A little while ago, there was a lot of flutter in the Twitterverse about Fortune Cards, and what kind of effect they would have on D&D. Will they unbalance combat? Will they add even more complexity to an already complex game? How are they used within the game?

For the most part, I abstained from this conversation because I had nothing meaningful to add. I do now, though. You see, last week at Encounters, I got the opportunity to use them. The store I play at, Family Fun Hobbies, is a Wizards premier store, so they sent a bunch of packs of Fortune Cards to the store for playtesting and feedback during Encounters. Each player at the store got a pack of cards, and got to use them during the encounter. These are my observations.

First off, I don’t think they introduce any significant balance issues. Most of the cards are extremely situational. One requires that you hit with an at-will or encounter power while you have combat advantage, while another only triggers when you are dropped to 0 hit points or fewer. Those that are not situational, that are more broadly applicable, usually have some sort of trade-off; a simple damage bonus usually comes at the cost of accuracy, an attack bonus at the cost of a minor action, or a full-speed shift at the cost of possibly falling prone at the end of it. Further, you can only have one of these cards at a time. The situational cards can be extremely helpful, but if you’re saving a card that triggers when you drop to 0, that means you’re not using any of your other cards, and you may not get to use the card you have at all.

As far as complexity goes, they do add some. It’s not a lot of complexity, since you can only have one, but it is an additional card to keep track of, and once you’ve leveled up a few times and have a sizable number of cards already, it would be easy for some of your abilities to get lost in the shuffle, even more so than usual. Drawing or discarding a card is also another thing you have to remember to do at the beginning or end of your turn, and (in our case) was occasionally forgotten.

My primary concern about Fortune Cards is simply that they provide yet another prescribed action for you to choose from which, in general, reduces the chance that you’ll be creative and come up with your own improvised actions. Combat tends to be a lot more fun when players are utilizing the environment, or attacking in creative ways, and Fortune Cards provide another thing that serves to distract from doing that. There’s a tendency in D&D, particularly among new players, to think that the only actions available to you are those that are laid out in front of you on your power cards, and I’m afraid that Fortune Cards might muddy the waters further.

In general, though, for a player like myself who is extremely familiar with the rules of D&D and tends to try to find interesting things to do anyway, I think Fortune Cards are fine. I’d probably shy away from using them in groups with newer players, or with players who aren’t that familiar with the rules. For that reason, it’s unlikely that I’ll be using them in my home game.

As if a swarm of regular stirges weren’t bad enough, sometimes a swarm of the beasts gorges itself on the blood of demons and their ilk. When this happens, the swarm becomes corrupted, gaining a malevolence that other stirges do not possess. Demonic stirge swarms seek out humanoid prey, and they delight in dessicating as many people as they possibly can.

In our last update, the group had found and entered a mysterious tower full of badders and porkers, reputedly the source of the defective robots plaguing the outpost of Kin.

After dealing with the yexil and the guard-badders upon entering the tower, the party hunkered down to rest for a bit. His Grace skinned the yexil, making a fur coat and hat from its pelt. The Inevitable piled a bunch of junk against the door leading deeper into the tower in an attempt to fortify their position while they rested. However, he had grown his own fur coat (a shaggy yeti pelt), and his furry hands kept getting in the way. Once the group had rested up, they removed the makeshift barricade and continued down the stairs, into the tower.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw a pair of badders crouched behind an overturned table, trying (unsuccessfully) to remain hidden. The party attacked the two badders, taking one out quickly and badly injuring the other. Two more badders–these ones armed with flails–came from around the corner, though, and quickly dropped Qro7t with their flails and psychic emanations. The Shroom activated his laser hound (a mechanical device with a faulty targeting system), which joined the fray. Man Bush crashed through a side door to outflank the badders, and found a large machine occupying the center of the room. On the other side of the machine was an iron cage containing three vacant-eyed humans, two women and a man. They seemed strangely oblivious to the battle around them.

Man Bush quickly figured out that the machine was generating harmful psychic emanations, but was also healing the badders. Once the party had taken care of the badders (and revived Qro7t), they focused on disabling the machine by hitting it with large objects. They tried to get the attention of the caged humans, but after they were unsuccessful, Sparx theorized that perhaps the machine had left them in a vegetative state. Sparx, The Inevitable, and His Grace pooled their knowledge about Stupendico Robotics (whose facility they were in) and the machine in front of them, and determined that the machine had originally been used to read peoples’ minds, but had been subverted by the badders. They got to work repairing the machine, and successfully reversed its harmful effects; hopefully, while they were exploring the rest of the facility, it would help the caged humans recover.

