Tomes of Antiquity: Gamma World 1st Edition – Part I

I was digging through a couple of boxes and came across my copy of Gamma World 1st Edition. Sadly, it is not the original boxed set just a copy of the rules. I believe I picked it up in the 1990’s on a shopping spree. Leafing through the book, it remains a very playable game but not one I was ever interested in running back at the height of my gaming.

Gamma World, like many other games of the TSR era, has been through many permutations. At least 7 editions have been published to date with varying degrees of acceptance. The 1st edition was released in 1978 and penned by James M. Ward and Gary Jaquet.

Gamma World features one of the first post apocalyptic frameworks in the RPG world. The book references the year 2471 as the start of the experience while referring back to events from 2309-2322 — the Shadow Years. The Shadow Years depict a time of violent social unrest that lead to the destruction of the civilization as it was known. It isn’t hard to imagine how the late 1960’s and early 1970’s could have influenced that portrait of the world. The exact downfall of the world is not stated. Hints of nuclear and bio-warfare are present but no specifics in the roughly 1 page introduction of the game setting.

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