So I was watching the music video for "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty the other day and I thought, "Hey, that seems like a pretty cool postapocalyptic Gamma World adventure hook." Except I've never played Gamma World so have no clue what it's actually like or even about. From what I gather, the PCs are mutants after a cataclysmic event. Anybody care to point me in the direction of good information about Gamma World (i.e., not Wikipedia) and which edition is the most awesome? I gather there have been four or five editions to date. Which one is the funkiest old school fun? Is Gamma World related to Metamorphosis Alpha? Or am I just conflating Greek letters? Got any cool Gamma World stories?
Gamma World is the spiritual successor to Metamorphosis Alpha and shares many of the same mutations and some of the same monsters.
Gamma World is a more or less gonzo-style post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. It takes place in the 25th century, which is presented as being a century to several hundred years after a world-shattering war, depending on the edition. This massive war is fought not only with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but also with high-tech weapons like powered armor and death rays, and some of them are still kicking around after the bomb. Players may choose pure strain humans (non-mutated humans who are hardy and resistant or immune to mutation), humanoids (mutated humans), mutated animals, or in some versions, mutated plants. The numbers and power of mutations are randomly selected, which may result in characters of vastly different power levels. The setting is post-apocalyptic, but it's the post-apocalypse of fanciful 1950s science-fiction, not grittier works like Mad Max.
As far as which edition is best, I don't know. The last version I ran was fourth edition, which was in some ways a proto-d20 system (with ascending armor class serving as a to-hit target and d20 skill checks with difficulty classes). Third edition was a dog on a lot of levels, but the worst was that the rulebook was incomplete, so you had to write TSR for an extensive errata booklet just to be able to play. (TSR being TSR, third edition got the most support.) The first and second editions are probably the most "classic versions," with the second probably being the one the most people cut their teeth on. (The first edition is very old school TSR in tone and feel, with a lot of lesser known Trampier artwork. The second is very mid-period mass-market TSR, with a Parkinson cover and some really good Elmore interior artwork).
I've never seen the Alternity version (I didn't like the Alternity system), and the d20 version seemed to take itself way too seriously. I'm aware that there was another version that was released around the time of 4e, but I know literally nothing about it.
Gamma World seems mostly inspired by Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey which is largely forgotten today (and I suspect, even then was pretty obscure). Post apocalypse, but you have humans, mutant humans, mutant animals, strange philosophical movements as organizations.
I think 4th edition is the best. It's basically D&D cleaned up. 1e/2e aren't bad either.
(And for another post apocalypse '80s music video, see Rick Springfield's Human Touch)
Mutant Future is a retro-clone of Gamma World. It's by Goblinoid Games, the crazy kids behind Labyrinth Lord.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/56282/Mutant-Future-Revised-Edition-noart-version
It's not exactly GW, but its close enough and well done.
Quote from: Dumarest;967638So I was watching the music video for "You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty the other day and I thought, "Hey, that seems like a pretty cool postapocalyptic Gamma World adventure hook." Except I've never played Gamma World so have no clue what it's actually like or even about.
From what I gather, the PCs are mutants after a cataclysmic event.
Anybody care to point me in the direction of good information about Gamma World (i.e., not Wikipedia)
and which edition is the most awesome? I gather there have been four or five editions to date.
Is Gamma World related to Metamorphosis Alpha? Or am I just conflating Greek letters? Got any cool Gamma World stories?
1: You arent the only one. Theres another called called Union of the Snake by Duran Duran and Lover Boy by Billy Ocean, among others.
2: Humans, Mutant humans, Mutant animals, Mutant plants and in some editions also Robots. The loadouts varied from edition to edition.
3: The GW mailing list on Yahoo Groups is still active. Got some new modules in the files section and other stuff.
4: Depends on what you want really. 1 and 2e are the easiest to pick up and use. Im partial to 2nd ed. This is GW before it got progressively dragged gown into the supposed "wild and wahoo" which later morons took to be slapstick. That one phrase has dragged the game down more than anything else.
