Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World Hack

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Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World Hack
« on: March 16, 2012, 01:04:41 PM »
Alpha Hack is a partial Apocalypse World hack of James Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha, the game which also spawned Gamma World. I recommend buying James' game here:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/metamorphosis-alpha/1647436?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1

I made this hack because I'm fascinated with Metamorphosis Alpha. I thought the game would be easier for me and my group to play with if we had an Apocalypse World style frame for it. Consequently, the moves are currently very stripped down. I hope to build them up a bit over time.

The rules for Alpha Hack are here:
http://planet-thirteen.com/AlphaHack.pdf

In Metamorphosis Alpha you play humans, mutant humans, and mutant animals on a vast interstellar generation ship gone wrong. The crew is long dead and the inhabitants no longer even know they are on a space ship. Extensive biomes and creature samples brought from Earth have mutated into bizarre forms.

Re: Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World Hack
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2012, 08:46:16 AM »
Have you had a chance to play this yet?

Re: Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World Hack
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2012, 10:53:32 AM »
Yes! I posted about it on the Story Game Bite-sized AP (http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=16000&page=1#Item_40).

I've been planning to post a long AP on my blog, but, well, life.

Here's the AP in full:

Metamorphosis Alpha!

Playing this with a light Apocalypse World hack.

Clyde-Bob is a human with a bricked iPhone and a mutant slave. Plunge Bob is also human. Quazzar is a winged horse with two brains. Chump is a huge mutated rabbit with armored plates and telekentic powers. They are off to the world of the gods to bring back an artifact and thus enter full adulthood as members of the tribe.

In the frozen mud plain beneath the 120' tall pile of shopping carts, Clyde-Bob convinces the lord of the chameleon crow people to become his vassal and sets up a potentially lucrative scrap metal mining operation. He then convinces a working domestic robot to become his personal chef.

Plunge-Bob and Quazzar penetrate the lost medical facility beyond the great radioactive slag aqueduct, defeat the security lockdown, decipher the mutagenic purge chamber, and transform Plunge-Bob into a genetically perfect specific of humanity.

Chump investigates the complex of endless apartment units, narrowly defeats the massive armored badger, and finds a functioning laser rifle for her new toy.

Of course when they returned with their artifacts, they found the ancient teleport device that brought them here un-powered and in need of repair--the likely focus of their next adventure.

This game is rife with weirdness and coolness in equal amounts. Every character had ample opportunity to be killed horribly, but they all pulled through and garnered great rewards in the process. The characters were set upon by a flock of possessive crow-folk almost instantly, causing them to immediately split up, which was a source of much interest.

The ability of humans to gain mutants as followers was exceptionally weird in play, as one Clyde-Bob set himself up as a combination slave lord and CEO. Unsurprisingly, this capability sets up instant human-mutant racism as a built-in function of the setting. Also unsurprisingly, the human PCs immediately used this ability on the mutant PCs and used them as riding animals. We just went with it, as this was already set up to be a very wacky, crazy game with more than a touch of satire involved. I think figuring out what to do with this setting element is a big issue with this game.

EDIT: posted up the AW hack we used to play this here: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=2439.0