This is the PDF version of Mutant: Year Zeroand shares the same ISBN.
Mutant: Year Zero goes back to the origins of the Mutant franchise: role-playing after the Apocalypse. In this game, you play as one of The People - heavily mutated humans living in The Ark, a small and isolated settlement in a sea of chaos. The outside world is unknown to you, and so is your origin.
Mutant: Year Zero has two major game environments, each with its own style of play:
The Ark, your home in the dawnworld. A nest of intrigue and Lord of the Flies-style power struggles, it's far from a safe haven. But it's the only home you know, and just maybe the cradle of a new civilization. The game rules let you improve and develop the Ark in the areas of Warfare, Food Supply, Technology, and Culture. It is up to you, the players, to decide which projects to embark on.
The Zone, wastelands outside the Ark. You will venture into the Zone in search of food, artifacts, other mutants, and knowledge - not least about The People's own origin. The game includes two maps of example Zones; London and New York and a plethora of tables and other tools to let the GM populate its sectors with mutants, deadly monsters and bizarre phenomena.
Where in the world the Zone and the Ark are located is up to you - why not play in a post-apocalyptic version of your own home town? The modular approach of this game lets you place all of the campaign material wherever you like.
I have totally slowed down my purchases from the Bundle of Holding this year. [Editor's note: I just reviewed my purchases and, in fact, I have increased my purchases this year; I only thought I had decreased my purchases because I remember several that I considered and then skipped. And I'm still waiting for them to re-issue the Bundle for Heart/Spire, which is a guaranteed purchase.]
But after checking out from the library and liking it, I decided to take the plunge on the Mutant bundles, which include the four core books:
* Mutant Year Zero * Genlab Alpha * Mechatron * Elysium
and a bunch of smaller accessories/adventures, including five zone compendiums:
* Lair of the Saurians * Dead Blue Sea * Die, Meat Eater, Die! * Eternal War * Hotel Imperator
and the adventure The Gray Death.
OK, first, as a general observation, each of the core books follows the pattern of Elysium: there's a whole RPG game (including character creation, system, and description of the world); and then there's some other game or system to keep track of the world; and then there's a campaign that basically undoes the world.
Now, after reading a bunch of OSR material, where there's usually kind of an open sandbox and a lot of random tables to define things -- and consequently, no real guarantee that there's a coherent story or that the PCs will experience that story -- it's real interesting to read something that has a story to tell and a world to undo.
So, for instance, Mutant: Year Zero is about a post-apocalyptic community of human mutants led by an elder from before the fall; besides adventures to go on as you explore the poisoned Zone around your safe Ark, you can also help shore up the community through projects. (That's sort of the mini-game here, and, I've said it before, there's no mini-game I love more than "building a town/headquarters.") Now, besides struggling for food, water, and equipment, the mutants face another type of existential threat: they are sterile, and if you want your species to go on, you have to deal with that.
And you also have to deal with mutant animals and even robots from the before-time. There's a real Gamma World feel here, and even some of the art has some of the goofiness of that early RPG; or even the early D&D adventure, Expedition to Barrier Peak, where your medieval goons stumble into a crashed spaceship.
Which kind of makes me wonder what the tone here is supposed to be: grim struggle against death or wacky silly adventures in the aftermath?
Anyway, through the included adventure (which is maybe about half the book), your PCs will slowly put together the real story of the world and their place in it. (Spoiler alert: they are not human, they are mutants made by one of the four titan companies/countries that survived the nuclear war.)
Genlab Alpha doesn't continue the story, which is both a brilliant and funny move: brilliant because you can just pick up any of these four books and play a game; funny because... are you supposed to play through one core book, learn the real history of the world, and then play another where you pretend not to? Well, maybe that's why the games are so distinct in location and action: whereas in Mutant, you play mutants who think they're humans trying to recover the past (quite literally in terms of the artifacts that will show you the true history), in Genlab Alpha, you play mutated, sapient animals who are kept in a prison valley by these robots. The mini-game that goes along with this is tracking the population and rebelliousness of the different animal tribes, from the mostly loyal dog clans to the naturally rebellious rabbit warren.
Because, no shock here, the campaign is all about finding a way to destroy the robot wardens and escape the valley.
(And just like the mutants were created by one of the titan groups, these animals were made by another. I think--I might have misplaced one of those titan enclaves. Also, the game system is so similar: where mutants had their own powers, the smart animals of Genlab Alpha have feral powers that let them do, you know, animal things.)
Now, the GM notes for this note that, while animals can be funny, this is not just a comedy, that this is a dark fable--and yet, again, I don't really get that from the art or from the story line. Like, the fight for freedom has an elemental quality, I get that, but pair that with a picture of a badger skiing down a mountain while a drone chases him, and I don't know that "fable" is the word I would use.
Mechatron is, I think, the third book in the series. (I'm not judging by print-dates but by which books mention which other books.) And this follows a robot rebellion in an undersea robot factory: another place set up by one of the post-nuke titans, but abandoned by the humans, and given the final command to build whatever they need to win the struggle. So now the robots are living out these commands, and some of them have developed consciousness, which the central intelligence does not like.