3e is ok. But its a shift to a slightly different system and TSRs growing infatuation with colour coding things.
4e brings in the stupid naming system which they tried to extrapolate from older monster names and then apply to just about everything to the point it starts sounding really stupid when applied to monsters, locations, etc. This one takes the slapstick to new levels in some of the material.
Thats the end of the GW line as it was.
Next was Alternity GW which is pretty neutered in race options, mutations, tech, and so on. The setting though feels more like older more serious GW.
Next is d20m GW. This was outsourced to White Wolf and whooooeeee is this one a problem! Its Gamma World in name only. EVERYTHING is nanotech now with some biotech tossed in as an afterthought. Horrible rules, and some of the worst writing Ive seen in an RPG. Its saving grace though is the nanotech system which acts like a sort of Green Lantern ring, and the rules for the PCs community as a sort of PC with its own stats and skills. Its a really interesting idea and plays well. Just seriously needed more rules for interacting with other communities.
The GMs book is oddly enough rather good in the advice section and gives lots of different views on how to DM a game and different approaches and styles. One of the best "How to DM" sections.
It though utterly and abysmally fails to be Gamma World at nigh every turn.
Next up is 4e D&D GW. It succeeds in fucking things up even more than d20 GW. This is such a fucked up schizophrenic book that it fails on nearly every level to be Gamma World. It was promoted as even more slapstick than Gammarauders and the setting is like a rip off of Torg. The writers insult the players for daring to not like a near totally random chargen. The art is so out of touch with the slapstick background its appalling. Deformed Circus Freaks. But... Its probably the best iteration of the 4e D&D rules to something more like an RPG than a board game. Its still very much got board game elements AND WOTC decided to stick it with a CCG too. Yeah. You had to collect your mutations and artifacts. The box set though came with enough cards to get going and never need the CCG.
5: MA and GW are by the same writer. Theres several similarities. MA came out waaaay back and then GW kinda took over. There was an Amazing Engine version that wasnt too bad. Then it went fallow again. Then Ward tried to bring it back with a new version that was not exactly recieved well. Then he pulled one or two takedowns of fan sites and things devolved for a while. Then ther was a relaunch and an unrelated release by someone else using system26. After that not sure. Think theres been another iteration.
Theres also the Gammarauders board game. Which is giant monsters battling it out. This was for 4e and takes place after Gamma World and furthers the slapstick theme. Also had a comic which itself had a mini joke RPG presented in segments in each issue.
Quote from: Omega;967682This is GW before it got progressively dragged gown into the supposed "wild and wahoo" which later morons took to be slapstick. That one phrase has dragged the game down more than anything else.
The illustration for the mutation "wings" in the first edition shows a hippo person with antennae and tiny bird wings vaulting over a wall. And since the first edition, the game has featured a bestiary that includes literal land sharks that burrow through the dirt, flying serpent-necked bird-footed beetle-mandibled lions that eat clothing ("the snappier the outfit, the better it tastes"), horses that somehow mutated to be like centipedes (with the helpful name "centisteeds"), and evil giant bunny rabbit people whose touch turns metal to rubber.
While I personally think that Gamma World works best when the GM plays things straight no matter how absurd the material is, it didn't have to be "dragged" anywhere. It started out unapologetically goofy.
Quote from: Omega;967682Theres also the Gammarauders board game. Which is giant monsters battling it out. This was for 4e and takes place after Gamma World and furthers the slapstick theme.
Gammarauders was released in 1987, when third edition was still an active product line, and something like four or five years before the release of fourth edition.
I personally prefer Metamorphosis Alpha to Gamma World. MA is set on a lost generation colony ship years after exposure to a radiation cloud killed or mutated almost evryone and everything aboard. MA is currently available from Goodman Games in a very nice deluxe edition, with lots of supporting materials.
Gamma World is MA on a planetary scale. It is more gnzo goofy in tone, although how much depends on the edition and the tastes of the gaming group. I cut my teeth on the first edition, second was an expansion and in many ways an improvement. One thing of note is that as the editions of GW progressed so too did the starting technology level of the characters. Initially they were scavengers with some metal working, by late editions gunpowder weapons were not uncommon.
Mutant Future (available from DriveThru in a free no art edition) gives a good feel for what GW is about. It is an adaptation of GW concepts for B/X D&D mechanics.
Originally Published in 1952, Starman's Son by Andre Norton was the actual inspiration for Gamma World. In later printings, this book would be renamed Daybreak 2250 A.D.
I would publish a lot more more RPG stuff concerning Gamma World, but this new bbs code website upgrade for the RPGSite is f*&^%* broken, and I keep getting an error message
"Non-English characters are not accepted"
I used a special parser to strip out all the non-english characters, but the BBScode this website is using, stubbornly refuses to recognize my post. I suspect this is some new scam from the hollyweird DRM crew to control when I'm copying and pasting links and such, and they have no business trying to figure out copyright law for me, without my explicit consent, and in a direct contravention to my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS TO FREE SPEECH.
PUNDIT FIX YOUR F*&^%^ UP CENSORED WEBSITE!
Thanks to all of you for your answers and opinions as well as additional music videos to check out and meld together into a post-cataclysm setting if I ever get the chance to try it. I would probably play it relatively straight with occasional weirdness.
Quote from: The Scythian;967699The illustration for the mutation "wings" in the first edition shows a hippo person with antennae and tiny bird wings vaulting over a wall.
Yeah because all that makes the whole game "silly"... You moron. You cant even do more than cut-n-pase the same pathetic excuse? Check the illustrations in the AD&D DMG. Then grow some brain cells.
Funny thing...I've been playing RPGs for somehing like 36 years now and it never once occurred to me in all this time that my games were supposed to reflect the illustrations in the rulebooks. Of course, my favorite RPG art is Classic Traveller 1977 edition, so there you go...
After viewing "You Got Lucky," "Union of the Snake," "Human Touch," and "Lover Boy" back to back to back to back, it's abundantly clear that Tom, the Heartbreakers, Duran Duran, Rick, and Billy got together in advance and decided it would be awesome if they made music videos based on their collective Gamma World campaign set in far-flung 2016. Obviously Tom, Duran, and Billy were playing mutated survivors or descendants of survivors of the apocalypse whereas Rick was playing a pure-strain human who sat out the apocalypse in a hidden military stasis chamber. And they were right, it was an awesome idea. I never knew Gamma World was played by so many pop stars.
Quote from: Omega;967780Yeah because all that makes the whole game "silly"...
It's one piece of evidence, yes. Along with the ogre-sized bunny rabbits that can turn metal into rubber with their touch. The centipede horses. The serpent-lion-bird-bats-insects that eat clothing and find fashionable outfits more tasty than other ones. The land sharks erupting from the desert sands. Don't forget them--and more! Like the module with the murderous termite men who were created, like all proper bug monsters, by pre-war nuclear tests. Or like that module that involves militant chicken cyclops men who have a blind spot when it comes to robots. And badger people who worship the University of Wisconsin mascot as their god. And that's putting aside things like exposure to radiation having a not insignificant chance to give your character a new super ability, like the ability to control weather, generate death fields, or open doors to alternate planes of existence.
All first edition.
And there's plenty more, but I'm not going to scour the first edition books for more examples. You can play the game however you'd like, and more power to you (I run it "straight"), but claiming that the game started out as this serious thing that got dragged toward absurdity later is simply incorrect. (Just like your claim that
Gammarauders was a fourth edition product was incorrect.)
Quote from: Omega;967780You moron. You cant even do more than cut-n-pase the same pathetic excuse?
I don't understand what this even means. What am I cutting and pasting? From where? What's my "excuse," pathetic or otherwise?
Quote from: Omega;967780Check the illustrations in the AD&D DMG.
