The Zone Quartet V

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is the fifth supplement for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the post-apocalypse set RPG based on Mutant - År Noll, the Swedish RPG from Free League Publishing distributed by Modiphius Entertainment. As with the previous supplements in this series—Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die!, and Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War—this is a slim supplement that presents various scenario set-ups and situations, or ‘Special Zone Sectors’ which can be quickly and easily dropped into a Game Master’s campaign and the sectors of her Zone map.

Where Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War was a supplement to a supplement, providing further robot encounters for Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator returns to the Zone found in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days—either the Big Smoke, the Big Apple, or a Zone of the Game Master’s own devising. It includes numerous encounters with the anthropomorphic animals of Mutant: Genlab Alpha and the sentient robots of Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, as well as some Humans of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium. However, technically, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is set before the events of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, and really, would work just as after its events too, perhaps in conjunction with Mutant: Year Zero – The Gray Death.

The first of the four ‘Special Zone Sectors’ in Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is the eponymous ‘Hotel Imperator’. This describes a weirdly still functioning hotel, complete with advanced features, but put to another purpose. It is the headquarters of a Psionically capable cabal called the Brain Ring with long term plans of domination for the Zone. If the Player Characters get inside, they will find an almost cornucopia of artefacts and things to be scavenged, but also a certain creepiness to both its atmosphere and its inhabitants. The situation and relationship between the inhabitants is on a knife edge, really awaiting the arrival of the Player Characters, but ‘Hotel Imperator’ is not best used simply plumped down as just another place for them to visit. Its write-up includes a number of events—some of them linked to previous entries in the ‘Zone Compendium’ series, suggesting how it can be worked into a campaign, but as a location it best works as the final part of plotline which the Game Master has worked into her campaign.

Of more immediate use is ‘The Long Road’, an encounter with relatively recently formed caravan operated by a band of anthropomorphic animals. Lead by an aggressive Orangutan, this is a relatively flexible encounter which does not have the big plot of ‘Hotel Imperator’, but rather can be used in a number of different ways, including trading partner, blockade, furthering another plot, and so on, but being nomadic, it can be moved around a lot.

Where Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War took the robots to a theme park, the Wild West-themed ‘Fort Robot’, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator takes us to ‘The Zone Fair’. This is an amusement park, replete with various attractions such as Fortune Teller, Shooting Range, Casino, and more. The Player Characters can come here to trade, enjoy the entertainments, and even participate in the upcoming poker contest—rules are provided for ‘Zone Poker’, as well as get involved in other plots. As a static location, there is plenty for the Player Characters to do, and the likelihood is that they will return again and again. However, there is at least one element to do with an NPC which is left undeveloped and the Game Master wondering what to do with him if the Player Characters want to dig into his background.

The last of the four ‘Special Zone Sectors’ in Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is ‘The Great Zone Walker’. This is another mobile encounter, but where the caravan of ‘The Long Road’ consists of just a few vehicles, ‘The Great Zone Walker’ is a behemoth, a monstrously colossal device which trundles across the Zone, home to a small tribe. In fact, in comparison to the encounters the Player Characters will have had in the Zone, it is on the scale of Mortal Engines, and being so big, it is not a subtle thing to bring into a campaign, and indeed could smash it apart. As an object though, its huge physicality means it is a fantastic object to clamber over and swing across.

Rounding out Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is something different to the other titles in the series—new rules. These though are relatively minor additions and tie back to the ‘Hotel Imperator’ ‘Special Zone Sector’ found at the start of the book. They include a number of new psionic mutations and two related artefacts. These are the Psionic Enhancer and Psionic Blocker, and whilst their inclusion makes sense, the inclusion of the new mutations not quite so much. Unfortunately, they only seem to have appeared in the Mutant: Mechatron – Custom Card Deck and so needed to put into print, and since Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator includes the one psionic encounter, it makes sense to have them included here.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is as well presented as the other titles in the series. The artwork is excellent and the maps, both illustrated and cartographic, are nicely done. In fact, the artwork also serves as great illustrations to show the players when they encounter the various locations and NPCs. The book is also well written, with solid descriptions and a handful of events and scenario ideas for the Game Master to flesh out.

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator presents a good collection of Special Zone Sectors. The second, third, and fourth—‘The Long Road’, ‘The Zone Fair’, and ‘The Great Zone Walker’—are generally easy to bring into a campaign and the Game Master’s Zone, but ‘Hotel Imperator’ will need some to work into a campaign and lay the groundwork for its payoff climax. In general, these are really useful to add to a standard campaign as detailed in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, but one which mixes elements from both Mutant: Genlab Alpha and the sentient robots of Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying. Overall, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator is a great addition to a late campaign of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days.

Escaping the End of the World

In classic post apocalypse gaming—by which we mean Gamma World—players get to roleplay a variety of character types Humans, Mutants, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants. Although it seems highly unlikely that players will get to roleplay Mutated Plants in the Mutant: Year Zero series, so far in the Swedish post apocalypse roleplaying game, Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, players have got to play Mutants, leaving the Ark that is their home to explore the Zone beyond and the metaplot which underlies the setting—a search for Eden and perhaps the fate of the Ancients. Then with Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, they got to play mutated animals, living in Paradise Valley under the careful eye of the metallic Watchers from their base in the Labyrinth. This was followed by Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying in which the players roleplayed not Androids, but robots, suddenly self-aware sent out to prevent other robots from achieving self-awareness, in a giant undersea manufacturing dome whose facilities have long begun to deteriorate. This only left the Humans. Just where are the Humans in the future of Mutant: Year Zero? All that is explained in the setting’s latest expansion and fourth standalone roleplaying game in the line, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium. Like those previous expansions and roleplaying games, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium includes everything necessary to play—character generation, rules, and a complete campaign, all of which leads up to the start of something new…

The last of humanity has ridden out the worst of the apocalypse in an enclave dug deep into the bowels of the earth. This is Elysium I—named after the meadows of eternal Spring of Greek mythology—founded by four powerful industrial and financial dynasties that continue to rule the enclave to this day. Decades after the end of the world, contact has been lost with the other enclaves, resources are growing scarce, the enclave is close to losing its manufacturing capabilities, and the four great houses—Warburg, Fortescue, Morningstar, and Kilgore—plot and feud against each whilst other putting on a public face of co-operation and optimism. Meanwhile, the workers agitate for better conditions, criminal gangs seem to have free reign, acts of sabotage seem to go unchecked, and rumours abound that the surface might be safe to walk upon and the air clean enough to breathe, a paradise awaiting the first footsteps of humanity once again. In response, the four houses have established a force of Judicators tasked with preserving law and order in the enclave.

The players take the role of members of the four houses—junior members or heirs—who have been assigned to the Judicators, every Judicator patrol consisting of at least one officer from each of the houses. Their loyalties are, of course, to their patrol and the Judicators, but in secret, they report to, and take orders from their house, which often means they have to follow agendas at odds with the rival houses, if not the fellow Judicators in their patrol. Effectively, this means that at any one time, one of the player characters in a patrol will be a double agent! In essence, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium has much in common with Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron. The player characters are tasked with policing and dealing with an issue that they are either part of or responsible for. In Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron it is dealing with difficult situations caused by self-aware robots, whilst also being self-aware, whilst in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, the Judicators are investigating acts of sabotage, whilst one of their number is supporting or conducting similar acts of sabotage in the name of their House. If Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium can be described in terms of other roleplaying games, it is Mongoose Publishing’s Paranoia meets EN Publishing’s Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000AD and Contested Ground Studios’ Cold City. All of which is played out in a giant inverted underground city equipped with advanced, but increasingly decrepit technology and infrastructure and the look and style of late-nineteenth century, though more central Europe than the Victorian era of Great Britain.

As with player characters in the other Mutant: Year Zero roleplaying games, characters in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium have four attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Each attribute has three basic skills associated with it. Instead of the Mutations of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the species of Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, and chassis and models of Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron, characters or Judicators in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium are all Human. They belong to one of the houses—Warburg, Fortescue, Morningstar, and Kilgore—each of which favours one of the four attributes. They also belong to one of six professions—Investigator, Officer, Procurator, Scholar, Soldier, and Technician. A seventh option is a Psionic, but the playing group will need access to Mutant: Year Zero in order to use such powers of the mind. Each profession provides a single professional skill, for example, Investigate for the Investigator and Command for the Officer, plus options in terms of a Judicator’s appearance, talents, relationships to the other player characters and NPCs, objectives, and equipment.

Unlike the previous roleplaying games and expansions in the Mutant: Year Zero family, the Humans of the Enclave I in general do not have any ‘special’ powers, such as the mutations of the mutants in Mutant: Year Zero. Exceptions to this are the aforementioned Psionics from Mutant: Year Zero and Biomechatronics—cybernetic implants, such as Data Banks, Polygraph, or Heat Vision. Their use though has the potential to cause Machine Fever in those implanted with them. It could be argued though, that the Contacts that each Judicar has, for example, ‘Deadbeat Child’, ‘Grandfather’s Trove’, or ‘Loan Shark’, are the equivalent of ‘special’ powers, but with more social rather than physical or mental effects. Similarly, like the use of Biomechatronics, the use of Contacts is not without its potential backlash.

To create a Judicator a player selects a House and Profession, making choices from the options that these provide. This includes one of the three talents available for the profession, for example, Defender, Pettifogger, and Public Servant for the Procurator. When a character gains experience, he can choose more of these profession-only talents, as well as talents from a wider selection, such as Double Wielder, Machine at Heart, and Rot Resistant. He also assigns points to both attributes and skills, the points for each varying according to a character’s age. A younger character will have more points to assign to his attributes and fewer to his skills, whilst the reverse is the case for an older character. In addition, a player also selects his Judicator’s contacts and what he thinks of them. These are important because they form the pool of NPCs in ‘Guardians of the Fall’, the campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium.

Our sample character is Horatio Kilgore, a historian who has written a number of books about society before the Titan conflict. The recent circulation of rumours about the surface world being safe made the head of the Judicars wonder where they might be coming from and what they might be based on. So, an expert on the past was requested and unfortunately, Horatio, was reassigned. Much to his dislike, he finds himself having to get out and about instead of spending his days reading and teaching. 

Commissar Horatio Kilgore
House Kilgore
Profession: Scholar
Appearance: Glasses, Hunched build, Smooth and buttoned uniform
Age: 52

Attributes
Strength 2, Agility 3, Wits 5, Empathy 4

Talents
Crucial Insight

Skills 11
Enlighten 4, Fight 1, Shoot 1, Comprehend 3, Know the Zone 3, Manipulate 2

Relationships (Fellow Judicars)
Niamh Warburg is your apprentice and you wish to teach her everything you know.
David Fortescue is ill-mannered and should be disciplined.
Lulu Morningstar has knowledge you thought was unimportant that proved to be otherwise.

Relationships (Contacts)
You hate Theodora Warburg, a fellow Scholar and former colleague. An imbecile, totally undeserving of the career at the academy which should have been yours.
You want to protect Melina Fortescue, a brilliant scholar at the academy and your former teacher.

Your Big Dream
To learn about the surface world and maybe even experience it. You suspect that the Council is not saying everything they know on the subject.

Gear
Stun gun, E-pack, emergency rations, Class IV ID card, comm radio, 9 Credits

Mechanically, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium uses the same system as Mutant: Year Zero—a mix of specialised dice and cards, also published by Free League Publishing and distributed Modiphius Entertainment. The content of the cards though, in the main artefacts as in Mutant: Year Zero, are reproduced in the pages of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium and so are not absolutely necessary to play the game. Indeed, arguably, the artefacts do not play as strong a role in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium as they do in other roleplaying games and expansions in the line. The dice are another matter. All six-sided dice, they are divided into three types—the yellow Base dice, the green Skill dice, and the black Gear dice. In addition to the number six, all dice are marked with the radiation symbol on that face. This indicates a success when rolled. On the one face of the yellow Base dice there is a biohazard symbol, whilst on the one face of the black Gear dice, there is an explosion symbol. Rolling either symbol is counted as a failure. The green Skill dice do not have an extra symbol of their one faces. Now a game of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium can be run without using the specific Mutant: Year Zero dice, but it does at least require pools of the three different coloured dice to represent the Base, Skill, and Gear dice.

To undertake an action, a Judicator’s player assembles a dice pool consisting of Base, Skill, and Gear. These should be yellow Base dice equal to the attribute used, green Skill dice equal to his skill, and black Gear dice equal to the Bonus for the item of any Gear used. A roll of six (radiation) on any of the dice rolled counts as a success, but rolling more successes are better as these can be spent on stunts. The types of stunt available are listed skill by skill. So with the Fight, you might inflict extra damage, grab an opponent’s weapon, or knock it over, while with Know the Zone, you would not only work out what a creature or phenomenon is, but also whether or not it could hurt you or you could hurt it. If no sixes are rolled, then the action is a failure. The results are even worse if ones or biohazard symbols on the yellow Base dice or explosion symbols on the black Gear dice are rolled. If a player fails to roll any radiation symbols—or not enough, he can push the roll and reroll any dice that did came up as Biohazard, Explosion, or Radiation symbols. Even if a player makes a successful roll, his Judicator can still suffer trauma for any Biohazard symbols rolled.

For the most part, combat in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium works in the same way as it does in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, with one major exception. Characters have access to advanced healing, although it takes time. Social conflicts use the same mechanics as physical combat.

The play of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium differs significantly ways both minor and major. The first and minor difference is that where in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, the player characters were trying to improve their lives and those of their community by inventing new technologies and building devices, here they are attempting to hold back the enclave’s ruin and eventual collapse. Instead of working to raise Development Levels, here the player characters are attempting to prevent them from degrading, though ultimately, this is unlikely. This sets up one half of the conflict that lies at the core of Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium. The other is that the player characters, the Judicars, are often expected to place their loyalties to their respective Houses above their loyalty to the enclave and the last of humanity overall. When asked to do so by their House, the Judicar becomes, in effect, a traitor to his patrol and fellow Judicars, and the enclave in general.