In a bit of comedy setup out of Paranoia, your sapient robots get recruited into special units to destroy sapient robots--only, I don't think that the writers were going for some black comedy here. I do appreciate other bits of the set-up though, that do have a more grim note, like how the factory is built underwater, but water is sort of the big enemy of machines and robots, so you have to reinforce the crumbling factory while also struggling for independence and helping others.
(A quick note: you can tell the authors like robot stories since once of the robots here is named Eando, after author Eando Binder, which was the pen name used by Earl and Otto ("E and O") Binder, and who had an early series of robot stories starting with one named... "I, Robot.")
I like this game and setting, but I'm not sure about the tone, and that is not helped by the artwork (again), which is both grubby and colorful, grim and whimsical. I also find it a little odd that this story doesn't end with the robots freeing themselves (which might be too close to Genlab Alpha), but with the robots having to fend off an attack from mutants and humans. So on top of the usual mini-game of how is your settlement doing (here, how is the factory faring in its struggle to survive), we get a mini-wargame at the end.
I covered Elysium in its own review, but just a reminder: a grotesquely unfair city is coming apart at the seams as the four main families engage in covert struggles for power, until the whole city falls and the survivors have to escape onto the surface--to live peacefully or not with the mutants, sapient animals, and robots from the other stories.
This bundle also included several zone compendiums, which are locales that you can drop into the game--complete with NPCs and little storylines; and a big adventure against some villainous survivors of the fall of Elysium and dealing with how the four groups of people coexist. Curiously, it seems like the canonical end of that adventure is unhappy, and that the answer to how these groups coexist is "uneasily", which is an interesting take, but not sure that's a future I want to play in.
Would I play this? Yeah, all four seem like fun, though, well, see the next answer.
Is this inspiring? It really leans on so many tropes and seems to pull from the history of RPGs that I'm not sure I find anything really original and interesting here, EXCEPT for the fact that we have four ways into the same question of "how did the earth die?"
Like all of Free League’s stuff, Mutant: Year Zero is excellent. The birthplace of the “Year Zero Engine,� Free League has developed this system across multiple lines (with significant customization) showing that it is a robust system with a large amount of flexibility and ease of use.
I originally picked this up because I was looking for a modern Gamma World replacement. Mutant is not that game. Yes, you play mutants in a post-apocalyptic setting, but this game is NOT the wahoo over the top style of Gamma World. This shit is serious - and dark. In fact, some groups might find it too dismal and full of despair to actually play.
Still, this is an excellent game focusing on exploration and hex crawl. There is a lot of gaming here, but GM’s be warned: There is really only one story here. It will probably take a year or so of playing to resolve it, but there isn’t a lot of plot flexibility. Nevertheless, the metaplot is actually good and likely very few groups will play long enough to completely exhaust it.
A "fun" take on the post apocalyptic TRPG. Still havent played with the year zero engine, but I have read a couple of different takes on it by now and I must say, I really like it. It seems to be so simple and clean and with a few adventures under the belt I think it will be really smooth. The world building is pretty dark, or rather it could be pretty dark. I see a lot of possibilities to play this more optimistic of you are so inclined. As I am. But hope work best after struggle so we will see.
Also, as always when it comes to Free league. Excelent production! Gonna pick up more of this line.
Great book with a fantastic theme and lots of cool ideas. There's a few mechanics that don't make sense thematically (e.g. finding artefacts by observing a sector from an observation point, or having maps with stuff on when noone is supposed to have gone out of the zone), but ultimately, the book is a guide and it's easy enough to make up reasons in game for that stuff.
I cannot wait for future collections of this stuff to come out.
A very complete game--while there are promises of many expansions and more material of all sorts, you can play an entire campaign start to finish with the material presented here, completing a metaplot while filling in your own adventures between the stages provided. There are some things that don't quite make sense, such as humans wandering around not dying of radiation sickness/Rot, but it would make for a good story so why not?
Una sorpresa, la verdad. El sistema, sencillo y fácil de enseñar, pero lo que me atrapa es la metatrama que los personajes van descubriendo, llena de giros argumentales dignos de una buena serie de televisión.
Buen juego con historia y campaña propia muy chula, con mecánicas de comercio postapocalipticas muy interesantes, aunq el sistema year engine no termina de gustarme en cuanto a daños y traumas se refiere
Great start to a great new system and a new era for Mutant, one of Swedens oldest role-playing games. But reading through it I also feel that it lacks the humor of earlier editions.
A stunningly beautiful and evocative RPG, it isn't hard to see how this has quickly become seen by many as the definitive post-apocalyptic game. Simple but genre supporting rules, great sandbox tools and a meta-narrative all lend themselves to creating all the structure a GM requires to create a fantastic and atmospheric campaign.
An exciting blend of indie ideals and old school mechanics. The books a joy to read and I devoured it in nearly one sitting. The proof is in the play of course, which will hopefully be soon.