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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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