#Mutant: Genlab Alpha review

[legionofmyth]

MUTANT: Genlab Alpha - The Resistance

🎲 Join the Resistance in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, a thrilling tabletop RPG from Free League Publishing. Unite against robot oppression and fight for freedom from Paradise Valley! #MUTANTGenlabAlpha #GenlabAlpha #MutantRPG #tabletopgames #TTRPG #RPG

MUTANT: Year Zero – [PDF]MUTANT: Genlab Alpha – [PDF]Discover Paradise Valley in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, an exhilarating tabletop RPG from Free League Publishing. Uncover the secrets of this post-apocalyptic sanctuary and shape its destiny! Tap into the incredible potential of MUTANT: Genlab Alpha animal powers, where your character can embody the strength and instincts of powerful beasts. From…

[rpgsandbox]

When humanity falls, when nations and authorities collapse, only the most basic human bond remains – family. While the world burns, the powerful industrial and financial dynasties Warburg, Zubov, Kruger, and Kilgore form a covenant called Elysium, after the meadows of eternal Spring of Greek mythology. Deep down in the bedrock, they build the enclave named Elysium I, designed to weather the long atomic winter.

Decades later, after the devastating Enclave Wars, Elysium I is a gilded prison, a lonely outpost in a sea of quiet destruction. Within the enclave’s dim halls, fear and suspicion grow unchecked. The Houses turn on each other, and after a violent confrontation, the heads of the four ruling Houses create a force of judicators, with the authority to strike against anything that threatens law and order in the enclave.

You are one of these judicators. Alongside agents from the other Houses, it is your duty to investigate any misdeeds. But never forget that your strongest loyalty is always towards your family. You are the true heirs of doom. The enclave is in decline, and you must struggle to ensure that your House gains influence over the dwindling resources that remain. When humanity sets foot on the surface again, it will be your House that leads the way into the new dawn. Your family.

This is the third major expansion to Mutant: Year Zero, the award-winning postapocalyptic tabletop roleplaying game by Free League Publishing.

But Mutant: Elysium is no mere supplement - it stands on its own and can be played as a complete game in its own right. Get ready for the final fall of humanity!

Note: Mutant: Elysium is a game that tackles some sensitive subject matters. In the game, players represent the ruling Houses that control the Elysium I enclave. The players start the game in positions of power, and a part of the challenge of the game is how to handle that authority when society starts to unravel around the player characters and they find themselves on the wrong side of history. This game does explore potentially sensitive themes, but it's not trying to make any political point.

Mutant: Elysium tells the origin story of the enclave humans, seeing themselves as the last torchbearers of human civilization. The four Houses of Warburg, Zubov, Kruger and Kilgore struggle for power in the Elysium I enclave, oblivious to a rising power that threatens to end their reign forever.

The expansion, which also introduces non-mutant humans as a playable class in Mutant: Year Zero, includes:

New rules for creating and playing enclave humans, including their web of contacts with rich and powerful allies. The book includes all the rules you need to play!

A detailed description of Elysium I, the mother of all Elysium enclaves, including a beautiful full-color map.

The complete campaign Guardians of the Fall, that will settle the final fate of the enclave. The campaign incudes unique game mechanics that give the players themselves control over the four Houses of the enclave, thus partly controlling the events of the campaign.

An overview of how the enclave humans can adapt to life in the Zone, and join the mutants, animals and robots of Year Zero, Genlab Alpha and Mechatron!

The cover image of Mutant: Elysium is painted by the acclaimed scifi artist Simon Stålenhag, known from his amazing Tales from the Loop artbook. The interior art is made by the skilled Reine Rosenberg, who has been the lead interior artist for Mutant: Year Zero from the very beginning.

Worried about backing a Kickstarter with Christmas approaching? We have you covered! We aim to finish a Beta PDF of the game and send it to all backers before Christmas Day! So, why not let the Mutant: Elysium be your Christmas gift for yourself or a scifi-loving friend? We expect to ship the printed game in April.

Mutant: Elysium is a full game in its own right, but if you’re new to the Mutant: Year Zero universe there has never been a better time to get started!

You can get the Mutant: Year Zero Starter Bundle at a discounted price as a reward in this Kickstarter, and most previous products in the Mutant: Year Zero line are available as addons.

Mutant: Year Zero is the latest version of the classic Swedish tabletop roleplaying game Mutant, first published in 1984. Mutant: Year Zero was published in 2014, and was an instant hit. Watch the release trailer here. Mutant: Year Zero was named Best RPG at UK Games Expo 2015 and it was awarded a Silver ENnie for Best Rules at Gencon 2015.