The comic panels in the Dungeon Masters Guide are clearly intended as comic panels, which would be akin to the "hopeless character" portrait in the Gamma World rules--the one with the weird trunk, hands for feet, and feet for hands. But the hippo person with tiny wings vaulting over the wall seems to be played about as straight as the other pictures, like the one of adorable hoops loaded for bear, or the hisser clutching his precious treasure--an ancient desk fan!
Quote from: Omega;967780Then grow some brain cells.
Hey, you're the one calling someone stupid for pointing out that the game with orange lion-bird-bat-serpent monsters with beetle-like mandibles that eat clothing and find high fashion delicious is
not meant to be taken seriously. Not sure what's up with that from an intelligence standpoint, but I hope it somehow works out for you.
(Edited to add a "not" in a strategic place!)
Quote from: Dumarest;967783Funny thing...I've been playing RPGs for somehing like 36 years now and it never once occurred to me in all this time that my games were supposed to reflect the illustrations in the rulebooks. Of course, my favorite RPG art is Classic Traveller 1977 edition, so there you go...
For what it's worth, I actually do think the illustrations in the early TSR stuff materials depicted the way they played the games and how they imagined the games and their worlds.
However, I'm not pointing to this one illustration (which in this case matches the text--it's illustrating how especially heavy characters are restricted to using wings to assist their jumps) in isolation and saying that the game was intended to be that way. This morning, I pointed to the illustration along with the patently ridiculous monsters. And now I've expanded it to include core assumptions about the game (bathing in radioactive waste, which is pretty much everywhere, has a not insignificant chance of giving you powers that allow you to open dimensional doorways or control the weather), as well as the way other first edition materials presented the world and its inhabitants.
In this case, the illustrations, the rules, the monsters, the setting material, and the adventures are all in pretty solid agreement with respect to tone.
Gamarauders was a standalone boardgames, Gamma Knights was the GW 4e supplement.
Gamma World, and Metamorphosis Alpha before it, has always had elements of silly in it. Look at the GW treasure lists which offer "3/4 of a metric ton of Mygnl Chorts", what ever those are. Along with fish that walk on land, telepathic lizards, and evry much comic book radiation.
But then again 0D&D and even Empire of the Petal Throne, not to mention RuneQuest, had bits of humour in them. The idea that RPGs have to be deadly serious business seems a rather recent invention.
Gamma World can, and has been, played straight, but it has always also supported outright comedy.
Quote from: DavetheLost;967804Gamarauders was a standalone boardgames, Gamma Knights was the GW 4e supplement.
But
Gamma Knights[/I] wasn't about giant monsters battling each other and it didn't have a comic book with game material in it, while
Gammarauders was and did. I'm pretty sure that Omega was talking about the latter and just completely screwed up the timeline.
Note that he also said:
Quote from: Omega;9676824e brings in the stupid naming system which they tried to extrapolate from older monster names and then apply to just about everything to the point it starts sounding really stupid when applied to monsters, locations, etc. This one takes the slapstick to new levels in some of the material.
That was Kim Eastland's Gamman language, which was used in third edition modules, not fourth. And was, ironically, probably more of an attempt to make things more "realistic" than anything else. (The lexicon appeared in a mid-1980s Dragon magazine with notes about why he came up with it and how he intended it to be used.) Fourth edition went back to the old tried and true "mangled and misremembered" naming convention so popular in post-apocalyptic film and literature.
So I'm honestly not sure what Omega is talking about. He complains about
Gammarauders, which was released four or five years before fourth edition, while third edition was an active product line. He complains about Eastland's Gamman language, which was a third edition thing (and was an attempt to make things more serious, not goofy). He complains about the "wild and wahoo" line, which was one line in a section of the introduction to fourth edition explaining different approaches GMs could take to the game (and it held up neither as preferred or better). None of the fourth edition materials that I have could be described as slapstick at all, let alone as taking it "to new levels".
Use 1e if you want crazy gonzo mutants with death rays fighting mutant camels with wings and goggles. Use 4e if you want a more sober apocalypse with automatic rifles and hand grenades. I'm not sure when it was introduced but the idea that a lot of the super tech stuff was brought by aliens who tried to stop the wars and instead caused the final war, has always made sense to me.
