The Year in Post-Apocalyptic RPGs 2015 (Part One: Catalyst to Shayō)

BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN

This turned out to be a great year for the apocalypse. So great I’ve reluctantly had to split 6K words into two parts. On the plus side, I only had to write one post this week. On the minus, it was four times my usual word count. Anyway, let’s look at 2015’s apocalypses in other media.

In television we saw a few things. 12 Monkeys is and isn’t a post-apocalyptic show. We’ve seen that trope elsewhere: time travel to prevent catastrophe. But I don’t think we’ve seen that as an rpg. The Messengers also had characters attempting to prevent disaster, this time the Rapture. (BTW is the Rapture supposed to be preventable?) In SPOILER territory, Wayward Pines has an ambiguously apocalyptic backdrop. Last Man on Earth may be the first even vaguely funny post-apocalyptic comedy (aside from the Quiz Show sketches on That Mitchell & Webb Look). The Man in the High Castle is good but falls more into dystopia. We do have one big winner. Probably the most classic and interesting post-apocalyptic program to arrive was Into the Badlands, combining a wuxia feel with a fallen world.

In film we had Z for Zachariah, about a love triangle after a nuclear war. That came and went quickly. Hunger Games: Mockingjay 2, Divergent: Insurgent and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials all offered new installments in their respective YA dystopias with hyphens. The terrible Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse mercifully seems to be one of the year’s few Z-films. Disney’s borderline Randian Tomrrowland references the apocalypse. The same could be said for the underperforming Terminator: Genisys. Of course the crown jewel of 2015 is Mad Max Fury Road. It’s amazing. It also harkens back to one of the most influential films on post-apocalyptic games, The Road Warrior.

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I SMELL A RIOT

I focus mostly on core books here. I include Kickstarter projects if they actually released in 2014. I give pdf-only releases their own entry if they’re notable, of significant size, or come from a major publisher. I’ve consolidated a ton of material into several ”Miscellaneous” items at the end. I’m sure I missed some releases. If you spot them, leave me a note in the comments.

The Year in Post-Apocalyptic RPGs 2015 (Part Two: STALKER: gra fabularna to Winter Eternal)
History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part One: 1976-1984)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Two: 1985-1987)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Three: 1988-1990)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Four: 1991-1993)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Five: 1994-1996)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Six: 1997-1999)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Seven: 2002-2002)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Eight: 2003)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Nine: 2004-2005)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Ten: 2006)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Eleven: 2007)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part Twelve: 2008)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part 13: 2009)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part 14: 2010)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part 15: 2011)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part 16: 2012)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs (Part 17: 2013)

The Year in Post-Apocalyptic RPGs 2014

History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs

History of Superhero RPGs

History of Horror RPGs

History of Universal RPGs

Samurai RPGs

History of Wild West RPGs: First Fifteen

1. Catalyst Roleplaying Game

That’s a bad name for a post-apocalyptic game. It's generic enough I assumed at first it was a universal system (ala Spark, Omni, Paragon). There's already a Catalyst Games, a pretty significant rpg publisher. There’s also the venerable Catalyst series of supplements from Flying Buffalo. The publisher could have easily tagged on another word reduce confusion (Fallen, Armageddon, World of…just something). 

This is the first product from the Cherry Picked Game and they unusually went with a boxed set. That's less common these days. I wonder if the availability of places like The Game Crafter will make that more common. Catalyst’s box includes a 270 page manual, a deck of 142 action cards, and a link to the companion app. Another interesting step forward, and one we might see more of. Catalyst also has a live action trailer on their website. Let’s say it doesn't do the game any favors.

The actual Catalyst setting goes with a tried & true Demon Invasion/Magic Returns disaster. Plague devastates humanity and now you’re among the survivors fighting back. The system uses d6's plus character stuff vs. a task number to determine success. Good, basic stuff. But Catalyst also touts their ‘card-based combat’ in promo materials. From what I can tell these aren't actually part resolution. Instead you use them to state and reveal your actions. That’s intended to create tension and potentially have players working at cross-purposes. I guess that means a limit on at table chatter? Those cards are an intriguing idea, but I'm curious how much work that makes for the GM. It looks like the GM picks cards for all the NPCs involved in a scene. 

Despite the box and app, Catalyst looks like a first product. Most of the graphic design chops went towards those cards. The core book has walls of text in places without headers. That makes reading more of a slog. Add to that the choice to make the page margins as narrow as possible. It looks weird. While that doesn’t completely undercut the product, I'd recommend checking out the game's website as well as the downloadable material to see if it fits for you. In particular see the sample, the character sheet, the GM advice, and the printable cards. The company's supported Catalyst with several supplements, including Fourth World. I point that out because this is a modern-magic game using a term suspiciously close to one closely identified with another big techno-magic game (“kof” Shadowrun “kof”). And that’s made by the company with the same name as this rpg. Deliberate?

2. Fragged Empire

Fragged Empire calls itself post-post-apocalypse. It’s a cool way to describe something we’ve seen before. 10,000 years in the future a galaxy-wide war devastated societies. After a 100 years of 'tribalism', four genetically engineered peoples have banded together to head forth into space. There's tension between the four, but all know they need the other to survive. It sounds of a highly developed version of Cascade Failure, one of my favs. The quickstart does a great job of setting up all this in just a couple of paragraphs. The cover art's striking so I had high hopes going in.

There's a lot to like right out of the gate. They have crisp layout and smart use of icons. The art remains nice throughout. They mention non-linear character building and a focus on sandbox play. The actual resolution system's 3d6 plus character stuff vs. a difficulty. Description can add a roll bonus (or penalty). While you're looking for a total number, each 6 rolled can be used to power special effects (ala Dragon Age, Mutant Year Zero). All good.