The first expansion for Mutant: Year Zero was Mutant: Genlab Alpha, telling the story of the mutant animals, released in 2016. The second expansion was Mutant: Mechatron, launched earlier this year, introducing the robots into the Mutant universe.

Praise for Mutant: Year Zero:

“Mutant: Year Zero blew me away on a personal level. I did not know of its existence, and suddenly I realise that I am holding a masterpiece, probably the best post-apocalyptic game on the market.”

-RPG.Net Playtest Review

“The book and supporting products are high quality and it uses unique, quirky mechanics that really bring its themes of desperate survival to the forefront.”

-The British Fantasy Society

“If you are into post-apocalypse RPGs you definitely should give Mutant a chance!”

-Stargazer’s World

Mutant: Elysium includes several more roles to play, introducing them to the overall Mutant: Year Zero setting. Here's one example - the Investigator. Description:

They say that Elysium I is the paragon of society. The type the world will be modeled after once humanity returns to the surface. But you know better. On the enclave’s underbelly, behind the polished facade of the Houses and in the depths of the tunnels bloom dark dealings, corruption, and violence. It is your job to reveal the criminals for what they are, and bring the truth to light. You are an Investigator.

The four ruling Houses of the enclave and their power struggle is the core of Mutant: Elysium. This is how the four houses present themselves:

To be a Warburg is to build and create. You make sure that food is always on every table, that materials are available when repairs need to be carried out, that new goods are manufactured, and that the energy the enclave needs is produced. Without House Warburg, Elysium will stand still.

House Zubov is Elysium's first and last line of defense against any enemy. Loyalty, pride, and justice are words you live by. Everyone knows that you always follow orders and are ready to make the difficult decisions sometimes needed to combat threats to the enclave.

For a Kruger, life is a blend of enjoyment and laziness, refinement and creativity. You provide Elysium with the pleasures, culture, history, and art at your disposal. Celebrations and entertainment, decadence and tradition – all are mixed in the whirl of impressions that is your House.

To belong to House Kilgore is to be an explorer, a researcher or scientist seeking answers or even new questions. It was a Kilgore who created the first xenogenetic creatures and took the decisive steps to combine man with machine. There is power in knowledge, of course. And with every new discovery you make, the greater your House’s influence grows.

Free League is a Swedish publisher dedicated to speculative fiction in various forms. We publish games, art books and novels set in strange and wondrous worlds. Our first English-language RPG, the post-apocalyptic Mutant: Year Zero, was awarded a Silver ENnie for Best Rules in 2015. The Tales from the Loop RPG, based on the retro scifi universe created by Simon Stålenhag, won no less than FIVE Gold ENnies at Gencon last year, including Best Game and Product of the Year.

Read more on our website.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, December 13 2018 8:00 PM UTC +00:00

Website: [Free League Publishing] [Modiphius Entertainment]

[kayawagner]

What Am I Playing Right Now?

Since my GM hiatus started back in June 2017, I used the opportunity to play in as many games as possible. For a very long time I was basically the go-to GM for many of my friends, but I didn’t get to play as often as I liked. Being the GM is fun, and it’s something very dear to me, BUT sometimes you just need to stay on the other side of the GM’s screen for a while. So, what games have I been playing during these almost 12 months?

Mutant Year Zero & Gen Lab Alpha If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know that I am a fan of post-apocalyptic settings in general and the Mutant games by Free League in particular. Mutant Year Zero is definitely one of the most exciting and immersive games I’ve played so far. Since I am playing one of the bosses in our Ark (which is a derelict aircraft carrier), the game is sometimes pretty political. My character, Washington,  is an idealist, trying to build a new civilization on the ruins of the past. He strongly believes in compassion, reason, and justice. In a way he sometimes feels like an anachronism. I have to admit that Washington shares a lot with myself, aside from the fact that I don’t have the Mind Terror mutation in real life.

MY0 has all the elements I love: drama, politics, intrigue, exploration. Matthias, our GM, is also doing an awesome job running the game. He even manages what usually fails spectacular: while he’s running the game, he also plays his own player character. This is usually a recipe for disaster, but in Matthias’ case it works great.

I’ve already wrote about our Genlab Alpha game in my review of the core rules, so I will skip it here.

