Metamorphosis Alpha 1E
Monday 16 August 2021

In August 2021 we presented the
Metamorphosis Alpha Bundle from
Goodman Games featuring the vintage 1976 First Edition of
Metamorphosis Alpha, the SFRPG created by James M. Ward of mutants and monstrosities on a colossal generation starship.
In 2290 humanity launched its first colonization ship, the
Warden. A radiation storm in deep space struck and crippled the gigantic starship. The ship’s human crew died — the few survivors mutated and formed primitive civilizations — tribes struggled against a world they could not comprehend. Generations later, as a human, mutant, or robot on the
Warden, you fight to survive, unaware even that your irradiated world is a spaceship. Can you uncover the secrets of the
Warden and steer it back on course, or will you simply try to live another day?
TSR Hobbies published
Metamorphosis Alpha as its fourth roleplaying game, after brown/white-box
OD&D, Boot Hill (both 1974), and
Empire of the Petal Throne (1975). Ken St. Andre’s now-forgotten
Starfaring (1976) barely beat
Metamorphosis Alpha to print as the first-ever SFRPG, but
MA has hung in there ever since, setting the benchmark for gonzo post-apocalypse adventure across
multiple editions and through its spiritual successor,
Gamma World.

In 2014, in an initiative similar to its long-running “
Original Adventures Reincarnated” program of ambitious new editions of classic TSR titles,
Goodman Games ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a
Metamorphosis Alpha 1E Deluxe Collector’s Edition. Goodman followed up with Kickstarters for the major
Epsilon City campaign expansion, and for Ward’s adventure
Doom on the Warden that, 44 years after
Metamorphosis Alpha debuted, finally lays a genuine path — a deadly, monster-filled path inspired by
Tomb of Horrors — for players characters to discover the
Warden‘s long-lost Level Zero, repair the ship, and set it once more on its long-interrupted journey.
This all-new offer featured the 1976
MA First Edition rulebook in a meticulous reproduction Goodman originally presented as Chapter Two of its
Deluxe Collector’s Edition (2016). Together with
Epsilon City, Doom on the Warden, and nine supplements and adventures, this offer had
everything you need for a complete campaign of precognitive regenerating bearoids and pyrokinetic shapechanging sword bushes exploring the Death Ziggurat in Cryostasis Facility B.

There were
seven titles in our
Starter Collection (retail value
$42) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, with pride of place given to the Goodman Games reproduction of the complete
Metamorphosis Alpha 1E rulebook, originally presented as Chapter Two of Goodman’s
Deluxe Collector’s Edition.The Starter Collection also included the
Referee’s Screen; three
MA sourcebooks —
Creatures & Gadgets,
The Mutation Manual, and
The Warden Armory; and two adventure sourcebooks:
Death Ziggurat in Zero-G and
Warden Adventures.

Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price
also got our entire
Bonus Collection with
six more titles worth an additional
$70, including
Doom on the Warden;
Epsilon City; and more
MA adventures and props:
The Android Underlords,
The Captain’s Table, and
Level of the Lost, plus the
Book of Handouts.
Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) went to the charity chosen by Goodman Games publisher Joseph Goodman, the
San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. For more than 30 years the SF-Marin Food Bank has worked to end hunger in the San Francisco Bay Area, where one in four are at risk.