The party entered a natural cavern, and Qro7t sneaked forward to scout the area. Finding nothing, he ventured further, only to stumble upon the lair of a group of blood birds and gamma moths. Using psychic powers recently gained, the party managed to instill terror into one of the blood birds, and force another blood bird to attack one of the moths. Things, however, got worse.

The gamma moths’ radiation beams proved nearly lethal, dropping Qro7t (again) and The Shroom, and badly injuring Man Bush. The birds, on the other hand, proved to be virtually no threat at all. Between The Inevitable’s gunplay, His Grace’s tending to the wounded (with squirrel jerky and a sort of squirrel mash rubbed on The Shroom’s feet), and Man Bush finding a cache of ammo for his sniper rifle, the party was able to defeat the creatures and revive their wounded.

Hunkering down in the caves, the party rested before venturing down, deeper into the cavern complex.

So you want a Gamma World DM screen, huh? So did I, when I started playing Gamma World. Initially, I downloaded this screen, printed it, and taped it to the inside of my D&D screen. An unsatisfactory solution, due to the fact that, if I were to play D&D, I’d have to remove all the Gamma World stuff, then put it back on when I switched games. So, I decided I needed a dedicated screen for Gamma World.

So, I chopped up the above screen and reconfigured the tables to my liking, arranging them in a 3-panel, landscape-style document. Then I grabbed some wallpapers from WotC’s website, and spliced them together to make some player-facing art.

After printing these things out on card stock, I mounted them to some foam board (which you can pick up in most craft stores). Initially, I attached both side panels to the center panel with packing tape, but this proved an unsatisfactory solution; you see, I couldn’t fold the second panel once the first panel was folded, which made it cumbersome to transport and store. So, I detached one of the side panels and instead attached it with Velcro, so that I could detach and reattach it at will, making it easier to store and transport. You can see the final product here:

DM-Facing Side

Player-Facing Side

If you’d like to make your own Gamma World DM screen, here’s the file that I printed and mounted to the foam board. It contains both the DM-facing side and the artwork on the reverse side.

Gamma World DM Screen (438)

Credit where credit is due: the tables come from here, the artwork comes from here. None of it is my own creation; I just re-mixed it.

Today we have a guest post from a new contributor, Marcelo Dior. Marcelo comes to us from Brazil; he writes on his own blog, and also speaks on some podcasts.

I’ve been adapting the adventures from the book Well of Worlds (Planescape) for 4e for a couple of months now. Last Sunday, I ran my 4e version of the fourth adventure of that book, Blood Storm. In it, the players are visiting some unimportant Prime Material town, when they are first approached by a Pit Fiend in disguise, then by a Marilith (also in disguise), each hiring them for such an absurd amount of money that some PCs might cry.

I’m cutting the description very short here, because it’s not important right now (someday I’ll publish all my suggestions for adapting Well of Worlds to 4e). The important thing is that they should accept both contracts, not realizing they’ll conflict. The Baatezu (devils) and the Tana’ri (demons) have agreed to meet at a ruined, old church just outside town. The church itself has been consecrated (or desecrated) to the devils and the graveyard, to the demons. They’re both interested in that town and the townsfolks’ souls, but neither side wants the Blood War to spill over to that plane of existence (yet) so they decided to meet and “talk” it over. But, being fiends, each party tries to have and edge at the “talks” come midnight.

By that point in the campaign, the PCs should be somewhat famous around Sigil, being level 9 (out of 20 in AD&D) and all. So the fiends detected or recognized them when they arrived in town, and each side tries to hire the PCs. The adventure is designed in such a way that the two contracts don’t seem to overlap, and eventually the PCs arrive at the old church and graveyard, realizing that they’ve, quite literally, made made a pact with the devil. And the demon.

Preparing the adventure, I realized that the possibility of the players choosing any of the sides on the battle at the climax were infinitesimally small, for half of the party is composed of good or neutrally aligned Divine characters (I’m using the old alignment system — it’s Planescape after all) so I decided to change the way the scene would unfold. Instead of having eight monsters controlled by me (four demons and four devils) that would alternate between attacking the PCs or the other fiendish group (Baatezu and Tana’ri would never join forces against anyone, let alone a bunch of mortal adventurers), I decided that if the scene unfolded as I expected, i.e. the PCs stepping back and deciding to wait and see who’d come out of the fray alive and then finishing them off, I’d give the players the control of the monsters!