Then there's Tactical Miniatures Combat.

“This ruleset includes intuitive tactical combat in which you will need to react not only to your environment (cover is your friend), but also to your opponents’ actions. It also includes optional rules for miniature-free combat (pg: 30). GMs are encouraged to make combat a part of the story and to reward intelligent play. As there are no perfect, statistically balanced encounters, the players’ creativity, skill, and teamwork will be the key to victory.”

Not my bag. It used to be my bag, but then I put that bag in the attic. Fragged Empire isn't the crunchiest game I've seen. We don't have ten different details for the guns (just seven). But we do have grid examples showing range increments and spread fire. The mechanics take a sharp uptick in number of things we have to roll and calculate. You have all kinds of maneuver and actions choices. The combat rules take up 22 pages of a 42 page quickstart.

It does have optional "Theatre of the Mind" combat-- very, very abstract. It’s a race to accumulate combat successes. Think Fate contests with more damage fallout. That's great and I appreciate the inclusion. But it does mean that much of the game's given over to rules and mechanics that I'd have to jettison. The character sheets are massively built for this kind of tactical combat, so you'd want to redo those. In the end, the setting and backdrop would have to be amazing to make me do that work. Don't get me wrong- Fragged Empire’s cool and looks good, but I didn't grab me with something new and striking about the world. On the other hand, if I liked tactical combat I think I'd be all over this. What it does, it does well. Plus the company has supported it an Antagonist Archive, Protagonist Archive, and several adventures.. If you're at all interested I recommend checking out the free quickstart.

3. Hope Inhumanity

I had a chance to play this at Origins in 2015. It's an rpg-board game hybrid. Players control a character and randomly draw relationships to the characters seated next to them. This builds the fiction of the group and opens with a quick collaboration. Then the PCs wander, hoping not to die before the end conditions arrive. On a turn a player draws from one of the terrain decks, showing where the group’s moving. These cards have an event, choice, challenge, or some mix of these. Players try to maintain your Hope and not get bad status cards, so they may have to call on group resources. Many of the choices cause bad effects for other players instead of or in addition to the lead player. Hope Inhumanity banks on mad, desperate semi-cooperative play. It's decently fun and probably much more a board than role-playing game. I like the GMless, card-driven mechanics. The designer has released an updated version and an expansion (Martial Law) recently, but I haven't picked those up yet.

4. Mutant

As has become apparent over these lists, I'm no historian. I've placed a few games in a larger context than simply the year. Mostly I like to get the timing right; to see what came before and after. Translations and Kickstarters complicate that. I've no hard and fast rule for the former. If I've seen a concrete pub date referenced, I usually go with that regardless of language/edition. For Kickstarters, I try to place them in the delivery year rather than campaign year. Some companies, shall we say, have a flexible delivery date, but still put out press releases as if the game's actually in people’s hands. 

So I have Mutant: Year Zero on my 2014 list, but I've also heard that it delivered in early 2015. (Ignoring the original 2012 Swedish release….). That gives me an excuse to mention the main game here. That’slucky because I posted a lengthy piece last week on how how awesome it is. MYZ's an example of a great game and a great rethinking. Some systems have made incremental changes over editions & reissues- you could argue that for D&D. Others have successfully rethought their approach for modern designs. Mutant: Year Zero and 7th Sea are examples of that; we'll see if the new Paranoia delivers on that promise. Some don't really change, while others miss the point (Shadowrun Anarchy). 

There’s a definitive MYZ release in 2015, even if I’m wrong about the original core book. GenLab Alpha dropped, the first sequel game for Mutant: Year Zero. It deals with genetically enhanced or uplifted animals in the same world. They're broken into multiple factions by species and held in Paradise Valley. Robot guards oversee and contain them. Scientists subject them to arbitrary experimentation. Dissent is crushed and calculating forces work to keep the groups divided.

Genlab Alpha uses the same mechanics as MYZ, with small changes to reflect these characters' nature. That makes it completely compatible with the first game, but allows it to stand alone. You choose both a species and a role for your character. Animals have their own powers, rather than mutations. When these go out of control, that character's likely to go feral or revert to instincts. The system doesn't feel like a reskinning; it feels complete and coherent. 

Perhaps most importantly, what you’re doing differs. Survival's a different question here. You're less concerned with mysteries and exploration because you know the land at the start. Instead you're trying to figure out how to escape. The parallel to Mutant: Year Zero’s Ark system is the Resistance Sheet. You’ll be be building connections, making deals, and trying to stay under the Watchers' radar. There's a clear metaplot campaign here. At the same time, the game supports just adding these animal characters to an existing MYZ campaign. In that case, you assume that the breakout occurred and they're out in the world. Or as I've done in my game, a few freakishly got away, but the vast majority remain trapped in the valley. 

Another 2015 release Zone Compendiun 3:Die, Meat Eaters, Die! assumes that escape happened a while ago. It has five new animal-based settlements for the MYZ PCs to encounter. The publishers released several other smaller support products in 2015, including a couple of pdf-only zones and a card set for GenLab Alpha. As of this writing, there's a third gamebook on Kickstarter, Mechatron. That covers robots. There's also the promise of a fourth volume dealing with Human survivors. Overall the MYZ series is solid and highly recommended.

5. Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition

I love the phrasing of this subtitle, "Techno-Fantasy Roleplaying." The last Mutant Chronicles came out in '97, an almost twenty-year gap. It can trace a line back to the original Swedish Mutant rpg. In 1993 the company dumped an explicitly cyberpunk version, Mutant RYMD, and republished with Mutant Chronicles. Instead of the noir and street cred of cyberpunk, they delivered an ass-kicking, testosterone powered rpg that smells more than a little like Warhammer 40K. Mutant Chronicles spawned a strong line: card games, miniatures, video games, multiple editions of the rpg, and even a Ron Perlman film. (one of seven RP movies that have rpgs associated)

Mutant Chronicles has a wild and distinctive art style, though you can clearly see the influence of Games Workshop on presentation and design. The new Modiphus edition keeps some of that, several covers come from older products or the original artist. You can spot those. They're the ones where everyone looks about to go into full 'Roid Rage. The newer covers are hit and miss, with a couple of different looks.

In the bleak future of Mutant Chronicles, a dread supernatural force known as the Dark Legion has been unleashed. The battle with these corrupting, undead and demonic legions has devastated the solar system. Humanity itself splintered into distinct factions- each with agendas and secrets. While it might look as over-the-top as Rifts, Mutant Chronicles has a strong central setting and premise. It is a gonzo military rpg. While other missions are possible, the presumption is a team of hardened heroes waging war on corruption (either human or Necrophage). Later books open that up further. 

Mutant Chronicles 3e uses the 2d20 mechanics which have become the house system for Modiphus (powering Conan, Infinity, and Star Trek). It's a crunchier system, reflecting the emphasis on combat and tactics in these settings (well, maybe not Star Trek). Successes generate momentum which can be spent to power other effects. The GM has Dark Symmetry points to power their actions. Action types, hit locations, crit tables, range calculations…there's a lot of stuff in this game. But I suspect enthusiasts will be looking for that in their play. 

Overall Mutant Chronicles 3e feels like a solidly built game. I like that we get female representation on the core book’s cover, but the boob plate's a bit much. Modiphus expands the original setting by including material for play during the emergence of the Dark Apostles. The publisher also strongly captures a dieselpunk look without making the pages muddy and unreadable. Modiphus has supported MC3 with many supplements. Five big sourcebooks came out in 2015 (The Brotherhood, Capitol, Imperial, Mishima, and Player’s Guide). Almost a dozen more released in 2016. If you're interested, check out the free quickstart.

6. Numenera

Numenera remains the post-apocalyptic game at the top of the head. It has a very different frame and tone than its nearest rival, Mutant Year Zero. On earlier lists I've spoken about the difficulty of placing something like Numenera. It takes place so far in the future that the various destructions are a memory. That makes it a little like 13th Age, which also has the idea of older civilizations and eras buried, waiting to the uncovered. But that's a minor note in 13th Age, whereas recovery and engagement with the weird relics of lost civilizations is central. That play always reminds me of early Gamma World, that’s what it was all about.

This year saw continued support for the line with major books, pdf supplements, physical add-ons, and third party releases. Ninth World Guidebook delineates and explains even more of the land. It reaches beyond the borders of the core book's map. It's for those who like more support and presented information. Into the Night goes even further afield. This covers the moon and space beyond the world. Smaller products included maps, cards, dice sets, adventures, and Weird Discoveries: Ten Instant Adventures for Numenera, an adventure collection. 

Dread Unicorn Games released The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, a follow up to their earlier adventure. Ryan Chaddock published The Wander, a collection of locations, encounters, and other miscellany. It's good to see some third party support, though that hasn't transformed into a movement.

7. Planète Hurlante

Or as Google translates it, "Shrieking Planet." A French game which seems to have been supported through a crowdfunding site called ulule. The designers call it a cross between Conan, Elric, and Gamma World. It definitely has a weird & visceral sound to it. You live on the artificial world of Cyanide, in the wake of the empire of the sorcerer kings. Factions battle over relics left behind and search the wastelands for power. Tectonic plates constantly shift, forcing communities to remain on the move. Cities roll across the landscape powered by magic or weird tech. It's like sword & sorcery Numenera in some ways, with more thews at least. Planète Hurlante's built on the Microlite 4 rules, a streamlined d20 variant. You can see more about it at their ulule page.

8. PROJECT

ALL CAPS. Reality ripped asunder. Things come in; guardians fight back against them. Uses the Open d6 mechanics. Has a kitchen-sink look to it, despite the generic name.

9. Shayō

Post-apocalyptic samurai, but very different from Motobushido, the first rpg to carve out this territory. When I first saw Shayō’s cover, I thought someone'd released a Tokugawa grimdark game. Then I looked again. Now I saw the gas mask cleverly worked into the armor, the ammo clip on the belt, and the bullet holes.

Shayō is a French post-apocalyptic samurai rpg. In the near future, a series of disasters devastates the planet. After a time of conflict humanity discovers new powers and in many places returns to older, archaic ways and cultures. Japan becomes Hi-no-Moto, under the Chrysanthemum Throne and the watchful eye of the Shogun. Now the world of this neo-Shogunate is stalked samurai, tech hunters, and priests. Mutants and mad powers roam, echoing ancient legends.

Shayō has neat concept and system looks like the middle-weight complexity we’ve seen from other French games (Kuro, Polaris, Les Ombres d’Esteren). It has a point spend system, with characters built on archetypes. The resolution system seems to be d10 with roll & keep elements. I'm unsure how much Shayō looks like L5R-systemwise. Maybe I’ll eventually get a chance to find out. The game had only a core book and GM screen released in France. I really, really want to see this game in English, but the announce Kickstarter date keeps getting pushed back. At this point I'm uncertain if it will ever come about.

