Gamma World: Game Masters Guide (Gamma World d20 3.5 Roleplaying) [Hardcover]

Bruce Baugh (Author), Werner Hagen (Author), Doug Oglesby (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Arthaus (March 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588460681
• ISBN-13: 978-1588460684
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,626,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Werner Wolfegang Hager IV (1974- ) was introduced to the role-playing game hobby in 1982 after devouring (figuratively) a copy of the Tom Moldvay version of Basic D&D. Werner grew up in sunny California, where he briefly flirted with a music career. Werner began writing for the hobby in 2003 as a freelance author for White Wolf Gaming Studios while working on a degree in Physics. From 2003 to 2005, Werner contributed to six works, including Players Guide to Fighters and Barbarians, Vigil Watch: Secrets of the Asaatthi, Scarred Lands Campaign Setting: Termana, Creature Collection: Revised Edition, Edge of Infinity: The Scarred Planes; and Gamma World Game Master's Guide. After a brief hiatus upon graduation, Werner returned to writing again - working with Abstract Nova to produce Exquisite Replicas (2008) and Aletheia (2007), the latter book taking advantage of his love of the paradoxical nature of the quantum understanding of physics along with a fascination with supernatural mysteries. Werner now works as a scientist and researcher in Pittsburgh, PA and lives south of the city with his lovely wife, Anita, and three beautiful children Werner V, Elisabeth, and Ariana.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative & Inspiring, April 27, 2005

By 

William (Kennesaw, GA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gamma World: Game Masters Guide (Gamma World d20 3.5 Roleplaying) (Hardcover)

This is an excellent companion to the Gamma World players guide. It provides a lot of useful information about how to run a game set in the dangerous future "Gamma World."

More importantly, it gives clear, lucid and useful advise on how to be a good Game Master (GM). The instructions for how to run a Gamma World are the kind of "How To" articles that apply to virtually any gaming experience, and will be useful for aspiring GMs from a variety of gaming disciplines.

2.0 out of 5 stars Sadly, This Was a Waste of Money, January 6, 2012

By 

Neodoering - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gamma World: Game Masters Guide (Gamma World d20 3.5 Roleplaying) (Hardcover)

Let me start this by saying I was teethed on Dungeons and Dragons, which did their GM's guide *right*. This Gamma World GM's guide, by comparison, is not a game master's guide that is packed with rich information on the game world but is more of an idea book with ways you can run your campaign and ideas you can use in your game world. The old D&D GM guide had pages and pages of incredibly useful tables and lists, covering subjects like magic items (in detail), types and values of gemstones, monster experience point value, magical properties of gemstones, and so on and so forth. There were sketches of various monster encounters--where they belonged and how to run them--and ideas for running your campaign at different experience levels. The Gamma World GM guide is a pale reflection of this dense work. It offers about 10% of what the D&D GM guide offers. To put it bluntly, there is not enough bang for your buck with the Gamma World GM guide to justify buying it.

I was very, very disappointed with this book. The old Gamma World rules made for a highly imaginative, highly dangerous campaign world full of weird monsters and ancient treasures just there for the taking. The storyline of an apocalyptic planet Earth was compelling and frightening, and with a good GM you could run one hell of a fast-paced campaign full of danger, adventure, high risks and rich rewards. You could run a zombie apocalypse, plague apocalypse, nuclear apocalypse, alien invasion apocolypse, or any combination of these. This title, this Gamma World GM's guide, is so vague and unfocused as to be meaningless. It almost stimulates you to think of wild ideas but doesn't quite do so, and it gives you virtually nothing in terms of hard information (lists and descriptions of tek items, for example, or types of diseases circulating in the Gamma World, or types and values of gemstones, or discussions of different forms of government, or a discussion of different types of slavery that might be in use, climate charts and tables for different climate and terrain types, etc.).

In short, don't bother buying this if you're a GM looking for a good game to play. Buy the old 2nd edition rules for Gamma World. They're a bit spare, but they're not vapor and fluff, like this book. You'll get bang for your buck and have a good time with the game.