Retrospective: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega

Since I recently started refereeing Metamorphosis Alpha, I've been thinking a lot about the game and its history. This inevitably led me back to the only version of MA I actually owned before the 21st century – 1994's Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, released as part of TSR's Amazing Engine series of games. Like the original version of Metamorphosis Alpha. this version of the game is fairly obscure, with comparatively few people even remembering its existence, let alone having played it. Indeed, I think it's possible that it's even more obscure than its predecessor, perhaps by being one of the last Amazing Engine products published during the tumultuous final years of TSR.

For those who don't recall, Amazing Engine was TSR's attempt to produce a set of generic rules that could be easily ported to a variety of different genres and settings. Designed by David Cook, the Amazing Engine rules were very "light," based on four ability scores, skills, and percentile resolution. Each setting book for the game built on this foundation, adding specific rules as needed. In Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, for example, specific rules additions primarily concerned mutations and high-tech equipment. 

Never having actually played any Amazing Engine game – a distinction I doubt is unique – I can’t speak to how well it worked in practice. Nor do I know whether the line’s cancellation less than two years after its launch reflects problems with the system itself or simply TSR’s dire financial state at the time, when no new product line likely stood much chance. The sad thing is that Amazing Engine did produce several genuinely interesting settings. I was particularly fond of For Faerie, Queen & Country, a Victorian fantasy setting, and Kromosome, a “biopunk” setting. Several of the other eight published settings were, by most accounts, also quite well done, though few people seemed to notice. Amazing Engine was very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it product line from the last days of TSR.

Designer Slade Henson, in his preface to Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, explains that the game began its life as a supplement to the 4th edition of Gamma World. That does not surprise me, since Jim Ward had been promising an MA supplement/expansion to Gamma World since at least 1981. The game's third edition very much seemed to be building toward it as well, making it one of the few things that captured my attention about that particular version of the game. However, it was never to be, nor, as Henson recounts, was it to happen for 4th edition. Once GW 4e was cancelled, the planned Metamorphosis Alpha boxed set – complete "a couple billion cards, a few trillion maps, and a googolplex of creative tidbits for the Game Master" – was to be converted into a stand-alone 144-page book. "I think I sobbed that day," Henson says, and I can't really blame him.

That said, the resulting book, truncated though it is from its original form, is not bad. I won't go so far as to call it good, because it has numerous flaws. However, it was, as I said, the first time I'd seen Metamorphosis Alpha in print in any form and so I liked it well enough. Furthermore, in many ways, it's an improvement on its legendary predecessor, most notably its organization and its relative completeness. It's perfectly possible to run an MA campaign with Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega and not be constantly beset with questions like, "What exactly does this mutation do?" or "Where did I see the rules for surprise?" Speaking as a referee in the midst of trying to make sense of the 1976 MA rulebook and occasionally failing, these improvements are no small things.

Likewise, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega gives a much clearer and more well defined sense of not only what happened on the starship Warden in the past but also in the present. The book provides referees with a history of the ship, from its launch to its encounter with the radiation cloud to its fall. There's also a post-sized map of all nine decks of the Warden, along with its various city and agricultural domes. These, in turn, are each described, giving the referee some sense of their inhabitants and current state. The end result is a much more cohesive presentations of the Warden and plenty of possible starting points for new campaigns and adventures.

None of these features are bad in themselves and, arguably, they're boons. One of the flaws of the original Metamorphosis Alpha is its sketchiness. As I mentioned in a previous post, MA 1976 is more of an outline toward an RPG than a fully playable game. In that respect, it's a bit like OD&D. On the other hand, one could reasonably argue that that very sketchiness is a virtue, giving individual referees a very free hand to make the Warden – and the game itself – his own, since he's left with no choice but to fill in the game's innumerable blank spaces and lacunae himself. 

By contrast, Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega does a lot more of the heavy lifting for you – not all of it by any means, but enough that there's a much stronger and more well defined foundation on which to build. That can be a great thing, provided you like the foundation. Otherwise, it can actually be harder to use, since the referee now has to work against the overall content and tone on offer rather than simply making it all up from scratch. I think it's here that Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is more of a mixed bag. Many of the descriptions of the Warden's current state are, in my opinion, strange and silly – like a tribe of Amazons who worship deactivated robots and mutant cows engaged in a range war against cowboy hat-wearing ranchers, to cite just two examples. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, which is why I can't say Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega is unqualifiedly bad. It's not and, by many definitions, it does a really good job, given the constraints under which it was produced and published. I also have some affection for it, since it was the first version of MA I owned and it has probably subtly informed my sense of what the game and setting is without my even realizing it. But a replacement to the original 1976 game it is not, which, for all its many flaws, strikes me as much more filled with possibility than its would-be successor.