So this is a good point to mention a couple of things here. First off, Gamma World is fucking fantastic. Fourth Edition GW is superb. You’ve probably seen the Penny Arcade Comic about GW, and if anything it understands just how amazing GW is. It condenses 4th Edition down to the important bits and trashes anything else that’s not important. Then it takes it and puts it in a post-apocalyptic setting where basically anything goes.
That said there are two complaints about the system that are I initially thought were pretty legit, but I have come to the conclusion are basically bullshit.
First is the cards. Yep, they made a Collectible Card Subgame that you can use for gamma world. You can buy booster packs, and they are hella expensive. There’s a simple solution. Don’t do it. The deck that came with the game is all you need. Really it’s plenty. If you can pick up some boosters on the cheap, maybe … but it’s not so big a deal to only have a DM deck to draw from. And the DM deck comes with the game.
Second is Ammo. Here’s the way ammo works. You keep track of every bullet, erg of laser-shot, and arrow. No wait, that’s dumb and stupid. You have ammo for each of your guns. Every fight you have 2 options: Don’t fire your gun more than once or fire it as many times as you frakking feel like. If you only fire your gun once, you’re conserving ammo and don’t run out. If you fire it two or twenty times during a fight you’re not conserving ammo, and at the end of the fight you run out of ammo. Now in general every 2-3 encounters the party will find Ammo. And ammo is totally abstracted. So if Bob’s pulse rifle, and Claire’s slug-thrower are both out, they can hash out who gets the ammo however they like, but then that player is resupplied. Maybe Claire gives Bob some ancient tech to get the ammo, and then it was bullets all along.