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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jk7UBlwUPI Link to free preview PDF that has most of the character creation rules: https://www.modiphius.net/products/mutant-year-zero-rpg-corebook-preview After playing the video game of the same name that just came out recently and getting really into the setting, I picked up Mutant Year Zero. It is very cool and very weird and I can't wait to play it. I'll talk about the fluffy bits first. You are a mutant living in an ark. There are arks scattered all over the world, but you probably never met anybody from another one, and you may not even know they exist. An ark is a small bastion of human life clinging to existence in a world that wipes everything out eventually. It could be a skyscraper, shopping mall, abandoned train, or whatever you and your players come up with. Your ark has fallen on hard(er) times. Your leader is dying or recently deceased, supplies are running low, and the factions are restless. You need to do what you can to help sustain it and make it grow. Or don't, and watch it fall. There are rumors that there is someplace called Eden out there somewhere, a clean place where people can live without worrying about the horrors of the Zone. You can seek that too. The Ark is in the Zone. A place so dangerous that just travelling through it will eventually lead to death by Rot for most, to say nothing of the multiple horrors that inhabit it. You need to venture forth into the Zone to find supplies, artifacts, and intelligence to help your ark survive. The Zone will eventually kill you. You will wither even as your mutations and wisdom grow. A bit on the mechanics. The first thing is...you design everything together. As a part of character creation, every player describes one NPC that they support, and one whom is an enemy. Every zone has 2-4 "Bosses' that lead factions within the ark. Of course, Boss is a character class, and if someone in the group chooses to be one, they lead one of these factions. Since an ark only has about 30-60 people in it, most of the important NPC's are created by the players during the first session. Upgrading the ark is a core game goal and there are lots of mechanics for doing so. Same for the Zone. You are supposed to get a gridded map of about 20 square miles. You are heavily encouraged to use a map of your home town or at least somewhere your players are familiar with. Your characters will explore the zones and note down what each sector contains on the map. They are encouraged to come up with ideas for sectors themselves. As for the character and dice mechanics, they are basically pretty simple and robust. The game is played with six sided dice and the only rolls that matter are 6's and to a lesser extent, 1's. You can get special dice from the manufacturer which are slightly easier to use, or just use your own. If you use your own it is best to have about 5 dice in each of three different colors per player. Gameplay is basically roll stat (there are only 4)+skill (if you have it) and count 6's. If you get none, you can Push the roll and then the 1's come into play as consequences. Every player starts with one mutation and it is random. They can have a second mutation at the expense of one of their attribute points (of which they have 14). Using mutations can cause other, latent, mutations to manifest during the character's life. Every time this happens, they lose another attribute point. If an attribute gets to zero, they are dead or useless. RIP. If you guys have any specific questions, feel free to ask. We're having our session zero this weekend. Two players have already picked a class and rolled mutations. So far we have a Gearhead with sexy fast legs and a ratboy Stalker. Also if anyone here would be awesome enough to follow this tutorial and give me a zone map of Atlanta, I'd be super grateful and get you a forums upgrade or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re1O43K1K0c
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Jan 29, 2019 22:29
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I am bumping my own thread because we had our first session last night, and it went incredibly well. I Introduced MY0 to my group last night. We've been playing 5E for over a year and it has been getting stale, our normal DM was getting burned out and sessions were only averaging 2 hours. I didn't expect it to go well at all. Plus, I was the only one with a book or grasp (however tenuous) of the system. One other player had read some of the free PDF. It was a little rocky at first, while I was going nuts trying to walk 6 chattering player through the process of making a character with one book. We ended up with two stalkers, a gearhead, a dog handler, an enforcer, and a fixer. The only rule I gave them was that I wanted the group to have a gearhead and at least one stalker. The magic happened when it came time to make the ark and NPC's. At first they were kind of bored, but every time someone mentioned anything, I said, "Great!", and wrote it down. Then they treated it as if it were written in stone and started using the stuff to reference other ideas. I was really impressed with what they came up with, just joking around. Our game is taking place in Orlando, Florida. The ark is in an old Indian Casino called "Red Man's Lair" One boss, King Croc, controls the pigpit and has a monopoly on food production and is a ruthless slaver. His henchman is a beautiful woman with feline mutations named Stormy. Then we Have Grubby Two-Hands, an legless insectoid fixer-type boss, a loan shark with a hand in nearly every important deal in town. His main henchman is Jose, a condescending man-pig that I am sure one of the players was basing on her husband (lol). Then we have the third boss, El Churro. A big, affable dog-man who is based on my dog. He runs most of the stalkers in the ark. There is also a sect of the Nova cult in town, they run the museum. 4 of the players run a shop that sells and repairs scrap. They mostly work for Churro, but one of them is in love with Croc's henchman, Stormy. The dog handler also usually does odd jobs for Croc. The ratman's best friend is the dog handler, and he secretly works for Grubby Two-Hands. There is lots of intrigue and tension already. Everybody is invested in their relationships and NPC's. I created exactly one NPC myself, Grubby. Their first job is to explore the zone looking for a missing stalker who was rumored to have found an artifact. Of course, each of them let their favored NPC's know about the job, so now all the bosses are aware of the treasure, and want in on it. It's a race. I didn't come up with hardly any of it, it just naturally emerged as a consequence of their relationships. It was magical. I have been DMing for over 20 years, and I have never had my players so instantly invested in the plot and setting. I am getting texts from the various players already, telling me what they and their NPC's are doing behind the scenes in preparation for the next game.
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Feb 3, 2019 15:32
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I like the idea of games where the players collaborate in the first session to build the community. I tried getting some folks I know to play the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG because it has a similar idea, but it didn't go over so well. Glad your group is having fun!
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Feb 3, 2019 21:24
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Yeah, it didn't go well at first. They started getting more interested whenever I just acted like whatever off hand joke they made was written in stone. Then they got into it. It was just like that Gremlins 2 skit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x01l_jMhjVM
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Feb 4, 2019 00:14
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