Quote from: David Johansen;967821Use 1e if you want crazy gonzo mutants with death rays fighting mutant camels with wings and goggles. Use 4e if you want a more sober apocalypse with automatic rifles and hand grenades. I'm not sure when it was introduced but the idea that a lot of the super tech stuff was brought by aliens who tried to stop the wars and instead caused the final war, has always made sense to me.
Why do I have to choose? I can have crazy goggle-bedecked mutant camels with magma blasters and mullets and be utterly sober about it. :p
I know the aliens were a thing in Alternity Gamma World, which had a lot of ideas I liked and was last edition I actually bought.
Maybe when people say "4e Gamma World" the really mean the Gamma World game using D&D 4e mechanics, which was not the 4th edition of Gamma World.
Quote from: Dumarest;967822Why do I have to choose? I can have crazy goggle-bedecked mutant camels with magma blasters and mullets and be utterly sober about it. :p
If you can run that game and have it be serious and sober I want a seat at the table.
Quote from: DavetheLost;967861If you can run that game and have it be serious and sober I want a seat at the table.
I'll hold you to that.
I think it's somehow very appropriate that a game about mutation has had so many different systems, some wildly different from each other.
That last edition (The one that used D&D 4 as it's base and tried to be a party game you could just play out of the box) was a fucking barrel of monkeys and could have been a breakout hit if Hasbro put some back into promoting it.
Quote from: David Johansen;967821Use 1e if you want crazy gonzo mutants with death rays fighting mutant camels with wings and goggles. Use 4e if you want a more sober apocalypse with automatic rifles and hand grenades. I'm not sure when it was introduced but the idea that a lot of the super tech stuff was brought by aliens who tried to stop the wars and instead caused the final war, has always made sense to me.
Fourth edition wasn't really an automatic-rifles-and-hand-grenades edition, though. In terms of setting assumptions, established background, and stuff like that, it was closer to the first and second editions, with some of the excesses reined in and the weird edges filed smooth. In all of those editions, humanity attained a "Golden Age of sci-fi" level of technology (lasers, plasma guns, death rays, powered armor, commonplace robots, highly advanced artificial intelligences, etc.) and then destroyed itself in an incomprehensibly brutal final war in which continents buckled, seas boiled, and all that good stuff. The first and second editions assume a primitive-to-medieval starting location for characters, while fourth edition starts further into the future and assumes an early modern (flintlock era) one.
Third edition teased the possibility that the final war was actually aliens destroying us, a theory supported by the existence of powerful crystalline weapons with unique properties, and also a crystalline alien base (complete with crystalline flying saucer) in the pack-in solo adventure. According to the rules, different characters begin the game with access to different technology levels. Pure strain humans start with access to modern (20th century) technology, while mutated humans start with medieval technology, and mutated animals start with primitive.
The alien invasion angle was quietly dropped in Kim Eastland's "Cities of Man" adventure series, and instead he did something novel. While the materials for other editions tended to root the action in actual, specific places (Lake Geneva, Fargo, Pittsburgh, Yellowstone, the Indiana-Illinois Border), Eastland created a setting with its own geography, language and naming conventions that he could strip of all references to actual locations. Strictly speaking, the new monsters in his adventures were mutants, but he tended to play up the alien and bizarre in an attempt to create something more like a self-contained fantasy world.
It didn't work for me, but I at least understand (and I guess on some level appreciate) what he was going for.
But based on what Davethelost said and a look at fifth edition's cover, I'm guessing that the one with a background alien war and an assault-rifles-and-grenades vibe is fifth edition. (And wow, the goatee, trench coat, and ruined Seattle backdrop positively scream 1990s!)
I'll throw out that the Mutant Epoch supplements and adventures (http://www.outlandarts.com/mutantepoch.htm) are really good idea mines for people looking for GW inspiration (albeit a -bit- more horror focused perhaps).
