Gamma World: Death By Chocolate

Game Date: 11/9/2025

Location: Home Game

Campaign: One Shot

System: Gamma World

DM: Matt

Main Characters:

Crunch (Whitney) - Cockroach / Shapeshifter

Helio (Leah) - Seismic / Demon

The Module:

This is a module I wrote, and I've run it once before. It's a candy-themed adventure, where you use candy as the miniatures. Whoever delivers a killing blow gets to keep the candy. For this session I used Hershey's Kisses, Starburst, and three kinds of Reese's. If you want to run the adventure yourself, I posted a system-neutral version of the module here.

The Session:

The party started out on the road, traveling by foot, when they saw a town in the distance. As they got closer, they saw a lively bar being attacked by a gang of chocolate-covered zombies. After rescuing some citizens from this candy-coated threat, they were asked to investigate the old chocolate factory on the hill.

Inside, they faced several types of sugary foes as they crossed the factory floor and made their way to the back offices, wherein they faced the final boss - a giant candy skeleton. After claiming victory, they shut down the machine that had allowed creatures to cross into our dimension from the Choclanic Plane.

Having saved the town from a sickly sweet apocalypse, the PCs were awarded a pickup truck, in which they drove off into the sunset.

Gamma World: Death By Chocolate

Game Date: 1/28/2012
DM: Matt

The Party:
Chewy Sweatyhair (Rick): Empath/Entropic
Jerry Fungi (Bryan): Fungoid/Plastic
Pebble Bushyhead (Misty): Plant/Pyrokinetic

The Module:
This was a special session for Halloween.  Yeah, yeah, it's January, but we had a hard time getting everyone together.  This was a module that I designed.  The gimmick (I always have a gimmick) is that instead of using tokens or minis, it uses pieces of candy to represent the monsters.  Whatever you kill, you get to eat.  I wrote the module using a generic universe, so it was easy to convert it to Gamma World.  For those interested in running it themselves, I've posted the generic version of the module in this blog.  

The Characters:
Per the suggested rules, I had the players roll their characters randomly, from all three sources (the basic Gamma World set, Famine in Far-Go, and Legion of Gold).   Bryan was a Fungoid/Plastic, so he was basically a rubber mushroom.  Misty was a Plant/Pyrokinetic, so she was a burning bush (you know, there's a cream for that).  And Rick was an Empath/Entropic, so while he could feel your pain, he was also often the cause of it.

I packed a bunch of D&D and Star Wars minis so they'd have a variety to choose from.  I had a decent mini for Bryan's Fungoid - a D&D  Myconid Guard.  For Misty, we used a D&D Blackwoods Dryad (I don't seem to have a mini of a flaming plant, sorry).  Since neither of Rick's mutations really affected his appearance much, I told him he could look like whatever he wanted... so he picked Chewbacca.

A typical-looking party... for Gamma World.

The Session:
The first encounter was against a bunch of chocolate-covered zombie minions (Hershey's Kisses) on the factory floor.  At the end of the first round, a large chocolate golem (Reeses Cup) burst out of one of the vats and joined the battle.  They PCs out the minions pretty quickly, after which defeating the golem wasn't that hard.

The second fight was against four Fruit Imps (Starburst) in the break room.  Jerry developed a temporary flight mutation, which he used effectively.  Of course, the enemies could fly as well, so it's not like he could just hang back and blast them from safety, but it still turned out to be a useful ability. 

I ran the third encounter a little different than in the original module.  The storage/shipping room now contained only one monster, a large golem (Reeses Cup).  When he was defeated, he split into three smaller golems (Reeses Minis).  During the battle, Chewy used an Omega Tech item which put all three Lesser Choclans to sleep... and put himself to sleep as well.  This made wrapping up the battle fairly easy, even if it did backfire on Chewy a bit.

In the final battle, I used a large plastic Hershey's Kiss to represent the Demon Boss.  He was joined in battle by two more chocolate zombies and two more lesser golems.  Pebble had acquired an Alpha Mutation which allowed her to fly, and a successful overcharge even let her hover.  So she stayed above the enemies' heads firing ranged attacks at them.  Early in the battle, Chewy tried to overcharge a power and ended up stunning himself.  It was save ends, but he failed to save about seven times in a row, making him miss most of the encounter.  But the boss had problems of his own.  His only ranged attack was an encounter power, and the PCs managed to stay where he couldn't reach them in melee.

Afterthoughts: 
The candy gimmick was a big hit with the players.  I hadn't DMed in a good while, so it was hard getting back into the swing of it.  Sometime around the second encounter it looked like the enemies were doing too much damage against a three-person, level 1 party.  So I nerfed a few of the monsters on the fly, mostly by "forgetting" to use certain powers.