Oh, I’m so bright, aren’t I? I had six players in front of me, and six monsters (the Marilith and the Pit Fiend would take their battle to the skies as they’re way too powerful to be let loose over the battlefield). I adjusted all the monsters to be of the same level (8, in this case) and gave the Tana’ri to the players at my left-hand side, and the Baatezu to the players at my right-hand side. Everyone would have so much fun playing the monsters and I’d wash my hands of deciding which side would be left standing to fight the PCs, and how damaged they’d be.

If only.

The players… didn’t enjoyed the experience. First of all, they wanted to play their characters, whose level had just increased at the end of the last adventure, and not some random monsters they’ve never seen before. Second of all, the monsters aren’t designed to be controlled in that fashion, because they usually have only one or two attacks, and way too many hit points. I was careful not only to level all the monsters but also to choose critters that had recharging powers, but that wasn’t enough. By the end of the third round, my players were vocally wishing the fight ended soon, so they could put their own PC minis on the table and start hacking at the remaining fiends.

When the session ended, I asked for feedback (as I usually do, asking what they liked the best and what they didn’t like very much). They loved the scenario (being unknowingly hired by both sides as the tip of the scale) and enjoyed the battlefield very much (I’m careful to always put interactive and dangerous terrain) but the experience playing the bad guys wasn’t so good. But they appreciated the idea, and suggested to me, given the opportunity to do it again, I should choose or make monsters that: 1. were more like PCs, with lots of attack options (Elites, maybe?); and 2. Cut away a lot of the hit points, so the quarrel wouldn’t take more than three rounds (if so much).

That’s the lesson I give you, reader. Sometimes brilliant ideas in theory are pretty stupid ones in practice. But players are always in search for original and innovative ideas their that DM is willing to throw at them.

Have a nice game!

The following is a guest post from friend of the blog, The Great Seamus. After the line you’ll see the entirety of his guest post, followed by another line. After that line, I’m going to insert some of my thoughts on the topic.

I’ll open with a story from a campaign I was DMing in the last few weeks. I had taken the module from the Monster Vault and modified it to include in my campaign world.

My players were adventuring in the mountains. They had come into possession of a relic, The Staff of the Winter King, who had been awakened from his icy slumber and had draped the land in an unnatural and unforgiving winter. He was demanding the return of his staff, of course. The players had the responsibility of locating this staff and bringing it back to the king, and then finding some means to ending this winter. Learning some of the history of this individual, the party had come to the consensus that they would have to defeat him, as he was a terrible warlord who sought to dominate the earth. So the players sailed on the magical dragon ship (nearly dying in the process) and managed to crash it into the area just outside of the king’s fortress. Upon reaching the gate, they were stopped by a guardian (a modified elemental solider, ice of course), who silently demanded that they hand over the staff.

So they did.

Being a dutiful creature, the guardian glided off, returned the scepter to the king, and then brought back a half dozen of his friends to kill the interlopers. Now, this combat was originally designed for the party to either sneak past the creature, or simply fight the one brute and several summoned minion allies. But the situation, played out honestly, resulted in what was nearly a total party kill. Two characters were killed in the first three rounds of combat, and two more ran for their lives. The other two gave their lives so that the runners could survive. One of the survivors ruled her character so traumatized that she was retired, while the other went into hiding for a time. The players simply resigned themselves to rolling new characters for the next session and giving it another crack.

And this is where the problems begin. Sometimes players are a pain. As the DM, I put a lot of work into this campaign – from integrating the module into my world, to simply doing the paperwork that comes naturally to the process, and to have the players simply hit the reset button wouldn’t work for me. So what does a good DM do when his players break the campaign? In my mind, there are three options, all of which revolve around a central core – there need to be consequences. Players cannot simply hit the reset button. It throws out a lot of the hard work the DM has done, and oftentimes adds all new work – new characters to track, generating new treasures off of their wishlists, incorporating their new backgrounds, new stat cards, new minis, and getting them all together for a start. Not to mention that they all need to get on the road and get to the objective all over again. Real world consequences, however, teach players that their characters’ actions matter, even well after their characters have passed on.

