It's difficult to say that any edition other than the very first holds the most
special place in my heart. The built-in childhood nostalgia from those
early RPG experiences with the old white and gray 1st edition is hard to
overcome.
Plus, thoughts of 1st edition are emotional for me...When I was fighting for my
life against bacterial meningitis, Brutorz Bill brought the 1st edition rules up
to the hostpital when he came to visit and left them for me. No better
friend than that to bring you the best reading material in the world.
(Think 1986-87 constrained to the hospital bed with no powerful handheld
electronics with wifi, no interweb, etc..). If I was going to die, it
wasn't going to be with the 3rd edition that I so loathed in my hands.
That being said, the 4th edition of Gamma World has to be tops for me. The
bulk of my experience came with this system. Our group was old enough when
this was released to build sophisticated campaigns that made our early stuff
seem like Monty Haul.
With Fourth edition, the pendulum swung back to AD&D inspired rules, and I was
able to gladly say goodbye to the abominable color charts from 3rd edition Gamma
World. It does seem as if the 4th edition of GW was a precursor to the D20
system that came out for D&D 3.0, but then again, I could just be imagining the
inspirational linkage. |