I'm not familiar with 4th edition Gamma World (or 4th edition AD&D either). Or any edition of Gamma World, for that matter. But I'd rather not use a D&D-derived system. If I see a cheap (or free! :D) copy of 1st or 2nd, I think I'll check it out. Those darn music videos have given me a ton of ideas for a game. I suppose it wouldn't have to be Gamma World, though, but the only other post-apocalyptic game I know about is Twilight 2000, which is a whole other direction.
Just to clarify, fourth edition Gamma World was published in 1992, and has nothing to do with D&D 4e.
The fourth edition of Gamma World is probably the most D&D-influenced of all the TSR versions (there are classes with class progression), but all versions are heavily influenced by D&D. For example, in each edition, you're going to get 6 D&D-derived attributes (physical strength, dexterity, constitution, mental strength, intelligence, and charisma, although fourth edition adds senses) determined in familiar ways (usually 4d6 and drop the lowest). Every version uses experience points to quantify character progression, just in different ways. All versions except third use d20 for attacks. All versions have armor class (and it's descending armor class in the first two editions). There are plenty of differences, too, but all of the TSR versions are derived to varying degrees from D&D.
(Edit: And, to be clear, I'm talking about 1st through 4th editions. Fifth uses Alternity, sixth d20 Modern, and seventh a variation of D&D 4e, I think.)
Quote from: GameDaddy;967742Originally Published in 1952, Starman's Son by Andre Norton was the actual inspiration for Gamma World. In later printings, this book would be renamed Daybreak 2250 A.D.
I would publish a lot more more RPG stuff concerning Gamma World, but this new bbs code website upgrade for the RPGSite is f*&^%* broken, and I keep getting an error message
"Non-English characters are not accepted"
I used a special parser to strip out all the non-english characters, but the BBScode this website is using, stubbornly refuses to recognize my post. I suspect this is some new scam from the hollyweird DRM crew to control when I'm copying and pasting links and such, and they have no business trying to figure out copyright law for me, without my explicit consent, and in a direct contravention to my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS TO FREE SPEECH.
PUNDIT FIX YOUR F*&^%^ UP CENSORED WEBSITE!
Dude, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. What non-english characters were you using?
It's happened three times to me. Once there was a trademark symbol that I needed to remove from an excerpt, the other two times it was weirdly enough extra lines of spaces. When I tightened up the posts by deleting any extra spacing leftover it took the quote.
Quote from: san dee jota;967946I'll throw out that the Mutant Epoch supplements and adventures (http://www.outlandarts.com/mutantepoch.htm) are really good idea mines for people looking for GW inspiration (albeit a -bit- more horror focused perhaps).
I'll second that. The Mutant Epoch puts out some really excellent material with a lot of system-free ideas. I think the system itself does a decent job of grasping the spirit of the early Gamma World editions. It can be a tad grimdark. But that is fairly easy to ignore if you choose. I think the system could run a good Judge Dredd setting or even cyberpunk. It lacks netrunning rules but I see that as a feature, not a bug. :)
Quote from: The Scythian;967997Just to clarify, fourth edition Gamma World was published in 1992, and has nothing to do with D&D 4e.
The fourth edition of Gamma World is probably the most D&D-influenced of all the TSR versions (there are classes with class progression), but all versions are heavily influenced by D&D. For example, in each edition, you're going to get 6 D&D-derived attributes (physical strength, dexterity, constitution, mental strength, intelligence, and charisma, although fourth edition adds senses) determined in familiar ways (usually 4d6 and drop the lowest). Every version uses experience points to quantify character progression, just in different ways. All versions except third use d20 for attacks. All versions have armor class (and it's descending armor class in the first two editions). There are plenty of differences, too, but all of the TSR versions are derived to varying degrees from D&D.
(Edit: And, to be clear, I'm talking about 1st through 4th editions. Fifth uses Alternity, sixth d20 Modern, and seventh a variation of D&D 4e, I think.)
Don't forget Omega World!
I've never run a Gamma World campaign or a D&D campaign without adding in at least one cross-system adventure. Mutants and magic powers just mix up so well.
