|
Matt
United States
Wilton
Connecticut
-
It's hard to wrap my brain around turning the game world into a carnival with the ultra-random character generation and flipping mutations. We used to play 3rd. edition about 2/3rd serious 1/3 humor.
I realize I don't have to play it the way the rulebook states. But several folks are saying they're doing it and it's great. I'm also worried about difficulties retrofitting my own house rules into the 7th edition ruleset and upcoming modules.
It's also hard to envision how it's fun to have a character with 4 clawed arms in one encounter, only to have them shrink away in the next encounter and then have laser beam eyes, then 2 hours later losing the eyes and suddenly gaining telekinetic powers. Maybe it makes for amusing play and varied options, but explaining it in game terms seems like it'd be hard. I know there's the whole colliding realities aspect and Alpha fluxes. But it sounds very abstract, very generic. I'm surprised to find that PC's aren't frustrated by the lack of continuity either.
-
Eric Jome
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
-
madhatter wrote: I'm surprised to find that PC's aren't frustrated by the lack of continuity either.
While I can certainly see it as fun to have changing powers and such, I too wonder about continuity or the lack thereof.
If I see my character as a flock of birds (Hawkoid/Swarm of Rats) named Irene, then it seems pretty strange that I might suddenly sprout antennae or get a body made of stone, which wasn't really a part of my character concept.
This is what motivated me to consider the (what I consider very minor) tweak to the rules - instead of there being a GM mutation deck for when the players run out of theirs, I would just let them shuffle up and draw from their own again. This would let them have more consistency in what happened with their characters - you could take a set of things that felt like a part of your character, so you'd never go too far off message. But you'd still have fun change ups and swings.
-
Bossko B.
England
Brierley Hill
The Black Country
BAZINGA!
-
I think it depends on your group and if this is your main game or not. Some games we do play gritty, Call of Cthulhu or WFRP spring to mind. I guess Gamma World & Paranoia are our occasional stress release games
-
John Middleton
United States
Laramie
Wyoming
-
The game is not a completely random carnival at all. It is still a very deadly and serious world that players must explore carefully. The amount of character death is similar to older versions of D&D. If the characters do dumb things, like trying to run through laser grids or taking on a whole swarm of laserbots in the open, they get fried. This game generally needs to be run in a very old-school fashion in order for it to work as an extended campaign. You go with the weird but you have to provide grounded reasons for it to exist.
The key to this game is for the players to embrace their mutations and generate character backstories to explain them in their own words. That way the character makes sense to them and they can play it in a more flavorful and realistic fashion.
As far as the Alpha Mutations, the way I explain them in games terms is that all the characters have vestigial attachments to the original parallel realities that have collapsed together. Some of these realities did not collapse but quite a few did. The Alpha Flux represents the characters connection to alternate versions of themselves which exist or did exist in these other realities. So when a flux occurs, it is character elements of other realities exerting themselves on the Gamma Terra reality. All the mutations are actual aspects of the character that they have little control over but are full-time and present in one of their other worldlines. This serves to connect up all the parallel world craziness of the game with the characters being special cases.
You can also have areas of the world that are in flux. I have a floating city, a la Cloud City, that phases in and out of different realities, for instance.
-
John Middleton
United States
Laramie
Wyoming
-
One other thing to remember, according to rule 5 on page 67 of the main rulebook, you only discard ONE Alpha card on a flux roll of 1.
If you are level 4 or 8 you have 2 and 3 cards , respectively, so the fluxes become much less random as your characters level. You choose which to discard, even one that has been used already in the current encounter.
I usually play with a 1 discarding all Alpha cards, as my players enjoy this random bit.
-
|
|
|
Posted Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:47 pm
