Mutant: Year Zero

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:41 am

Anyone here heard about this ? Its apparently a swedish roleplaying game set in a post-apocalyptic world. The catch seems to be the existence of two phases: the "Ark" phase and the "Exploration" phase. The Ark is the place players live and help to define as a group at the beginning of the game. The Exploration phase is when the players go out the Ark to explore the Zone (how they call the region around it). Its supposed to deal with scarcity and other setting-appropriated themes. Oh, and all players are mutants.

Here, they even have a little advertising movie. Looks cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jk7UBlwUPI

THoughts ?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 1:53 am

Who did they plagiarize this time?

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 2:21 am

Well, it has some key similarities to Apocalypse World (characters relationships, "special moves" for each class, orthogonal results on successes, etc) so I suspect they took some inspiration from that game. (*EDIT* this interview indicates AW was indeed an inspiration). Other than that it sounds pretty original to me.

Also, the "Ark" aspect seems pretty well realized. Im reading the book right now and at the start of each session the group participate on an "Assembly" where they vote for different projects like Slavery, Universal Suffrage, Radio Tower and Armory, for example. There are dozens of projects described in the book, each with its requisites and effects. Reminds me a little of Pendragon, which is a good thing.

Atmo · Post by **Atmo** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 4:00 pm

Dead thread? Dead thread.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 4:20 pm

Frank cocksucker ? Frank cocksucker.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 5:38 pm

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31286

The most basic of searches would have given some data on the game.

Looks like there's some degree of strucuture to it, but it's mostly a rules-lite storygame.

Image links from the review above:

Character Description
http://www.modiphius.com/uploads/1/4/0/ ... 3_orig.jpg

An example of a home base, or Ark

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/u ... nt-Ark.jpg

First Pages of setting fiction:
http://www.modiphius.com/uploads/1/4/0/ ... 4_orig.jpg

Some internal (afaik) art:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qElZu-nLfJk/maxresdefault.jpg

Atmo · Post by **Atmo** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:26 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote:http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31286

The most basic of searches would have given some data on the game.

Looks like there's some degree of strucuture to it, but it's mostly a rules-lite storygame.

Image links from the review above:

Character Description
http://www.modiphius.com/uploads/1/4/0/ ... 3_orig.jpg

An example of a home base, or Ark

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/u ... nt-Ark.jpg

First Pages of setting fiction:
http://www.modiphius.com/uploads/1/4/0/ ... 4_orig.jpg

Some internal (afaik) art:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qElZu-nLfJk/maxresdefault.jpg

Quite unninteresting. People who dig those settings will love it, though.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 8:30 pm

Depends on how high their standards for game engines or settings are.

Some setting aspects could be useful for other projects or genres of game.

While this setting uses "arks"; the idea isn't original, but some of the ways its presented here might give some varitions on this repeated theme in apocalyptic/post-apocalytic narratives (Fallout, The MaddAdam Trilogy, Gamma World, etc.); and could be useful in thinking about mechanical structures for games where the PCs aren't Hobo Psychpaths.

The setting itself is.. like most typical post-nuclear apocalyptic fiction... something that barely interests me.

Mostly because post-apocalyptic narratives are barely distinguishable from westerns. Might is right; there is no law in the wilds; every where you travel (outside of true population centres) is operating on a scarcity or borderline-survival economy.

I'm more in favour of a setting that has After Sundown monsters roaming around making problems for the surviving monstrous descendants of the human race; in something that looks more like the Heavy Metal science fantasy one expects from D&D/Rifts/Exalted.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jun 13, 2015 8:39 pm

I'm more in favour of a setting that has After Sundown monsters roaming around making problems for the surviving monstrous descendants of the human race

Funny, that's one of the themes I got from the game. Apparently the players must deal with monster inside the Ark (literally - as everyone is mutant - and figuratively) and outside in the Zone (don't know exactly the type of threats that exist, but I think I've read something like savages, doom cults, anomalies, and even ghouls).

No ?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:04 pm

I am disappoint... the name is really cool.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:40 pm

What disappointed you, CodeGlaze ? From my part, its the X-men vibe I got from the character powers. I think it don't fit the grittiness of the setting.

On the other hand, I'm finding it have a nice Stalker feel to it (the wastes arr colled "Zone", there are "Anomalies" as threats, there is even a character class called "Stalker" with a special ability called "Find the path" ). I wonder how easily I could be converted to such a scenario.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:47 am

Real mutants

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 3:53 pm

Quick heads up to say my group agreed to make this our next campaign. Everybody is pretty excited with the game premise. One player in particular simply jumped "Lemme GM this! Lemme GM!" after leafing through some pages.

About the mutations, we are still discussing it, but we identified that most of them has a "survival" functionality (besides the more blatant "Xmenish" ones), so we are tending to let all mutations available, but only to be used as survival-tools (Ie: the "Pyrokinesis" can only be used for heating up a small area to avoid characters get hypothermia, or to fire up flammable materials - we cut out the put people on fire effect. )

Ill put more impressions after we have our first session.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 5:40 pm

Aside from being paid by shitty companies that make shitty RPGs to google bomb, why do you make posts like this?

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:30 pm

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?758 ... Zero/page4

I expected his "heads up" to be copy pasted from there where he actually received "nice" "helpful" replies, but no. I guess it's part of the "social experiment" to post it here instead.

But he IS willing to say this there and not here

About AW supposedly doing everything better, don't know if I agree.

This is one interesting "social experiment" all right.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:28 pm

Someone was talking to me pretty excitedly about this at the last con I was at. A wonderful person, actually, because they bought some of my games.

They made it sound pretty cool. Certainly like less of a shitshow than asspocalypse world.

apparently, by critfailing rolls you get mutations that make you progressively more awesome, until you have too many mutations (4?) at which point you explode, because you are too awesome to live.

I was intrigued.

About AW supposedly doing everything better, don't know if I agree.

damn straight you shouldn't agree, assworld doesn't even have fucking mutants!!!!