Part Two

The Year in Post-Apocalyptic RPGs 2015 (Part Two: STALKER: gra fabularna to Winter Eternal)

History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs

History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs

History of Superhero RPGs

History of Horror RPGs

History of Universal RPGs

Samurai RPGs

History of Wild West RPGs: First Fifteen

Mutant Year Zero: RPGs I Love

I cut my teeth on Gamma World in the late 70’s, being blown up by Torc Grenades and eaten by psychic vegetation. But post-apocalyptic wasn’t really my thing. It would be another 30+ years before I played it again. My friend Dave ran a homebrew Fallout rpg, based on a video game I never dug. Had a great time, but filled my wasteland quota. But in 2014 I started my History of Post-Apocalyptic RPGs, one of the most requested genres. That finally put Mutant: Year Zero on my radar.

It wasn’t because the game immediately appealed to me. Instead I was trying to trace the evolution of the Mutant RPG, a Swedish release from 1984. Mutant had gone through multiple iterations- becoming cyberpunk in one and spinning off Mutant Chronicles in another. A couple of smart folks in my G+ feed recommended Mutant Year Zero. So I picked it up. And I read it. And then I ordered the GM screen. And then the dice sets. And then the expansions.

And then I ran it.

GLOOM AND HOPE

In Mutant Year Zero you play- as you might imagine- mutants in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. How that came to be isn’t clear. But it’s dark. You live in a desperate community overseen by an Elder, called an Ark. The world outside’s full of horror and The Rot. Your community’s primitive, just hanging on the brink. In the early days of a MYZ campaign, you check at the end of session to see how many people died. Even the mutations are messy and dangerous. They can explode and more problems. These challenges t ought to feel dark and hopeless.

But it doesn’t.

Partly that comes from how you build characters, partly from each session’s opening activity. I have a group of players who came out of a Fate-inspired campaign (control, competency). I worried how they’d react to this switch, but they’ve embraced it.

Sherri’s said that Mutant Year Zero stands at that perfect point between Trad and Indie gaming for her. It merges the atmosphere of both. You’ll first see that in character creation. You choose one of eight roles (Gearhead, Slave, Enforcer, etc). These are presented “playbook style.” So In addition to mechanical decisions you make picks from sets of choices: about your appearance, your relationships to other PCs, your relationships to NPCs, your Big Dream. These build bonds and develop details about the world itself.

The mechanical side of the game’s pretty simple. You assign numbers to the four stats and the twelve skills. These are low numbers, five’s max . Each role gets a unique 13th skill. These include the pathfinding of the Stalker, the deal making of the Fixer, the beast mastery of the Dog Handler, and the gang control of the Boss. You get one talent, feat-like abilities, and one random mutation. You also write down your gear. Then you build your Ark.

Sidebar: Gear: Here’s where Mutant Year Zero gets me. Encumbrance’s a traditional mechanic, a means of invoking ‘realism’ in the setting. In MYZ it becomes another point of pressure and hard choice. Normally I ignore encumbrance and item tracking because the complexity to payoff ratio’s pretty high. But this system’s so simple it works. You have a number of slots-- represented by rows on your character sheet-- equal to twice your Strength. So anywhere from 2 to 10. Most items take up one row. Heavy items take two rows and you can write in two light items on one row. OK, enough space for equipment and good. But you also need supplies to survive- grub, water, and booze. Four rations of these count as a single regular item. What do you do when you find a cool object in the waste? What do you drop?

BUILDING THE ARK

After character creation you take the hopeful connections to other characters and use those to build your Ark. As you read out your links and name NPCs, you collaboratively map out the community. You make a series of choices about what it looks like, how it feels, who has power. This starts you out with a collective sense of command and authority. You build a cool place you can invest in.

Then you find out what dire straits it is in. You have four development tracks- all important and vital: Food Supply, Technology, Society & Culture, and Warfare & Defense. Each has an impact on the fiction and the mechanics. For example, you need high Tech to understand artifacts easily. You need Food to reduce the number of deaths each session. All of these tracks start at zero.

But you can change this. There’s an “Assembly” at the start of each session where you choose a “Project”. These start simply: Basic Palisades, Pigsty, Temple. Later as they meet certain requirements, they get more interesting: Tavern, Water Wheel, Ink & Paper. It’s a Civ-like tech tree. Once a project’s selected, you can spend some your time and energy time working on it. You roll an associated Skill and count successes towards the number required to finish it. Early projects usually take a session to complete, later ones may take more. Of course you can only do one project per session. So every choice matters. For example, working on a project can be a hard call- other obligations and the siren call of exploring the Zone can eat up time.

In my group, the projects moved to the center. Players love them. They dig the choices and how they reshape the terrain of the community. It also ties into another important setting element: artifacts. I love the goofiness of the artifacts in this game. When an air mattress can be a significant find, celebrated by the players, you know it works. MYZ has a card deck which includes Mutations, Artifacts, and Threats. They’re a great and tangible handouts and players love them. It makes randomization easy.

How do these connect to Ark development? You’re supposed to turn over any artifacts to the Elder. They place them in “The Dawn Vault.” In game terms, artifacts turned in can raise your Ark’s ratings. A chainsaw gives +d6 Tech, a painting gives +d6 Culture, a crossbow gives +1 Tech and +1 Warfare. There’s social pressure to do this, which makes the choice interesting, especially when something’s useful. My players have leaned towards sacrificing things in order to make the Ark better.

DO YOU WANT TO ROLL AGAIN?

I need to dive into the Mutant Year Zero’s mechanics for a moment because they’re so supportive of the atmosphere. The game reserves test for important places; it specifically says to work to avoid perception-type rolls all the time. When you do make a test, you roll a pool of d6’s based on Stat + Skill. If you have appropriate gear you may roll its bonus dice. MYZ sells a set of dice for the game, you don’t have to use them, but they’re nice. Stat dice are called Base Dice (they’re yellow), skills use Skill Dice (they’re green), and equipment uses Gear Dice (they’re black).

