Old School Metamorphosis Alpha

 

Metamorphosis Alpha was first published in 1976 by TSR and authored by James. M. Ward. Though not the first scifi game it was one of the early games. The game had some similarities with D&D along with unique differences. In addition it clearly borrowed some ideas from other TSR games and would proceed Gamma World. In concept Metamorphosis Alpha is a space fantasy game of mutants and non mutants on a massive generational colony ship in lost in space. The ship is so huge it appears to be a self contained world that also functions as a giant massive dungeon crawl and world combined. If played as envisioned players would not immediately know they are in a ship, some referees have even disguised the environment sufficiently for the players to believe they are in a fantasy setting by burrowing heavily from D&D. Another aspect of the game contained in the sample combat rules clearly indicates players vs players situations are to be expected. This actually makes sense as the game rules suggest up to 25 players can play. On the whole I have seen folks suggest that these are either massive groups of players led by a “caller” or different smaller groups sand boxing through different areas of the ship, which are all possible of course, however the rules seem to indicate teams of competing players also could be playing at the same time. 

Many modern role playing gamers find it odd that the setting, the ship, technology and monsters comes first in the book and then player character creation followed by everything else. First the setting and understanding of it as the Judge of the game was being emphasised as important. In addition the rule book was written for the Ship Master (aka the GM) to read and character creation was clearly supposed to be something done together guided by the Referee. Session Zero though not called that was implied. Further this game was designed in such a way that only the Game Master ever needed the rule book. In other words the one rule book was the DMG and players didn’t need a PHB, they simply needed guidance in the very limited creation process. Any ideas out side of the RAW would be created or added by the Game Master and indeed how to create mutant monster rules for example are in the book.

 The game has the potential to be very deadly. I thought it would be interesting to explore the Game Mechanics of Metamorphosis Alpha first edition and gain a deeper understanding of the game.

 Character Creation Compared With D&D & Gamma World 

  Characters have 6 basic abilities and like in D&D’s Men & Magic rules 3d6 are rolled and added together to give a total for each ability. However the latter Gamma World would move to using 4d6 drop the lowest roll and add the remaining 3 higher numbers together. Another difference between the three games is Gamma World would discuss “hopeless” characters and die statistics and what they mean a bit for mechanics.

 Unlike D&D and the latter Gamma World though some of the abilities are different. I decided to line up both original D&D’s abilities and latter Gamma World’s abilities to show the similarities and differences in concept abilities between the games. I kept each game’s original order but it is interesting to see the differences between all three games both in abilities held important and language used.

 Metamorphosis Alpha’s Abilities    VS    D&D             VS         Gamma World

Radiation Resistance                                  Strength                      Mental Strength 

Mental Resistance                                      Intelligence                 Intelligence 

Dexterity                                                    Wisdom                       Dexterity 

Constitution                                                Dexterity                     Charisma

Strength                                                      Constitution                 Constitution 

Leadership Potential                                   Charisma                     Physical Strength 

  I personally like the terminology Leadership Potential as it emphasises a more social understanding of the ability referred to more commonly as Charisma in TSR games. I feel it is simply clearer terminology. As you can see all three games have Constitution though how that is used mechanically does deviate between the games, leading to some interesting differences. All three also have Dexterity and Strength with Gamma World needing to add the word Physical to clarify based on its internal terminology. Only D&D and Gamma World have Intelligence as an ability score. Metamorphosis Alpha’s Mental Resistance and Gamma World’s Mental Strength can be considered glosses for the same ability concept. Only D&D has Wisdom as a separate ability, while only Metamorphosis Alpha has Radiation Resistance as a separate ability. When Gamma World is published the ability Radiation Resistance is rolled into Constitution allowing for an Intelligence ability in Gamma World. Early D&D tied Intelligence to psionics but both Wisdom and Intelligence were also tied to magic via the Cleric and Magic User classes respectively. When I was a kid and we moved either D&D characters to Gamma World or vice versa we usually treated Mental Strength as a gloss for Wisdom to simplify conversion between the games. Another option of course was to simply roll up the new ability and add it to the system trotting player characters.

Next article will take a look at each of Metamorphosis Alpha’s Abilities in detail…