This core conflict is supported by the roleplaying game’s set-up and play, which again is different to that of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha. Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium is best played by four players so that their patrol is comprised of one heir from each of the four houses. Play is divided into Strategic and non-Strategic rounds. Strategic rounds are player controlled and are when each represents not his characters, but his whole House. They plan and stage Incidents which will hopefully either increase their respective House’s Control or decrease the Control of a rival House in a sector. By increasing a House’s Control in a sector, the more Influence Points a character has during play, which enables him to bring in more of his contacts into play. Each House’s degree of Control is also used when voting to determine which Incident is assigned to the Judicar squad that the player characters are in. Each Incident will have a starting effect which is unavoidable and a final effect which will take place if the Judicars fail to deal with it—and that is in addition to the final effects of the Incidents which take place at the same time as the Incident being investigated, and which the Judicars do not deal with. Thus there is a constant sense of ongoing decline and decay that the Judicars just cannot hold despite their best efforts—which are often undermined.

At this point, the Strategic round pauses, the non-Strategic round begins, essentially normal play with each player roleplaying his character conducting the investigation of the Incident. This includes one of the squad being a double agent who is following his House’s agenda rather than that of the squad or the enclave. Following the resolution of the Incident, the players get to vote on who they think the double agent is and can get Experience Points if they all do. An exposed double agent is punished for misconduct and can be imprisoned for multiple infractions.

All of this is supported not just by a detailed description of Enclave I, sector by sector, and solid advice for the Game Master, but also the ‘Guardians of the Fall’ campaign. It is built around fifteen key NPCs and eleven Incidents, divided into eight standard Incidents and three Special Incidents. The eight standard Incidents will occur again and again up and down the Enclave, until such times as the Judicars investigate them and then they do not occur again. As the Incidents pile up and Enclave I begins to degrade, the Special Incidents occur. These tie the events of the  ‘Guardians of the Fall’ campaign into previous events in other Mutant: Year Zero campaigns and ultimately will push the Judicars out of Enclave I. The ‘Guardians of the Fall’ campaign is generally very good, but it does feel relatively short at eleven episodes and its constant focus on the debilitating effects of the Houses undermining each other, does make it a bit of grind with no let up. Now the Game Master is provided with the means to create other Incidents, which are really necessary if she wants to run Incidents that are normal in comparison, but it would be nice to see ordinary Incidents as detailed as those in the campaign. Especially as that would also allow the Game Master and her players to involve their characters more in what is the nicely detailed and rich setting of Enclave I. The last part of ‘Guardians of the Fall’ campaign takes the whole of the Mutant: Year Zero into the future, but hopefully there will be support for that future from Free League Publishing.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium is of the same standard as the rest of the Mutant: Year Zero line. Although it needs an edit in places, the writing is decent, the cartography is clear, and the artwork is excellent, the latter including a rather nice pastiche. Lastly, it comes with a good index.

Although, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium bears similarities to Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, it is a very different campaign in tone and nature. It is divisive—it is House against House, and thus player character against player character; it is collective in nature—each Judicar’s House matters more than the individual or the Enclave; is is oppressive—the Judicators are officers of an autocratic state; the enemies are internal—that is, the inhabitants of Enclave I—rather than external; and ultimately, the Humans of the future of Mutant: Year Zero are committing the errors of the past once again. Also the satirical aspect previously seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is not as strong in Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium and there is a darker, more oppressive feel to both setting and campaign. That said, the campaign does end on a wondrous and positive note, and perhaps the fact that it is short at just eleven episodes is something of a relief given its oppressive feel. It will be interesting to see how all of these differences are contrasted and handled in future releases for the Mutant: Year Zero line.

If a Game Master and her players have played through the first three Mutant: Year Zero roleplaying games, then they will certainly want to play Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium, but be warned, it is radically different in terms of tone and play than the others. It would also work as a one-shot campaign, but is best played as the fourth part of the Mutant: Year Zero line because it is so different. Darker, decaying, and Dickensian, Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium takes the Mutant: Year Zero in a wholly new direction, just as each of the Mutant: Year Zero titles have done before it. This is the Mutant: Year Zero which brings them all together and which sets up what will hopefully be the next chapter. 

The Zone Quartet IV

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War is the fourth supplement for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the post-apocalypse set RPG based on Mutant - År Noll, the Swedish RPG from Free League Publishing released in English by Modiphius Entertainment. As with the previous supplements in this series—Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea, and Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die!—this is a slim supplement that presents various scenario set-ups and situations, or ‘Special Zone Sectors’—though not new rules—which can be quickly and easily dropped into a Game Master’s campaign and the sectors of her Zone map. Where those three supplements have in turn provided encounters in the Zone, at sea, and with the animals of Mutant: Year Zero: Genlab Alpha, this supplement provides encounters with robots, as detailed in Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying.

As a supplement to a supplement—that is, a supplement to Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying—Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War sets up encounters with robots in the wider world beyond the confines of Mechatron-7, a sub-sea manufacturing and supply base for Noatun, one of the three Titan powers which fought the apocalypse. Depending upon the scenario, this can be as player character mutants from the Ark in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days or as robots from Mechatron-7 from Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying. Each scenario includes notes for using it with either and for what happens if there the mutated animals of Mutant: Year Zero: Genlab Alpha in the party also as well as the standard descriptions of the location, the situation, inhabitants, and possible events.

The first of the four Special Zone Sectors is the eponymous, ‘The Eternal War’. The player characters—specifically mutants, but again easily adjusted to include other character types—find an intact building with an open steel door, near some water. Inside stairs lead down to an underwater harbour, complete with cargo submarines, cargo drones, a mystery, and two robots with conflicting orders battling it out to destroy each in between increasingly lengthy recharge periods. This a closed area, ripe for exploration, and an opportunity to send the player characters off in a radical new direct—perhaps to Mechatron-7, perhaps somewhere else of the Game Master’s design. (Oh, for an official scenario where that happened!) The facilities themselves could easily be expanded upon if the Game Master so wanted. Overall, this is a pleasingly straightforward Special Zone Sector to run with a limited number of NPCs and things going on.

‘Fort Robot’ the second scenario, can be best described as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying get together and mix it up with West World. The player characters come across ‘WILD WEST WORLD’, a former theme park which has been taken over by robots who are slowly renovating it and restoring parts of it to order. As visitors they get taken in and invited to partake of what the park has to offer—drink at the saloon, ride the steam locomotive, visit the Native American village, and so on. Of course, the saloon gets shot up by bandits, the steam locomotive gets robbed by bandits, the Native American village gets raided by bandits—it is all part of the entertainment. This is all fun and good, but there is a rattlesnake or two present to shake things and how things shake out is definitely down to the players and their characters. In the meantime, both players and Game Master can have fun with the clichés of the Wild West genre in this inventive, if a little odd Special Zone Sector.