When you roll, you want at least one “6”. That’s represented by the Rad Symbol on the MYZ dice. Each six is a success. You usually only need one success to win. But if you roll more successes, you get bonuses. In combat, for example, extra successes can be turned into:

• Extra point of damage (repeatable)
• Subdue or tiring- cause one point of Fatigue
• Increase your Initiative by 2 for next turn
• Knocking something from opponent (a weapon or object)
• Knock them over

If you take a defensive action, for each success you can:

• Reduce one success rolled by attacker
• Subdue or tire- cause one point of Fatigue
• Increase your Init by 2 for next turn
• Knock something from opponent (a weapon or object)
• Knock over
• Counter and inflict straight weapon damage

Many of the unique role skills give bonuses to spend extra successes on. For example the Gearhead can make things stronger, have more uses, or be more reliable.

So again, all you need is one success…but more is better.

And you always have the option to push your roll. If you do, you pick up all the dice that don’t show a “1” or “6”. You reroll those. Add in any successes from “6’s”. Woot! Look how great and easy that was.

But…if you rolled any “1’s” on your Base dice (those from stats) you take damage on that stat. See your stats are also your damage tracks. So you get worse as you take damage. And keep in mind your stat’s going to be 5 at most. So that’s pretty rough. As well, if you rolled “1’s” on your Gear dice, you reduce that items rating by one per.

This makes for a tough, push-your-luck choice. Let’s say you really need to make a roll. Desperately need to. But on your first attempt, you rolled two “1’s” on your Base dice. Now you know that if you push your roll, you’re definitely going to take 2 damage on that stat. And you’re rerolling one other Base die, so if it comes up a “1” as well, you’re going out. But you’re also rerolling a bunch of Skill and Gear dice, so odds are decent you’ll get a success. These other dice can’t do damage to you, but you might deplete your equipment. But you have to reroll them all; you can’t cherry pick.

You can see the pressure. In play it’s awesome. We don’t roll that much, but when we do, it’s significant.

Want another push your luck mechanic? Consider mutations. Each session, you get a Mutation Point (MP), used to activate powers. As well, when you take damage from pushing rolls, you gain an MP per damage. So there’s some reward built into the system. Now when you actually activate a mutant power it happens. There’s no resistance or skill check. You spend a point and do X. I like that. BUT you do roll a die for each MP you spent. If you roll a “1,” then there’s a chance of a misfire. You roll another d6 to see what happens. That can be good: overclocking your powers or refunding your MP spent. Woot! But it cancan be bad, in which case you gain a new mutation power. But you also permanently lose a stat point.

Tough Choices.

Sidebar: Incidentally, Paul Beakley's written a ton of smart stuff about Mutant Year Zero. If you're interested, I recommend checking out what he says. He sees a lot of details I miss.  

DOWN DOWN DOWN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE

So what pushes you to the choices? What do you actually do in the game? Generally you’ll spend some time within the community, usually choosing between working on a project or carrying out your character’s agenda. You’ll also be responding to the Threat on the table, which may mean staying at home or venturing out into the zone.

At the start of a session, the GM randomly determines the Threat. I’ve been using the card deck for this, setting aside those I’ve already drawn. The core book has a random table. After the Assembly, the GM sets the stage and presents that threat. Some are local—sabotage within the community; some are nearby—some kind of monster stalking those who venture just outside the ark’s borders; some require a journey—locating a new filter for the community’s water purifier. They’re all robust and easy to riff on. A few might require more work (a murder among the community for example). Regardless Mutant Year Zero suggests not prepping for these. You should run with the randomness. It offers some other ways to do this, but the message overall is: put it out there and see what happens. Players will find their fun.

On the one hand you may really dig the Ark stuff. The game supports that with nice random tables for NPCs. There’s always going to be tension among Bosses within a camp, so you have cool power play stories. MYZ encourages social interactions in a couple of ways. First, several roles have skills that function mostly within the Ark. For example the Fixer can take time to set up deals in order to generate money (in the form of bullets) and/or resources. Second, there’s an easy mechanic for social manipulation, whether that’s via charm or intimidation. That doesn’t exclude role-playing scenes, but offers a nice backbone for it. Finally, the way MYZ doles out experience incentivizes social connections. It uses a series of questions (ala various PbtA games). Each “yes” answer generates a point of XP. Did you do work on a Project? Did you sacrifice or risk something for the NPC you want to protect? Did you sacrifice or risk something for the NPC you hate? Did you sacrifice or risk something for your PC “Buddy”? Did you make progress towards your Big Dream?

But you’re as likely venture out into the Zone, the land outside your Ark. And that’s a trad Hexcrawl. Mutant Year Zero supplies several maps broken into squares: desert, grey-tinged, pseudo New York, etc Take your pick. My players chose one with many lakes.. At the start of the game, you mark on the map. X marks the Ark. It’s hugely satisfying to take a permanent marker and writing on something like this. You can see the shape of the terrain, spot weird details printed on the map, and write in discoveries as you make them. This is some of the trad that Sherri mentioned.

MYZ has great tech supporting exploration. On the players side, they have to deal with questions of supplies and encumbrance. How armed are they? What artifacts are they carrying? How much grub and water do they take? That last one’s important because they have to spend one of each per day or suffer penalties. But they’re also the resource they spend to heal damage. Don’t take enough and they might be limping along for a long time. Eventually the PCs might buy talents to help offset this, but it remains a challenge. They also have to track the Rot, points of contamination which may build up in their system over time. On the positive side, several of the roles have cool skills related to exploration. The Stalker’s the most vital. Their skill Find the Path allows them to spot danger, move the group through quickly, or locate any cached artifacts. Players get XP for exploring zones as well.