I. Your life doesn’t end just because you got whupped
What villain worth his salt simply lets the dead bodies of his enemies go to waste? Raising them from the dead to torture for information is always a fun idea, though the souls of the PCs may not necessarily be willing. The next step is to raise them as undead servants, who regain their faculties (if not their lives) and must now progress as zombies or worse. The rules were made to be modded, of course, and simply adding the undead keyword and a few token resistances can adjust combat to accommodate their new unlives – though in the future it would be very difficult for them to get around in civilized society as, say, zombies.

II. Fudge the story
This is my least favorite option, because it presents less in the way of consequences and more of an inconvenience for the players – come back the next session and say that the players were not killed outright, but taken prisoner. Stripped of their weapons and armor, they were thrown into an icy prison to rot away. From there, the survivors may mount a rescue mission, while the captured PCs have to try and execute a daring escape. That way, the players keep their characters, and have a chance to salvage the adventure.

To modify this, perhaps the PCs were captured alive, though the players didn’t know it. Their characters become generals in the army of the Winter King, and help him to wreak bloody havoc across the land. The new party needs to stop the old party in order to even get a crack at the king and his staff.

III. What does this mean for the rest of the world?
he option I ultimately chose, I allowed for the players to hit the reset button – new campaign in a new part of the world (they wanted a nice, temperate jungle adventure after freezing in the north) so they picked new characters and decided on traveling south, towards the jungles.

Along with thousands of refugees.

The winter king, in his glory, is expanding his empire, and the lands he takes are swaddled in the embrace of that same terrible weather. Ice, snow, and sleet that destroys crops and makes life almost impossible have sent the residents of those now occupied lands to villages and cities in the south. Other nations and races are sealing their borders, and food is getting scarce. Bandits plague the roads driven by hunger and desperation, and many towns and villages simply deny the party entrance. As a DM, this means more wandering monsters, higher DCs to forage for food, and more difficulty performing social skills checks – especially against other races.

The most important thing a DM can be is flexible, but there is a line not to cross. You can’t let the players treat your work like a game of Final Fantasy. There are no save points, and certainly no reset button.

Having an entire campaign go down the tubes because of some choices the players made is pretty frustrating. It means a lot of extra work for you as the DM, and means that the story you were trying to tell may not get finished. And I agree that there should be consequences for the players’ actions. There’s one thing that, having read the above post, I feel is missing from that core conceit.

Actions should have consequences, but consequences should be fun
Fun may not be the best word, but it’s the most concise and perhaps the closest to what I’m trying to say. Here’s my train of thought.

D&D, and other RPGs like it, is a game, and games are designed to be fun, first and foremost, for everyone playing the game. If the players make some bad decisions that cause a TPK (or a near TPK, as the case may be), then that’s probably going to hurt the DM’s fun in the long-run because of the extra work and the wasted effort put into that story. What you have to remember, though, is that–once the initial rush of an epic combat is over–getting clobbered by the monsters isn’t all that much fun for the players, either.

Combat should have consequences. If players don’t feel any tension as a result of their characters’ lives being imperiled, that’s a problem that you have to solve. That said, if your consequences are simply meant to punish players, or to encourage them to take the safe route, then your consequences might need adjustment.

A lot of indie RPGs subscribe to a particular philosophy. The idea is that success is, largely, inherently good. Failure may not be inherently good, but it should be at least as interesting as success, and it should lead to situations that are at least as interesting and fun for the players (even if they aren’t fun for the players’ characters). I think that applying this philosophy to D&D is, in general, a good idea, especially when it comes to game-breaking events like this.

If the players have really bungled things and it looks like the bad guys are going to win, don’t think of it as a negative. Think of it as an opportunity for drama, an opportunity to tell the story in a way you hadn’t thought of before. In the above example, I particularly like the idea of bringing the PCs back as undead creatures in the service of the Winter King. Not only do the PCs get to play for the other side for a bit, but eventually you get to give them the choice of betraying their master and trying to do the right thing, even if it means their destruction as the necrotic energy that animates them is dissipated with the Winter King’s demise.

Kobold Warren
Level 2 Encounter (650 XP)

Livestock has been disappearing in a nearby town, and now children are going missing. Having tracked the disappearances to a tribe of kobolds, you enter the darkened warren, unsure of what to expect.

