Gamma World

One of the first RPGs I played, literally a third of a century ago, was Gamma World. I cannot be certain if it was the second edition of the game I played or the third. Or that I played it at all, come to think of it. But I learned about Gamma World at a very young age, and had always been fascinated by the premise of the setting.

Somewhere along the line, I acquired a copy of the Third Edition boxed set (the circumstances of which are also forgotten), but I never actually played it.

Then this year, with my foray into classic D&D modules, I came across Expeditions to the Barrier Peaks, and it occurred to me that here was a chance to kill two birds with one stone: I would run Expeditions using Gamma World rules!

The module itself is a dungeon-crawl with no real clear aim, so taking a leaf from Seth Skorkowsky, I decided to add an active opposition to our party.

So I decided that our party are mutants from a village of, well, mutants, who are persecuted by Pure Strain Humans in this post-apocalyptic world. The mutants have only medieval level technology, while the humans have modern technology. They learn that the humans are planning to launch an attack on their village, and to even the odds, they are sent on a quest to the magical dungeon in the mountain to find magical weapons. When they arrive at the door to the dungeon, they see that the humans have the same idea, and have just entered it before them. It will be a race against time and mutant-hating humans to find the most powerful weapons, and make it out and back the village in time before the attack comes!

I gave my players the choice of any type of mutant: a mutated humanoid, mutated animal, or mutated plant. I got a mutated gorilla, a mutated rabbit, a mutated bat, and a mutated cactus. Since they decided on their characters before they knew what the module would be about, it meant that only the mutated rabbit would reasonably be able to use any of the weapons they will find inside the dungeon. Well, maybe some other mutants back at the village have human-like hands...

The gorilla figure is a D&D prepainted, the bat a giant bat from Games Workshop, the rabbit a conversion made from the head and torso of a skaven (with bunny ears sculpted on), the arms of a Frostgrave soldier, and the legs of a Warhammer Fantasy ungor, and the cactus from Pegasus Hobbies.

While googling around for more information on the module, I learned that the 'boss' monster is an iconic creature called the Froghemoth. There is actually an official version of the miniature, but it is expensive for a one-use miniature, and it would be so much more fun to made one of my own.

So two packs of rubber toy animals, some stiff wires, putty, and spray paints later, I got this:

The most difficult part of this build was actually the teeth, but without them the model just looks like a large toy frog.