Mutant Space Zero

For a decade now, since 2014, Free League Publishing’s Mutant: Year Zero post-apocalyptic future has been explored in a quartet of core books that each described and told the story of a different faction with the setting. The four factions—mutants, mutant animals, robots, and humans—each represent a classic group within post-apocalyptic roleplaying and each was given time in the spotlight with their respective books. In turn, mutants with Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, anthropomorphic animals with Mutant: Genlab Alpha, robots with Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying, and humans with Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium. The climax of the campaign in each of the four books would see members of the factions leaving the environment which had kept them safe throughout the apocalypse and beyond, ready to explore the wider world, interact with each other, and even discover some of the secrets that had led to the apocalypse in the first place. Yet at the end of each of the four campaigns, there remained an unanswered question: “What happens next?” The question was partially answered in 2018, with the release of The Gray Death. This was a sequel to Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium in which the Player Characters must thwart an attempt to prevent an expansive organisation known as the Army of Dawn from conquering all of the Zone that the Player Characters have made their home. However, at the end of ‘Path to Eden’, the campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the first book in the series, there is another story hinted at and it is this story that is explored in Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra.

Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra does something wholly unexpected, and in doing so, opens up a whole new number of worlds and environments to the Player Characters, ones that would ordinarily be beyond their imagination—space! The supplement most obviously provides a campaign whose outcome will decide the future of the Mutant: Year Zero setting, not just the devastated Earth, but habitants and worlds beyond. It also provides an overview of the Solar System, detailing bases, settlements, and habitats specific to the campaign, and gives new rules, equipment, and character options for playing in Zero-G and other hazardous environments. Although the campaign is intended to be run as a continuation of the ‘Path to Eden’ campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, there are numerous suggestions in Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra as to where to place its starting point, including at the end of the most recent supplement, The Gray Death. The other suggestions encompass Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying and Mutant: Year Zero – Elysium as well as Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 1 – Lair of the Saurians and Mutant: Year Zero – Zone Compendium 2 – Dead Blue Sea. Together this gives the Game Master several options to choose from, but whatever supplement the Game Master decides to use as the jumping off point for Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra, the Player Characters will find themselves in a rocket, being blasted into space, headed for the unknown, allegedly for their own safety.

The Player Characters find themselves transported into Earth orbit, to the space station Jotunheim. Once they have explained who they are and where they have come from, the administrator will tell them where they are and then ask them for help. Jotunheim is a perilous situation. Its core engine has been stolen and without it, the space station is unable to maintain orbit. Entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up is inevitable, and with it the death of everyone aboard, let alone those on the surface that are struck by the falling debris. The perpetrators plan to use the core engine to power a starship—the Ad Astra—that is being constructed in orbit around Jupiter and will take the survivors to a hopefully better and brighter future in another star system! Unfortunately for them, their plans have been halted by Dirac Thirteen, a mutated ape and technician who has stolen memory circuits needed to allow the Ad Astra to launch. Despite having worked on the Ad Astra for years, he now sides with the Jotunheim and has fled from Jupiter into the Inner Solar System. This is an opportunity for the administrator and Jotunheim. Although he does not know what Dirac Thirteen has stolen, the administrator knows it must be important as a bounty has been placed on his head. Thus, he asks the Player Characters if they can find the escaped ape before anyone else can.

In order to find Dirac Thirteen, the Player Characters will need to travel across the Solar System, from Earth’s orbit to the Moon, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt before making the longer journey to Jupiter. To facilitate each of these perilous trips, the administrator lends the Player Characters a spaceship, the Mundilfari. Named for the Norse father of Sól, goddess associated with the Sun, and Máni, associated with the Moon, the Mundilfari is in a severe state of disrepair and this presents the Player Characters with their first challenge. On Earth, the Player Characters will have encountered a wide range of technology, some of it jury-rigged by themselves and their fellow survivors, some of it high tech leftover from the Old Age. In space, the technology is primarily and obviously that of the Old Age, far greater than the Player Characters will have had ready access to before. However, the technology aboard the Jotunheim and else where in the Solar System is either being barely maintained, breaking down, or beyond the capability of anyone to repair it. This includes the Mundilfari, which the Player Characters will need to repair and refuel in order to travel anywhere. In Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra, the Mundilfari becomes the Player Characters’ home, replacing the Ark in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days.

The adoption of the Mundilfari as the Player Characters’ temporary home marks a radical shift in emphasis in the campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra. In Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the Player Characters face a constant struggle to find sufficient grub, water, and bullets, making the role of the Stalker with its ‘Find the Path’ special ability highly significant to the survival of a group. However, access to grub and water is less important in this campaign. Instead, the Gearhead has a much more prominent role. This is because of the constant need to repair and upgrade the spaceship, the Mundilfari. Without a Gearhead, the difficulty of the campaign is much more challenging.