This was my first time running a Gamma World session, and it was a lot of fun.  However, the Alpha Mutations and Omega Tech cards make it a lot harder to predict how combats are going to turn out.  A perfectly balanced encounter can suddenly become a breeze when a player draws the right card, or it can become a nightmare when that same player fails an overcharge attempt.  But that's part of what makes it awesome.

Pictures:

When Chocolate-Covered Zombies Attack

Product shot!

Fruit Imps in the break room

Chewy gets put to sleep by his own Omega Tech

The final boss

Gamma World: Piiiiiiigs In Spaaaaaacesuits

Game Date: 1/22/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party (Level 1):
Bryan -Plaguebearer / Mythic
Jesse - Exploding / Yeti
Leigha - Mythic / Plastic
Matt -  Gravity Controller / Mind Coercer
Ted - Telekinetic / Mind Coercer

Pre-Game Thoughts:
As I write this paragraph, it's still a couple of hours before gametime.  This will be my first time playing Gamma World.  It's a quirky sci-fi setting that uses a simplified version of D&D 4e's rules.  We're also going to use the expansion pack, Famine in Far-Go. I've been wanting to try Gamma World for a while.  I'm thinking about running a few sessions that take place in a modified version of my Itropa universe.  I was going to use a reflavored version of normal D&D 4e, but Gamma World could be the perfect ruleset to use.

The Game:
Rolling up our characters took a little while, but only because some of us hadn't played Gamma World before.  Now that I know the rules, I could probably roll one up in 5 minutes.

We played a Gameday module titled "Trouble in Freesboro."  Mayor Thomspoon hired our strange group to investigate some unusual sightings at the PungCo Laboratory.  Witnesses had reported explosions, flashing lights, and large flying insects. 

On the way to the lab, we were attacked by five Porkers (pig people) and a swarm of Bloodbirds.  This was our first chance to try out the combat system.  It felt a lot like playing D&D 4e, with a few notable (and mostly welcome) differences.  Second Wind is a minor action, and heals half your hit points.  There's no healing surges to keep track of.  After the battle, your short rest refills all your hit points.  And then there's the cards... the Alpha Tech and Omega Tech cards give you extra powers or defenses, and they get switched out at different times.  It adds a bit of chaos to the battles.

After we won the encounter, we continued to the lab.  One of us had a crowbar (inventory items are also random, and sometimes very unusual), and used it to break into the building.  On the ground floor, we found a computer, and managed to get it working.  The DM's booklet actually had links to a supplemental website which let us view the security video from the parking garage.  We also managed to access a map of the building, and an e-mail giving us more background info for the story.  I was very impressed by this level of interaction.

We found the stairs and went up to the second floor, where we fought five hovering robots.  Then we continued on to the third floor.  The final encounter took place in a large lab, where a large chamber showed us images of other locations.  We fought three Porker Marauders, one Hoop (rabbit guy), and one Dabber (badger guy).  They were lead by a warthog in a spacesuit, named Ghengis Tangh.

Being the final battle, it was pretty difficult.  There were three cannons on the walls, which could be turned on using the computer terminals.  The bad guys got one working, and our party turned on another one, with the help of some "Dehydrated Scientists" we'd picked up.  This turned out to be a mistake, because once activated, the cannons just fired at the nearest creature, regardless of who activated the cannon.

One of us had a card with some sort of vortex power, which pulled most of the enemies to the center of the room for easier killing.  Another player had a card that let him mimic other cards, so we actually got to use the vortex power twice.  At one point in the battle, Tangh entered the chamber, which teleported him out of the battle.  He returned a few rounds later, looking a bit roughed up.  One of our party tried the chamber as well, and found herself on another planet.  We all survived the battle, but two of us nearly died.


Having discovered the reason for the disturbances, we ended the session. 

Afterthoughts:
Gamma World is not a very deep system, but I love it.  I think it would work best for one-shots and short campaigns.  Some of the players want to try optimizing our characters next time, instead of rolling them up randomly.  Personally I don't think the game would work well that way.  Unlike the uber-balanced D&D 4e, some origins in Gamma World are clearly better than others, and the randomness of rolling up your character - and then living with the outcome - is part of the challenge.  But I'll be glad to try it if that's what the players want to do.

As I mentioned above, I've been working on a module or two, based on the Itropa setting I created for NeverWinter Nights.  Itropa is also a "B-movie sci-fi" type of world, and it could work well with Gamma World's rules.  However, I'm also considering just using D&D 4e, and reflavoring everything to fit a sci-fi universe.  I'm going to have to give it some thought.  Gamma World is more light-hearted, and its simplicity makes it perfect for what I have in mind.  But D&D has a more robust Monster Manual, which might not be exactly what I need flavor-wise, but I can easily convert flavor.