gameworld.thesnakefarm.com: gamma world

Getting Started | Basic Rules | Character Creation
Combat | Gear | Characters | NPCs
Campaign Log | Player Handouts

Your character can do simple things without worry of failure: start a car, swim in a pool, chew gum. But when your character attempts something that might fail, or something that's difficult, you roll dice to determine how well you've succeeded or how horribly you've failed in the attempt. Every character has Stats and Skills measured in Die Codes. Each time you attempt to use a Stat or Skill, you look at the die code to find out how many dice you roll.

A typical die code would look like this: 3d. This means you roll three six-sided dice and add the numbers you roll together. If the die code had a plus at the end, like 3d+2, you would roll all the dice, add the numbers rolled, then add 2 to the total.

Die codes go in steps. 2d, 2d+1, 2d+2, 3d.... The +1 and +2 are sometimes referred to as 'pips'. When creating your character, you can split 1d into three pips, allowing you to have three Stats that end in +1 or one stat that ends in +1 and one that ends in +2. More on that later.

Each character is defined in game terms as a bunch of stats and skills. A stat is a basic attribute, like your IQ, your strength, your hand-eye coordination; Stats are innate abilities. Skills are abilities you learn instead of abilities you are born with. You can't improve your stats during the game, but you can improve your skills.

All skills start with the same die code as the stat. If your character has a Dexterity of 3d, all your Dexterity-based skills have a rating of 3d. During character creation and extended game play, your character can increase skills beyond the base stat die code.

Each time you roll the dice, you're attempting to equal or roll higher than a difficulty number. Most of the time this will be an unopposed test, like jumping for a hanging rope ladder. Other times, it's an opposed test, like when your character decides to arm wrestle another character.

For opposed tests, generally who rolls higher wins. If you rolled an 8 and your opponent rolled a 10, you lose.

For unopposed tests, the GM determines how difficult the task is. Something Very Easy would fall in the 3 to 5 range. Easy tasks are between 6 and 10. Moderate, between 11 and 15. Difficult, 16 to 20. Very Difficult tasks are between 21 and 30. Impossible tasks are 31 and up.

Ranged weapon combat is similar -- Point Blank Range: 3-5, Short Range: 6-10, Medium Range: 11-15, Long Range: 16-20.

So if you only have 2d in a skill and you need at least a 13 to pass a task, you're hosed, right? Not really -- everybody gets lucky sometimes. To represent this, we have something called "the wild die". Here's how it works -- If you get a six on the wild die, you get to keep re-rolling that die and adding it to your total. Keep getting sixes, you keep rolling and adding.

Normally, in a game where we're all sitting around a table and rolling real dice, we'd have you roll a different colored die and use that as the wild die. But in the chatroom, we'll use the first die that comes up in your roll.

For instance, if you type "/roll 2d6" and chat room responds with "User Jericho rolls 2d6: 6 + 2 = 8", that first die rolled was a 6. That means you can keep rolling -- more sixes, more rolls. If, in the chat room, your first die is a 6, type "/roll 3d6" to simulate rolling additional dice. We'll count any additonal 6's and add them to your total. (For example, if the first roll totalled 9 and the second roll came up "User Thomas rolls 3d6: 6 + 4 + 1 = 11", we'll add the 6 and the 4 to your first roll, which gives you a total of 19.)

Every character starts with one Luck Point. Anytime at all during a scenario (which may span multiple game sessions), you can say that you're using a Luck Point. This will have one of two effects -- you double all your stats and skills for a short moment or you can avoid certain death.

The certain death thing -- if your character is trapped under a falling building and you roll to try to get out of the way and completely fail and there's pretty much nothing that's going to happen except your character's life is over, spend that Luck Point. Poof. You're automatically safe. But you have to explain why -- debris from the falling building hit around you, ripping a hole in the ground to a previously-undiscovered subway station which you dive into just moments before the massive building would've crushed you. Something like that.

The doubling effect only lasts for that combat round. A combat round is how long it takes for someone to do something -- shoot a gun, run over there, play a hand of cards. When you double your stats and skills, you get to take twice as many actions as you normally could, your chances of success are much higher, you are less likely to be injured, and if you somehow become stunned during the round you ignore stun effects.

When spending Luck Points, you can do it at three different times -- by being unheroic, being heroic, and being heroic at a dramatically appropriate moment. When you're unheroic, you spend the point and it's gone. Heroic, you'll get it back at the end of the adventure. Heroic at a dramatically appropriate moment, you'll get the luck point back and probably another one as well.

Under most circumstances, using a skill or stat takes one combat round. One round is about seven or eight seconds, so four rounds is about half a minute.

If you want to make sure you use a skill or stat successfully, you can take an extra round to prepare. You do nothing at all during one round and in the next, you make your skill roll, but get to add 1d to the roll. You can only use one skill or stat in the next round. For instance, if you have a missle weapons skill of 3d+1. If you have a relic weapon gun and declare you're going to aim at a target, when you fire you get to roll 4d+1.

If you run in the same combat round you use a skill, your skill code is reduced by 1d.

If you are wounded when you use a skill, your skill code is reduced by 1d.

You can use more than one skill or stat in a single combat round. You have do decide which skills you'll use at the beginning of the round. Every skill use after the first one costs you 1d. If you use two skills, all skill codes are reduced by 1d; three skills, a 2d penalty; four skills, a 3d penalty. This applies to every skill use in that combat round.

Beginning characters probably aren't skilled enough to do more than two different things at once and hope to succeed at whatever they're doing.

Dodge, melee parry, and brawling parry are reaction skills. You don't have to declare their use at the beginnning of the combat round -- you can use them whenever you need to. If someone shoots at you, you can dodge right there.

However, if you use a reaction skill in a combat round where you're using more than one skill, this counts as an extra skill use. All the skill uses you've declared after this reaction skill still have to be attempted, but because you just used a reaction skill, all those following are reduced by an additional 1d.

For example, Jericho has a relic blaster and declares he's going to fire three times. He has a blaster skill of 4d+2, which means he'd make three blaster attacks at 2d+2. He fires once, than is fired upon and decides to dodge. His dodge skill is 4d, but now he's using four skills this round, so he is now penalized 3d instead of 2d. He now has a 1d for Dodge for this round; his last two blaster shots are at 1d+2.

When describing the setting, the GM will do his utmost to accurately describe what's in the area. However, the GM will not be able to describe every single detail in a location. The players also get a chance to shape the world. Here's two examples.

Jericho and Talia are in the ruins of an Ancients city and are being pursued by a large group of mutants. They run down an alley, which is described as having "a fence" at the end. Talia's player states that she is going to climb the chain link fence and hop over. The next combat round, the mutants show up and attack Jericho. Jericho's player cannot state that he's going to pry a board off of the fence and block with that as Talia's player had just made the fence a chain-link fence instead of a wooden fence.

Jericho is backed up against our chain-link fence, the mutants are closing in. Jericho's player states that Jericho is going to pick up a brick and throw it at the lead mutant. Even though the GM didn't state that there was a brick or rubble in the alley, there probably is one -- Jericho picks up a brick and throws it at the lead mutant. If Jericho's player stated Jericho was going to reach down and pick up a laser rifle that someone discarded, that wouldn't work.