The third Special Zone Sector is ‘Northbay Nandeep 23’ and is specifically designed to be played by player character robots. It can be run as part of the ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ from Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying and sees the player characters sent on a strange mission. They are given a Work Order to visit an external farming facility and ascertain what resources it holds. It turns out that the facility is still working—more or less—but not without its problems. Some robots want to keep it working, others want to leave, whilst still others are simply sick. All sides will be surprised to see the player characters, their arrival serving to upset the balance of power which has existed for a long while. There are a couple of secrets to uncover, but eventually things will come to head and chaos will probably break out at the facility. This is probably the most complex of the four Special Zone Sectors in Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War.

The last of the Special Zone Sectors in the supplement is the simplest and its only disappointing entry. ‘The Robot Factory’ is a restored cannery, a potential source of grub for the Zone that may well ensure the survival of its inhabitants. Unfortunately, the factory operators are employing slave labour—robot slave labour—and something of them are beginning to achieve self-awareness… Who will the player characters side with? The owners with their supply of canned grub or the newly awoken robots? Unfortunately there are not as many options or events to play this through as the other three Special Zone Sectors. Nor is there much in the way of subtlety or nuance either and it is rather underwhelming in comparison to the other three. It does not help that there is no internal map of the location either. Overall, not an overly special Special Zone Sector.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War is as well presented as the other titles in the series. The artwork is excellent and the maps, both illustrated and cartographic, are nicely done. In fact, the artwork also serves as great illustrations to show the players when they encounter the various locations and NPCs. The book is also well written, with solid descriptions and a handful of events and scenario ideas for the Game Master to flesh out.

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War presents good collection of Special Zone Sectors. Three of them—‘The Eternal War’, ‘Fort Robot’, and ‘The Factory’—work as different introductions to the robots of Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, in turn as killers, protectors, entertainers, and workers, whilst the third, ‘Northbay Nandeep 23’, introduces robots of Mechatron-7 to the outside world of the Zone. It would be good to see a supplement devoted to the Work Orders—the scenarios inside the robot facility, but Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War is a nicely presented, solid set of Special Zone Sectors for when the Game Master wants to bring robot and mutant together for the first time.

Under the End of the World

In classic post apocalypse gaming, players get to roleplay Humans, Mutants, Mutated Animals, and Androids. So far, in the Swedish roleplaying game, Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, players have got to play Mutants, leaving the Ark that is their home to explore the Zone beyond and the metaplot which underlies the setting—a search for Eden and perhaps the fate of the Ancients. Then with Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, they got to play mutated animals, living in Paradise Valley under the careful eye of the metallic Watchers from their base in the Labyrinth. Its standalone campaign, ‘Escape from Paradise’ could be played as precursor to, or could lead into, ‘The Path to Eden’, the campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. In addition to introducing Mutated Animals, one thing Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha also did was provide the setting with its first look at robots! Now, with the release of Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, robots come to the fore, with complete rules for creating and roleplaying them as player characters, plus a setting and a campaign.

As with Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, this new supplement and roleplaying game was originally published in Swedish by Free League Publishing, before being released in English by Modiphius Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The setting for Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is Mechatron-7, a sub-sea manufacturing and supply base for Noatun, one of the three Titan powers which fought the apocalypse. The last order its central mainframe, NODOS was to continue manufacturing materiel in support of the war, and this it has done for decades—at the very least—and the giant undersea dome’s facilities have long begun to deteriorate. With contact with the outside world long lost, the facility is no longer receiving supplies or raw materials, leading to an inability to conduct repairs or conduct maintenance, even generate power. Yet NODOS has its orders and continues to manufacture what it can, filling warehouses in readiness for shipment, but in reality just crushing previously manufactured goods. In the years since the Humans left, the robots have continued their assignments as well as emulating Human activities more and more, including eating grease puddings and drinking oil drinks, and enjoying robot entertainment like Pong. Other robots have simply worn out and been broken down into scrap, but with no robots being manufactured, some new robots have been put together from the scrapped parts, although none of these ‘new’ robots can access the Collective or are recognised by NODOS as being part of the Collective. It is into this bubble of advancing decrepitude that the player character robots suddenly achieve self-awareness…

The character creation in Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is most complex of the three when compared with Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha. Each robot is constructed first from three parts—head, torso, and undercarriage—which determines not only what a robot looks like and its primary means of movement, but also its core attributes, armour, and the number of modules it can have installed. The four attributes are Servos (Strength), Stability (Agility), Processor (Wits), and Network (Empathy). A player also needs to assign points to his robot’s programs, including the special program unique to each robot model. There are six robot models—Battle Robot, Cleaning Robot, Companion Robot, Coordination Robot, Protocol Robot, Scrap Robot, and Security Robot—and like the roles in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, a model provides an appearance, personality, and so on, as well as a robot’s relationships, its  gear and its big dream. It also provides a rank number, representing a robot’s place in the Hierarchy of Mechatron-7. What is interesting about this design process is that players are encouraged to min-max their robot designs, to get the best of their robots. Further, as the campaign progresses, a robot may also be able to find scrap parts and so replace its head, torso, and undercarriage and so possibly improve its attributes, armour, and the number of modules it can mount. That said, during robot creation, no player character robot can have the same head, torso, or undercarriage as any other. Eight of each are provided to choose from.

Edsel WST-242
Model: Security Robot
Hierarchy: 4
Chassis Parts:
Head: Kordura Mod 022
Torso: Modessi RK ‘Uni’
Undercarriage: LBM Terra 004

Description:
Colour: White with black markings
Voice: Firm and serious
Features: Jackey marked ‘NoPol’
Metalic head with human-like features, lightweight barrel torso with thin arms, and thick robot legs with heavy feet.

Personality: Patient Chatterbox

Attributes
Servos 4, Stability 3, Processor 3, Network 3
Armour: 5
Modules 1 (Head:1, Torso: 0, Undercarriage: 1)
Secondary Function: Command Override

Skills
Protect (Servos) 2, Overload (Servos) 0, Force (Servos) 0, Assault (Servos) 1, Infiltrate (Stability) 0, Move (Stability) 1, Shoot (Stability) 2, Scan (Processor) 2, Datamine (Processor) 0, Analyse (Processor) 0, Question (Network) 0, Interact (Network) 2, Repair (Network) 0

Modules
Interrogator, Riot Control

Relationships
Niamh BWR-508 (PC) does not respect the laws of the Collective. You will have to take action.
You hate… The cleaning droid Dusty BPD-857, who always triggers the alrm when it’s cleaning restricted areas.
You need to protect… The Coordination droid Rufaro DYM-097, who has helped you many times with difficult tasks.

