We had a major Star Frontiers campaign just wrap up before Christmas, where the kiddos were a part of the victorious UPF in their triumph over the Sathar in SW 2. When the next campaign kicks off, it will be a few years later, new NPCs and new challenges. So for a 'one off' I told the kids we'd try Gamma Dawn. What they don't know, is that at the culmination of the adventure, they will discover that they are actually in the same frontier that the main SF campaign we just wrapped is, on one of the plague worlds. 

In fact, the SF campaign 2.0 will in part deal with the impact of the discovery of the planet and the mad race by corps and the Malthar Synidicate to gain tech from the planet. 

So for character generation, I allowed the kids to go with a character concept and pick some mutations rather than randomly rolling. That said, I limited them to physical mutations so they wouldn't be massive cyber warfare invisible ninjas or something like that. My younger son elected to go for a big mutated animal kind of like a lion, so massive claws, dumb as a rock, really fast and strong. My older son went for a more sniper type so went with different vision related mutations. All really interesting things, but nothing so powerful as to make the game boring. I did this in part because I'll allow them at some point to be rescued and be run in the frontier as "henchmen" of their main characters. 

So I designed a little area with some small city states (The Free Towns) where they will be adventuring, and began with the characters defending their town from a danger on the road just outside. From there, it will lead to a keep on the borderlands kind of dungeon crawl where they get paid to clear out some caves in a rift near one of the towns. The end game will be to discover a bunker left over from before the war with a guy in cryo from that era. Not only will he be able to get them off the planet, but will also provide some backstory to the tetrarchs, as his people were at one point one of their 'pet' races. 

So we're kind of in the first part now, but rather than do a traditional Gamma World hot zones everywhere kind of scenario, I elected to go with a civilization that is rebuilding over time, with cities coming together, certain mutants stabilizing into new species, and the people trying to expand civilization into the borderlands. The general tech level in the towns is a little more steampunk with revolvers, steam engines, etc. It's kind of a fun change of pace.