   Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 20:03:42 +0100
   From: James <James@jpb-s.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [gworld] campaigns

> I'm a 30 year old GM who just came back to RPG's after
> a long dry spell. Anyone have campaign suggestions/ideas?
>
> The guys I play with are still working thru the hack'n'slash
> stages but I'd like to get them started on a longer campaign
> with maybe a behind the scenes enemy.
>
> Any suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there,

I'm always glad to discuss ideas for GW.If you are looking for
plots, I think your first stop ought to be Kerry's Web page
where he keeps a handful of GW adventures
submitted by various members of this list.  The URL is
http://www2.msstate.edu/~kdj1/game/game.html#gamma

However for a broader discussion you could do worse than check out my
brand new GW web site at http://www.jpb-s.demon.co.uk

My campaign ( apologies to the members of the list
who have read about this all before, but I love talking about it :-)  )
is founded on the simple concept that relatively
few people have the special abilities characters in Gamma World
usually have. The farmers, shopkeepers and goat hearders the
characters meet, mutated or not, are still simple 1d6 or 2d6 critters.
The result is a game is close in flavor to the supers genre.

In my campaign the party members all belong to a special
branch of the Restorationist called Trouble-shooters. Their job is to
look after and protect the other more wimpy and scholarly
members of this cryptic alliance. So typically they will
be involved in clearing monsters from a new ancients
site, recovering an artifact stolen by the Archivists,
going out to search for a lost Restorationist expedition.

Of course no supers game is really complete without
super-villains. This is where the Wizards come in.
Wizards are a new class of evil, power-hungry
examiner types. They are not "magical" as the name
might suggest but they tend to control a lot of powerful,
ancient technology. As such the are the natural enemies
of the Restorationist Trouble-shooters. There are a few
sample Wizards at my site in the campaign section.

The campaign is easy to set up. You just open
a new Restorationist Chapter House in some small
town; create a couple of competent examiners and
a handful of trainee examiners NPC and have
the PCs assigned to it. Nearby you have a few
digs; places where the Restorationists think they
might uncover an ancient site. These are your main
adventure hooks. You can find a couple of
adventures written for this campaign at Kerry's
site ("The Augsburg Case" and "The Rosewood
Ghosts").

The main thing about this campaign is to make the
characters really feel like part of the Restorationists
and not just hired guns, particularly if you want
to move away from the hack'n' slash mode.Getting
involved in the broader Restorationist cause might mean
for example that between adventures some characters
might get involved in setting up a school for the kids
in the your base town. It helps if you portray the
rest of the Restorationists as comically impractical
and helpless as it encourages the characters to
take charge of running the chapter house themselves.

The other thing to consider is that it doesn't cope well
 with a large parties. Of course that assumes
you can find a lot of people willing to play GW in the
first place, not an easy task.

Well I hope some of this is remotely useful.
And BTW, you're not the only one here in his 30s.

Regards,

--- James ---

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 09:56:42 -0400 (EDT)
   From: RCrichton@aol.com
Subject: Re: [gworld] 4th Edition General questions

In a message dated 97-06-05 03:52:37 EDT, you write:

> Putting blow-up dummies in police cars
>  to make it look like there's a cop up ahead.  Great trick.  Cheap.  And
>  EFFECTIVE.
Until rednecks get in the habit of taking potshots at the 'empty' patrol car
that's always at that intersection, and happen to do it on a day that the
REAL cop is there. (read about that actually happening, somewhere. They got
charged with reckless endangerment or some such, since they missed)
-Bob