The 1992 edition is my favorite and its similarity to D&D was one of those reasons. It had some basic classes and skills and had great 'races'. Just so much variety with mutant animals, mutant humans, pure strain humans and mutant plants. I think you could even use the system to run a basic supers game. It is my 'go to' system. I also like the base 18th century tech level vibe. Start play with black powder guns and end up with plasma blasters!
Quote from: RPGPundit;968928Dude, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. What non-english characters were you using?
Quote from: EOTB;968929It's happened three times to me. Once there was a trademark symbol that I needed to remove from an excerpt, the other two times it was weirdly enough extra lines of spaces. When I tightened up the posts by deleting any extra spacing leftover it took the quote.
Happened to me to when I was pulling text from a website into Word to cleanup and then post, I dropped it into Notepad, and copied from there, it cleared out whatever weird formatting was there.
It's not the RIAA sending their Temple Hacker Assassins to ruin Gamedaddy's day, it's the BBS software's Anti-Chinese Spammer code getting a little overzealous.
I'd love to hear more about Hollywood's DRM crew though.
Quote from: The Scythian;967657Gamma World is the spiritual successor to Metamorphosis Alpha and shares many of the same mutations and some of the same monsters.
Gamma World is a more or less gonzo-style post-apocalyptic roleplaying game. -stuff removed-. The setting is post-apocalyptic, but it's the post-apocalypse of fanciful 1950s science-fiction, not grittier works like Mad Max.
As far as which edition is best, I don't know. -more stuff- Third edition was a dog on a lot of levels, but the worst was that the rulebook was incomplete, so you had to write TSR for an extensive errata booklet just to be able to play. (TSR being TSR, third edition got the most support.) The first and second editions are probably the most "classic versions," with the second probably being the one the most people cut their teeth on. -more stuff-
-stuff here too-, and the d20 version seemed to take itself way too seriously. I'm aware that there was another version that was released around the time of 4e, but I know literally nothing about it.
I prefer "gonzo" to "wild and wahoo," but then I prefer to call it science fantasy as well (because wild and wahoo just sounds stupid).
I love me some GW. Started with 2nd edition when it was available in production, then picked up every iteration since (save for Omega World, though technically it is in Dragon, I think). It's basically expanded 1e.
3e threw me, until years later when I had the full rules set, thanks to Ebay. Once you have that, it is really a nice (I would say elegant, but...) system that covers everything a game needs (Old school, not story era).
4e was very nearly a d20 type game in presentation with the way the rules were set. Still very science fantasy.
5e was Alternity, though neutered GW
6e was White Wolf's d20 iteration. I hated this game until I looked at it years later (after picking up Numenera btw). It is definitely more sci-fi than it is sci-fantasy, but once you get past the rules system (d20 Modern) and dig in, it is still pretty gonzo. Nanite controlling characters, very cool mental mutations, and a really good Game Master's guide (works for many games advice-wise). Mix in some Darwin's World (a d20 P.A. that looks like Fallout 3 with the names changed) and you're good to go. d20, unfortunately, sucks.
7e is the D&D 4e version with the Hadron Collider (sp?) incident and inter-dimensional spills (guess KS wasn't brave enough to try and sue WOTC over some imagined theft of ideas here). I'm not a fan of D&D 4e, though if you combine this rules set, the essentials books, and a little work reducing the random character stuff (and card game garbage), you can get a decent Thundarr the Barbarian game going.
Quote from: RPGPundit;968928Dude, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. What non-english characters were you using?
It happened to me when I was trying to use the copyright symbol if I remember right; I also seem to recall I was going to write something in French but it wouldn't accept some accent marks, or maybe that was a different web site I'm thinking about.
Quote from: EOTB;968929It's happened three times to me. Once there was a trademark symbol that I needed to remove from an excerpt, the other two times it was weirdly enough extra lines of spaces. When I tightened up the posts by deleting any extra spacing leftover it took the quote.
Huh. Yeah, I saw this now. I guess this is to avoid asian spammers.