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. 

The Dark Crystal

It's often said, not without plausibility, that the 1970s were the years when fantasy became an unstoppable pop cultural force. Indeed, this blog has since its inception championed the 1970s as a time of unique artistic ferment during which many, if not most, of our contemporary fantasies achieved a foothold in our collective imaginations that they have not yet relinquished. Despite that, I would like to submit an addendum to that thesis, namely that it was not until the 1980s that we would truly start to see the full fruits of the work of the previous decade. 

A good example of what I'm talking about is the 1982 movie, The Dark Crystal, which I recently had occasion to watch again for the first time in many years. I saw the film when it was first released and probably saw it again a few years later, after it appeared on VHS. I can't recall seeing it again until this week and, as such, my recollections of the movie's plot and other details were hazy. 

I did recall enjoying The Dark Crystal as a teenager, though I also remember that my opinion was in the minority among my peers, never mind adults, who largely found it confusing. That's understandable, as the action and characters are wholly fantastical, without any connection to our Earth. Likewise, the film proceeds incredibly briskly, clocking in at 93 minutes – the blink of an eye by the ponderous standards of 21st century Hollywood. It probably didn't help that the dialog is idiosyncratic and often opaque or that plot points are revealed only by a narrator's voice-over. Had Jim Henson had his way, it would have been even more cryptic, with some of its characters speaking only in a constructed language whose meaning is revealed via subtitles.

On the other hand, one could quite reasonably argue that The Dark Crystal respects the intelligence of its viewers. Rather than spoon feeding its plot with slow-moving expository scenes, it moves nimbly, trusting that viewers will understand the details the action implicitly conveys. That's not to say that the movie is perfect by any means. The main character, the Gelfling Jen, is something of a cipher, for example, and that leads, I think, to a certain level of detachment by the viewer. Jen is no Luke Skywalker; we learn very little about who he is or what he wants beyond a vague sense of his loyalty to his deceased master, urSu.

Yet, I can't hold this against the movie, because of how wondrous its world and characters are. The villainous Skeksis are simply amazing, upright vulture-lizard attired in rotting finery and bickering with one another within the Castle of the Crystal. So striking are the Skeksis that they even had an effect upon Dungeons & Dragons, in the form of the Nagpa that appeared in module X4, Master of the Desert Nomads. Equally amazing are the urRu Mystics, who stand in opposite to the Skeksis. Slow-moving and deliberate, the Mystics have six limbs and spend their time in quiet contemplation, contrasting with the power squabbles of the Skeksis. Both are delights to watch, not to mention testaments to the skills of Jim Henson's Creature Shop

All the characters and creatures in The Dark Crystal are Muppets of one sort or another and I couldn't help but marvel at both the imagination and artistry involved in their creation. The weird crustacean soldiers of the Skeksis, the Garthim, really impressed me, as did the landstrider mounts employed by the Gelflings. These are only the most prominent examples, however; most scenes included lots of other creatures in the background and they're every bit as imaginative as those shown front and center. Everything in the movie employed practical effects, not out for the fetishistic reasons we see in big budget movies nowadays, but because there was simply no other way to achieve these effects in the early 1980s. They truly are wonders of another era of film making.

As I said, The Dark Crystal isn't perfect. There have been more cohesive and approachable fantasy films since its release almost four decades ago. Yet, for all its flaws, I found it hard not to be impressed with the scope of its fantastical vision, accomplished before the advent of computer generated imagery, and without (too much) recourse to the well worn tropes of the genre. This is a movie that dares to present a different kind of fantasy world and to tell a story that isn't just the usual plucky band of rebels versus the Dark Lord – and does so in the span of barely an hour and a half. I wish there were more movies like The Dark Crystal today; if there were, I might be more interested in what Hollywood is producing.