Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;459444Are we talking about the 4th ed. of Gamma World?

I didn't think this was so bad. From memory, its d20+ mod vs. target number most of the way throughout, with no real skill system - just a percentage roll to see if you get swim or read/write as skills?

You've got the right cover, but not quite the right mechanics.

Combat is d20+mods, but the skills system is both present, and also literally backwards from the combat system, using a bizarre roll-under on D20 system, were the roll is D20+difficulty, with the target being rolling under stat+skill.

Quote from: Melan;459449I owned the Metamorphosis Alpha rules for Amazing Engine, and considered it a good idea ruined by a bland, generic system and bland, shoddy writing. The other games in the line may be good, but MA was just boring. I ended up not running the campaign I was all psyched up about before I actually owned the product.

I've got some of these, though have never played them. I thought Bughunters wasn't bad -this was from the guy who wrote Dark Conspiracy, Lester Smith. The Galactos Barrier was somewhat weird - Star Wars with magical singing powers, made by the guy who TSR was using to spy on Gary Gygax- while MagiTech was somewhat weird (pseudo-modern with space travel and magic-based technology). Kromosome and For Faerie, Queen and Country looked like interesting setting but I don't know much about them, even less about MA or the King Arthur one.

Quote from: J Arcane;459504You've got the right cover, but not quite the right mechanics.

Combat is d20+mods, but the skills system is both present, and also literally backwards from the combat system, using a bizarre roll-under on D20 system, were the roll is D20+difficulty, with the target being rolling under stat+skill.

You're right ! I'd remembered attribute checks were roll-under like that, but I checked and I'd forgotten that the class skills used the same system. Shameful since I played quite a bit of this back in high school

If you have a ref for the two different teams working on the design I'd be interested in checking this out; at the time it actually never struck as unusual that the mechanics were as you say ass-backwards, since 2E and quite a few other games at the time didn't have a universal mechanic.

Faerie Queen and Country was neat.  Not quite Castle Falkenstein being more focused on Britain and particularly London but a Victorian urban fantasy that wasn't horror or over the top.

The magic system was a nice flexible make your own spells type thing though I don't remember much more about it now.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;459634You're right ! I'd remembered attribute checks were roll-under like that, but I checked and I'd forgotten that the class skills used the same system. Shameful since I played quite a bit of this back in high school

If you have a ref for the two different teams working on the design I'd be interested in checking this out; at the time it actually never struck as unusual that the mechanics were as you say ass-backwards, since 2E and quite a few other games at the time didn't have a universal mechanic.

It's more a sense of the design, and their obvious lineage in later games. The combat and stats obviously hint at proto-3e, while the skill checks remind me of nothing so much as a crude prototype for Alternity's system.

It seems a lot like they grabbed some random mechanics that were still in test bed for later systems, and hatily attached them to Gamma World to justify the expense.

Quote from: J Arcane;459661It's more a sense of the design, and their obvious lineage in later games. The combat and stats obviously hint at proto-3e, while the skill checks remind me of nothing so much as a crude prototype for Alternity's system.

It seems a lot like they grabbed some random mechanics that were still in test bed for later systems, and hatily attached them to Gamma World to justify the expense.

Well, did some digging (skip to end for short version)

4E Gamma World (May 1992) - lead designers Bruce Nesmith and James M. Ward. I'd expect Nesmith would be the primary design influence on this edition, Ward being the original author of the game.
Contributors included Rich Baker, Tim Beach, David Zeb Cook, Thomas Reid, Eric Haddock, Dale Henson, Dale Donovan. Skip Williams (who was on the 3E team later) is listed on as a playtester (whatever that means, given that Lorraine forbade playtesting).

Alternity (April 1998) was written by Bill Slavicsek & Richard Baker...so Richard Baker was a 'contributor' to Gamma World and wrote much of Alternity. James Ward appears as a 'special thanks' .
(Also there's advice from Monte Cook who of course was one of the three or so lead designers of 3E).

Possibly unrelatedly: Late in 2E, the later revision of the psionics rules (Will & The Way/Skills & Powers)  is very similar to the Gamma World system, with 'mental Armour class' and 'M-THAC0' though it uses the old lower-is-better AC system; this is credited to Bill Slavicsek & Dale A Donovan; Donovan gets a mention in GW but is only credited as a 'playtester'.

3rd Ed didn't come out until August 2000 – so 8 years after Gamma World – with the core mechanic being generally credited to Tweet (and being similar to the system in both Talislanta and Ars Magica). Tweet was with WOTC from 1993, but TSR wasn't purchased by them until 1997.

Short Summary:
Possibly link between GW and Alternity with Richard Baker the likely guilty party. Differences in time make the link between 3E and GW more tenuous, but one of the lead designers (Williams) was a playtester for GW.

I faintly recall someone telling me that Tweet was involved in GW4 somehow as well, but I think it was Pundit who said it, so i dunno how accurate that is and given the dates I think he wasn't even with the company then.

Really though, the 3e changes to the core mechanics are pretty obvious evolutions anyway, Palladium had more or less already hit on the mechanic by this point.  All it's presence in GW may indicate is just that TSR had been thinking about executing those changes themselves earlier than some may realize.

I think you may be getting mixed up with Omega World, the Gamma World inspired micro game based on D&D 3e.

Tell you what, if one took the basic framework of the 1991 Gamma World and applied the elegant design of Omega World you'd have one hell of game.