Your Big Dream
To break a difficult case and be celebrated as a hero of the Collective

Gear
Stun gun, lock bolt

Mechanically, Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying uses the same system as Mutant: Year Zero—a mix of specialised dice and cards, also published by Free League Publishing and Modiphius Entertainment. The content of cards though, representing Chassis parts, Modules, and Artefacts are reproduced in the pages of Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying and so are not absolutely necessary to play game. The dice are another matter. All six-sided dice, they are divided into three types—the yellow Base dice, the green Skill dice, and the black Gear dice. In addition to the number six all dice are marked with the radiation symbol on that face. This indicates a success when rolled. On the 1 face of the yellow Base dice there is a biohazard symbol, whilst on the 1 face of the black Gear dice, there is an explosion symbol. Rolling either symbol is counted as a failure. The green Skill dice do not have an extra symbol of their 1 faces. Now a game of Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying can be run without using the specific Mutant: Year Zero dice, but it does at least require pools of the three different coloured dice to represent the Base, Gear, and Program dice.

To undertake an action, a robot’s player assembles a dice pool consisting of Base, Gear, and Program dice. These should be yellow Base dice equal to the attribute used, black Gear dice equal to the Bonus for the item of any Gear used, and green Program dice equal to his skill. A roll of six (radiation) on any of the dice rolled counts as a success, but rolling more successes are better as these can be spent on stunts. The types of stunt available are listed skill by skill. So with the Assault Program, you might inflict extra damage, grab an opponent’s weapon, or knock it over, while with Analyze, you would not only work out what a creature or phenomenon is, but also whether or not it could hurt you or you could hurt it. If no sixes are rolled, then the action is a failure. The results are even worse if ones or biohazard symbols on the yellow Base dice or explosion symbols on the black Gear dice are rolled. If a player fails to roll any radiation symbols—or not enough, he can push the roll and reroll any dice that did came up as Biohazard, Explosion, or Radiation symbols. Even if a player makes a successful roll, his robot can still suffer damage for any Biohazard symbols rolled.

Instead of Mutant Points or Feral Points, a robot has Energy Points. They work as a power source to fuel devices, as currency, and as Experience Points. Inside Mechatron-7 and a robot can freely charge its batteries at its charging station, though there will be some sectors of the facility where it has no access or there are none working. One use of Energy Points is to power Modules. There is the danger though, when a robot uses a Module that it will overheat, draining further power, cause a memory wipe, and so on. Another use for Energy Points is to buy off damage, on a one-for-one basis, whether suffered as a result of Biohazard symbols rolled, accident, or combat.

For the most part, combat in Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying works in the same way as it does in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha, with one major exception. Robots can engage in Logic battles as well as physical battles. These require a logical argument and the use of the Interact Program. A robot’s place in the Hierarchy can provide a bonus to the robot which has a higher rank in Mechatron-7’s structure. Another thing is that robots can also suffer from viruses and there are programs too available which a robot can become addicted to in Mechatron-7.

As well as detailing Mechatron-7 and providing artefacts and various robots and monsters, Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying includes quite a lengthy campaign in the form of ‘Ghosts in the Machine’. This begins with each of the player character robots becoming self-aware and being detected as defective and sent to the Turing Robot Sanatorium. There they are assigned to the Quality Assurance Program and then given work orders as Error Eliminator Unit #457. What this means is the robots are going to be sent out to deal with difficult situations and robots—some of whom may also be self-aware, which may be the cause of their problems—despite the fact that the player character robots are also self-aware. So there is an element of satire here, much like the roleplaying game Paranoia or many of the works of author Philip K. Dick.

The campaign is a mix of Work Order missions and events and roughly be divided into two parts. The second half pushes the campaign out of Mechatron-7 and back again, essentially plugging Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying into Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha. Overall, the campaign is excellent, but it definitely feels like the half in Mechatron-7 should be longer and that there should be more Work Orders.

What is interesting is that in Mechatron-7 and in ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ the Development Levels—Food, Culture, Technology, and Warfare—of both Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha are inverted. The aim in those settings is for the player characters to increase their Ark’s Development Levels and so improve the technologies they have access to. In Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, the Collective is measured by a different four—Energy, Production, Defence, and Information. Instead of working to improve them, the player characters are working to prevent their decline. They can improve the ratings in each, but cannot prevent their decline. So essentially, as the campaign progresses, the level of technology and facilities they have access to also declines. Eventually, just like the plot of the campaign, this will push the player characters out of Mechatron-7 and out into the wider world, following the pattern set by ‘Paradise Valley’ in Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha.

Both the campaign and the game in general is supported by some excellent advice for the Game Master. This consists of a series of short pointers—‘Robots are Machines’, ‘The Collective Means Safety and Control’, ‘Robots are Individuals’, ‘The Decay is Inevitable’, ‘There Is Never Enough Energy’, ‘The Outside Is a Threat’, ‘Let the PCs Become Scrap’, and It Can Be Funny Too. The ‘Let the PCs Become Scrap’ is interesting as a foil to the earlier advice to letting the players min-max their robots, essentially advising the Game Master not to hold back in order to demonstrate that their robots are at risk, whether in Mechatron-7 or outside.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is as impressive as the previous two volumes. This is grim, but not without a sense of humour. That said—and despite the satirical edge to the world of Mechatron-7 and the Collective—Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is a not a game to be played for pure laughs. The book even warns against this. Any humour present is sardonic at most, for neither the setting nor the campaign never let the Game Master or the players forget the grim nature of the robots’ predicament. The book is also very nicely illustrated, but the cover by Simon Stålenhag is particularly good, neatly encapsulating the themes at the heart of the supplement.

Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is a mix of Judge Dredd meets Blade Runner meets Paranoia all built into the nicely detailed location of Mechatron-7 whilst still leaving room for the Game Master to add her own places and Work Orders. If there is an issue with Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is that the first half of the ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ is over too soon, not giving the Game Master and her players time to explore the complex and the Collective. That said, this supplement does a fantastic job of expanding upon the greater setting of Mutant: Year Zero and like Mutant: Year Zero – Genlab Alpha before it, can be used as a roleplaying game in its own right, or used to plug into an ongoing campaign run by the Game Master and so can be used to introduce both new characters and new character types. It is the most complex of the three books to date, in terms of character design, of its Energy Point economy, and its core concepts. It enables the players to explore new characters—only physically complete—as they become aware of what they are and who they are, essentially from the point of their birth. Mutant: Year Zero – Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying is a dark satire upon robotic identity and robots finding their place in a ‘brave new world’.

The Zone Quartet (+1) III

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! is the third supplement for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the post-apocalypse set RPG based on Mutant - År Noll, the Swedish RPG from Free League Publishing released in English by Modiphius Entertainment. As with the first, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians, Mutant: Year Zero and the second, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea, this is a slim supplement that presents various scenario set-ups and situations—though not new rules—which can be quickly and easily dropped into a Game Master’s campaign and the sectors of his Zone map. Where Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea took Mutant: Year Zero to sea, what Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! does is set up encounters with mutant animals in the post apocalyptic world of Mutant: Year Zero. However, it does not present four encounters in a thirty-two page supplement like those two previous supplements, but five encounters in a thirty-six page supplement, but this is only a minor difference.

What really sets Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! apart from the previous entries in the ‘Zone Compendium’ series is that it is a supplement to another supplement as well as the Mutant: Year Zero core rules. That supplement is Mutant: Genlab Alpha, the standalone roleplaying game and supplement which enabled the Game Master and his players to explore the place of mutant animals and their roles in the post apocalyptic future. Notably, it included the campaign, ‘Escape from Paradise’, which told of the various animal tribes coming together to discover who their robot overlords were and ultimately making an escape into the world beyond Paradise Valley. It is beyond this valley home where the encounters are to be had in Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! take place, in the Zone—or at least near it—where the player characters have their home in their tribe’s Ark.

Problematically, the title and cover of Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! are a bit of a giveaway for the first location. ‘New Kingdom of Deeproot’ presents a warren of lagomorphs, militantly paranoid in their fear and hatred of meat-eaters—as depicted on the front cover. The rabbits have also formed a workers’ protectorate and entrenched themselves against attack. In some ways this is the most challenging encounter in the book, the Rabbits being equally as entrenched in their opinions and beliefs, and getting to persuade them otherwise will take a lot of effort upon the part of player characters. Now the concept of gun-toting bunnies has been a mainstay of the gonzo post-apocalypse genre ever since Gamma World gave us the Hoops, so what we have with ‘New Kingdom of Deeproot’ is something of a cliche. Fortunately, this a decent treatment of a genre standby and whilst it might not be the easiest of location to use, there are good suggestions on how to use it.

Fortunately, ‘Blackhand’s Bar’ is much easier to use. It presents a former rest stop, an oasis of calm and rest amidst the tumult and the wreckage of the long past, somewhere where the player characters can stop, recover, and perhaps gather information. ‘Blackhand’s Bar’ is also the headquarters of the Zone Riders, messengers who traverse the Zone carrying missives and mapping out the Zone. A simple encounter with the Zone Riders will easily draw the player characters to ‘Blackhand’s Bar’ and from there they can establish relationships with the owners and the patrons, perhaps with the aim of also establishing a forward base. Another area of interest is ‘The Garbage Masters’, a mountain of garbage overseen by mutant toads! The place stinks, but the owners will trade for permission to root around in and around the great pile of refuse in search of artefacts. Of course, how long the batrachian owners can hold before someone else wants control of the trash piles and just what artefacts are there to be found in the miasmic mounds?

‘The Island of Doctor Life’ is home to a mysterious machine being as much a refugee from Genlab Alpha as the mutant animals are. As well as the secrets of who this machine is, this is an opportunity for the player characters to gain some much-needed healing, but at what price? There is potential here for a scenario which might take the player characters into—or back into—Paradise Valley, though it will be up to the Game Master to develop this. Lastly, ‘Squirrel Wars’ drops the player characters into the middle of a forest war between two packs, one of squirrels and one of dogs. The war has been running for as long as they can remember. The question is, will the player characters side with the Hounds or the Tail Runners, or perhaps find a way to mediate between the two?

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! is as well presented as the other titles in the series. The artwork is excellent and the maps, both illustrated and cartographic, are nicely done. In fact, the artwork also serves as great illustrations to show the players when they encounter the various locations and NPCs. The book is also well written, with solid descriptions and a handful of events and scenario ideas for the Game Master to flesh out.

Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! also marks the growing co-operation between Free League Publishing and Modiphius Entertainment as its contents are a joint project, both in terms of writing and publishing. There is a great deal of flexibility in how a Game Master can use Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! The most obvious one is simply use it as sequel content to Mutant: Genlab Alpha, exploring what happens to the mutant animal player characters after the events of the ‘Escape from Paradise’ campaign out in the Zone. Alternatively, it could be dropped into an existing Mutant: Year Zero campaign and the content used to introduce mutant animals as characters and the mechanics of Mutant: Genlab Alpha. The mutant player characters of Mutant: Year Zero could even encounter the NPCs and locations of this supplement and then play out the events of Mutant: Genlab Alpha as a prequel, allowing the players to explore how the mutant animals got to the Zone. That said, the mutant animals do need time to establish themselves after escaping from Paradise Valley, so the Game Master needs to allow for this before the player characters—mutant or mutant animals—encounter each other and these scenario locations.

Ultimately, the Game Master does not need to have a copy of Mutant: Genlab Alpha to run the contents of Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die!, though having access to it may help. If he has Mutant: Genlab Alpha, then Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! will definitely be useful if he has run ‘Escape from Paradise’ as it provides information about what happens to some of its escaping NPCs and helps him bring mutant animals into the Zone. Overall, Mutant: Year Zero Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meat-Eater, Die! contains content that will freshen up a Game Master’s Mutant: Year Zero campaign.

The Zone Quartet II

Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea is the second supplement for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the post-apocalypse set RPG based on Mutant - År Noll, the Swedish RPG from Free League Publishing released in English by Modiphius Entertainment. As with the first, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea is a slim thirty-two page supplement that presents various scenario set-ups and situations as well as new rules, but where in Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians these scenario set-ups and situations and new rules could be quickly and easily dropped into a GM’s campaign and the sectors of his Zone map, this is not quite the case with Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea. This is not actually a criticism of the supplement, but rather a reflection of its content and the changes it will make to a campaign, for as its title suggests, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea takes the Mutant: Year Zero RPG to sea.

What Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea does share with Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians is impressive productions values. They are the same as those of the core rulebook. The supplement is done in full colour, the illustrations are good, and the maps—more exploded diagrams than two-dimensional maps—are nicely done. True, they do not show every detail, but they show enough and from their overall descriptions, the GM will be able to describe the rest of the location with ease. Overall, this is a sturdy little book that feels good in the hand.

In taking Mutant: Year Zero to sea, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea sets up two options and supports them with various chanes. The first is taking an existing Mutant: Year Zero campaign onto the water, the second is having a campaign start there. To do this, it gives a whole zone to explore, much as Mutant: Year Zero did for the Big Apple and Big Smoke in the core rule book; replaces inappropriate mutations that do not work at sea; and adds new rules for running a game at sea, setting up an Ark at sea, and handling boats and travel. It adds rules for zones at sea as well as threats and artifacts plus four Special Zone Sectors—‘Cage Island’, ‘Oilfields of the Ancients’, ‘Drifters from Afar’, and ‘Ghost Ship’.

The changes start with two Mutations, ‘Cryokinesis’ and ‘Human Toad’, being given to replace two Mutations, like ‘Frog Legs’ and ‘Tracker’, which do not work so well at sea. The first enables a Mutant to freeze an opponent, water, or a fire, whilst the latter lets a Mutant catch objects and creatures with his tongue, secret a poison through his skin, and hibernate. Rules for conflict at sea cover swimming and its dangers, whilst those for weapons note that bullets are not popular as they are on land, either for firing from guns or for use as currency, because gunpowder gets wet. Instead, harpoons are employed because they can be used on and under the water, and once fired, their lines can be hauled back and the weapons reloaded.

