Thursday, September 8, 2016

Gamma World: "Menace of the Usqivites"

The third of my "genre switch" adventures finished a couple of weeks ago, and was fantastic fun.  I ran the introductory adventure for WOTC's Gamma World game ("Steading of the Iron King"), but re-skinned it to take place in post-apocalyptic Toowoomba as "Menace of the Usqivites."  At it's core, the adventure is a very basic dungeon crawl, as the PCs are sent to investigate why robots keep attacking a nearby settlement; the answer lays within an ancient robotics factory that has been re-started by a hoop (sentient humanoid rabbit) who calls himself the Iron King.  The PCs for the adventure included a Giant Mindbreaker ("Captain Ultra-Plasma", a self-styled super hero), a Radioactive Telekinetic ("Ray") who was the player's second character after his Seismic Cockroach got killed), and an Electrokinetic Doppelganger.  The game was very light-hearted and intentionally over-the-top, and I felt a great deal of freedom and flexibility in running it because, bottom line, it's Gamma World, a ridiculous premise to begin with.  The PCs were quite creative, which crazy plans like luring a monster into a pile of fetish-clothing (long story) because smashing it with two pick-up trucks, or sending a motorcycle+sidecar loaded with explosives to take out a fortified enemy position.  A couple of PCs died during the four-session adventure, but in hilarious ways, and they emerged triumphant from the big boss battle at the end and thus earned the right to join the safest and most advanced tribe of Gard Encity, the Basers.  I've enjoyed all three of the genre-switch adventures I've run so far (previously a western and a 1930s pulp), but this was the most entertaining by far (copious amounts of rum may have helped).  In fact, it was so good that I'm already planning to run the adventure from the first expansion box next year.  But next up: super-heros using "Silver Age Sentinels."

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