For those of us who refuse to make games a pure exercise in mathematics, a tape-measured tabular march across a table top, a money-grabbing venture of building hotels or railroads, a mind-boggling assault across a Ping-Pong table into Russia, or a weekend harangue of rules and tactics, there remains the role playing game. And if you are tired of burrowing with bunnies, hacking with paladin, and lasering with star troopers, there are Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World. No two similar games currently capture so well the future that could be in store for us if our present rate of socio-technological advance continues at its present vastly accelerated pace.

Both games handle the future exceedingly well, but Gamma World brings a horrifying future to our home territory and does it admirably by improving on an already fine role playing simulation. This review will concentrate on those improvements, while comparing the two so that the reader will see the significance of and the need for a new game in this field. This review presumes the reader is already familiar with Alpha, but enough will be stated to keep the less-informed reader aware of the contrasts.

Frames of Reference

The frames of reference of Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World are quite different, though the playing environments become similar. In Alpha adventurers sally forth on a multi-level starship of incomparable proportions - a starship on which life has gone totally awry due to the Warden's passing through the fringe of a cloud of space radiation. Gamma puts the radioactive holocaust on Earth, in the spirit of Stephen Vincent Benet's "By the Waters of Babylon." Earth, once ravished of its resources, had reached its apocalypse, then returned to splendor in a period of technological restoration. But in the process, the inhabitants had become highly cultist. These cults eventually brought about the nuclear destruction of the entire planet - only happenstance structures remained and life became an abomination of the romantic ideals man had once strived for. Also in the process, the knowledge that could have united an entire universe was lost, due to the petty follies of Mankind. As in Alpha, mutation became rampant in all creatures, and only a few pure strains of any species survived. It is these creatures, both pure and tainted, who strive to search the "ancient areas" to restore the utopia that once had been.

These Ancient Areas are the first improvement of Gamma over Alpha. Granted, the older game had special areas that still contained the forgotten technology, but not quite in the same sense of the newer one. The first Ancient Area is "Mech Und," or robot controlled farms, where crops are raised, harvested, and canned by automatons - obviously a great find for primitive types. Next, the "Tombs of the Ancients" are buildings, usually scientific or military installations that could have survived Armageddon, or various villages, towns, cities, or even a metropolis. Most of these are radioactive due to their proximity to point zero of an atomic blast. Finally, a few "spaceports" have survived. These hold a wealth of technological devices. In general, all of these areas become important rarities due to the warfare that changed the world; simply because Gamma is historically different, it lends itself to a new ideology.

These historical differences do not change the game mechanics at all. As with most role playing games, the flow of play is virtually the same, shot full of die rolls and vivid, imaginative description. These two games differ only slightly in mechanics or rules. The tables change, as will be seen later, and movement is slightly different, but the play remains fluid and fast-moving. Wandering monsters are rolled for only twice per day, emphasizing search and acquisition of treasure rather than "hunt & hack" actions.

Characters are similar too. Alpha employs the attributes of radiation resistance, mental resistance, dexterity, strength, leadership potential, and constitution. Gamma's mental strength is like mental resistance in Alpha except that it may be used both offensively and defensively; intelligence is used to discover the use of any artifacts found, and for evaluating circumstances; charisma is identical to leadership potential, and dexterity and physical strength remain unchanged. Both games use constitution to determine hit points and resistance to poison, but in Gamma it additionally determines radiation resistance. Thus Gamma has consolidated and explained the abilities a bit more, making the game more manageable for the first-time game master.

Just as Gamma has diversified, it has also intensified. Players may elect to play pure-strain humans, who are always recognized by robots and gain entrance to otherwise forbidden areas; furthermore, they receive a plus-three bonus to charisma. If the pure-strain human does not appear challenging enough, one may play a mutant humanoid. Many of us prefer to play some mutated animal concoction, though, for we gain not only the animal's normal abilities, but several others as well. In order to make the characters strong enough to survive in such a hostile environment, the rules permit rolling abilities with 4d6, and choosing the three highest rolls.