Features

1. Entrance. The players enter the cave system here. The entire cave is dark, and the kobolds do not yet know that the PCs have arrived.
2. Pool. The water knee-high, and is difficult terrain. In addition, the splashing alerts the kobolds in the chamber beyond unless the PCs pass a group Stealth check (DC 15).
3. Mushrooms. These mushrooms are poisonous. When a creature enters a space containing mushrooms, they explode in a close burst 1, attacking each creature in the burst (+8 vs. Fortitude; ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends) on a hit).
4. Trapped Bridge. This bridge covers a 10-foot hole. As a standard action, a kobold standing at 4 in the chamber beyond can cause the bridge to drop anyone on it into the pit. Creatures on the pit are allowed a saving throw to avoid falling. If a creature succeeds, it falls prone on the closest non-pit square; if it fails, it falls into the pit, taking 1d10 points of falling damage and falling prone. An Athletics check (DC 10) can be used to climb back out.
5. Stalactite Wall. These stalactites are close together, providing superior cover to the kobolds on the other side, who are small enough and experienced enough to have adapted to the closely-placed stalactites. Creatures that they target with ranged attacks to not gain cover when the wall is between them.
6. Bolt Holes. These are small tunnels, big enough for a Small creature but too small for anyone larger. The kobolds know the layout of the twisting tunnels; because of this, a kobold in one of these squares can use a move action to move to any other bolt hole square. Another small creature can also use these bolt holes, but because other creatures do not know the layout of the tunnels, it requires two move actions to move to another bolt hole.

Tactics
If the party makes enough noise splashing through the pool, the kobolds get a surprise round because of the forewarning. The tunneler on the trapped bridge stays there, trying to lure creatures onto the bridge. It readies an action to shift off of the bridge as soon as another creature moves onto it. The tunneler by the bridge’s trap mechanism likewise readies an action to trigger the trap as soon as his comrade is clear of it. The kobolds then attack from range while the party deals with the pit.

The kobolds behind the stalactite wall use its cover, and pepper the party with javelins as they try to move through the area. As soon as it hears the sounds of battle, the kobold in the guard drake’s room commands the drake to attack, then attacks from range. The slinger attacks from range, first using its special shot, then switching to regular shot when it is exhausted. The dragonshield waits, hiding (Perception DC 17 to spot it), until a PC comes within reach (it has readied an attack for such an occasion), or until the guard drake is defeated.

If everyone else is killed and the dragonshield is bloodied, it and the slinger try to escape through bolt-holes toward the entrance.

I’ve talked about minions in the past. In general, I’m a big fan of minions. I like what they do mechanically; I like that I can use them to throw hordes of mooks at the PCs and make fights that look huge and impressive, but are easy to run and won’t cause an automatic TPK.

Sometimes, though, it can be a little frustrating when a wizard’s scorching burst or a dragonborn’s dragon breath clears out all the minions in the encounter in one go; this has the general effect of lengthening the encounter by a turn or two (because the wizard used his standard action to clear out the minions, for example), without adding a lot of tactical depth to it. Sometimes I like to spice things up, and use minions that’ll stay around a little bit longer, allowing them to actually be a threat. I don’t do this all the time; it’s not a technique that you want to overuse, because it’ll get frustrating to the PCs if every minion is hard to kill. Sometimes, a minion is just a minion, and it’s meant to be knocked over by the PCs. Sometimes you want the PCs to feel like badasses, cutting through entire swaths of of mooks in one go.

For those other times, there are some tricks you can use to allow your minions to last a little bit longer.

Resist All
The most obvious way to give a minion staying power is to allow it to resist attacks to some degree. Sticking with the obvious train of thought, you can give your minion resistance to all damage. I’d suggest resist 10 all at heroic tier, then 15 or 20 at paragon, and 20 or 25 at epic.

Upside:This has the effect of making your minions more resilient to bursts and blasts in general, because bursts and blasts tend to do less damage than single-target attacks. Dragon’s breath, for example, is likely going to do, at most, 1d6+4 damage during the heroic tier (though it might creep a little higher for high Constitution characters); that’s not enough to get past the resistance. This means that you’re unlikely to see entire groups of minions cleared out by a single attack, unless it’s an encounter or daily power.

Downside: The PCs will probably have to engage a lot of the minions individually, burning an entire turn to take down a single minion. This can be particularly frustrating for strikers, who want to be maximizing their damage potential. As such, you should use this trick sparingly. You can also pair it with a load-bearing boss; give the boss a trait that gets rid of the minions’ resistance when he dies, and drop some hints that this may be the case. That way, if the players focus fire on the boss, they can take out the minions once he’s gone, and your minions will have gotten a few extra rounds to wail on the good guys.