On the other side, the GM has a set of great and easy to use random tables. That allows them to generate the kind of zone, the terrain, special features, and threats very quickly. It strikes a balance between too simple and too detailed. They can generate these on the fly or put together a list to work from. It supports the improvisation.

Plus Mutant Year Zero has write ups for several special zones with bigger stories. GMs can drop these in easily. Many offer new factions and peoples the PCs will have to deal with. Free League has also released several Zone Compendiums with new areas. Beyond that there’s also a meta-plot story connected to the origins of the PC’s ark and the fall of the world. Gamemasters can choose to use that or not.

Does it hold together? I’m not a usually a random charts GM. I’ll look through them for inspiration and sketch out lists for the game. They’re more toolbox than a tool. But Mutant Year Zero hits a sweet spot. It generates exactly enough bits to frame things. It plugs in the threats easily. It makes everything reinforce the atmosphere. I love it.

Last session the players worked their way through multiple zones. They’d managed to salvage a broken down truck a couple of sessions before. Now they set out for a strange location they’d gotten coordinates for. But they planned to do that via an Industrial Dump run by an NPC they’d met. We went through ghostly woods, they set fire to horrible zone crows who tried to keep them out of a building, they explored an abandoned church with strange graves outside, they opted to go around an unmoving yellowish fog, they sic’d a giant boar they’d mind control onto a group of cannibals holed up at an old gun range, they got caught in a torrential rainstorm as they traveled along the edge of a massive crater.

Finally at the dump site they got to dig through garbage, looking for artifacts and interesting scrap. That was a half-hour plus of rolling on the giant random item table: trombone, electric toothbrush, Santa mask, electronic keyboard, and more. They found only one artifact but it was awesome, a leather jacket in great shape with a flaming skull on the back.

It was the best.

FINAL BROADCAST

In short I’ve had a great time running Mutant Year Zero. I’ve not really run post-apocalyptic before, and MYZ makes it easy. It has the kind of lean mechanics I’m more comfortable with these day. It makes usually trad gameplay elements (like the Hexcrawl) work within that context. The system doesn’t take long to get, but it hides the sting. Life’s tough for your mutants. Your powers can kill you. Exploring can murder you. Just being outside can poison you. But for all that, seriously for all that, it feels hopeful. Players can build their Ark and leave a lasting legacy. I recommend it. 

Sidebar: Other Worlds: Mutant Year Zero has a sequel game: GenLab Alpha. It’s in the same setting, but you play Anthropomorphic Animals trapped in an automated experiment. The system’s entirely compatible and you can cross the two if you wish. But Genlab Alpha offers its own campaign, not about zone exploration. Instead you’re building an underground revolutionary network. You want to overthrow your masters and gain freedom from their murderous and arbitrary experiments. It’s cool and quite different. There’s a Kickstarter currently underway for the third game in the setting, Mutant: Mechatron- Rise of the Robots which has those as the PCs. Eventually we’ll see a final volume covering the remains of unmutated humanity. 

You’ll also see the MYZ mechanics in Coriolis, a sci-fi game. It changes up how the push system operates in an interesting way. I ran it twice. I talked about that on Episode 81 of the Gauntlet Podcast. I also posted the AP videos (session one, session two). The system also powers Tales from the Loop, which I can’t wait to actually try. 

Road to the Gauntlet: Running a Full WWW Promotion

THEY WHO HOLD THE GAUNTLET

Sunday morning we wrapped up a full “promotion season” of World Wide Wrestling. Eight sessions of crazy joy. The game works; it clicks, it hums. I had amazing fun managing the whole thing and WWW blew the doors off. I’m a goofball who only paid attention to pro wrestling starting the middle of last year. I’ve watched with an eye to running WWW, but remained a complete newb.

But that didn’t hurt things. World Wide Wrestling lets you get into goofy stories mixed with real human drama, set against super-fun sequences of improvised and collaborative athletic description. Running a session's like pushing a cart over the crest of a hill. You can only hang on as it picks up speed.

In this week’s episode of the Gauntlet Podcast I talk about World Wide Wrestling and my experience running a rotating cast of characters. We had interesting challenges come out of running for sixteen different players over eight sessions. I had to bend some mechanics for relationships, heat, and other sundries. Not by much and I learned lessons for the next time we play this.

On a related note, Rich Rogers interviewed WWW designer Nathan Paoletta on the +1 Forward Podcast. He talks about PbtA design and runs an amazing short WWW vignette for Rich. It’s a demonstration of skillful GMing. I’ve seen some designers poorly showcase their work in play. Nathan brings it to life and engages the mechanics. He shows off the fun in the game.

I got a ton of joy in building our promotion’s backstory in the campaign. I had lots of ideas for Gauntlet League Wrestling and the mysterious Caestus Group behind it all: conspiracy, backstabbing, over-ambitious artistic pretensions. I had a great time working in references. Many NPW’s (non-player wrestlers) came from other games. I made stupid allusions to other PbtA gamed.

CHECKING THE OVERNIGHTS

We recorded all eight episodes and I think they hold together as a great story with amazing arcs. Several characters made major transitions throughout play (The Dingo, Jeremy Bleakwood). Some could keep up with the times (Harbinger, Cyborg Destroyer). We also had a weird superfan, the Hooded Luchador, who created a series of reaction videos. They’re a little odd, particularly the last entry. If anyone has information on HL’s current whereabouts, please send those on.

You can see the full playlist for those videos here on YouTube.

Finally, some of you might be saying “I don’t give a shit about wrestling, back to the elfgames.” I certainly said that before. I got frustrated when comic book blogs I dug spun off to talk about Wrestlemania. But if you’re a roleplayer and you like fun with a capital F, World Wide Wrestling delivers —regardless of your wrestling experience or interest. Exhibit A is my wife Sherri. She rolled her eyes audibly when I first told her about this wrestling rpg. Fine for some people, but not her bag. But she’s a good sport and tried it out. In the end, she came to love her character Sirius Bizness, a Jobber who evolved into an Athlete.

