Where'd You Go?

So, what have I been doing in the past two months? Well...

- Still playing in Drance's awesome Castles and Crusades game, for one! It has been waaaaay too long since I've actually gotten a chance to play a role-playing game of any stripe, so spending every Wednesday rolling as Milo the mace-wielding thief has been great fun.

- Running some games! In October and November, I ran some D&D Gamma World (the most recent 4E-style box set) for my friends and my girlfriend. Though Thanksgiving and real life definitely killed most of the game's momentum, it was a total blast while we played it.

- Working a crappy seasonal job to pay rent! Thankfully, I've got some job interviews lined up in the future for more library-focused work, but 5:30 mornings have been a bit of a creative buzzkill.

Fortunately, there's going to be plenty more to come from Fistful of Coppers into the new year, so stayed tuned today for some more posting and the announcement of a super special new Old School/Dungeons and Dragons-related project!

That's right! Goblins and treasure and magic swords and everything!

B is for Buddies

But before I do that...

Buddies are great, aren't they? You hang out with them, make music, watch movies, eat food. Sometimes you even play roleplaying games with them, like I did this week. For all of my blogging bluster, it has been a really long time since I actually, you know, gamed with anyone. So after I finished an intensive week of projects for library school, I decided to call a couple of my friends up and let the good times roll.

We gathered over at Marcos and CJ's house with a carefully purchased assortment of Cheetos and Mountain Dew (to complete the experience) and my copy of the D&D Gamma World boxset. While Marcos, CJ and my friend Mike from college rolled up character origins, I was frantically winging the skeleton of the potential adventure and the basics of Radon, the town that it took place in. I wanted to do the classic 'post-apocalyptic gang wants to take over a small town for its natural resources' bit, but give it a bit of a twist. So the resource that the porker motorgang was chasing after was not gas or weapons, but food. Specifically, a mineshaft filled with tasty, genetically modified beetles that reproduced at an alarming rate and ate anything they were given. We never got that far, but it's nice to think about your prep work.

Our characters were:

• Chimp Eastwood (CJ), a Giant Simian, who's 20 Strength and naturally rolled 17 Constitution made him the de-facto piledriver of the group. Skilled in Mechanics, he carried a big ol' hammer and an electric nailgun, which he could use to pretty deadly effect with his Ape Rage (no joke, actual power from Famine in Far-Go)
• Bogo Free (Mike), a Magnetic Arachnoid, described as a kind of regular looking guy with a giant web-spinning thorax. Accompanied by a HAL-esque talking laser helmet, Bogo also used what we referred to as a 'cargo-cult railgun' that used his natural magnetism to fire projectiles.
• Problem Glueth (Marcos), a Gelatinous Nightmare apparently from a parallel universe where life never evolved above single celled organisms (albeit very big ones). A private detective by trade, Problem used his gelatinous body to form blades, shields and his patented Goomerangs.

As you can see, a finer group of adventures doesn't exist. The trio started out on the Road heading towards Radon to deliver goods and mail to the local post station, rolling in a pick-up truck towing Problem's wagon and canoe (Gamma World's random crap tables are fantastic.) But on that hallowed highway, they come across a smashed up trailer with a large cloud of glowing red birds hovering over it. The trio attempted to move past the blood birds, but ended up attracting their vicious ire and combat began.

It was vicious. Chimp and Bogo initially tried to close into melee with the avian bastards, but the blood birds radiated a damaging aura and each of their attacks inflicted ongoing damage against our heroes. After splitting up and retreating to a safe distance, Chimp was unexpectedly tagged by a bullet from a distant rifle, wielded by a sneaky dabber who hid in wait to scavenge the gear from the victims of the blood birds! With Chimp distracted, the blood bird flock focused their attention on Bogo, whose attempts to use his laser helmet were met with robotic disdain and the sound of batteries draining. Chimp used his powerful Alpha mutation to throw up an invisible wall of force between the dabber and his allies so that he and Problem could focus fire on the dreaded bird swarm. Down to a minuscule amount of hit points, Bogo freed himself from the blood birds and spat an entangling web of venom that managed to keep the swarm tied down and immobilized for the next five or six turns thanks to my crappy saving throws.

