Can SIEGE Engine Do Gamma World?

Wow, what a question.

Can Castles & Crusades do a Gamma World game?

My first reaction is no because Gamma World is a game without classes or levels. You start with a considerable chunk of hit points (1d6 per CON point). Weapons are deadly. If you were to create a level one survivor, you would quickly die fast, like a Dungeon Crawl Classics level 0 funnel. While the melee weapons are D&D standard, every other energy weapon and monster attack in the game is deadly.

Our huge problem with the Gamma World game was this pile of starting hit points. This made traditional melee weapons worthless; a d4 dagger or even a d8 longsword will never feel like a threat to a CON 10 character with 35 starting hit points. You are talking 10-20 hits to bring down a starting character. The original game was incredibly cool, but we wished you could zero-to-hero the experience, start at level 1, and earn that pile of hit points.

As a result, the game's technological weapons felt balanced for CON 10, 35 hit point characters, and we never had a use for the traditional D&D style melee weapons. And also, all of the game's monsters are balanced for that 8-20 starting hit dice scale; there is no such thing as a 1 HD orc in the Gamma World game (an Ark has 8 HD); they are all starting out on the same hit point range of the characters. And there does not seem to be a direct 1-to-1 conversion between AD&D HD and GW HD; the content in Gamma World is anywhere from 1 to 20, with 8-12 being average.

This almost feels like a high-level AD&D adventure adapted into a role-playing game, and none of it is on that familiar B/X scale of hit points and damage. So any conversion needs to consider a massive issue with modifications and hit dice scaling.

And then I stop and think a moment.

Troll Lord Games publishes the adventure that inspired the Gamma World game, the Starship Warden. And oh yeah, they have their own sci-fi fun, the Amazing Adventures supplement called Starsiege.

Okay, it is looking a little more likely at the moment. This would be a strange Gamma World Game.

First, as Starsiege recommends, use the Amazing Adventures game for your character classes, renamed if needed according to the rules on page 20 of Starsiege. Gadgeteer becomes Technical Engineer, Gumshoe becomes Bounty Hunter, and so on. For more primitive cultures, you can use the Castles & Crusades classes like archer, fighter, etc. This is going to be a strange feeling game having classes here, but I guess a bit more interesting. So our classes are:

• Soldier
• Psychic
• Technician (AA gadgeteer)
• Plus all non-magic C&C classes:
• Fighter
• Ranger
• Rogue

Magic is banned, but psychic powers are a must-have. And remember, you can use dual- and multiclass like in C&C, so if your character concept goes across a few, start combining ideas. Another part of me wonders if this is too many classes. I got rid of knight, gunslinger, scoundrel, bard, archer, assassin, monk (pit fighter), and pirate (which could make a good raider class). Barbarian and bounty hunter (AA gumshoe) have also been removed.

The fewer classes I have, the easier this world is to imagine.

Mutations

Mutations are an issue, but according to the Gamma World 1e rules, roll a d4 for both physical and mental mutations and roll on the charts directly. Pure Strain Humans get their 3 primes, as usual. Humanoids and others get 2 plus mutations and then come up with other benefits as per Starsiege alien race templates. I would balance mutations using the "mana points" system on page 39 of the Castle Keeper's guide, with CON as the extra spell bonus instead of INT. I would also fix the effect or damage of mutations to 1d6 or +2 per mana/mutation point. Maybe. This would need to be play-tested.

Gear

Equipment, armor, and weapons should be on the lower damage and more play-balanced Starsiege and C&C gear. You can port iconic items as needed and put those on the Starsiege damage scale.

Monsters should probably follow a hit-dice generation method and be closer to Castles & Crusades' level of challenge and ramping up in difficulty. The hit dice in Gamma World will be way off because we are on the 1d6 per CON scale, and I would base these on similar C&C monsters.

Admittedly, this feels like more of a sci-fi and fantasy post-apocalypse Starsiege game than a Gamma World game.

And that is how I would start.

What Type of World Would This Be?

That is a good question.

You look at the classes alone, something more happening than primitive survivor tribes in a destroyed sci-fi world. There are these quotes in the original Gamma World book:

The pockets of humanity that have survived are few, scattered throughout a world where a moment's lack of caution may mean an instant and painful death. Men are highly suspicious of strangers, jealous of each other's possessions, and clandestine organizations, known as cryptic alliances, plots, and schemes against each other. The smallest hint of the location of The Apocalypse base, lost now for decades, creates intensive rival searches, for it is rumored that therein lies power - power to survive, power to control...

And this:

What cities there are will generally be situated on a coast or river, and are near the few remaining robot farms (explained later). City populations should range between 5,000 to 50,000 humans, mutants, intelligent plants, etc.

So I am feeling a conflict between groups restoring ancient technology and those wanting to go back to a more primitive way of life and destroy the technology that destroyed the world. So there are populations of "medium-tech" survivors with the technology and a semblance of modern life (supported by robot farms), and others who are more agrarian and Middle Ages.

I will guess the less advanced civilizations outnumber the advanced ones, and there is animosity between the two, with many feeling those who want to bring back the old ways will only destroy the world for good this time. Who knows, that legendary world-ending weapon from the Planet of the Apes (original 1960s) movies could be out there and end the world with a push of a button. The anti-technological types could be right.

So this will be less of a game about primitive types searching the ruins and figuring out loot and more of a story-based world with conflicts, NPCs, characters, and two societies trying to find a way to live together and balance the old ways and the new - without destroying the world again. And you could have secret factions everywhere, and even pre-ruin factions reactivated and causing trouble.

It Works, Kinda...

Thinking through this, the conversion would work, but it does not feel ideal. The most significant issues are the starting hit point and HD scale for monsters and the enormous weapon damage for technological items (and the weak melee weapons). I would love a low-level zero-to-hero game sort of version of Gamma World, some kind of like how Mutant Crawl Classics does things.

I would love a dedicated game that does this well and one based around the Starsiege rules. The classes need to be better focused; either this is going to be a "mystery of the ancients" sort of game (with lower starting technology levels) or a "politics of surviving factions" sort of game (with some factions at a medium-tech, and many at a lower-tech).

I want better mutation rules, and I don't want to rely on the Gamma World charts. I would like that integrated with the C&C mana system like I did, but with powerful mutations needing more mana. I would want all their effects and damages to be scaled for C&C-style games.

And the game needs a good monster list, balanced around the expected scale of creatures in a B/X or AD&D style progression.

The game could do it, but it is not ideal. If C&C characters stumbled into Gamma World, I would probably keep the hit point and monster numbers as they are and use it as a "high-level adventure" scaled up to be a challenge. This means "first-level" NPCs start with the 1d6 per point of the CON hit point scale, and if they ever level up, they get the "beyond 10th" level adjustment. The entire world is the S4: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks the Campaign World. This way, I am changing nothing, keeping the challenge level intact, and the base C&C rules work well with the world.

Everything here is OP back in a fantasy world, but that is how it always was.

Overall, C+ Grade, Duct-Taped

I give my efforts a C+, they work, but they feel like a taped-together mess. I would love a Mutants & Mayhem style set of rules that is more Castles & Crusades, more focused, zero to hero, mysteries of the ancients, has a random mutation, monster, and artifact generators, and has everything needed to play.

Mutant Crawl Classics and Mutant Future are better experiences than my mess of a hack and, of course, any version of Gamma World you prefer to play.