Gaia Gamma release 6

I'm happy to announce release 6 of the living Gaia Gamma rules. As usual you can find the download in the navigation to the right. Release 6 represents an important step in the development of Gaia Gamma as it contains a number of widespread improvements.

My most beloved artifact: The Black Ray Rifle

One of the most interesting experience for me when playing science fiction or science fantasy games always has been reading about and then coveting a certain type of item. For Traveller it was the battle suit (I always wanted to have a character who owned one and the one time a character of mine managed to steal one he was hunted down and killed by the imperial police). For Gamma World it always has been the infamous Black Ray Rifle.

All Things Gamma

Since I started working on Gaia Gamma and blogging here regularly I noticed that I also started using the term "Gamma games" to encompass all types of games I loosely associate with Gamma World. I would like to extend this nomenclature in order to introduce some new regular Gaia Gamma related series to this blog.

Lots of fiddly bits going on - release 4 of Gaia Gamma

Since the last release of Gaia Gamma I have fiddled with many aspects of the game. Here's a quick rundown of all the changes:

Structuring the table of contents

After a while of fiddling with basic mechanisms I usually start to layout the table of content in more detail.

Revision 2 of Gaia Gamma released

Revision 2 of Gaia Gamma now is available (see the sidebar to the right which now also includes an archive for the older versions of Gaia Gamma).

"Release early, release often"

Release early, release often (RERO) is a software development philosophy that stresses the importance of close feedback cycles between developers and testers. I definitely want to use this approach for Gaia Gamma, too.

With my other current RPG design, Hexer & Helden (a German old school version of AD&D 1st and 2nd edition with some ideas from 3rd mixed in), I started out with a similar idea but again caught up with fiddling with the rules. While I work on the rules quite often, I once more am imprisoned by the thought of "the next version must be finished enough to warrant a release" so that updates get fewer and fewer the more complete the game becomes.

I want to change this to the absolute opposite with Gaia Gamma by going for a continuous release approach: Every time I work on the rules and change something I will release a new PDF and blog about the changes. Thus every development step will become tangible.

I will start tomorrow with the next update concerning die rolling mechanisms.

The release format for Gaia Gamma

Recently I have found it very helpful to have as early as possible a pretty good idea of what I want a game to be in the final stages of publication. And yes, these days I always think about publication when starting an RPG project - thanks to Lulu I would say. Self-publishing today is as easy as a breeze and when I started with RPG designs seriously around 1990 it was a dream.

So for Gaia Gamma I also have a vision in mind. I want Gaia Gamma to be book limited by the following choices given to me by Lulu:

• Soft cover (it seems that many interesting hardcover choices just disappeared... *sigh*)
• 88 pages
• square format (8.5 by 8.5 inches)
• full cover cover but B/W interior; maybe there will be a full color deluxe version at some point but going for full color raises the printing costs for 88 pages by a whopping $13 which IMHO is too much. In B/W it will be possible to sell the final game for less than $10 which is as it should be as far as I am concerned.

And here is a revised design for the front cover... more gritty which I like better: