How's Mutant Year Zero play?

The animal and robot source books aren't as fun as the human or mutated human books simply because Mutant Year Zero uses a system to generate missions and stories so the DM doesn't have to put as much effort into it and they're heavily connected to how you decide to handle and influence your homestead. Half of the game and most of the story is interwined with how you decide to handle your ark/bunker and its inhabitants.

The animal and robot books doesn't feature this home since the animals starts out as trapped and the robots just wander looking for answers. They're still fun but it's like any other roleplaying game. The systems strenght really lies in how it hands over the power to the players to truly influence something larger than their character. Especially considering how easy it is to lose one. Death, irreversible mutations and going feral/broken is common and happens to everyone eventually. You _will_ lose your character but you'll still have made a mark on the world that your next one can take advantage of.

So you're saying the base-building is the best part of the game?

Not out yet

...

>How's Mutant Year Zero play?

My group has been through 6 or 7 sessions and had a lot of fun. Game mechanics wise it's fairly straight forward.

>The system seems nice and simple. Is the setting good too?

The MYZ core book provides a solid initial campaign story line, but there are a few plot-holes. The nice thing about MYZ is that has tons of potential beyond the initial story arc. I'm interested in seeing if my players build a new free society or if things take a darker turn get all 'Lord of the Flies".

>What's the best supplement to get after the main book?

Depends on what you want. Lair of the Saurians has not only several sectors (think mini-modules) but also rules for long distance travel, and rules for generating new creatures to encounter.

Dead Blue Sea has a series of rules for ocean based adventures and encounters (a la Water-World) and various water based equipment, etc.

Doom Sphere isn't bad. But Denizens of the Sinkhole has some plot 'continuity' issues which are at odds with the main story line (though they could be logically explained - the authors just didn't manage to do so in the material included).

It's an okay system I guess, but honestly post apocalyptic would be much better suited to something like dungeon world. It's a much faster and more innovative system and could be adapted for post apocalyptic pretty easily. Honestly just rename the basic moves and make up a couple homebrew classes. Someone's probably already made a hack of it for free. Certainly better than spending 60 bucks on a bloated RPG with overly complicated vehicle rules.

Cool, thanks.

Have you played any other mutant games, like After the Bomb or Gamma World? If yes, how do they compare?

>Someone's probably already made a hack of it for free
Yes, like some random guy named Vincent Baker.

Pretty funny trolling, gotta hand it to you it's an 8/10.

>Yes, like some random guy named Vincent Baker.
Haven't heard of him. Can you give me a link to his work. Probably would help OP to know he has options besides MY0.

I haven't heard the name 'After the Bomb' in a long time. And yeah, I've played Gamma World.

Gamma World is very much 'D&D in an alternate setting'. In Gamma World the players are your classic RPG 'Murder Hobos' who wander the wasteland and kill things / collect loot and experience points.

MYZ is differnt - VERY different. In MYZ the characters live as part of a community - the Ark. And the Ark is almost an NPC in it's own right. The players can't really survive without the Ark, because everything beyond the confines of the Ark is lethal. The air, water, and dirt are all infested with some degree of Zone Rot. Wild weather, Zone Ghouls, Rot Poisoning, starvation and thirst are all waiting for the Characters. 'Safe' places are few and far between. The characters aren't going to amass fame and fortune. They're going to build the foundation of a new society for better or worse - though odds are they won't live to see it. They accomplish this by choose Ark projects to complete and convincing 'Bosses' in the Ark to assist them - for a price. So the game has plenty of social dynamics, along with a constant feel of never truly being safe. And there are some big questions about the origins of the 'People of the Ark' and their special abilities, as well as the true history of the Apocalypse. I'm looking forward to seeing what my players do. (My group's got a female player who runs a Chronicler and is effectively the party leader. She has been a lot more ruthless than I would have guess about protecting the Ark. They took out a Boss who was a serious threat, but she then effectively sold the dead Bosses' followers into slavery working for the other Bosses despite some strong evidence that they had all been mislead.)

>So you're saying the base-building is the best part of the game?

Not the user you replied to. I wouldn't say it's the best part of the game, but what it does do is hand both the players and the GM a very strong story telling element that becomes the backbone of the idea user mentioned, and that is allowing the players to influence something larger than themselves - like the very survival of a fledgling society barely hanging on. I may well introduce the Animal Mutants and Robots as characters without necessarily running the Gen Lab Alpha campaign. Mechatron isn't out yet - I've got the Alpha version of the rules from the KS, but they've delayed the release to completely revise the backstory, etc to better fit within the framework of the MYZ series. I'm also interested to see what they'll do with the Humans / 'Titan Powers' book. (The 'Titan Powers' are basically the surviving ancients who's greed and selfishness lead to the Apocalypse in the first place. Think /k/'s unna-da-ground stories - along with under the Sea, and 'hiding in space' and you get the idea.)

That sounds rad! Pretty different from the usual kill everything that moves and loot it post-apoc I'm used to.