As the force field faded, the dabber was greeted by the sight of Problem vibrating his gloopy body like the Hypnotoad, channeling terrifying psychic flashbacks into the poor creature's head. He remembered how his father left him in the wilderness to fend for himself and never truly cared. As the dabber continued firing at ghostly images of his awful past (and missing), Chimp took a rage-fueled run at his assailant, who instinctively flung open his vest and triggered a claymore mine attached to his belt buckle that sent the ape-man flying. Problem continued to lock down the poor, misunderstood bastard while his allies went to finish off the rest of the swarm. Trapped inside the radiation aura once again, Bogo managed to deliver the killing blow to the dreaded birds.

With their enemies defeated, the trio united to finally deliver the mail to the town of Radon. The post office was a ragged tent-city affair and the mutant on duty told them that they could get a free meal at the local greasy spoon Bud's before turning in. The food was delicious, if disconcertingly all called... clams. As night fell, Bogo and Chimp found their lodgings at the Huck, an arcade-game filled tavern with a creepy animatronic animal band and Problem found his at El Rancho, the stable where he unsuccessfully tried to barter for the owner's riding mantis.

At night, the party was awoken by the sounds of revving engines and rumbling dirt. Making their way outside, they were confronted with a late night biker gang invasion of dear old Radon! The fight wasn't as punishing as the confrontation on the way to town, but the motorcycle-riding porkers were vicious in their attacks. The day was finally won when Chimp rolled a 1, which caused him to switch out his Alpha Mutation for the Teleportation power. He made his Overcharge roll, then sent every remaining biker 50 ft. into the air. As folks who have played a 4E game know, falling damage is a bitch. Each porker took about 5d10 damage and pretty much disintegrated on contact with the ground.

That's where the night ended and it was a pretty wild ride. The pared-down 4th Edition system behind Gamma World is damned solid and my friends had a great time pulling, throwing and zapping people with mutant powers. The only caveat is that Gamma World is super deadly with less than 5 people in the party. It's really hard to make appropriate challenges for three people without making them overly deadly. The first encounter of the evening was designed for 4th level characters and our heroes barely escaped with their lives.

All in all, we had a great time and played until I had literally run out of prep material. Unfortunately, Mike has since gone back to school and I am left solely with Marcos and CJ as adventuring companions. Though I really do love the new Gamma World, I'm afraid that it would be way too lethal for their early leveled characters, so the eventual Assholes in Space game will definitely involve the two of them and hopefully some more folks.

Gamma World: A Delicious Melange

Nothing is more fun for me than anachronism. I've been trying for ages to put together my campaign ideas for a western campaign inspired by Desperado, Hard Boiled and the Spaghetti westerns I've talked about before: a game where it doesn't matter that the bad guys are coming into town on a combination of horses and old sidecar motorcycles because you've got to Fonzie slap the jukebox in the saloon into playing Misirlou before you flip-cock your Winchester and get ready to shoot someone through a plate-glass window.

(God damn I want to run this so bad)

Regardless, that's the way I feel about Gamma World. It's fantastic because of this wildly fluctuating technology level. Some communities might have a still functioning slushie machine in their local cantina and as a result, that's what the town's known for! Firefly-esque prospectors with laser rifles! Tribes of robots with rebar spears! A group of Programmers worshiping a crazed mechanical digger!

I love this machine and the post-apocalypse makes it even better

And that's why I really like the new Gamma World rules. Albeit, I've never played any of the previous editions and I'd like to get my hands on a copy of 2nd if only for the map of post-apocalyptic Allegheny County, but I like the feel. The rules support that anachronistic melange in a way that I didn't feel that Mutant Future does.