Various places are suggested to place the player characters’ Ark, such as a lighthouse, an oil rig, or the top of a skyscraper protruding from the water. New projects for a water-based Ark include a Distillery—since potable water is scarce at sea, a Sail Loft for sewing sails for boats and ships like the Scrap Sloop, Scrap Ship, Sail Catamaran, that an Ark can also build. The dangers and difficulties of a Sea Zone are also highlighted, not just how the weather and night can affect travel, but also how the seas and winds are in constant motion, which means that the Rot—the nuclear, biological, and chemical after effects of whatever it was that caused the Apocalypse and which can accumulate in a Mutant’s body and mutate him further if not outright kill him—is constantly churning and moving, dispersing and accumulating.

Given the change in environment and its dangers that the supplement describes, it should be no surprise that Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea gives new and numerous threats that the player characters might encounter. These include merchant convoys, whalers, slavers, and castaways as well as menagerie of waterborne monsters, such as Steel Sharks that chew and eat everything, Strangle Weed that ensnares and strangles, and legendary things like Rotzilla and the Kraken, which ascend from the depths to rampage or fight each other, and so cause great waves to crash across the zone.

The first of the four Special Zone Sectors is ‘Cage Island’. Located on a heavily fortified scrap island, this trading post is a home to exiles from across the zone and is a growing and well-organised mercantile nexus. It is also a slave-trading centre, but goods of all sorts, including artefacts, can be found here too. Plot hooks suggest that colleagues of the player characters have disappeared there, that the merchants at ‘Cage Island’ are spying on the player characters and the Ark, and more. The second, ‘Oilfields of the Ancients’ describes a quartet of four oil rigs that are still operating, their lights are on, flames still soar into the air, and oil is still being pumped from the depths. Half-staffed by clones, the oil rigs, being from before the apocalypse, contain a hoard of artefacts and are rumoured to hold large stockpiles of food. Plot hooks include a civil war aboard the rigs, the rigs taking an interest in the Ark, an attack by a rival energy concern, and more. The drifters in ‘Drifters from Afar’, the third Special Zone Sector, live aboard a floating village, part of fleet that has split up and sailed away from the Mothership. The villager aboard are looking to trade and more as the player character may get caught up in strange customs or a war between rival floating villages. The last of the four Special Zone Sectors is ‘Ghost Ship’, an immense luxury cruiseship long abandoned and given over to the Rot and other things. This is essentially a floating dungeon to explore and loot, but can be used in other ways, perhaps as point of conflict between rival groups, the site of a rescue mission, and so on.

All four of these Special Sector Zones are decently done, but they are not quite as interesting as those given in Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians. Further, they are more difficult and challenging to use primarily because the environment they are set on—the ocean—is difficult and challenging to run and play. This is difficulty is present from off if the GM is setting his campaign and the Ark on the water, but the challenge and difficulty are added to game if the GM switches his campaign from land to water. Of course, should the GM set his campaign on the water, Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea does not neglect the campaign at the heart of Mutant: Year Zero, explaining how the metaplot can be adapted to life on the ocean waves.

The problem with Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea is that you have Mutant: Year Zero then Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians is an obvious first choice as a purchase because it more obviously expands on the starting Zone and extends it play area than does Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea. That said, if you want to start your Mutant: Year Zero campaign at sea or take it to sea, then Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea is what you need—it is a specialist supplement, but its speciality is decently done.

A Horrific Incursion

The setting for Mutant Chronicles: Techno Fantasy Roleplaying Game is a near-future Solar System rent by inter-corporate rivalry and war in the face of a horrifying darkness that sows fear and chaos wherever mankind steps. Its insidious reach undermines the greatest of mankind’s advances and forces a technological regression that sets up the combination of horror and science fiction in the diesel punk sci-fi roleplaying game, now in its third edition, which was published by Modiphius Entertainment in 2015. Since then Modiphius Entertainment has published numerous sourcebooks for the setting, covering both factions and the setting, but only the one campaign, consisting so far of Dark Symmetry and its sequel, Dark Legion. As these titles suggest, their events play out against the backdrop of the RPG’s three different eras. Thus the events of the Dark Symmetry Campaign Book take place against the backdrop of mankind’s Golden Age as it collapses through the Fall and beyond as the Dark Symmetry is freed and unleashed, whilst the Dark Legion Campaign Book is set a thousand years after the Fall. Presumably the third part of the campaign, the Dark Eden Campaign Book will take place during the time of high conflict that is only barely touched upon in the core rulebook.

In fact, the events of the Dark Symmetry Campaign Book take place in two separate periods. The first period is a prelude to the second period and is set right at the start of the Dark Symmetry Era, mere days after the Imperial Conquistadors discover and touch the strange tablet that unleashes the Dark Symmetry on the Solar System and is explored in two connected scenarios, ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ and ‘The Fall of von Hölle’. The second period comes near the end of the Dark Symmetry period after the end of the First Corporate Wars and is explored in the Dark Symmetry Campaign itself, which takes up three quarters of the Dark Symmetry Campaign Book. Both the prelude and the campaign proper have the same set-up of the player characters being detectives with, or freelancers working for, Luna PD, and to that end, pre-generated characters are provided. Unfortunately, only the one set of pre-generated characters is provided, which is something of an issue given that they can only be used with one or the other. So the players will need to generate their own characters if they are to play the Dark Symmetry Campaign and when they do so, their choices will be limited to the character types that are only available during that era.

The prelude opens with ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ in which the player characters, as detectives assigned to, or freelancers working for, Luna PD 32nd Precinct Homicide Division, are assigned a call-out to a tenement block, the eponymous ‘Straffar Gatan 39’, where the residents have reported screams and other strange sounds. The investigation takes place entirely in the environs of the tenement block, which becomes very much a character of its own as the scenario proceeds and the influence of the Dark Symmetry seeps into its walls and ducts until the point that the building turns against the investigators as they race to uncover what is going on in Straffar Gatan 39, rescue those still living there, and then get out. The latter is itself a challenge and for much of the scenario, the player characters will find themselves locked in, which may be a frustrating experience for some players. That said, there is a way out that becomes apparent towards the scenario’s end. The building is nicely detailed and its dilapidated state is reflected in it having been chopped open as a train tunnel has been driven past it. The scale of ‘Straffar Gatan 39’, which is relatively small and self-contained within the building itself, makes it a good starting scenario, exposing the players and their characters to the first signs of the Dark Symmetry.

Where ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ begins in a relatively benign fashion and lets the effects of the Dark Symmetry build towards the horror that comes to pervade the future of Mutant Chronicles, ‘The Fall of von Hölle’ exposes the player characters to the effects as they spread throughout the Solar System. Its tendrils reach out and affect pieces of high technology at random, corrupting it and setting it against its creators and users, and as the detectives are told to follow up the leads from their call out at Straffar Gatan 39, it begins to hamper their investigation. This is a much more of a traditional investigation in roleplaying terms and is thoroughly playable, but its best scenes are not the ones that really involve investigation. Instead, they are those that bring the detectives face to face with the effects of failing technology—out of control spaces plummeting to the Lunar surface, oil pipelines rupturing and their content threatening to immolate all and sundry, and so on. There are a couple of oddities in the scenario too, a pirate broadcast station that constantly plays across screens, but how it works is never quite explained and a building with a floor that it is not supposed to be there.