Denial Powers
Another trick you can use is to give the minion a power or trait that triggers when it drops to 0 hit points, and keeps it a live a little longer. You could allow the minion to make a saving throw to see if it actually dies, you could give it an extra turn after it drops to 0 before it actually dies, or you can (as a DM that I’ve played with does) say that the minions only die when the damage they take is an even number.

Upside: Some of your minions are going to survive being hit multiple times, even when they take a lot of damage. They’ll likely get a few swings off before they bite it. This also has the upside of not requiring a lot of book-keeping or math; you don’t have to worry about how much damage is done, or how many hit points the minion has.

Downside: Again, you can wind up making your encounters longer than they need to be. Abilities like this can also frustrate players, as they wail on a minion again and again with no effect. The even/odd trick also presents unique problems with powers like magic missile, which do static amounts of damage. You can circumvent some of these problems with the load-bearing boss technique above, or by making these powers encounter powers for the minions (so that minion only gets one saving throw to resist being killed).

Death Effects
Rather than trying to artificially prolong the lives of your minions, you can embrace their fragility and make their most potent abilities trigger when they die. A minion that explodes in a close burst 3 when it dies, attacking everyone around it, can discourage players from attacking further minions, especially when they’re close to other minions of the same type (for fear of starting a chain reaction). You can also allow a minion to make a basic attack or charge attack against its killer as an immediate action, guaranteeing that it’ll get at least one attack in before it leaves the battlefield. Minions that heal or buff other creatures in the fight are also an effective deterrent, particularly if you make it clear what they’re doing when they die.

Upside: The PCs still get the feeling of badassery for killing tons of minions, and you ensure that your minions actually have an effect on the battle. These kinds of powers can also encourage a lot of tactical thinking in your players, forcing them to maneuver the minions around to minimize the effects of their death bursts.

Downside: More a cautionary note than a downside, don’t make your minions’ death bursts to potent. A minion that causes a burst 1 attack that does 5 damage is probably fine, but a minion that does automatic damage on death to everyone in a burst 1 might be too powerful. Remember that more than one of these minions might be dying at the same time, and that damage can add up very quickly.

Terrain and Positioning
If you don’t want to mess with a minion’s powers and traits, you can simply use the terrain to their advantage, and position them advantageously. Spread your minions out to avoid them being wiped out by a single burst attack. Put artillery minions in high places so that your ranged strikers and controllers have to engage them individually. Introducing minions in waves can also be effective, or simply delaying the arrival of the minions for a round or two. Allow the PCs to engage the regular monsters, then attack with the minions while they’re otherwise engaged.

Upside: This doesn’t require any modification of the minions themselves, and it requires virtually no book-keeping at all. It’s also the best technique to use frequently, as it’s a more organic solution.

Downside: Players are clever, and this technique doesn’t always work. You may spend a lot of time positioning your minions in the perfect spots, only to have your players spring a surprise tactic on you that kills them all in one go.

I ran my first session of Gamma World last night, and it was great fun.

The Party

• Lord Marquis Dr. Reginald Von Buddmunchen IX, Esq., PhD (or just ‘milord’ or ‘His Grace’), a pyrokinetic doppleganger. He wielded a canoe paddle and a bag of squirrels with great aplomb, and had a penchant for creating fiery duplicates of himself and sending them after people.
• The Inevitable, a prescient gunslinger. He was pretty effective with those six-guns, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up with fisticuffs, either. He came forward as the party’s spokesperson on most cases, and did an admirable job.
• Man Bush, an exploding gravity controller. His sniper rifle was deadly, but he could do some serious damage when he blew up on people, too.
• The Shroom, a seismic fungoid. His weapon of choice was a microwave oven, and he had a mental connection to the ur-mushroom, a massive, sentient fungal entity beneath the surface of the world that he could communicate with to cause localized earthquakes.
• Qro7t, a speedster giant. He was the last survivor of a race of subterranean giants, and was the runt of the litter. Even so, he wielded a stop sign as an axe and a traffic light as a flail. The 7 is silent.
• Sparx, an electrokinetic felinoid. Agile and deadly, Sparx alternated between shocking people and scratching their eyes out, and she flung poisoned ice cubes at people when they were too far away.

The Story
As the sun rose, the group traveled down the river Shi-Yen toward the small outpost of Kin. Their ultimate goal was Far-Go, a place where mutants like them could find acceptance, safety, and peace. Before leaving Kin for Far-Go, though, they would need to barter for supplies: food and gasoline for their vehicles.