One of my favorite additions to the new set are the generic weapons (Light One-Handed Melee, Heavy Two-Handed Ranged, Light One-Handed Gun, etc...) because it levels that playing field. Under the rules, a crossbow can be as effective as a hunting rifle or a harpoon gun made out of car parts, depending on what you decide its stats are. It feels a lot more natural than either limiting characters to medieval weapons at the start or ending up dropping your trusty spear completely when you pick up a plasma rifle.

By its nature, the post-apocalypse should be off-beat. Chuck all your favorite influences into it, let 'em simmer and season with gonzo or serious to taste. But for Pete's sake, don't make it prosaic.

Picture from Six-String Samurai. If you like Gamma World and haven't seen this movie, what the hell are you waiting for?!

Gamma World: The Road

There's only one Road. Only one good one, anyway. Chances are there was a whole network of Roads once, criss-crossing and connecting the entire West. But a lot of things have happened since then: wars, disasters, dimensional incursions, robot wars...

The Road we've got is probably pieced together from the good bits of a bunch of different ones, judging on how some stretches tend to go on beyond the turns. Most of them are either bombed out, booby trapped or overgrown enough that you couldn't get anywhere on 'em without rides built special for navigating the terrain. No way in hell that the Tankers could make their way over those cobbles. And that's why we have the Road, and the reason that it can't be broken.

Sure, you can drive your pick-up or dune buggy or hover-boat around wherever you please, but none of those things can haul worth a damn. If you really wanna get things from Point A to Point B, you gotta use something big, like one of the old tankers or a gravity barge, and if there's one thing that all those Big Rigs need, it's space and stability. But once you've got that, you need to keep it that way.

That's where the towns come in. Most of them sprung up Roadside as soon as the lines from the Coast to Vegas were being reconnoitered, but each of them soon learned the drill. If you keep your chunk of the Road free from raiding parties, burrowing sharks and giant robots, you get trading rights for the cargo coming down the Road. Depending on what Rigs are rolling, you could get anything from clothing to food to construction supplies to Dr. Goggles' Tank-Aged Frontier Whiskey. The promise of first dibs on these treasures is enough to keep the crossbows loaded and lasers charged most Roadside settlements.

I am weak and have poor impulse control

So here's my new Gamma World box set, purchased with a Black Friday Borders coupon and cracked open outside of the plastic. Clearly, Hermes is very excited.

Just for fun, I rolled up a series of Origins and tried to see what I could make of them.

Mind Coercer/Plant: A dryad-like plant woman with hypnotic pollen. Most likely named something like Rose, Tulip or Violet.
Gravity Controller/Speedster: A density-altering mutant
Mind Breaker/Telekinetic: A psychic Russian agent from a parallel earth where the USSR won the Cold War.
Giant/Electrokinetic: A Frankenstein's Monster-like conglomeration animated by a car battery embedded in its back.

And my personal favorite, Android/Doppleganger, which I decided represented an sentient vending machine wearing a cowboy hat a la The Tick's Eastern Bloc Robot Cowboy, who can vend smaller utility robots from a core base block.

I think this game is gonna be all right.

Further thoughts on Mutant Future

So, after last week's Mutant Future post, I printed out a copy of the rules at the school's computer lab and have been checking them out when I have the chance. So far, an extended look at the rules has mostly verified my suspicions from last week: still a whole lot of Labyrinth Lord in those rules. I'm mostly afraid that in trying to run the kind of game that I want to run in Mutant Future, I would have to hack out and house rule an inordinate amount of stuff, write up my own equipment lists and probably my own monsters, mutants and robots, too. I don't want to feel like I have to rewrite the entire thing to get it to work for me.

So what would work? Frankly, the more I've been hearing about the new D&D Gamma World, the more inclined I am to pick it up. It seems to be able to do what I want it to do right out of the box, but I've been trying not to spend money on gaming stuff.

Totally awesome mutant pigs vs. PCs picture by Chance II of the Something Awful forums from his Roadhogs and Rednecks Gamma World Let's Play.