Shadowrun 3rd Edition This is a game I’ve been playing for years now. And even though I think that the rules are a mess, the game itself can be a lot of fun. Planning runs, trying to get to our goals without even raising an alarm is a lot of fun, and sometimes we even managed to have some flawlessly executed heists. But usually things go terribly wrong and everything ends in a messy fight. Since we usually ignore some of the more tedious rules  (like bioware stress etc.), our characters got very powerful, very quickly. While some games might break down with characters that powerful, our GM just raises the stakes a bit. Our Shadowrun campaign is over-the-top and great fun, but all good things must end eventually, so we decided our current adventure will be the last. We’re dealing with dragons and their machinations this time, which is IMHO very fitting for our last bow.

Numenera Numenera is one of the games I enjoyed running the most. It perfectly suits my GMing style and improvising whole scenarios was perfectly possible. From a lazy GM’s perspective the Cypher System is just a joy to work with. But I also fell in love with the setting. It’s fantastical, wild, weird, and fun. When I first picked it up I hoped someone else would be willing to run it, so I could play it myself. So I was overjoyed when my Shadowrun GM invited me to his Numenera game which he has been running for a small group of friends for a while. After leafing through the Character Options 2 book, I quickly decided to play an Artificially-Intelligent Seeker Who Speaks to the Datasphere. Unfortunately scheduling has been a bit of an issue, so we haven’t played more than once since I joined, but I had a blast!

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition When our Traveller GM told us that he wasn’t able to run as often in the future because of an increased workload at his job, one of the players stepped up and offered to run “Curse of Strahd” for us. So we decided to pause the Traveller campaign for a while, so that we can play some D&D 5th Edition in the coming months. Ravenloft is one of my favorite D&D setting and I think the latest iteration of D&D is probably its best. I had mixed results actually running it, but the prospect of actually playing it made me quite excited. I eventually decided to play a Moon Elf Warlock with a Celestial patron, with a custom background: Detective. Think of an Elven Sherlock Holmes. One of the other players even decided to play my sidekick, so in a way he’s the Watson to my Holmes. Together with a Human cleric and two Dwarves (one sorcerer and one ranger) we were sent out to investigate Wolf attacks in Daggerford, which turned out to be caused by Werewolves. While following the tracks we were suddenly engulfed in Mists which brought us to a different plane… While I was looking for inspiration for my character I noticed that a lot has happened since I last looked into D&D 5th Edition. There’s a lot of homebrew and 3rd party material available, which is usually of high quality. I got also quite interested in Matt Mercer’s campaign setting again, and currently I am tempted to buy a copy – just in case I want to run D&D 5th Edition again.

Star Wars Edge of the Empire The most regular game I currently play in is our Edge of the Empire campaign in which I play probably my most quirky character. Zid, or Captain Zid, as he usually calls himself, is a Gand Fringer who recently discovered that he has some connection to the force. After an exploration of the Jedi temple of Tython he started to follow the path of the Jedi, which sometimes comes in conflict with the realities of the hard life on the Outer Rim, and his naiveté. While I was pretty skeptical about the games’ mechanics at first, I quickly fell in love with it. It might not be as simple and straightforward as WEG’s Star Wars which still has a special place in my heart, but interpreting the dice rolls can lead to some pretty cool results sometimes. While we have dealt with some pretty grim and serious issues in the campaign so far, the mood at the game table is usually quite light-hearted and fun, sometimes bordering on the silly, especially when Zid is doing one of his weird dances again.

Jovian Chronicles Last but not least there’s the Jovian Chronicles game I recently joined. It seems I am not the only person out there who loves the hard-science mecha RPG by Dreampod 9. An old friend of mine introduced me to this GM who was dying to run this fine game, and I immediately took the opportunity. What I am not too fond off are the rules of the 2nd Edition (which is the one were using). While the basic dice mechanic is quite simple and easy to understand, the overall system feels a bit quirky and has a lot of fiddly bits to it. From what I remember (I haven’t read it in a while) the 1st Edition made more sense to me. But I can live with this as long as the game itself is fun. And so far it is! My character is basically the Jovian equivalent of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. At least that’s how I conceptualized the character, we’ll see how he turns out after playing him for a while. In our first session we ended up in the middle of a terror attack by unknown forces and my fellow player characters were “volunteered” for the Jovian intelligence services in order to help me investigate the incident. Unfortunately for my character this feels more like a job for a chaperone. I am currently extremely excited about what the GM will throw at us next.

Related posts:

First Look: Barebones Fantasy Role-playing Game

Savage Worlds, playing The Wild Hunt (and a long winded retrospective…)

Is Anyone Still Playing Alternity?