They were greeted at the docks by Ulysses, a man wearing camouflage fatigues and a bowler hat, with a shotgun resting on his shoulder. He explained that he was Kin’s constable; he was in charge of maintaining the outpost’s defenses and keeping troublemakers out. The Inevitable told him that they did not seek trouble, and that Far-Go was their destination; however, they would need supplies before continuing their journey.

Ulysses offered them a trade: help them with a security problem, and they could walk away with all the food, gas, and ammo they needed. The group accepted, and asked what the problem was.

Kin, it seemed, was having a robot problem. Every day at noon, like clockwork, a robot would arrive from the foothills to the south. Most of these robots just shook and exploded, but a few shot rockets at the walls of the outpost, damaging them. They presented a possible risk, and their presence did not bode well for the outpost.

The Inevitable, Qro7t, and Man Bush scaled the walls and waited for a robot to show up, while the others occupied themselves. Eventually a robot did appear, and exploded just as Ulysses had said it would. His Grace searched the wreckage of the robot and found, improbably, a tin of sardines; he discussed the benefits of a diet rich in canned fish with his invisible manservent, Theobold. Theobold, of course, agreed.

The group followed the path of the robot for a few hours, into the foothills, until they came to a tower. The tower was clearly guarded by humanoids of some sort, though they couldn’t tell what they were facing. The approached cautiously, but were spotted by the badders (humanoid badgers with cruel tendencies) and porkers (humanoid pigs who like to ride motorcycles and fight).

One of the badders told them to leave, that the Iron King did not suffer intruders and had given them leave to kill trespassers. The Inevitable stepped forward and, drawing on the High Speech, told them to run, or face the consequences. The badders and porkers did not run, but were visibly shaken, and the group was able to get the drop on them.

A quick battle ensued. Man Bush sniped at badders from a distance, while Sparx and Qor7t engaged porkers in melee combat. The Inevitable gunned another porker down. His Grace sent flaming squirrels after the assailants, and when one of them shot him with a crossbow, he immediately manifested a flaming duplicate of himself; it was weeping uncontrollably. Soon after, it ran and embraced a badder, immolating it. The fight was quick and brutal.

The party searched the corpses of the fallen and the surrounding area. They found a number of intact items that they could use or trade, as well as some powerful Omega Tech. They proceeded to the door of the tower; Qro7t kicked it in.

Inside were two raised platforms, upon which were more badders with crossbows at the ready. At the end of the room was a raised aerie, and in that aerie was a yexil (a winged lion with mandibles) chewing on a suit jacket. The badders opened fire.

Several people focused fire on the Yexil, causing it significant injury; it returned fire with lasers from its eyes, then swooped down to attack in melee. The badders fired crossbow bolts at the party, and two more burst out of a side room.

The Shroom caused a minor earthquake that toppled one of the raised platforms, bringing the badder on it down to his level so he could crush it with his microwave. Qro7t followed suit, smashing the other platform with his stop sign axe. Man Bush’s head-mounted laser (a powerful piece of Omega Tech he had found) injured the yexil severely, and His Grace finished it off with a force pike to the mouth, pulling a blazer out when he retracted his hand.

The badders just outside the melee were causing problems for the group, so Man Bush ran over to them and exploded, severely injuring a pair of them. He was soon overcome by his own wounds, though, and rendered unconscious. The rest of the party made short work of the badders, though, and revived Man Bush. They searched the area and found more valuable junk, as well as a fully-loaded pistol and some more Omega Tech.

Inside the badders’ baracks, they found a notice, which verified that this was source of the defective robots. Knowledge (and heavy ordnance) in hand, they continued into the tower.

Thoughts
Gamma World has a reputation for zaniness, and it’s well deserved. Even though the character generation is mostly random, it provides a lot of fuel for creativity when you’re figuring out how to play and describe your character. My players did a great job coming up with cool schticks.

Something interesting that I noticed is that basic attacks are used a lot more in Gamma World than they are in D&D. At-will powers are often very situational (such as Man Bush’s ability to explode, or Qro7t’s Brickbat power), which means that basic attacks are what you often fall back on. Unlike D&D, however, it’s likely that you’ll be good at using your basic attack, because your weapons are going to be keyed to one of four different ability scores: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, or Intelligence. It’s likely that at least one of those will be at least 16, so you’ll probably have a good basic attack to use.

I also noticed that people were rarely simply using a power without describing what they were doing. Gamma World seems to encourage creative descriptions, and the players at my table seemed to want to out-do each other with the wackiness of their attacks. Even when His Grace used his ranged basic attack, he described it as throwing a squirrel, which set itself on fire mid-flight.