I love all the PCs who appeared on-screen throughout Gauntlet League Wrestling:

The Analyst

Carnage

Cyborg Destroyer (ret.)

The Dingo

The Executioner

Fabuloso

Fyrefly

The Gauntlet

Harbinger

Jeffrey Bleakwood

The Padishah of Professional Wrestling

The Pebble

“Revolutionary” Randy Burns

Slapshot

Taz Skolnick

Terry Burns

Walker Beasley

Wolly Winka (Dec.)

We Didn't Burn Down the Academy: Thoughts on the Kingdom RPG

Last week we finished two sessions of Kingdom, Ben Robbins’ rpg about challenges to communities. It’s one of my favorite games, despite flawed sessions and rough patches. I’ve played it nine times now, and each session has been radically different. For our most recent game, we tried out my homage to X-Men framework, Xavier's Kingdom for Gifted Children. I dug it, though I see some needed tweaks.

Kingdom’s what I’ll call a Scene Calling game; maybe it’ll catch on. Usually they’re GMless. On a player’s turn, they have the authority to set the scene: what’s going on, where they are, who is present, etc. Implicitly or explicitly they establish what the scene’s about and maybe even the stakes. The group- in part or whole- then plays out that scene. After that it moves on to the next player. Often there are mechanisms to ask to enter, intrude into, take control of, or reshape a scene outside this sequence. It depends on what the game’s going for.

While these games might seem loose, some of them have tight and involved mechanics. I’ve played several scene-calling rpgs- Kingdom, Fiasco, DramaSystem, Durance, Before the Storm, the Shab-al-Hiri Roach, and Questlandia. I own others I haven’t gotten to the table: Downfall, Follow, Primetime Adventures, Last Best Hope. I think these all fall into this category.

Some have randomization mechanisms. Questlandia has a whole set of dice challenges to track and ultimately shape how everything resolves. Fiasco’s set up and tilt build on random tables. The Shab-al-Hiri Roach has cards dealt to players which can create twists. Others rpgs track authority and control, like DramaSystem, Durance, and Before the Storm (to a certain extent).

Kingdom has no randomizer. The main “game” mechanic is a timer which counts down to either a decision point or a collapse. That makes it looser than some. But sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. To begin with, each player has a character and a role. You can be Power, which means that you’re associated with authority in the Kingdom. You can directly or indirectly cause heavy things to happen in the fiction. (Jailing, Censure, etc). You can be Perspective and set the consequences for the choice the Kingdom makes at the decision point. Or you can be a Touchstone and be able to state what the community’s feeling. They’re abstractions, but each role has a concrete power.

In Kingdom we playing to find out what happens at a Crossroad and how that impacts the community. A Crossroad’s a Yes or No choice—does the kingdom do X or does it not do X. Examples from my DS9-inspired seed: Expend resources searching for the station shuttle we lost contact with? Turn to black market sources to support the station? Declare independence from the Confederation? That binary phrasing’s underpins the game’s play. For example in our session we had a dangerous mutant-only drug in the school. Our crossroad was: “Will the school carry out an undercover investigation?” If we decided on another kind of investigation, then the answer to that question would be No.

That’s important because of the pressure the Perspective can build. Any time a Perspective character’s in a scene, they may establish something that will happen with the Yes or No choice. So with the crossroad above, they might write “Students lose faith in the administration” or “A network of informants develops” under Yes. Or maybe No. Where they put that says something about the setting. Multiple Perspective players may create radically different predictions. These might even contradict one another. That’s OK because at the end of a round we go through these: things might change or we might have to develop fiction to reconcile them.

When one of the countdown tracks has been filled, the round ends and we move to resolution. We have two tracks with boxes equal to the number of players +1: Crossroads, meaning that we’re getting closer to getting that choice; or Crisis, meaning what’s happened in the scene is tearing the community apart. If the latter happens, then all bets are off. A player adds a checkmark to one of the two when their scene finishes: Usually a round ends with the Crossroad track filled. At that point, the Power makes the Yes or No choice. Then each Perspective goes through their predictions and says whether each one comes true or not. They negotiate contradictions if they can. Finally the Touchstone says how the community as a whole feels. Then we talk about what happened.

But there’s more mechanically complexity than that. Sometimes you’ll disagree—like if we have two Power players. The game systems to resolve these disagreements. Resolving the Perspective’s predictions is an obvious place for dispute. It can also happen in play if someone makes a declaration or use of the power that others object to. To solve this, we have structure negotiation. The disagreeing player states what they’re objecting to and the desired change. The other player can say yes, no, or yes, but with a demand. That can settle things or it can escalate, in which case a player has to usurp another player’s power-- changing both their roles. Players can also change roles voluntarily, if they meet certain conditions and justify it in play.

But those are the basics—and I’m leaving out some mechanics. Having played this bunch, I’ve cobbled together some impressions. If you’ve played Kingdom, I’d be curious if you agree or disagree with them. Keep in mind I love Kingdom, though I’m not entirely sure why. I know I dig the idea of communities in rpgs: from crunchy mechanical tracking to this higher level thinking. But I don’t think that’s it alone.

If you want to see our actual play, you can check that out here (Session One; Session Two).

