Articles by Jared von Hindman
Jared von Hindman is an artist and sometime comedian who "dug too deep" while researching Stupid Monsters of Dungeons & Dragons. He awoke something dire and horrible (perhaps fiendish, even) and now he spends his days playing with plastic elves and illustrating new and creative ways to kill goblins. Currently he resides in Berlin with an older woman and a snake named Slinky.
Gamma World: You Can’t Handle All This Junk
“What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?”
-Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”
Hi there, Gamma Boys, Girls, Androgynous Robots, Plants, and indiscernible Others. What we’re going to talk about today is the Junk. Junk that’s survived the test of time. But first, Trivia! How did we get here?
For me, it involved doing way too much research for my D&D Alumni Drop-Out article on the long history of Gamma World. I tore through book after book, edition after edition, trying to wrap my head around what the essence of the Gamma World experience was all about. Thing was, I overlooked a major component, mostly because I think I have an allergy to what was cool about old-school gaming: Charts.
It wasn’t until I saw the Ancient Junk table on pg 81 that something started popping back into my mind, like that Gummi Bear song or that one time at Summer Camp you’re supposed to have forgotten about. Fast Forward a bit to me torturing my players by forcing them to roll random to get terrible treasure crafted by the infamous James Ward or Gygax themselves, a Twitter joke about having these charts lying around, and huzzah: The Critical Hits crew steps up and makes Gygax’s Junk available to all. That….sounds wrong some how, but such is the fun of talking about Gamma World and a word that’s versatile enough to refer to Twinkies, Chinese merchant vessels, broken alarm clocks, and genitalia. So don’t judge me.
On topic: The Grand Unified Junk table has terrible things from all editions….that had Junk tables. Sure, they might have been called Loot or Treasure, but anyone who played knew they mostly contained something that you’d be embarrassed to have…or ashamed to be excited to have. The White Wolf & Alternity editions, being serious expeditions into Gamma Terra, had nothing to stuff inside my trunk. The others? Oh my. Here’s a brief rundown, followed by some of my personal favorites that just might convince you that the Grand Unified Junk Table needs to be let into your heart (or hearts, if you have more than one). [Read the rest of this article]
