Goodman Games

The origins of both MA and S3 are somewhat vague. Jim Ward told me that he was playing in Gary's campaign when he suggested that Gary write up a scifi game like D&D. Gary said something to the effect of, "no, you write one!" and Jim put togeher MA. If memory serves me correctly, in the same year that MA was released (1976) Gary ran S3 at Origins II as a tournament dungeon to sort of "introduce" MA to gamers, so I'm not quite sure which inspired which, or indeed if they weren't imagined more-or-less at the same time.

And if you're interested in MA, I should put in a plug for Jim Ward's Offical MA Forum. Jim posts there when healthy and is happy to answer questions about the game.

Thanks for the info. I love the behind the scenes stories of how things came about.

Awwwwwman, 200 posts and I'm still a devil lich. I was hoping to change to something new.

300 posts gets you to an arch mage and 500 gets you to an old red dragon ghost. Good luck.

Agreed. I find myself to be a bit of a "gaming historian" as well as a lifetime gamer. At least, I have a lot of interest in OD&D and the early TSR years. Seeing the evolution process on how a game gets from an idea into a full-blown product has always been interesting to me.

As far as Metamorphosis Alpha goes, it has always surprised me that TSR never really supported the game. Most of the other RPGs from that era (Boot Hill, Gamma World, Top Secret, etc) got GM screens, some sort of modules, and similar depth. MA got a single rulebook and then got shown the door. Strange. Even the MA articles in Dragon magazine vanish after issue 15 or so.

I suspect that's tied to why Jim Ward managed to retain the rights to MA while TSR kept the rights to pretty much every other game they produced.

I wonder why too. Did the game just not sell well or was it just one RPG to many for TSR to support? At the very least I would have thought an intro adventure for 1st level characters just to get people playing the game.

Not sure about all of the "behind the scenes" stuff. Maybe I'll ask Jim about it one of these days.

Part of the thing is that Jim initially imagined MA as a "one shot" game sale, with the notion that each person would design his own Warden-like colony ship. I think it really surprised him when everyone wanted to play on his ship.

Also, TSR moved on to Gamma World, which was a similar game but a bit more familar (post Holocaust earth) and that kept Jim busy for a while. GW got a lot of support.

I suspect that by the time TSR got around to supporting MA it was already "old news" and they decided to support the new GW instead. The fact that Jim retained rights to his game probably factored into this decision a lot as well.