What Am I Playing Right Now? published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[legionofmyth]

MUTANT: Genlab Alpha - Paradise Valley

🎲 Discover Paradise Valley in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, an exhilarating tabletop RPG from Free League Publishing. Uncover the secrets of this post-apocalyptic sanctuary and shape its destiny! #MUTANTGenlabAlpha #GenlabAlpha #MutantRPG #tabletopgames #TTRPG #RPG

MUTANT: Year Zero – [PDF]MUTANT: Genlab Alpha – [PDF]Discover Paradise Valley in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, an exhilarating tabletop RPG from Free League Publishing. Uncover the secrets of this post-apocalyptic sanctuary and shape its destiny! Tap into the incredible potential of MUTANT: Genlab Alpha animal powers, where your character can embody the strength and instincts of powerful beasts. From…

[legionofmyth]

MUTANT: Genlab Alpha - Your Animal

Embrace your inner beast as you create and embody powerful mutant animal characters, each with unique abilities and traits, in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha. #MUTANTGenlabAlpha #GenlabAlpha #MutantRPG #tabletopgames #TTRPG #RPG

MUTANT: Year Zero – [PDF]MUTANT: Genlab Alpha – [PDF]Embrace your inner beast as you create and embody powerful mutant animal characters, each with unique abilities and traits, in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha. Embark on a heart-pounding journey in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, a gripping tabletop RPG where you shape the destiny of mutant animals. Dive into a rich and immersive post-apocalyptic world, where the…

[legionofmyth]

MUTANT: Genlab Alpha - Introduction

🎲 Embark on a thrilling adventure through the hazardous Paradise Valley, where mutant animals fight for survival and uncover secrets in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha. #MUTANTGenlabAlpha #GenlabAlpha #MutantRPG #tabletopgames #TTRPG #RPG

MUTANT: Year Zero – [PDF]MUTANT: Genlab Alpha – [PDF]Embark on a thrilling adventure through the hazardous Paradise Valley, where mutant animals fight for survival and uncover secrets in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha. Embark on a heart-pounding journey in MUTANT: Genlab Alpha, a gripping tabletop RPG where you shape the destiny of mutant animals. Dive into a rich and immersive post-apocalyptic world,…

[legionofmyth]

YEAR ZERO ENGINE Games - Incredibly similar, wonderfully unique

YEAR ZERO ENGINE Games – Incredibly similar, wonderfully unique

For more tabletop RPGs check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K74B3fJYBQQ&list=PL7EtdhpcaaJUvpUGOI1x0ybOoswLKou8G

👍 Please take a moment to like & subscribe, it really helps us out. Thank you.

What do you think about MaxLiao’s segment on how similar and unique the Year Zero Engine games are? Post your thoughts below.

LIVESTREAMS

[kayawagner]

What Am I Playing Right Now?

Since my GM hiatus started back in June 2017, I used the opportunity to play in as many games as possible. For a very long time I was basically the go-to GM for many of my friends, but I didn’t get to play as often as I liked. Being the GM is fun, and it’s something very dear to me, BUT sometimes you just need to stay on the other side of the GM’s screen for a while. So, what games have I been playing during these almost 12 months?

Mutant Year Zero & Gen Lab Alpha If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know that I am a fan of post-apocalyptic settings in general and the Mutant games by Free League in particular. Mutant Year Zero is definitely one of the most exciting and immersive games I’ve played so far. Since I am playing one of the bosses in our Ark (which is a derelict aircraft carrier), the game is sometimes pretty political. My character, Washington,  is an idealist, trying to build a new civilization on the ruins of the past. He strongly believes in compassion, reason, and justice. In a way he sometimes feels like an anachronism. I have to admit that Washington shares a lot with myself, aside from the fact that I don’t have the Mind Terror mutation in real life.

MY0 has all the elements I love: drama, politics, intrigue, exploration. Matthias, our GM, is also doing an awesome job running the game. He even manages what usually fails spectacular: while he’s running the game, he also plays his own player character. This is usually a recipe for disaster, but in Matthias’ case it works great.

I’ve already wrote about our Genlab Alpha game in my review of the core rules, so I will skip it here.

