I'm wondering if saying "Hilarity often ensues" three times is supposed to make it funny. But as I've said before I find a lot of their statements about how wild and crazy the game is supposed to be feel rather forced. If it is so zany (which it certainly can be) I can tell by playing it: I don't need cue cards to tell me when to laugh...
Anyway its a pretty cool behind the scenes thought process look. It certainly serves well to justify the use of cards, though it actually weakens the point of making them collectable. If they are intended to replace tables, speed character creation by not having players sift through a list of powers, and provide surprises, then how does a system that makes it difficult to complete sets (breaking the ability to form a "table"), encourages players to sift through piles of cards to preconstruct their player deck (slowing character creation), and has provisions for preconstructed player decks (decreasing the unexpected) work for those goals? Though as a counterpoint to what I just said, I do like the point they made by bringing up the similarity of player magic item wish lists to having a preconstructed player Omega deck.
One thing that really confused me though: They mention that the "number of salvage slots you have available depends on your character level". Did I miss a rule in the book somewhere or was this lost from the release after the article was written?
One thing that really confused me though: They mention that the "number of salvage slots you have available depends on your character level". Did I miss a rule in the book somewhere or was this lost from the release after the article was written?
You're not the only one. Obviously they are referring to a rule that either ended up on the cutting room floor, or is in one of the "suppliments". After reading this I went back and checked the rulebook, and it cleary states that a PC can have any number of readied/salvaged Omega Tech items.
I'm wondering if saying "Hilarity often ensues" three times is supposed to make it funny.
Personally, I find that when games are written to be funny they often are just strange. I'd prefer a more "straight" game where the players can inject their personality into the adventure, because those games often turn funny enough already. Adding a bunch of random stuff is fine, but it just makes my game group decide not to take the adventure or their characters seriously. If they don't care about their character, they do dumb stuff and not hilarious stuff.
Just my own observation. Your milage may vary.
I'm wondering if saying "Hilarity often ensues" three times is supposed to make it funny. But as I've said before I find a lot of their statements about how wild and crazy the game is supposed to be feel rather forced. If it is so zany (which it certainly can be) I can tell by playing it: I don't need cue cards to tell me when to laugh...
I thought the exact same thing as I read the article. It's almost like "Gamma World is pure hiliarity; did I mention that Gamma World is pure hiliarity? because it is! BTW...Gamma World is pure hiliarity!"
Still a decent read; wish WotC would spend less time making interview/articles like that and more time reading the GW forums and answering questions about inconsistent rules/questions/etc.
though it actually weakens the point of making them collectable.
This is the only problem I have with the cards.
I was first fine with it, when I first started discussing with friends how they would replace the need for the eventual "Chart chart"... you know... the chart you roll on to see which chart, from which book, you roll on for that specific power roll. Cards were an elegant way to do that, and I'd heard nothing about them being collectible cards.
Then at the Gamma World Game Day I discovered the collectible status of the cards, as a couple of the players at my table started trading, talking about equivalent value of rare-uncommon-common cards as they did. I had the booster from the box set, and had bought two more boosters along with the game, but it hadn't dawned on me until then that they were labeled symbols. I didn't figure they'd make them collectible (naive, I know), so I didn't look that closely at them.
I had just come down off of my soapbox after a "you're turning my favorite RPG into a CCG!!" rant the week before, conceding that they hadn't turned GW into a CCG, but finding out about the rare-uncommon-common cards sent me into another rant.
Fine, GW cards are equivalent to D&D miniatures, as far as the necessity and collectibility goes, but on the other hand, if I choose to buy D&D miniatures, I can make a D&D miniature represent whatever I want. "That's not really a Hobgoblin Hand of Bane, it's a Hobgoblin Patrol Leader, and those aren't Goblin Cutters with him, those are Goblin Warriors, and that's not a red dragon, it's a blue dragon". It's nice that they included the cards with the boxed set, to give you a start and support the idea that you don't need to buy boosters to play, but the cards are far more specific, compared to miniatures, and you can't substitute one for another. The collectibility of them bothers me.
"That's not really a Hobgoblin Hand of Bane, it's a Hobgoblin Patrol Leader, and those aren't Goblin Cutters with him, those are Goblin Warriors, and that's not a red dragon, it's a blue dragon".
The crazy array of wardogs, skeletal hounds, and lizards I ended up pulling out to proxy for a bunch of giant rats (I only had 2 actually appropriate minis) certainly led to a lot of snide remarks ("I'll attack the shiney green rat with orange crest") but it definitely didn't impede play.
It certainly serves well to justify the use of cards, though it actually weakens the point of making them collectable. If they are intended to replace tables, speed character creation by not having players sift through a list of powers, and provide surprises, then how does a system that makes it difficult to complete sets (breaking the ability to form a "table"), encourages players to sift through piles of cards to preconstruct their player deck (slowing character creation), and has provisions for preconstructed player decks (decreasing the unexpected) work for those goals?
This is one of those times where I can't shake the feeling that they're lying to us. Yeah, I know, paranoid conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah... Maybe it's just that being old enough to remember Iran-Contra makes me see 'plausible deniability' everywhere. It seems 'obvious' to me that WotC, which owes its existance to M:tG, and was bought by Hasbro specifically to acquire CCG properties, would want to extend the CCG model to any of their other properties. It's not like they haven't already tried a collectible model with D&D minis. It's not like they haven't been trying to make cards part of D&D throughout 4e.
The justifications for cards in GW are just that, justifications after the fact. They were going to float booster for a CCG, they decided to risk the less valuable cult-favorite GW propperty instead of the bigger D&D (which, lets face it, has a much more tempermental fan base - GW fans are delighted to see /anything/ published).
And it's transparently just rationalization, because every claim they made as a reason for going CCG would have been better served with just a complete deck.
Though as a counterpoint to what I just said, I do like the point they made by bringing up the similarity of player magic item wish lists to having a preconstructed player Omega deck.
Yeah... if that isn't a hint that we'll be getting magic item boosters for D&D...
One thing that really confused me though: They mention that the "number of salvage slots you have available depends on your character level". Did I miss a rule in the book somewhere or was this lost from the release after the article was written?
This isn't the first time developers have mentioned the non-existant 'salvage slots,' they were brought up prior to release, too. I'm guessing it's something that didn't make the final cut for some reason - perhaps even due to an undetected editing error?