Gamma Worlds' "How to Use This Book"

[Gordon C. Landis]

My copy of Gamma World is copyright 1978, TSR Rules, and is listed as the 2nd printing, August 1978.  The authors are James A. Ward and Gary Jaquet.  Clearly an early RPG.  I'm going to quote fairly extensively from its' "How to Use This Book" section, then make a few comments, and see what you folks think about it all.  Seems to me like there are some interesting bits here.

"GAMMA WORLD is a role-playing campaign game.  One (or more) of the participants acts as referee, creating a world in which the players act out parts as in a book or play, parts scripted by the referee but formed and finalized by all participants.  The referee presents the situations in which the players are to adventure.  In each adventure, the players gain experience, and hopefully, valuable artifacts, which increase their chance of survival (they are occasionally killed) in GAMMA WORLD.  An interconnected series of such adventures is called a campaign.

"Potential players and referees with previous experience [. . .]  The rules are rather lengthy [At 46 pages, including charts, lists, background information, maps, and etc, this is quite an overstatement by later standards], but actually quite simple.  They provide a nearly endless multi-level, science fanasy game that, once begun, need never end.

"The referee is the participant who is willing to provide the mental and physical labor of completing [emphasis added] the game within the framework provided.  He will also preside over the actual play of the game itself.  Instructions detailing the referee's tasks are given in the material to follow [. . .]

"The players cannot begin the game untill the referee has completed his design work.  Once the referee has made the necessary preparations, the players create their game personae, called player characters, as described under CREATING CHARACTERS.  After a character has been established, the player is responsible for keeping records [. . .]"

In later sections, the text in some ways makes good on its claim about detailing the referee's tasks - e.g., a map is presented to be completed by the referee (more similar to Orkworld than later "setting" presentations from TSR), with extensive advice and examples of how to do so.  As I recall from long-ago play, the claim that characters "are occasionally killed" is a gross understatement - the rules make this a very deadly game.

But I'm primarily interested in holding this up as a surprisingly cogent example of "how to play" for an early RPG, and to point out a few bits that seem particualrly important and/or interesting.  First bit - defining itself as a role-playing campaign game.  Adding that campaign qualifier - and explaning some about what that means - puts a label to an important aspect of play, that I think is more descriptive of one kind of RPG play than other labels, before or since.

Next bit - by avoiding (consciously or not - my guess is not) reference to "story", it avoids The Impossible Thing while still forming a familar division between referee (GM) and player.  Scripted by the GM and "formed and finalized" by the player is in no way Impossible.

Tiny bit - by allowing "or more" in its' "One (or more) of the participants acts as referee," it supports what was actually a common phenomena in my playgroups of that time - but it doesn't really provide any further info/support/how-to/etc., so that's a real tiny bit.

Now the final, and biggest (to me) bit - the expressed assumption that the game design process is NOT complete in the book, and MUST be completed by the referee (DESIGNING GAMMA WORLD is the title of one of the referee's how-to sections).  Despite my references to Gamma World in another thread (about why incoherence sells), this isn't directly about GNS Coherence/Incoherence - though that is, I'd claim, an important aspect, though no one at the time could have recognized it as such.  The idea that the text is NOT the completion of the design process is also in some ways an early version of the Lumpley Principle, but it is also (and probably more importantly, as far as the authors were concerned) meant as a literal truth - play can't begin until some more work is put in by the referee, and that work is, in all meaningful ways, game design work.

Now, the game design that I've been wrestling with on and off for the last 2 or so years is all about unfinished design - but rather than saddle the GM/referee with all the work, I try and share it among all the participants.  At least, that's the theory - since I have no posts over in Game Design about SNAP, you can guess I'm having trouble getting something "done enough" to present.  Others have also approached this notion - Universalis does it without an RPG focus, though it CAN support such a thing, and Fang's Scattershot looks to be in this mold as well.  But I found it very intersting that a game from the dawn of RPGs showed such a clear understanding of the concept.

So - thoughts?  Did I miss something else interesting in this text?  Am I off base with something I read into it?  I mean, I'm not trying to make mountains out of mole hills, and as I recall Gamma World as a game had some real problems - but as opposed to the useless, mostly content-free words in the similar sections of games like D&D and EPT from the TSR of this era, I thought there was some real MEANING here.

Glad the talk about game text a while back inspired me to read some of my old books,

Gordon

[Patrick O'Duffy]

In each adventure, the players gain experience, and hopefully, valuable artifacts, which increase their chance of survival (they are occasionally killed) in GAMMA WORLD.

Players occasionally get killed? Damn, that's harsh. I normally just kick my players a few times and send them home with bruises.

[quozl]

In each adventure, the players gain experience, and hopefully, valuable artifacts, which increase their chance of survival (they are occasionally killed) in GAMMA WORLD.

Players occasionally get killed? Damn, that's harsh. I normally just kick my players a few times and send them home with bruises.

Referring to players is standard in game rules.  See the rules for Monopoly, for example.

Edit: I guess I should address the original post too. :-)

I agree with your assessment completely.  This looks like one of the few examples where the introduction actually "knows what it's talking about".  Do you have any other examples?

[Gordon C. Landis]

In each adventure, the players gain experience, and hopefully, valuable artifacts, which increase their chance of survival (they are occasionally killed) in GAMMA WORLD.

Players occasionally get killed? Damn, that's harsh. I normally just kick my players a few times and send them home with bruises.

Hey, I just quoted what it said :-)  Guess I shoulda added a [sic] . . .

Gordon

[Gordon C. Landis]

I agree with your assessment completely.  This looks like one of the few examples where the introduction actually "knows what it's talking about".  Do you have any other examples?

I re-read a bunch of the intros in my old game books as a result of some discussions here a month or three back, and this is the one I've been meaning to post about.  The others are mostly . . . incoherent.  Though my first-printing Runequest had a few interesting bits.

I think John Kim's site has a link to various on-line "what is roleplaying?" texts, but I was curious about the older stuff.

Gordon

[John Kim]

I re-read a bunch of the intros in my old game books as a result of some discussions here a month or three back, and this is the one I've been meaning to post about.  The others are mostly . . . incoherent.  Though my first-printing Runequest had a few interesting bits.

I think John Kim's site has a link to various on-line "what is roleplaying?" texts, but I was curious about the older stuff.

I've also got some older texts at

http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/styles/gametext/

I'm working on revamping my theory pages to include more stuff.  

- John