Finally, Gamma World works really well with a rule called the Kill Shot (I didn’t make it up, but I forget where I got the idea). The idea is that occasionally, when players kill an enemy, I allow them to describe what it looks like. I got some really creative descriptions of enemy deaths, including pulling a blazer out of the yexil’s mouth.

So, tomorrow I’m going to be running my first session of Gamma World, at my FLGS. I thought I’d take some time to tell you about the very interesting cast of characters that will be participating in the game. Some of these guys have given me detailed information on their characters; I will quote where appropriate.

The first is a pyrokinetic doppleganger. I’ll let him tell you about himself.

I believe I have a bag full of “artillery” and also a large wooden boat oar. I am also decked out in an orange prison jumpsuit, a black tattered blazer, and a red and black striped cravat, and a small kerchief in a matching pattern tucked into the breast pocket of the blazer. I am wearing manacles (broken) around my wrists and ankles, and I have the number 24601 tattooed into my forehead. The same number is printed on my jumpsuit.

I am Lord Marquis Dr. Reginald Von Buddmunchen IX, Esq., PhD. I will answer to “milord” “your lordship” and other titles of respect worthy of my station. I also refuse to carry my canoe. Such menial tasks are below my station. I randomly am prone to breaking out into carefully choreographed song and / or dance, and have been known to recite Shakespeare whilst simultaneously doing the “macarena” dance (20% chance when under duress). I also hold lengthy and nigh un-understandable conversations with “Theobold” my invisible manservant. He, also, cannot carry the canoe.

The “artillery” he mentions is, by the way, a bag full of trained squirrels that he throws at people. Sometimes they . . . spontaneously . . . burst into flame.

Next, we have an exploding gravity controller. Yes, you read that right.

I am not even sure what my real name is anymore. I have been called Man Bush as long as I can remember. This is not some military costume I wear. These weeds and vegetation grow from my skin. Now I am like some walking bale of hay. At least the are pretty think and intertwined to provide me protection against the “Nasties.” I guess I am… or was, rather, human. My memory of the times before all hell broke loose are all but gone now. The only thing I seem to remember is how to use this rifle. and I use it pretty damn good. I also carry a machete in case a Nasty gets close to me. Heheh! Gotta love the irony… a walking bramble carrying a machete.

Basically, the branches and weeds that grow from his skin are the armor type protection. The rifle is a heavy duty .50 sniper rifle, with “Bauer Amerkia” etched on the barrel. The machete is a very think type of blade used by landscapers and jungle guides everywhere.

And then there’s the speedster giant, both strong and fast.

“Everyone else is gone. Hims is the only one left. The others were all brave and big…hims, not so much. The giant squishy spitty bugs came and ate them all ups. Hims had to run; no other choice. Hims was always good at hiding. Now hims lives on the upperland…very different from underplace. Bright, and blowey. Hims likes the burney ball (little folks calls it the ‘sun’). Now hims don’t have to hide too much; hims one of the big ones now. Sometimes the bigger stuff comes, and hims runs and hides still. But, most of time, hims is the big one now. Hims is the last lirmok. Hims name is Qro7t (the seven is silent). Hims is a survivor now”

Born the ‘runt’ of several subterranean humanoids which he was told were called lirmoks, Qro7t is a 7 and 1/2 foot tall lean & mean pole of muscle. Sized both shorter and slighter than his brethren, he focuses on speed and silence before pure brute force. Wielding a hodgepodge of seat cushions, tire scraps, sporting equipment & an undersized baseball mask for protection, he uses what he calls a harpoon gun before wading into combat with either his fence gate shield & stop sign axe, or (if he wants to do REAL damage) his stoplight flail. He typically won’t run from a fight due to his curiosity & tenacity, and though he suffers from a very low intellect and naivety, his common sense is strong and he knows when somethings bigger than him, it’s time to run.

There are also three as yet (mostly) unnamed characters. One is a prescient gunslinger who rides a motorcycle and fights with a pair of six-guns. He is sometimes known as the Inevitable; he is from another world, or perhaps Gamma Terra’s future, after it has moved on. The next is a seismic fungoid, a mushroom man who can cause minor earthquakes. Finally there’s an electrokinetic felinoid, a cat-woman who can shoot lightning bolts.

It promises to be great fun, and I’ll tell you all about it when we’re done.