Mutations

Since both worlds are fundamentally radioactive, it is obvious that mutations would be a rule more than an exception. I originally felt Alpha had outdone itself by producing 113 physical and mental mutations, but Gamma goes farther still. Three physical mutations are dropped from the former game - poison claws or fangs, gills, multi-armedness - but nine are added: fat cell accumulation (a defect - D), heightened constitution, increased metabolism (D), increased speed, infravision, photosynthetic skin, symbiotic attachment (found only in plants in Alpha) ultravision, and weight decrease. From the mental mutation list, deletions include mental paralysis, levitation, charismatic effect, mental transparency, and temporal fugue; additions are directional sense, empathy, light wave manipulation (which can make one invisible), molecular understanding, radar/sonar, sound imitation, telekinetic flight, thought imitation, and total healing. The avenues of plant mutation, however, go even farther. I can see now that this was one of the few weaknesses of Alpha, for in Gamma, seventeen mutations have made plant life a powerful character in the game. The new mutations are: adaptation (a character becomes immune to certain types of attacks), bacterial symbiosis, barbed leaves, boring tendrils, carnivorous jaws, color sensitivity and imitation, exploding and/or radiated fruits or seeds, sucker vines, temperature sensitivity, throwing thorns, and wings/gas bag. One can readily see that this host of floral mutations will help keep even the most droll situations alive.

All mutations are presented in a highly organized manner, alphabetically with separate percentile ranges assigned for either humanoid or animal random generation - it is a lot easier to employ than Alpha. To test it out, I decided to mutate the common housefly, and came up with one of the most potent offensive weapons I've seen in either game. The new "zinger" is eleven inches long, can teleport, and does double damage on all attacks. To make things worse, the little buzzer is capable of force field generation, cryokinesis, death field generation, and can cause opponent mutants to reverse their evolution, thereby causing them to lose their mutated offensive and defensive capabilities. I mutated a cockroach as well, but telling the result might cause the reader some unwanted discomfort.

As if the myriad mutations are not enough, the game designers have provided even more of a creature mix than in Alpha. Forty-six novel types haunt the rule book, just waiting for a chance to leap from the pages and into the play. One of my favorites is the "sep," a land-adapted shark that moves beneath the surface of the desert, telekinetically pushing away the sand in front of it. I can see the headlines: JAWS III TERRORIZES DEATH VALLEY COMMUNE.

Where combat is concerned, the two games are similar to all role playing games. Alpha's melee is usually pretty fluid, with little bogging down in massive encounters unless the game master has designed a specific scenario undertaking. There are some rough edges in the system, especially in determining what weapons belong to which weapon's class, and sometimes during ranged combat or in determining the effects of the different mutations used in combat. Gamma World polishes all of this out and expands on it as well.

Combat Plusses

Basically, there are five new areas of coverage, or improvements over the Alpha system. The first is initiative. Begun in miniature warfare, initiative allows the side rolling highest to attack first in a given melee round. Most of us look at this as a significant advantage in first attack, but I've found it can be particularly devastating as melee approaches its close. For example, both my fighter and my opponent were close to unconsciousness or death due to hit point loss, and due to my losing the initiative on one round and winning it the next, I was able to attack twice in succession without retaliation. The second of these attacks reduced my opponent to the useless hunk of meat he deserved to be, and my character stumbled away, barely able to move on, a body with only four hit points remaining.

The second improvement is the utilization of dual physical attack matrices. The first is for normal weapon combat, similar to Alpha. The second is used for monsters or plants which attack without a specific weapon. In this one, the monster's number of hit dice (constitution, normally) are cross-indexed with the defender's armor class. The system works smoothly because the game master needn't try to compute what weapon class a fang or a tangle vine would be. Additionally, ranged combat, is modified so that there are only two effective ranges. At short range, weapons are used normally on Physical Attack Matrix I; at long range, there is a penalty of minus five to the to-hit roll, but the overall range of the weapon is doubled.

The third combat improvement is a revised mental attack matrix. In Alpha, mental attack strength is compared to mental resistance, and the result is a die roll to be beaten with 3d6. Sometimes there was difficulty determining the mental attack strength. In Gamma mental strengths are compared on the matrix and a d20 roll is made to determine a hit. Not only is the system more succinct, but the chances of obtaining a hit are a little better. Attacks on mutants with mental abilities become more important, so that targets must be selected carefully in the early going. (Note: I like the Space Patrol system the best for the use of these, as it employs a Success Probability Table with similar results, but not quite the same hit frequency. It uses percentile dice, which allow for probabilities other than in increments of five per cent. The two systems are very close, though.)

