Fading Suns and GM4 are both nice pickups, don't know a lot about the rest.

I never played Millennium's End but I owned it and used it as a source book/inspiration for a gritty, street level supers game I was running at the time. It was sorta like a Tom Clancy RPG. It was very into the current tech so it's doubtless suffered some dating.
I loved the Fading Suns setting, and yeah it was like Traveller for the Vampire crowd, which makes sense as it was made by a bunch of folks that had left White Wolf. But I was never crazy about the game mechanics.

Heavy Gear is one of my favorite science fiction games.  Until late in its run, it was one of the few one-planet settings that didn't suck or fail to account for its posited changes in the culture and societies therein, but due to a lot of those being subtle and fluffy instead of obvious and crunchy they often got missed by folks.  Too many people fixated on the titular mecha (the Gears) and failed to see the underlying conflicts ready for playing all over the place.

I say that the second edition--not the first, not the third--is the best one out there and despite not being able to get a group to play it I retain possession of my materials because it really is that damned good.  What it lacks is in the "So, what do I do with it?" department; the two published campaign scenarios don't make full use of the fantastic elements in Heavy Gear's technology and society and leave GMs not fully conversant with the whole corpus bereft of any sense of what to do about the scenarios that can't be done with another game that's more popular or gamer-friendly.  Done in by collectors and IP empire building, Heavy Gear's flaws require techniques similar to dealing with the Realms.  It's worth it, but only if you and your group are willing to dive into the setting.

Quote from: wulfgar-Gamma World 4th Edition

This usually fetches a good price on eBay ($25-$35), so if it's like $10, and you're even remotely interested, it would be worth to give it a read...you can alwasy sell it if it doesn't work for you.

Like Pundit said, it's the "best" edition of Gamma World by normal RPG standards...that said, I play 1st edition with a few smatterings of 2nd ed. stuff.

I'd say a yes on Fading Suns.

Quite a few people consider WasteWorld to contain the best engine of any rpg yet published.

I wouldn't go that far myself, but it has a definite following.  If you don't like it you could likely sell it on ebay, though I'd announce here and on rpg.net you were doing so.

Quote from: wulfgarThere's a used bookstore in one of the towns I travel to for work every couple of months.  I always go over and check out the rpg shelf but usually it's all D20 and White Wolf stuff that doesn't interest me.  Today I walk in at lunch, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff!  So has anyone played any of these?  Are they gaming junk or gaming gems?

-Millenium's End
-Waste World
-Gamma World 4th Edition
-Heavy Gear 2nd Edition
-Fading Suns
-Providence

The one that piqued my interest the  most was Millenium's End, and I say they seemed less interesting the farther down my list, but I really didn't have time to look over any of them too much.

Providence is one of my favorite game settings. Brilliantly envisioned world but you need the full compliment of world books (World book, Cry-Star, Bone Wail, etc.) to get how good it is. The rules are not my favorite--overly complicated and inelegant.

Gamma World 4th is one of the better renditions of the game (its class and level, but its reasonably well balanced--about the worst criticism I've seen is towards its non-d20 style skill system, which makes sense) I love the game a lot.


Millennium's End is a pretty decent technothriller game, I liked it well enough but gave away my copy because I simply don't do the genre well without heavy twists (aliens, cyborgs, monsters.)


Waste World I highly, HIGHLY recommend. It's a solid engine (similar to Talislanta but with a point based PC generation AND example templates), uses a single d20 for task rolls, and is basically "Rifts done right", a high science fantasy post apocalyptic setting with good balance, and fun things like samurai with lightsabers (energy swords), robots, aliens, psychomaguses and more.

I am glad you got it--I didn't realize you were asking this earlier. (I've been away from computers a lot lately. Long story.)