Community

Hey everyone,
I'm new to tabletops in general having been only involved in one campaign so far (a lengthy Mouse Guard campaign) and a one off here and there.   I picked up Gamma World to try out with my regular group because our GM for Mouse Guard has never had the chance to join a game as a player, plus I'd love to try my hand at GMing.

Here's where my questions come in.  We ran the first example encounter from the Gamma World box where you battle a couple badders and porkers on the hill to the tower.  They're going to keep these characters for a future campaign I'm working on, but there was only 3 players in the initial encounter.  For the campaign I may run it will probably jump to 5 or 6 at most, but I have no sense of how many enemies they should be encountering in this.  I know it's a very combat driven system but I want a mix of them exploring and doing some battle along the way, then having them do full on battle encounters against a group of enemies.  How do I judge when to raise the level of the enemies? How do I scale it?  How do I decide what is too much or too little fo them to be facing?  Not to mention if I let them keep their characters we may have say... 3 level 2 guys, and 2 level 1 in a party together.  What are my options in creating opponents for them to handle?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated