Gamma World

As we experimented playing other games, one game that Peter Wang brought out was ‘Gamma World.’ Gamma World was a post-apocalyptic world where civilization was decimated, although there were strongholds of technology hidden out there, and humans were joined by mutated humans and mutated animals on the earth.

Gamma World was also where I was really introduced to the idea of player versus player in-group fighting.

We had many of our regular suspects playing in this game.

• I created Blaster Badger, a blaster toting Badger with regeneration and superspeed. I actually found an picture of him that I drew of him from that time. he had quite the weapon array, including a war hammer, sword, crossbow, blaster, and you can see a laser scalpal attached to his left wristband.
  
• Dan Wang created Remington Rad, a mutated human who had radiation eyebeams.
• John Wunderlin had Bossman, who was a normal human in power armor. John was so impressed with our other characters’ mutations that he started having Bossman eat anything radioactive, trying to get him to mutate, too.
• Lance Carothers created Colonel Hare, a mutated hare.
• Warren Brewer, I believe, had Monk Kee, a mutated monkey.
• Mike Wang had King Cobra Khan, a mutated bipedal cobra.
• Gian Pagnucci had Leo Griffin, a six legged, long necked, beaked mutated lion with wings.
• Mike Daniels had a mutated shrimp called Shrimp Whitey…I think. My records for Gamma World aren’t that good.

In all honesty, I may have made up all the names myself for my own internal sense of continuity.

There was something about the combination of Lance Carothers, Mike Daniels, and Warren Brewer that led to disaster each gaming session. Our characters had discovered a technological undersea base and were in the process of looting it when Hare, Kee, or Shrimp did something that set the other two off. Soon, our characters were not only fighting the mutated monsters in the base, but were ducking pot shots at each other. Eventually, Hare had found a lightsaber like device, and as Kee and Shrimp closed in on him, he cut through the outer watery shell of the base. Water rushed in and drowned both Col. Hare and Shrimp.

We played a couple more times, each one of them with characters taking pot shots at each other for various reasons. Lance’s second character, a normal human named John Smith, picked up where Hare left off. Kee was dead soon, as was Mike’s second character a mutated Skunk. Blaster Badger got caught in the crossfire and was killed as well. They found a device that brought him back to life, but I had to re-roll his stats, and he ended up with an intelligence of 7 on a scale of 3 to 18.

We moved on to another game fairly quickly.