The fourth addition is a Fatigue Table, which begins to affect melee on the eleventh round, depending on the weapon type. The effect is assessed by subtracting from the roll to hit in a given attack. For example, on the eleventh round, an attacker with a two-handed sword will have to subtract one from his hit roll, and a further subtraction for each subsequent melee round. Other weapons are affected as well, but on later rounds. On the same note, an attacker's fatigue can also be caused by his armor. These additional adjustments begin to occur on the fifteenth round. Not covered in the rules, but a good suggestion, would be to have these fatigue rules take effect earlier, dependent on how far the adventurers have journeyed in the day, or what kinds of hardships they have suffered recently. Players entering combat after climbing a steep hillside, for example, might have the deductions begin a few turns earlier.

The fifth and final addition is the much improved weapon and armor specifications given in the rules. In Alpha there are very few listings of weapon and armor characteristics; in fact, the total coverage would make up about a single column of print if it were consolidated. But in Gamma, three pages are spent elaborating on the materials suggested for use in the game. Information on weapons includes its maximum and effective ranges, its power, its damage potential, and a brief description of its methods of use and/or its effects on the defenders or the armor they are wearing. Armor listings contain the armor class, force field, locomotion, power source and battery life, and any special characteristics. Another two pages are spent providing information on miscellaneous power devices and medical supplies and equipment that adventurers might be lucky enough to happen upon. (All of this is included in the artifact rules section.)

All of these constitute a fine group of rules to augment an already fluid combat system, but Gamma World also includes a great deal more that is miscellaneous material barely even hinted at in the Alpha system. These make up the final conglomerate of how the future in role playing game science has matured.

Secret Societies

The advent of the secret society in science fantasy has finally emerged, First developed, I believe, by the Judges Guild in its D&D modules, the secret society is a group of people who work towards a specific goal, to the point of monomania. Each has its own code of ethics, and many have secret signs they use to identify each other in hostile surroundings.

Thirteen of these "Cryptic Alliances" are developed in Gamma World: The Brotherhood of Thought seeks to unite all intelligent creatures; The Seekers attempt to unite pure strain and mutant humans who show no outward signs of their 19 mutations; Knights of Genetic Purity, as the name indicates, work to destroy all mutated humans; Friends of Entropy, or the "Red Death," implement the destruction of all life, especially that having a robotic nature; a group of mutated humans called The Iron Society aims at the total annihilation of all pure strain humans; Zoopremists are mutated intelligent animals that feel they would rule Gamma World the best; The Healers wander about all areas, hoping to rectify the damages occurring so often in a hostile world; Restorationists seek to redeem the lost technology and reestablish scientific utopia; The Followers of the Voice worship computers; a military-religious order called The Ranks of the Fit attempts to rule the world through any means - they seem to have acquired a copy of Mein Kampf; the Archivists store away and worship the artifacts of the past, not realizing the potential they have to change their environment; Radioactivists make up a religious sect which worships the Radiant Divine Glory; and finally, a group of androids who are known as The Created seek to control the world at the expense of the naturally living creatures.

These secret societies combine to give the flavor found in adventurous SF television programming - characters can often be thrown into situations of peril, and must use their wits to the utmost to discover their crime and escape. The first scenario I designed for use in the game pitted a group of the Iron Society in a raid on a secret encampment of the Knights of Genetic Purity. This worked out very well, although I had very little preparation beforehand - none of the massive mapmaking involved in most games of this type. The highlight of the adventure was a mutant "life leech" strafing run, made by those having wings.

Another area of consideration is the Artifact Table provided in the game booklet. This is similar to the one found in Alpha but it is handled in a manner similar to magical treasures in D&D. The Game Master rolls percentile dice to determine the general category of the artifact, then rolls in that specific category to determine the treasure that has been procured. It is this complete listing of artifacts that I dealt with in some length under weapons and armor above.

This brings us to one of the truly outstanding features of Gamma World - the Artifact Use and Operation Charts. Three charts are provided for determining whether or not a character can figure out exactly what the purpose of the artifact was. Each chart has a progressively more complex series of paths to explore in reaching a solution. The charts are a system of circles, diamonds, and squares similar to one of Don's Star Web maps published in an earlier issue. A player begins at box "S" and rolls a d10 to determine whether he stays in that box or moves to another. He is allowed 5d10 rolls per hour of intense concentration, and he moves from box to circle, sometimes following circumlocutive paths of reasoning, sometimes parallel. Eventually, he will arrive at point "F," where he figures out the true use of the device, or he migrates to a skull and crossbones, when something drastic will happen to some unfortunate soul. It is possible to figure out an easy device in a very short period of time - .105 chance in three rolls. But a difficult one could take weeks or even months.00072 chance in six rolls.

