Fun with the Boys (Down Time 2)

Sorry Lance, still no novel innovations for "down time" in games. Just more quarantine fun. 

The boys and I grabbed my copy of 1st Edition Gamma World and rolled up some characters just for fun. I'm not gonna run it (it's a little too loosey-goosey, especially since I have the 4th edition rules which are not that complex, and 2nd Edition in PDF now which is better organized than 1st and simpler than 4th), but one of my players is considering dipping his toes in the refereeing waters soon with GW, and my 7 year old was itching to roll up a character. 

Well, my 7yo went first. He didn't roll so well for stats, and only got a couple of mutations, but I let him pick since it was just 1 physical and 1 mental, rather than rolling which made him happy. He rolled up: 

Popcat TV

Mutant Cat, MS 8 IN 11 DX 9 CH 7 CN 10 PS 13; HP 31, AC 7 (furs, shield)

Wings (fly speed 12), Mental Control over Physical State (ignore pain, heal x4, double DX, PS, speed for 5d10 rounds 1/week)

Then I rolled up  a humanoid (I rolled high for the two physical mutations, allowing me to reroll and ignore defects for #1, and just to select #2, while the mental mutation was a random roll): 

Del Hartman

Mutant Human, MS 17 IN 12 DX 9 CH 12 CN 8 PS 15; HP 20, AC 7 (furs, shield)

Heightened Strength (add 3 dice damage with physical weapons), Heightened Vision (see clearly up to 3km, infravision w/o drawback, ultravision), Mental Defense Shield (+4 mental defense, sense others with mental mutations within 30')

About the time I got done with that, my 14 year old came in and decided he wanted to roll up one too. He went with a mutant raccoon, and of course the dice loved him, although he did get a defect to balance things out:

Missile

Mutant Raccoon, MS 15 IN 14 DX 13 CH 15 CN 14 PS 10; HP 60, AC 3, Speed 9

Total Carapace (AC 4, reduce damage by 1/2, reduce speed by 1/4), Multiple Body Parts (+9 arms!), Wings (fly speed 12), Shorter (141cm tall, -1 AC bonus), Heightened Intelligence (+4 mental defense, -2 on artifact function discovery rolls), Poor Dual Brain (causes problems randomly)

The good thing about this edition is the simplicity. The character sheets are so simple. Char gen is relatively quick. The down side is that the rules organization isn't the best, and a lot of the mutation descriptions say things like "check with the referee for the effects of this" and just leave it up in the air. Of course, with later editions available to me, I can check to see how it has been done by others, but I think if I do run that GW game I'm thinking about, it will either be with the 4th Edition or a house ruled hybrid of 2nd and 4th (simplify where desired, use the more crunchy details when useful).