Shadowrun 3rd Edition This is a game I’ve been playing for years now. And even though I think that the rules are a mess, the game itself can be a lot of fun. Planning runs, trying to get to our goals without even raising an alarm is a lot of fun, and sometimes we even managed to have some flawlessly executed heists. But usually things go terribly wrong and everything ends in a messy fight. Since we usually ignore some of the more tedious rules  (like bioware stress etc.), our characters got very powerful, very quickly. While some games might break down with characters that powerful, our GM just raises the stakes a bit. Our Shadowrun campaign is over-the-top and great fun, but all good things must end eventually, so we decided our current adventure will be the last. We’re dealing with dragons and their machinations this time, which is IMHO very fitting for our last bow.

Numenera Numenera is one of the games I enjoyed running the most. It perfectly suits my GMing style and improvising whole scenarios was perfectly possible. From a lazy GM’s perspective the Cypher System is just a joy to work with. But I also fell in love with the setting. It’s fantastical, wild, weird, and fun. When I first picked it up I hoped someone else would be willing to run it, so I could play it myself. So I was overjoyed when my Shadowrun GM invited me to his Numenera game which he has been running for a small group of friends for a while. After leafing through the Character Options 2 book, I quickly decided to play an Artificially-Intelligent Seeker Who Speaks to the Datasphere. Unfortunately scheduling has been a bit of an issue, so we haven’t played more than once since I joined, but I had a blast!

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition When our Traveller GM told us that he wasn’t able to run as often in the future because of an increased workload at his job, one of the players stepped up and offered to run “Curse of Strahd” for us. So we decided to pause the Traveller campaign for a while, so that we can play some D&D 5th Edition in the coming months. Ravenloft is one of my favorite D&D setting and I think the latest iteration of D&D is probably its best. I had mixed results actually running it, but the prospect of actually playing it made me quite excited. I eventually decided to play a Moon Elf Warlock with a Celestial patron, with a custom background: Detective. Think of an Elven Sherlock Holmes. One of the other players even decided to play my sidekick, so in a way he’s the Watson to my Holmes. Together with a Human cleric and two Dwarves (one sorcerer and one ranger) we were sent out to investigate Wolf attacks in Daggerford, which turned out to be caused by Werewolves. While following the tracks we were suddenly engulfed in Mists which brought us to a different plane… While I was looking for inspiration for my character I noticed that a lot has happened since I last looked into D&D 5th Edition. There’s a lot of homebrew and 3rd party material available, which is usually of high quality. I got also quite interested in Matt Mercer’s campaign setting again, and currently I am tempted to buy a copy – just in case I want to run D&D 5th Edition again.

Star Wars Edge of the Empire The most regular game I currently play in is our Edge of the Empire campaign in which I play probably my most quirky character. Zid, or Captain Zid, as he usually calls himself, is a Gand Fringer who recently discovered that he has some connection to the force. After an exploration of the Jedi temple of Tython he started to follow the path of the Jedi, which sometimes comes in conflict with the realities of the hard life on the Outer Rim, and his naiveté. While I was pretty skeptical about the games’ mechanics at first, I quickly fell in love with it. It might not be as simple and straightforward as WEG’s Star Wars which still has a special place in my heart, but interpreting the dice rolls can lead to some pretty cool results sometimes. While we have dealt with some pretty grim and serious issues in the campaign so far, the mood at the game table is usually quite light-hearted and fun, sometimes bordering on the silly, especially when Zid is doing one of his weird dances again.

Jovian Chronicles Last but not least there’s the Jovian Chronicles game I recently joined. It seems I am not the only person out there who loves the hard-science mecha RPG by Dreampod 9. An old friend of mine introduced me to this GM who was dying to run this fine game, and I immediately took the opportunity. What I am not too fond off are the rules of the 2nd Edition (which is the one were using). While the basic dice mechanic is quite simple and easy to understand, the overall system feels a bit quirky and has a lot of fiddly bits to it. From what I remember (I haven’t read it in a while) the 1st Edition made more sense to me. But I can live with this as long as the game itself is fun. And so far it is! My character is basically the Jovian equivalent of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. At least that’s how I conceptualized the character, we’ll see how he turns out after playing him for a while. In our first session we ended up in the middle of a terror attack by unknown forces and my fellow player characters were “volunteered” for the Jovian intelligence services in order to help me investigate the incident. Unfortunately for my character this feels more like a job for a chaperone. I am currently extremely excited about what the GM will throw at us next.

Related posts:

First Look: Barebones Fantasy Role-playing Game

Savage Worlds, playing The Wild Hunt (and a long winded retrospective…)

Is Anyone Still Playing Alternity?

What Am I Playing Right Now? published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com