The campaign proper begins on the space station Jotunheim and the Player Characters’ attempts to repair their newly acquired spaceship. This requires interacting with the various factions aboard the space station, including descending into the Dark Corridors where the Jotunheim’s Underfolk lurk, and bargaining with them for components that will either repair or upgrade the Mundilfari. This teaches the Player Characters some of the skills they will need to survive their greater mission, such as going on a spacewalk. Once they have managed to make the Mundilfari spaceworthy, the Player Characters have a number of objectives, chief of which is finding Dirac Thirteen and then getting to Jupiter. It is thought that Dirac Thirteen is on Mars and the Mundilfari has sufficient fuel to get that far and to other locations across the Inner Solar System. However, it does not enough to make the longer trip to Jupiter, so a visit to the Selene Mining Field on the Moon, the only working source of Helium-3, is also required. Each of the various destinations—the Moon, Mars, and also the Asteroid Belt—are given their own chapters and can be played in any order. The Jupiter chapter is played after these as the climax to the campaign.

Along the way to Jupiter, there are some great encounters. These include holding off an attack by the space pirates of the Rust Fleet, getting involved in a possible meat versus machine rebellion on the Moon, discovering some the dark secrets of the Titan Powers that fomented the war that ended the Old Age, and going out onto the range and deep into the Mariner Valley, chased by Bounty Hunters. The scenes on Mars in particular veer between the remains of the shattered colony in Total Recall and the Wild West feel of Tatooine in Star Wars, but the campaign in general has a pulpy Sci-Fi feel contrasted by the increasing state of disrepair as devices and technologies fail and cannot be repaired.

Ultimately, the Player Characters will make it to Jupiter and there confront both the future of everyone in the Solar System and on Earth and the architects of the situation on Earth, and then make some choices. The latter may see Jotunheim being repaired, the Ad Astra being repaired and leaving, and even the Ad Astra leaving the Solar System with the Player Characters aboard! What happens next is outside the scope of Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra, although if the Player Characters decide to stay in the Solar System, there is enough information in the supplement to start a campaign that focuses on exploring it in the wake of the events of Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra.

There is another option though, and that is to play through campaign using characters who have grown up in space, though this is not explored in any great depth. Even if Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra is played as a direct continuation of ‘Path to Eden’, the campaign in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, the Game Master will still need access to Mutant: Genlab Alpha and Mechatron – Rise of the Robots Roleplaying as they detail the mutated animals and robots to be found in Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra. If run as a direct sequel to ‘Path to Eden’, the Game Master may also want to play up the culture shock of the Player Characters encountering mutated animals and robots for the first time, as well as being in space for the first time.

Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra includes new rules and additions for roleplaying in the expanded setting of Earth’s Solar System. ‘Pilot’ is a new Role which specialises in flying spaceships, and has the specialist skill of ‘Drive’ which applies to all vehicles, not just spaceships. There is guidance too on adapting skills like Comprehend, Know the Zone, and Jury-Rigg to space and other planets, and on mutations such as Insect Wings and how they work in Zero-G. ‘Free-floater’, ‘Drone Pilot’, and ‘Flying Ace’ are amongst the new Talents given as well. Alongside the relatively short guide to how spaceships and spaceship battles work, there is a list of events in space and aboard space stations—for example, ‘Toilet Problem’ or ‘Magnetic Field’, and new gear. The later includes the ‘Scrap Rocket Launcher’, and the ‘Space Suit’ which has two slots for modules so that a Player Character can customise his space suit. Lastly, there is a decent overview of the Solar System, including descriptions of locations not visited as part of the campaign, that the Game Master can use to create her own adventures and encounters—though hopefully, Free League Publishing will support the setting with further material.

Physically, Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra is well written, nicely presented in full colour with excellent cinematic-style artwork. Fans of anthropomorphic creatures in spacesuits will certainly appreciate many of the illustrations in the book. 

Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra opens up the setting of Mutant: Year Zero and takes it in a wholly unexpected direction. As a sourcebook it lays the groundwork for a post-apocalyptic setting that is not confined to the one world, but found across many and awaiting further development and exploration. As campaign, it places the Player Characters fore and centre as heroes who can either save the day or found a whole new civilisation, and in the process confront the consequences of some of the actions made by the Titan Powers. The campaign itself in Mutant: Year Zero – Ad Astra is the fantastic continuation of the ‘Path to Eden’ campaign found in the pages of Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days that the roleplaying game’s fans have long been waiting for, whilst the sourcebook material provides scope to explore rest of the Solar System.