You can see my other Kingdom posts here:

Xavier's Kingdom for Gifted Children

Far Station Eschaton: A Kingdom Seed

Kingdom: Fae & Samurai

Kingdoms of Ars Magica

Heroes of the City,

Heroes of the City AP

The Daily Sentinel AP

Battleship Orion AP

SCATTERED THOUGHTS ON KINGDOM

• Lack of Challenge: In all the times I’ve played Kingdom, I haven’t seen a challenge or a usurpation. Players usually want to work with what other players establish. They’re used to saying yes. In my first couple of sessions teaching this, I kept challenges off the table for the first crossroad. That may have been a mistake. I think I’ve seen players change roles once or twice, but it’s pretty rare.
• Black/White: Some players have a hard time with the binary of the Crossroad. They want the kingdom to do something different, but they also don’t want to answer “No.” That’s usually because of the predictions under that side. The Heroes of the City AP above has a strong example of that problem.
• Lonely at the Top: If you’re teaching the game, you’re more likely to be in the Power role. It’s the least interesting on the surface. The other two have stronger seeming in-play powers. Power also represents authority. Some players like to rebel and some don’t like be responsible for what happens. It isn’t always true, but be ready for that.
• Fight for Your Write: How aggressive players are in using their Perspective and Touchstone abilities will shape your session. The Perspective creates the stakes. If they’re constantly adding predictions, they deepen the situation. Make sure the Perspective player knows that they get to choose which of their predictions come true at the end (assuming they’re still in the Perspective role). That gives them more freedom to add things. I’ll come back to the Touchstone’s impact later.
• Speed Up: Ben Robbins has made a couple of rules changes since publication. You used to have a third countdown clock, “Time Passes.” That became the refuge of the hesitant. It stretched out rounds unnecessarily. Cutting that and some of the other character bits speeds up play. I used to put a hard limit of four players on a Kingdom session. I think with these changes it could accommodate five and not feel bloated.
• What Can I Do? Getting what the Roles do can be tough. It’s more difficult online than in person. At a f2f game, you can give everyone a bookmark with their role definition and powers. Online you can provide those, but they don’t give the same weight or focus. New players online can be uncertain about when and where they can use their role’s power.
• Stoppages: That in turn creates a problem with game flow. After a scene, you pause to check in. The scene caller has to think about what happened and mark one of their tracks. But they have the opportunity to their power. That presents a couple of choices, depending on the role. Plus, if other PCs were in the scene, they can use their role power, so you have to check in there. The teacher/moderator often needs to remind players about, adding to the break’s length. It can get longer if players choose to do a Reaction.
• Short Cuts: A reaction’s a short, maybe thirty second, cut away. In it you narrate your character’s reaction to the changes or decisions from the scene. If a player does a reaction shot, they can also use their Role ability. In games where I’ve talked about Reactions as a play element, either players don’t use them or every player uses them. I’m not sure what the happy medium is. The former means we lose an interesting tool. The latter means the breaks between scenes extend and break the flow even more. Again, I suspect this may be a function of playing and teaching online.
• Feeling Heat: The Crisis option can be difficult to manage. The idea is that all of our characters want the kingdom to survive. We might want it to change or go down a different path, but we all need its existence. When I teach the game, I describe it as “reverse Fiasco.” Instead of looking for cool ways to have everything blow up, we’re looking for dramatic moments of keeping the community together. If we fill the Crisis track, everything gets smashed and we have to do a reset. In that event things can be destroyed, characters die, and most importantly we clear the work for the round. That means the Perspective loses their predictions and the Power loses their choice.
• Blow Up: But there’s a pressure on Crisis. With the new rules, you only have two tracks for the countdown. The Touchstone has the power to add or subtract boxes from the Crisis track. Besides saying what the people think, that’s their big power. And it’s much more interesting and satisfying to check a box than erase one. Usually scenes aren’t calm—they aren’t reasoned examinations of the topic. They usually involve arguments and passions. One or both sides haven’t gotten what they want. The natural instinct when that happens isn’t to check the box that says “we’ve made progress towards a decision.” It’s to check the box that says “everyone’s pissed at each other and the whole thing’s going to break down.”
• Not As I Do: That’s a matter of framing, specifically framing from the person who is teaching the game. I’ve found how I describe those two tracks affects how players mark them in a round. My new approach is to stress that checking the Crossroads track means that we’ve moved towards the dramatically logical decision point. If we were watching a movie, we’ve gotten closer to a crucial scene of drama. I stress that checking the Crisis track means that things have gone really, really wrong. People are actively and aggressively working against stability now. But that explanation creates another problem.
• What’s a Meta For? It means we weirdly focus on the “meta” content of a scene. Instead of the events of the scene, we focus its place in the larger story. At least we do for the Crossroads, maybe less so for the Crisis. That explanation may make a player’s choice even more difficult. It reflects one of the larger challenges: switching back and forth from character-level to meta-level. Your Role choices and decisions aren’t necessarily from your character’s viewpoint or actions. They can be, but they’re distanced. It’s another switch that some players have trouble with. It can throw people off if we end an emotional scene and suddenly we have to zoom out to give a reading on it.
• Stonecutting: Also if you downplay the Crisis track as I have, you undercut the Touchstone. It’s something I often forget. A Touchstone player can and should be using that track to get what they want. They can add to it faster or remove checks. They should be doing that. I used to think the Touchstone was the weakest Role, but then I saw someone use it as a hammer to shape others’ choices in our pseudo-BSG game.
• Mea Culpa: Then again, all of this may also be a function of my play style and/or way of teaching the game.

OVERALL

It sounds like I’m being negative about Kingdom. I’m not. Instead I want to get it right. I’ve had some amazing moments of play with it. I love, love the way predictions and crossroads work. That’s so good. I love it when the Touchstone realizes they can use Crisis as leverage. It clicks when the players work to find a balance between opposition and cooperation. Kingdom’s a game I’ll keep coming back to, maybe not as much online, but definitely f2f. I just want to get better at teaching and moderating it.