In June 2024 we revived the August 2021 Metamorphosis Alpha Bundle from Goodman Games featuring the vintage 1976 First Edition of Metamorphosis Alpha, the SFRPG 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 James M. Ward’s 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 revived August 2021 Metamorphosis Alpha Bundle once again 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 revival provided 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 this revived offer’s 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. (Note: This isn’t the complete Collector’s Edition, just the rulebook reproduction from Chapter Two.) The Starter Collection also includes 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 this revival’s 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.