What is noticeable about ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ and then ‘The Fall of von Hölle’, is that there is a step up in sophistication from the first to the second scenario, and similarly there is another step up in sophistication as the Dark Symmetry Campaign begins. Divided into six parts, it opens with ‘Appetite for Destruction’, which concerns itself with the day-to-day, shift-to-shift life of being a detective for the Cheapside Division of the Luna PD. The Mutant Chronicles: Luna & Freelancers Sourcebook is likely to be useful here as it lets the GM do ‘Luna Street Blues’, throwing lots of little situations and cases at the player characters whilst laying the foundation for the campaign’s main plot and the seeds for the climax to ‘Appetite for Destruction’, which occurs in the next part of the campaign, ‘Going Underground’. This second part is much shorter and sees the detectives delve into the sewers, tunnels, and ruins beneath Luna City. This is a good contrast to the hustle and bustle of Luna City above and both reveals the plot and brings the campaign to natural break. What is revealed is that a cult has been using the rampant drug trade and culture in the Cheapside sector to seed and implant humanity with alien horrors, this setting up the body and birthing horror themes a la the film Alien that runs rampant throughout the Dark Symmetry Campaign.

Completing ‘Appetite for Destruction’ and ‘Going Underground’ should give the players and their characters a sense of achievement and victory, but there is a greater plot to the Dark Symmetry Campaign that comes to the fore with its inter-corporate rivalry and corporate malfeasance in the third part, ‘Journey to Mars’ and beyond. When their corporate masters learn of what they encountered in and under Luna City, they task the player characters with transporting it to Mars—in complete and utter secrecy of course. It is on this journey that the campaign has the capacity to most closely emulate the film Alien, though there is respite of a sorts if the GM uses the various events that can happen to drive the player characters and their ship, The Pandora, to call in at Fuji Station, a space station between planets.

Unfortunately, if The Pandora does need repairs, the player characters certainly do not have the funds to pay for them. The only option presented is to use their precious, ‘secret’ cargo as some form of payment and there are factions aboard Fuji Station that will be interested in it. No other choices are suggested and as much as it is designed to put the player characters in an awkward situation with their employer, the campaign could have handled it better. Certainly the consequences of the player character actions could have been better explored before they arrive somewhat abruptly on Mars.

If the world of Mutant Chronicles is dominated by corporate interests, then in ‘The Deregulation Zone’, the fourth part of the Dark Symmetry Campaign, both they and capitalism, are allowed to run rampant. Dumped in this free for all zone following their arrival on Mars, the player characters need to navigate this capitalist paradise, following leads up the corporate ladder if they are to gain enough clues to be able to confront the villain of the piece. Where the start of the campaign, ‘Appetite for Destruction’, was free form in its structure, allowing the GM to direct its events, ‘The Deregulation Zone’ is free form in structure, but driven by the decisions and actions of the player characters. There is room here to expand the campaign should the GM decide to do so, but eventually, the detectives should have gained enough information and clues to able to approach the mastermind behind the plot.

‘The Deputy’, the fifth part of the campaign, is almost a slice of light relief after the events of the previous four parts. Essentially, the player characters get to audition for the new series of Don Stevia’s television show, jumping through a series of hoops in order to get to the ‘great’ man. Otherwise, the three scenes here are inconsequential, staged affairs, just as you would expect for reality television. In the final and sixth part of the campaign, ‘The Citadel’, the player characters get to assault the horrors that the all too human evil at the heart of the scenario is protecting. All that the player characters need are guns and the willpower to survive.

Much like certain adventures for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Dark Symmetry Campaign does suffer from some terrible wordplay in Swedish and German. So the ‘Straffar Gatan’ of ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ actually means ‘Penalties Way’ in Swedish and the ‘von Hölle’ of ‘The Fall of von Hölle’ means ‘of Hell’ in German. This is not so much of a feature in the Dark Symmetry Campaign itself, although wordplay does abound. For example, the name of a hot-dog seller who is an ardent and vocal supporter of capitalism, is Milton Feedman, whilst the name of the reality television series that the player characters participate in is The Deputy rather than The Apprentice.

As good as the Dark Symmetry Campaign Book is, it is not without its issues. The first is the disconnect between the prelude—‘Straffar Gatan 39’ and ‘The Fall of von Hölle’—and the Dark Symmetry Campaign itself. Essentially there is no way for the characters from the prelude to go on to the campaign and perhaps it would have been better had a second set of pre-generated characters been provided to play with the full campaign. Perhaps though, the two scenarios could have been released in a book of their own and that would have allowed room for pre-generated characters in each book. The second issue is that although the campaign has some good set scenes, such as having to rescue the children from imminent immolation and having to ascend a building in a malfunctioning lift in ‘The Fall of von Hölle’ and having to repel a pirate boarding attempt in ‘Journey to Mars’, too often these set scenes, especially the climaxes are predicated on combat over other solutions. There is a lot of investigation to be conducted, but all too often the solution to any problem is a fight. The third issue is that whilst the first two scenarios do come with good handouts, there are almost none in the Dark Symmetry Campaign itself and what there is is instead, is several sections of heavy information that needs to be read out to the players. There is a lot to digest in these pieces and they could have been better handled and presented.

The fourth issue is the weakness of certain parts of the campaign, in particular aboard the space station in ‘Journey to Mars’ where they need to acquire repairs to their ship if they are to continue with their mission. The consequences of the player character actions are not really explored to any great depth in this chapter and the GM is essentially left on his own to handle the various possible outcomes—primarily what happens if the player characters lose their alien cargo?—on his own. Similarly, what happens when the player characters confront the villain of the piece, Don Stevia, is not fully explored. For example, does anything happen if they shoot him?

Lastly, there is the portrayal of Don Stevia himself. Essentially, he is a Donald Trump-like figure—very Donald Trump-like. This is obvious in his portrait in the book and in the name of his television show, The Deputy. Yet, for all his power and wealth, when the player characters do confront him, it is an anti-climax and likely to be unsatisfying. Of course, there is a satirical aspect to this portrayal, but in light of more recent events, there is the possibility that some players and GMs may be offended at such a portrayal.

Physically, the Dark Symmetry Campaign Book is nicely presented in full colour with a lot of visceral artwork. The book does need an edit in places though, and whilst there is a lot of information packed into the book, it means that the text itself is quite small and not always the easiest to read.

Whilst ‘Straffar Gatan 39’ and ‘The Fall of von Hölle’ together provide a decent introduction to Mutant Chronicles, the Dark Symmetry Campaign provides a good, if not perfect campaign for the game. It will require a GM with some experience to run properly as some elements of the campaign are not as fully developed as they could have been and so they are not as interesting as others. While it does well in delivering up the body horror and the corporate shenanigans, where the Dark Symmetry Campaign really shines is in the expansive sections that let the GM and player alike explore the world of Mutant Chronicles and allow it to breathe.