Wear and tear will be an issue if they are used regularly. The rulebook is digest size and perfect bound. I have heard complaints about the binding splitting if you look at it, but my copy has held up well under use. There are plenty of illustrations and the text is readable. Tokens are single-sided and on cardboard stock. They hold up well in play and easy to manipulate on the maps. If you are looking for character sheets, check online as the supplied sheets are four sheets with room for one character on a side. The writing space is minimal and the sheet barely covers the basic information needed to play. Had they made the flip for gear and notes, the sheets would have been useful, rather than just filler. Overall, I would give the style a nice solid rating of three with the box size, “character sheets”, and maps being the biggest dings.
The game is based on the 4E D&D rule set with an eye towards streamlining the rules. It could be called “4E Lite”. The rule book is small; digest size and only 160 pages. It still delivers enough to run a game and then some. There are six chapters: How to Play, Character Creation, Gear, How to Run the Game, Monsters, and the Adventure. The lay out is good and it wasn't hard to find the rules or reference that was needed during play. Rules are easy to learn and if you've played or now 4E, there's only a minor differences. Character creation is random, where you roll two backgrounds, such as Andriod, or Rat Swarm. These will assign your primary stats with all others rolled on 3d6 in order. Very old school. Backgrounds give you certain bonuses to mutation overcharge and powers that you gain via leveling. Gear is a small chapter and almost incidental. Weapons and armor are very generic with the players adding in the flavor such as wielding a piece of rebar with a concrete end while wearing armor made from seat cushions. Shield from a stop sign is optional.
How to Run the Game is pretty bog standard advice. If you've run a game, none of the information is new or eye-opening. If you've not run a 4E game the section on building encounters is handy, but there's always the fudge factor in Gamma World. In old school [1st & 2nd] edition death came swiftly from the various mutants that crawled in the wastes. This has been replicated to some extent in this edition as well. The Monsters aka Mutants chapter has a host of critters that will chew up characters before you can say “Look at the pretty red birds... OMG why does it hurt!”. Many of old favorites are back, such as The Obb,. Blood Birds, and the Sep. Grens and Sleeth got something of a makeover in this edition, in terms of motivation and looks. Still, it's easy to reskin and ignore the flavor text. The adventure is sub-par, more a mish mash of encounters than a more neat, tidy, and coherent story. It suffers from the smorgasbord of creatures that you might find in a basic D&D game. There's a kernel of an idea and can be rewritten with an hour of prep time.
On a last note, the writers tone in rule book comes off condescending if you decide not to follow the rules exactly or dare to tailor the game to provide an enjoyable experience for your players. I've played Gamma World since '79, I'm not looking for someone to tell me that changing the rules is bad-wrong-fun. After a couple of play test sessions with my players, we came up a mechanic where you didn't pull a new mutation every singe time. It's not as game breaking as you might think, as the players agreed that certain situations might cause mutation, such exposure to radiation. They even bought into random character generation for backgrounds and stat rolling.
The cards deserve special mention as they govern both mutations [Alpha cards] and technology [Omega cards]. The basic set comes with 40 of each type, which are called the GM's decks. There's an additional 120 cards in randomly packed boosters of eight cards. These are geared towards the players to buy and build “decks” of cards for use during the game. This is a good example of why marketing should not be allowed to make suggestions to game design. Frankly, they probably would have made more money by packing the booster cards into two fixed sets [30 Alpha, 30 Omega] and charging $30.00 a pop for them. On the upside, there's a compiled list of the cards on the WOTC forums including card text. Dump them into a chart and roll a d100 to see what you get. Cards have their separate mechanics. Alpha cards are changed after every encounter. That's right every encounter, if they are used or not. Remember the dimensional collapse? That's why your mutant is always changing. With Omega cards, if they are used during the encounter, at the end you roll a d20. On a 10+ you get to keep the card, otherwise it's discarded. Some Omega cards can be recycled into gear if you the appropriate level. With all that said, the game works just fine without the booster cards. Once again for clarity, they are optional.
On a substance level, I'm going to give it a four. Outside of some tweaks to the rules and confusing rule references, it's a solid game. And it's fun. Even if you change the rules.