It is very different. Which is why I'm having a good time running it rather than say 'Murder Hobo Campaign #387'.

The setting is quite nice. The rules are horrible. Too simplified and forcing roleplaying in a mold that is immature and limiting.

Shit, even the GM hated it.
Characters scrape by to even subsist, which was kinda nice but everything else felt clunky. Dividing PC attention between adventuring or doing labor to improve home was annoying, particularly so when you rolled badly for said improvement.
Combat wasn't satisfying. Mutant powers is risky so you end up not using it at all. A dedicated fighter with a chronicler backing up felt straight up broken.

If anybody likes the sound of the Ark aspect of MY0, Legacy Life Among the Ruins does a similar thing, albeit with more control. Every player creates a "Family" , which is just a regionally important faction, which they largely control. They come in several different flavors, and the process of creating them also informs certain attributes of the world and the apocalypse. For instance, picking the "giant monster hunter" family archetype obviously means that giant monsters are a thing post-Fall, but also more subtle things like different stat arrays meaning different things about the apocalypse (for instance, your BoS/Enclave style tech hoarder archetype has stat arrays for super science tech being widespread before the fall, largely localized and hidden in vaults and stuff, or having largely been created or unleashed BECAUSE of the apocalypse). It's pretty neat and makes for an interesting collaboration experience between players and GM

You do also get to play as individual people, but they're more the major players of a particular event and chosen for that particular purpose rather than playing the same one every time. The fact that they are slightly more purpose built and not quite as investment heavy means you can feel free to take more risks with them and do weirder shit since the game assumes you'll be swapping out characters for the next major event you "zoom in" on and play out.
It's modified pbta which I know will turn off some people but IMHO it's a fairly fun, unique system.

rules can be changed. i remember i tinkered around with rules greatly when i was dm-ing. for example the way armor and shields worked. i made it so that without them you died real quick in a melee that ended the rogue types running into battle pretty fast.

>The rules are horrible. Too simplified and forcing roleplaying in a mold that is immature and limiting.

What? What limits did they put on role-playing? It isn't as if they insist that all players speak in a Swedish accent or something. In point of fact, they actually reward players for treating the NPCs as if they're important in their own right rather than just "OK NPC #37 - give me a plot hook before I murder you for the extra 6 experience points and loot your corpse." There isn't anything immature about rewarding actual role-playing as opposed to 'roll-playing' (i.e. I rolled some dice gimme some loot.) kind of shit that goes on in the vast majority of RPGs on the market.

I can understand not liking something, but your comments make me wonder if your GM was very good at running the game or not. Did your GM make the players role-play out hours of labor something? The core rules literally tell the GM that it's just fine to hand wave anything like Ark project construction or injury recovery that isn't directly relevant and driving the story forward. "OK, we have convinced the Ark to build an animal pen." GM: "How many of you are contributing labor? OK, roll your dice." Players roll dice and total their results. (Which takes what, 20 - 30 seconds?) Based on the dice results the GM describes how long it takes to accomplish the goal. GM: "The players rally the people of the Ark around the project. Over the course of 4 days various Ark factions scavenge up the raw materials and all labor to complete the 'Grazer' pens." That isn't exactly a huge time sink in the course of a game session. After that the PCs would have to manage a zone expedition to capture grazers for the pens, etc. All of which leads to more roll-playing and action. As for the issue of Mutation 'misfires' - there's a 1 in 6 chance per usage. Use a D8, D10, or D20 to adjust the percentage. Not exactly rocket science.

Just curious, how high did you get your ARK DEV ratings in your games?

...

Does MYZ support cyborgs and mecha? As in, could the rules handle such things, or are they more focused on human-scale gritty survival?

Mutant: Mechatron was kickstarted but it's running late.

kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/mutant-mechatron-rise-of-the-robots-roleplaying/description

>In Mutant: Mechatron, you literally build your character from parts. These parts come in the form of Chassis Cards (a physical card deck is included in the ANDROID reward and above), divided into Head, Torso and Undercarriage. Each Chassis Card contributes attribute points, armor and a maximum number of modules (also chosen using cards), meaning you will effectively create your character’s core stats by combining the Chassis Cards in different ways.

That's cool and all, but it's unclear to me whether this supports just human-size robots or whether you can make 30' mecha and laser tanks with this.

>30' mecha and laser tanks with this.
Unlikely as stuff like that has never really been a huge part of the Swedish versions of Mutant. Laser weapons existed in UA (the previous version) for example but were objectively worse than regular matchlock rifles.

>Laser weapons existed in UA (the previous version) for example but were objectively worse than regular matchlock rifles.

They really werent, unless they were fucked over by the reliability stat.

It was more they had the old fallout problem that if you survived until you could restore one to working order no one had any skills to use them.

M:UA did have some crazy old-tech stuff but they were more horror stories and the few things that got statblocks werent on the level of "fuck you, y'all dead".

Its really the latter, no crazy Rifts shit here, what there was of that in the really old versions more or less split off and became Mutant Chronicles.