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| Gammarauder wrote: | I like your idea. I will probably set one up in the next day or so.  |
Here are a few for the various incarnations of MA for your reading pleasure, while we wait in eager expectation for the benefecient acts of our fearless leader:
http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/SF/MArevw.html
http://www.icewebring.com/Reviews/Metamorphosis_Alpha_review.php
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6269.html
This one used to be online; I can't find it now (and will gladly remove it upon request) but this was a personal favorite:
Crotchety Ol' Gamer Reviews the New Metamorphosis Alpha by Matt Blackwell
Hey as long as you ain't afraid of the radiation why don't you run down to your local games outpost and pick up a copy of this remake. Better yet, buy one for each of your arms. Better yet, read this review first!
Source: Matt Blackwell
Date Posted: 7/22/2002
Total Views: 175
The Article
Metamorphosis Alpha- 25th Anniversary Edition (Fast Forward Entertainment) $14.99. Written by James M. Ward. 8 ½" x 11" 64 page folio bound book. B&W interior. Published 2002. And now, a review from the old crotchety gamer: Bah. You kids these days, with your dice pools and your templates. You don't know how good you've got it. Why, back in my days, we didn't have no fancy 28mm miniatures. We had to use bottle caps for our characters, and we liked it! And dice! We were lucky to use chits! And we were even luckier if we remembered that the dog had eaten the 7 and the twelve in the d20 set. And character sheets! Why, we had to write them on scraps of tree bark using ink we squeezed from berries while we dodged those blasted dinosaurs! Hey, where do you think those stats in the Monster Manual came from? We had personal experience, dagnabit! Anyway, you young whippersnappers, back in 1976, that's the same year that "Mother, Jugs, and Speed" came out, by the way, good old Tactical Studies Rules, or "TSR" as you short timers might know them, released Metamorphosis Alpha. Nah, it wasn't the first. That was Dungeons and Dragons, and you know it! Durn kids. It twernt the second either. That was Boot Hill. Or maybe En Guarde. Come t' think of it. Tunnels and Trolls came out right about then too… Heckfire, I can't remember. It was twenty six years ago! What? Get to the point? Lousy kids. No attention span. It's that durn ColecoVison's fault. Anyway, back in 1976, TSR released Metamorphosis Alpha, a game about a giant starship struck by a horrible tragedy that mutated the ship's crew and the animals aboard. Some folks called it science fantasy. Some called it post-holocaust. Some sarcastic folks called it "D&D in space", which wasn't helped by Gary Gygax writing stories about D&D characters transported to the doomed vessel. Whatever it was, it was a success. TSR followed it up two years later with the more expansive "Gamma World" setting which described more lost technology, more mutations and more badgers. And a decade and a half later, it indirectly lead to Rifts. Durn TSR. Well, it's 25 years later, and Fast Forward Entertainment has released a brand new version or the classic game. How's it handle? If you younguns wanna know that, why don't you just scroll down to the bottom of the page? Impatient whippersnappers. The rest of you, start reading. You always need it spelled out, don't cha? Back in my day, we didn't have no fancy instructions. We had to make stuff up… To start us off, MA (I ain't typing that name again. It's bad for my rheumatism.) is a rarity in today's market. It's a 64 page long RPG. Yep. Everything's in here. Characters. Combat. Background. Mutations. Technology. Heck, they even have enough pages left over to add some art and a two page character sheet. The rules are referred to as the 3d6 system and use, oddly enough, 3d6. Characters start off by choosing a race, either robot, android or human. Then, the character's abilities are rolled. (Yep, it's a random system, not one of them namby, pampy ones they try to pass off these days. You never had to try and run a character who no stat higher than 9, have you? Wusses.) The characters have 6 stats: Constitution, Dexterity, Leadership, Mental Resistance, Radiation Resistance and Luck. Each race has a different range for stats for the first five stats. Luck is determined by the character's other stats. Basically, the lower the total stats, the more luck they'll have. (Hit points, BTW, are the result of a CON # of dice rolls.) After that, players get to customize their characters. Robots get to pick a power system, a body style and a handful of programs and robot-like stuff. (Cutting saws, repulsor lifts, grasping claws. You know, stuff.) Androids pick an android type and some programs. And humans get bupkis. Oh, sure. They can use neat equipment and stuff, and they can get mutated, but they don't have anything inherently cool about them. Well, okay, they can dance better than the other races, but that's it. After that, we move to the rules. Every action has a difficulty number and a stat that the test is governed by. Going to the handy "doing things" table, you cross reference the stat and the difficulty #, which gives you a task number, which must be rolled equal to or higher than to succeed. Simple, huh? After that, it's mutation time, in physical, mental, and plant variety. It's not as detailed as, say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's system is, but it's okay for two pages of text. Then it's monster time! Followed by combat (compare the Weapon class to the Armor class using the combat chart. Roll higher and you hit.) Damage? Figure out how much of the target's flesh is showing, then roll a d6. That roll will determine how much damage is done. Basically, the more flesh, the more likely to damage. Off to the handy "figuring stuff out chart" which is used when the characters finds a new bit of stuff. Rolling on the chart, the PC can figure the item out, break it, or cause it to explode amusingly. And in the final eight pages, we get instructions on random encounters, a sample adventure area, and two pages of art, plus the aforementioned character sheets. Even the insider covers are used, providing a map of the Warden and a chart whose purpose we're encouraged not to reveal.. I bet you younguns thought I would. But I won't. Nyah. Background? Oh, yeah. The science vessel Warden finds an irradiated vessel, which causes the ship's systems to go haywire. The aliens who caused the other vessel's destruction show up and try to invade the ship, and must be stopped by the remaining crew. The good points: It's a complete 64 page RPG, and it's not a bad one. The rules are surprisingly clean and could actually be used to run an RPG. The layout is quite good, light years beyond the 76 version. And practically everything is covered that a GM might want to know about. Bad points: Well, a few. The stats are a bit lackluster. Two of them are resistances, and they all feel a bit off. Mental resistance, for example, also determines how well the PC can figure out things. Constitution helps determine how much a character can carry. And somehow, radiation resistance is independent from constitution. The combat system also feels off. If they hit, a sponge ball and a missile have the potential to do the same amount of damage. The missile is more likely to hit, but it still feels odd. And while everything is covered in the book, it's all very light coverage, with a handful of paragraphs at most on any given subject. Players used to White Wolf-esque detailed backgrounds may be offput by the Spartan, old-style presentation. The artwork, while nice, might have been trimmed a bit to provide more rules space. There are no mutated animal PCs, which should disappoint old MA and Gamma World players. And, frankly, humans are goofy. In the original, PCs were simply inhabitants of the ship who had been there for generations, some of whom were even unaware that they were on a ship, so they were expected not to know anything about the ship. In this version though, the humans are fresh from the cryo tubes, but the radiation has scrambled their memories. Uh-huh. While this is obviously intended to recreate the "Hey! What does this do?" feeling from other post-holocaust RPGs, is still feels, well, not right. Oh, and the cover screams "copyright infringement". All that aside, is it worth the price? It depends. There's certainly enough material here to run adventures on the Warden. (In fact, the designer recommends four to cover the invasion storyline.) And more supplements are on the way, which should flesh out the background a bit. If you've got no inclination to run adventures on the Warden, there's really no reason to buy this. Or if you're looking for ideas to plunder for, say, a Star Trek adventure, well, there's not much here to steal. If the idea sounds neat, or if you're up for a nostalgia fix, buy this RPG. If you're just looking for a change of pace from the regular campaign, pick it up. If you're looking for something with depth to rival, say, the average White Wolf game, you better look elsewhere. Now all you durn gamers get off my lawn!
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