Another comprehensive area of coverage is that of robotic types. Eighteen of these are described in detail, twelve more than in Alpha. The information given on each 'bot (or 'borg) is much more useful for play, since it adds things like the armor class of the unit and the number of hit points it has. It also lists power sources and special characteristics that could influence play. One devastating unit is the warbot, equipped with various holocaustic weapons and defended by an energy screen which takes 200 hits to be destroyed, exclusive of the 500 on the warbot itself!

Gamma also brings a manageable experience system into the realm of science fantasy. In the older game, mental attack successes could be compounded to insure a greater chance of future successes, and this is thankfully carried over to the new game. But experience for other actions can now be accumulated as well, divided into three areas: 1) in combat, the hit points of defeated or subdued beings are awarded on a one for one basis; 2) for finding valuable items or figuring out artifacts, experience is awarded one for one in terms of domar value (5:1 as opposed to gold), or according to the Artifact/Experience Chart suggested in the rules; And 3) outstanding actions may be awarded a number of points, arbitrarily determined by the referee. When a given player has reached a set number of experience points, he rolls a d10 and checks the Experience Bonus Matrix to see just how his past actions will help him in the future. Generally a plus-one to one of his abilities, this bonus will prove a slight help in future encounters.

Of minor use to the game, but still something extra over the Alpha rules, are the Trade Value Table and the Metric/English Conversion Table. The first table can be used to determine the buying price of some items or the experience the items are worth in domars or gold. The second table seems to be useless to me, though some game masters may find it an aid to converting distances, weights, and speeds back and forth from one system to another. As near as I can tell, the table was thrown in as an afterthought to the detachable charts at the back of the book, perhaps to utilize previ6usly vacant space. No explanation for this chart is given in the rules.

These detachable pages at the back of the rules book make up another improvement over the former game. Alpha provided a single sheet which was not comprehensive enough to keep the game master from referring to the rules. Gamma allots us a full ten pages, the first three of which are filled with the charts and tables necessary to the flow of the game. The remaining pages give monster and treasure assortments which can be rolled randomly according to terrain, for programming the GM's in initial terrain map, or for use in wandering encounters. The list is 350 long, showing once again the polish and preparation that has gone into making Gamma World a fine game.

Finally, TSR has taken steps to help the game have a better public reception. It comes in a 9 1/4 x 11 1/4 inch box which contains the fifty-six-page rule booklet and a 16 1/2 x 25 inch campaign map which represents the area of the continental United States in the far distant future. (The land masses have changed radically - my Southern California abode would now be some 1000 feet beneath the Pacific.) Dice are also included so that the novice can immediately begin his preparation (1 x d4, d6, d8, d12, d20). When one compares the two products, he can easily see that Gamma World easily outshines Metamorphosis Alpha, simply because the result is far more comprehensively accomplished. The game, and the predicted future of a blatantly changed technological world, has matured to produce a finished product that is currently unequaled in the hobby.

I have found only one chart omitted from the Gamma present at ion, and since it is one I have found of tremendous value in Alpha, I must consider this my only major criticism of Gamma World. The authors, James M. Ward and Gary Jaquet, have excluded a chart of mutated substances as treasure items. These substances, are berries, glands, skins and the like, which will give the owner resistance to some of the hazards encountered in his brave new world, if he uses them properly. Since I have both games, I am really at no loss for mastering adventures, but others may not be so fortunate.

Still. when all is considered, Gamma World is the place to be. It you are tired of everything else you've tried, or simply feel the urge to move off the miniatures table, the hexagonal grid, or out of the dungeon, Gamma World is an excellent alternative. After all, ten million mutants can't be wrong.

TSR's dice abbreviation system, using a two point identification code: The first position indicates the number of sides to the die rolled, prefaced by the lower case letter "d." Thus, 2d4 would mean to roll two four-sided dice; 4d6 meaning four six-sided dice; d8. d10, d20 meaning one 8, 10, and 20 sided die respectively. (Since there is no such thing as an equiangular 10-sided solid figure, a "10-sided die" is really a 20-sided die numbered 1-10 or 0-9 twice.)