sounds interesting. I loved darwins world. Might see about looking this over after the holidays and bills subside

The author will be in #rpgnet IRC chat (not affiliated with the website) for a Q&A a week from today at 8 p.m. Central.

I just picked this up Saturday and we should be giving this a run in my group in the next couple of weeks.

It is a very brutal game in terms of modelling entropy... Everything including the players will rot or break eventually.

You can 'push' rolls, but then all of those ones you roll on your base dice become trauma, and the ones on your gear dice go towards damaging/breaking your weapons. (A similar breakage mechanic exists for cover/armor)

If you get one 'success' that is typically enough, but each skills has a few 'stunts' you can spend extra successes on which makes for a surprisingly tactical game. (eg. You pass your 'endure' roll while hiking through a terrible blizzard, but another PC fails the original roll, as well as the 'push'. If you 'push' and reroll the other dice, you might get another success which you can use to help your friend succeed, or you might just incur several points of trauma as you try but fail to drag him to safety...)

On the plus side, it is by pushing yourself that you get mutation points to power your mutations, so yes you may be put on the edge of becoming fatigued/confused/broken in a fight, but now at least you can use your mutant power to eat that Zone Ghoul you just killed and save some rations.

This is a game in which the players can starve,die of dehydration, 'rot' or watch all of their People in the Ark get slaughtered if they don't build up their community.

Pillaging with a purpose (TM)

It also has a wonderful critical injury chart where you roll d66 and 'real bad things' happen. (two of the rolls note something along the lines of 'roll up a new PC, you are dead')

There's two new products on pre-order. I'm probably going to pick up the GM Screen, but my interest in the  first Zone Compendium is limited mainly to the Saurians themselves. Does anyone know if there's any  other book planned that contains info and stats about them?

I passed on the GM Screen as its portrait. I grabbed the Compendium though.

Quote from: Skywalker;825849I passed on the GM Screen as its portrait. I grabbed the Compendium though.

Do you suppose saurians could be built using the upcoming Gen Lab Alpha book?

Quote from: 3rik;825874Do you suppose saurians could be built using the upcoming Gen Lab Alpha book?

No idea. There seems to be a broad range of animals, though most look mammalian.

This would suggest Yes:

Thing is, while I'm quite the reptilophile, I'm not sure it's worth getting a book of locations only because it happens to have cool saurians in it...

As for the screen not being landscape, I end up putting my GM screen down flat on the table surface most of the time anyway. It's a rather costly affair, though, so I'm still on the fence. It would be helpful to know which tables are on it.

I finally finished reading the game through. I'll be posting a video review on the 25th. I quite liked the mechanics and the Zone material is brilliant. I found the treatment of slavery rather problematic.

I've run one session of it a couple of months ago, and this weekend will be running another. It was a lot of fun. I could see it being a "go to" game for one-shots and short campaigns. I'm not yet sure how well it'll handle prolonged campaigns, but all of the pieces are there for them.

Quote from: Tetsubo;826015I found the treatment of slavery rather problematic.

Just that it's present or something more specific?  I vaguely remember that the PCs' Ark can implement slavery (which the PCs can either support or oppose) and that one of the detailed Zone locations makes heavy use of slave labor, but don't recall anything that struck me as out of line for a post-apocalyptic crapsack setting.

That's a great lizard-guy in a parka picture.  Not something you'd normally think of, but being cold blooded they'd be totally into that.

The art in Mutant Year Zero is all great and all done by the same artist. Here are some more from the Gen Alpha supplement:  

http://frialigan.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/miljo_27.jpg
http://frialigan.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/backer_20141212.jpg
http://frialigan.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/kapitel_4.jpg
http://frialigan.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/miljo_18_liten.jpg
http://frialigan.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/miljo_20.jpg

I decided to hold on to my money until the Gen Lab Alpha book is available.