Anyone ever played Mutant Year Zero? The setting looks like a good match for my Tuesday group. And it is post-apocalypse. I’m a sucker for post-apocalypse! However a cursory* playtest of the combat system made it seem rather lethal. Will players be constantly rolling up new characters, or do the right mix of mutant powers give them get out of jail free cards?
*Cursory because we had a 4 hour power cut and trying to read the rules by candlelight wasn’t really working out!
I haven’t played this, but I have Mutant Future, which I’m planning to run for the Wharties at some point soon… is Mutant Year Zero a similar idea? (I.e. an OD&D Gamma World-alike)?
I’ve not played it but these guys have,
Thanks! I’ll have a look at that when I have a spare evening.
MY0 isn’t really Old School in terms of system. It’s a dice pool system. It has building up your community/base as part of the game mechanics, and includes social relationships with NPCs and other PCs as part of character gen. e.g. you get a bonus when you are trying to save the life of your ‘best friend’. There also seems to be a downward spiral (or an ongoing battle to stave off the spiral) of accumulating more mutations, more contamination, more decrepitude… (I think I need to re-read that bit).
It is more Gamma-world like in its setting: the PCs are the young whippersnapper mutants in an isolated community and the last Elder who ‘knew stuff’ has died or gone doolally, so the PCs have to go exploring to find the stuff the community needs to survive. The mutations are all bonkers science fantasy stuff, like having insect wings and being able to fly with them, or breathing fire, or being a human magnet! The GM sections have lots of nice homages to Mad Max movies, Beneath Planet of the Apes, A Boy and His Dog, etc.
Great stuff, thanks chaps. I’ll let you know how Mutant Future goes when I get around to it, although we’ll probably record it too. I’m going to do my level best to make sure Jon rolls up a photophobic nocturnal photosynthetic sentient plant with an irrational fear of plants.
You don’t really need to try to make that happen, do you?
Ah I remember the heady days of Gamma World and my brother’s mutated owl, who was afraid of heights and of the dark! 