The radioactive wastelands of Earth are home to many bizarre and barbaric creatures. The apocalypse hasn’t exactly made the world a better place. It’s survival of the fittest. Time to build a new food chain.
This game expansion presents a menagerie of mutant creatures and a ready-to-play adventure. The monsters presented herein can also be pulled over and used in the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game.
This product includes:
- 160-page adventure book, including new mutant monsters and
- 4 sheets of mutant monster tokens
- A battle map
Product History
Legion of Gold (2011), by Richard Baker and Bruce R. Cordell, is the second expansion for Gamma World Seventh Edition. It was published in February 2011.
Concluding the Gamma World 7 Line.D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game (2010) was thus followed by Famine in Far-Go (2010) and Legion of Gold (2011) over a four-month period … and that was it.
The publication of these Gamma World expansions was actually a bright spot during a dreary period for Wizards' D&D publication. In early 2011, Wizards was postponing and even cancelling products for the D&D line proper as they figured out their post-Essentials strategy. Famine in Far-Go and Legion of Gold were the only actual roleplaying product published by Wizards between the final Essentials books in November 2010 and the appearance of Heroes of Shadow (2011) the next April.
Like its predecessors, Legion of Gold was published as a square box that contained a 160-page book, two battle maps, character tokens, monster tokens and some more cards. These newest cards were more Alpha Mutation and Omega Tech cards, bearing the icon of a three-eyed mutant. They filled the card set out at 213 total, including all the fixed and collectible releases.
Adventure Tropes. The Gamma World adventures were constantly limited by the requirement that every tactical encounter had to be playable on the game's battle maps. Baker says that this made the design of Legion of Gold tricky … even though he now had access to the maps from D&D Gamma World, Famine in Far-Go, and Legion of Gold.
Adventure Tropes: A Tale of Two Legions. The idea of an army of golden warriors originally appeared in GW1: "Legion of Gold" (1981), the first adventure for first edition Gamma World (1978). There, towns were being attacked by "golden marauders". The players stumbled through three irrelevant mini-adventures (delving into a buggem nest, a series of bomb shelters, and an underwater laboratory) before finally discovering the home of the Legion of Gold and the computer controlling them; fighting ensued.
For the new Legion of Gold, Baker wanted to create something "strongly influenced by the original from thirty years back, but [that] did something new". As a result, Legion of Gold moves a bit away from its predecessor (and certainly moreso than the similar conversion of Famine in Far-Go). There are still marauding Legions, but rather than facing irrelevant sidequests, the players now move straight along a single path to face the Legion: from the Barony of Horn to LUCAS Lab … to the moon!
As with Famine, the differences between the two Legions demonstrated how adventure design had changed in the intervening 30 years. The original "Legion" was a disconnected set of dungeon delves, while the new Legion is a much more carefully plotted series of tactical encounters. In the modern-day, story and continuity had become king!
Expanding Gamma World 7. Like Famine in Far-Go, Legion of Gold contains much more than just an adventure. It also includes a handful of new origins (aongside a table for rolling against all 48 origins in the three boxes) and an impressive 45 pages of monsters.
Exploring the Gamma World. As was the case in the previous iteration of this adventure, Legion of Gold is set in the Gamma Terra future of southern Wisconsin. The Barony of Horn centers on Elkhorn, a modern-day city of 10,000 located between Chicago and Milwaukee. Burl is the similarly sized Burlington, which lies east of Elkhorn, and Muk Wona is of course Milwaukee, on the shore of the Michig Sea (Lake Michigan).
However, the Legion of Gold's focus on the Gamma Moon is probably more notable. Though the general details on the moon are somewhat scant, it reveals a whole new world of adventure.
Monsters of Note. There's another large batch of monsters in Legion of Gold, featuring not just 'bots and mutants but also space critters and even supernatural creatures like demons and haunts. This shows the breadth of possibilities in the Big Mistake Gamma Universe. The levels of these monsters also tend to be on the high side, filling in the rest of the Gamma World bestiary. The overall scope of levels goes from 4-14, with most of them running from levels 7-10. The monsters at levels 11-14 are particularly notable because they're in advance of Gamma World 7 character maximums!
About the Creators. Baker and Cordell were the designers of Gamma World 7th edition, now getting a last chance to work on their well-received game line.
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com. Thanks to the Acaeum for careful research on Players Handbook printings.
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