Furiosa (2024): New Trailer

It's a lovely day for a new Furiosa trailer!

The eternal George Miller is back with a prequel to 2015's unexpectedly amazing Fury Road. I'm not generally a huge fan of "just-so story" prequels, but I loved Fury Road and have been eagerly anticipating another look at the rebooted, Dark Sun-paletted Mad Maxiverse. And Anna Taylor-Joy, who plays Furiosa this time around, was marvelous in the Queen's Gambit. 

I'm also primed for this, having just recently played in a Scrum Club game based on Fury Road and then re-watched the movie with my son - his first Mad Max!

The two photos above are from the game, run by Peter Megginson using his What a Lovely Day! miniatures rules, and run previously at Scrum Con (here's the 2020 program listing) and many other cons.

Ride eternal, shiny and chrome!

GAMMA WORLD IS HERE...

1978 promotional poster for Gamma World

FYI, just about forty years after they were originally released, the original Gamma World rules, now known as the first edition or 1E, are now available on Drive Thru RPG in both PDF ($10), Print-On-Demand ($20), or both ($22) ---

Gamma World 1E on Drive Thru RPG 
(link includes affiliate number)

Gamma World, by James Ward and Gary Jaquet, was first published in 1978 and was developed from Ward's earlier Metamorphosis Alpha RPG (1976). As the co-authors wrote in Dragon #18, "The creation of the boxed game of Gamma World was brought about when the need for a planet based version of Metamorphosis Alpha presented itself. The distances and possibilities presenting themselves on a planet were far more vast than those of a star ship. Also, through the course of playing MA, many new concepts were created and old ideas evolved into things far different from what was given" (from "GAMMA WORLD: First Report; Setting Up The Campaign" in the column From the Sorceror's Scroll in Dragon #18, Sep 1978).

The PDF is of the third printing from 1981, with a TSR Face Logo. Earlier printings had the Lizard Logo or the Wizard Logo (August 1978). I've checked the 2nd and 3rd printing against each other and didn't note any rules differences, just some slight differences to the logos, copyright info and product listings. I don't have access to a 1st printing, so I don't know whether any corrections were made from 1st to 2nd.

A Gamma World "Sneak Preview" appeared in Dragon #8, July 1977, the same month that Holmes Basic was first available at Origins 77. It was titled "Introduction to: Gamma World", and was an early draft of the Introduction that later appeared in the rulebook. It was attributed as an "Excerpt from "The Black Years" --- Hald Servin, 2562", with no further explanation. However, based on a further article "More Excerpts from the Journals
of Hald Sevrin" by Gary Jaquet in Dragon #19, it appears that he is "Hald Sevrin". 

In Dragon #15 (June 1978), an advertisement on page 18 announces two new TSR releases for Origins 78, Gamma World and the AD&D Players Handbook. This was repeated in Dragon #16 (July 1978), and the next two issues have, "This is Gamma World" advertisements that use the same artwork as the poster shown above, and specifically mention the poster as being available.

The back of the original Gamma World boxed set stated that "The GAMMA WORLD™ rules are also suitable for use with the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ rules." This compatibility can be seen by looking at a stat block from the "Monster & Treasure Listings" in the back of the Gamma World 1E rulebook ---

07. Yexil (2) HP: 42, 35; AC: 6, Move: 4/15; AT: bite does 3d6 damage, laser eye beam does 5d6 damage (25m range); MU: totally resistant to cold attacks.

They left HD out of these listings (similar to the OD&D M&TA listings, although those have a "To Hit AC9" score), but it can be found elsewhere in the write-up (10 in this case). It'd be trivial to just throw this at a (A)D&D party as an encounter. 

In 1979, the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide included a section, "Mutants & Magic" (pg 113-114), on conducting cross-over campaigns between the two rulesets in either direction.

It took a few years, but the original rules were eventually supported by several products, including the sandbox module GW1 Legion of Gold (1981) by Gary Gygax, Luke Gygax and Paul Reiche III, the module GW2 Famine in Far-go (1982) by Michael Price, and a Referee's Screen with a mini-module, The Albuquerque Starport, also by Reiche. None of these are available on Drive Thru RPG yet, but hopefully will eventually appear. There was also a module in Dragon #52 (August 1981, Cavern of the Sub-Train, by the original co-author, Gary Jaquet.

I must note that they still haven't released Holmes Basic in PDF or POD....!!!

Update: I saw some pics on FB of the POD product. Since the file format puts the box cover on top, it results in a booklet with a color cover - a nice touch. The original booklet cover is the first page on the inside. The blue map from the box is also included in the interior, across two pages.

Mas Day in New Hope

Mas Day in New Hope by Jim Ward

      

     Mas Day in New Hope is a mini-scenario for the 2nd edition of Gamma World, published in Polyhedron #15 (Nov 1983, pg 22-23). Polyhedron was bi-monthly at the time, so this was the holiday issue. The scenario was written by the creator of the game, Jim Ward, and thus could be held as official GW content. Around this time Ward had a series of Gamma World articles in Polyhedron; most of these remain obscure due to the low profile and lack of CD archive for Polyhedron as compared to Dragon magazine.

     The scenario begins with the PCs in the town of New Hope near Quests Mountain, a location also featured in the 1983 Endless Quest book by Ward, Light on Quests Mountain. New Hope celebrates an annual Mas Day holiday descended from Christmas:

     "Mas Day arrives and all of the children and cubs of the village are up early and outside playing around the Tree of Life. Your parents and friends are just climbing out of abed when the village is shaken by sonic blasts from an unseen force ... Your vision is drawn to a point just beyond the edge of the village; there to your surprise is a huge man with a white beard, dressed in strange red clothing - flying a large metal chair of the Ancients pulled by eight giant, flying brown creatures".

     The villagers naturally feel threatened and attack the visitor to little effect. See the artwork above by Jim Holloway illustrating this scene. The man is an X.M.A.S. unit, a deadly Santa robot (long before the one on Futurama), "originally designed to serve in department stores around the world". They are manufactured by a recently awakened robot factory on the glacier-covered mountain, but because Gamma World is so deadly the units keep getting destroyed, and the computer system in charge has heavily modified them to increase offensive and defensive capabilities: "it was made radiation-proof, was designed with battle armor, and was given three different internal weapons systems and two auxiliary laser weapon systems. The brown servos [i.e., reindeer] were all enlarged and given mini-missile launchers in their antennae and flame throwers in their tails" and the sleigh (grav sled) was given force fields to protect from everything but large nuclear blasts.

     Despite the weaponry, unless the assault continues it will "be friendly to all the people of New Hope and give out toys and the like to the kids. It will talk to everyone and ask them what they want and promise to bring it the next year (a promise that cannot be kept)".

     If you are a fan of Jim Ward's postapocalyptic material, check out his material available for first edition Metamorphosis Alpha available on DriveThruRPG.com, including a nice pdf of the original  Metamorphosis Alpha rulebook from 1976 with some bonus material included.

     And if you missed it, the Greyhawkery blog interviewed Ward about two weeks ago.

     Merry Christmas to all!