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- [00:00]
A
Do you have your shrine there?
- [00:02]
B
I do have my shrine.
- [00:03]
A
Let me have it. Can we have a look?
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C
Of course.
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B
Yeah, of course you can have a look.
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A
Here we go. Oh, wow.
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B
Have you seen me die? Spike.
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C
The Grognod Files.
- [00:27]
B
Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day. And today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England. I'm completely and utterly surrounded by my stuff. We're going on holiday as a family in a couple of weeks, heading north to Oslo in Norway. I've got that part of the world in mind as I look at the great array of Swedish games on my right as part of the great library of RPGs. At the start of this episode, you heard the voice of Magnus Sita admiring my ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline Munro. He joins me in the Zoom of role Playing Rambling to discuss his incredible new book, Outside the Box How Sweden Conquered the World of Role Playing Games, an insightful history of RPGs in Sweden. I love it as it's not just about the industry, it's about the people who play and it is completely and utterly infused with Magnus enthusiasm. Just Blithey, our resident rules lawyer. Well, we go speed rating together with Mutant Year zero. We played the big book campaign, the great death that I games mastered, and he has returned to the game this year as his go to convention game. We reflect on what makes it work as a game and setting and some of the key mechanical features. I'll be back at the end to explain how you can have a free copy of Magnus Book kindly provided by Fire Drake, the publisher. Until then, ramblers, let's get Rambling Open Box. Welcome to the Zoom of Role Playing Rambling to Open Box, the part of the podcast where we look backwards to look forwards. I'm joined by RPG historian, game designer and writer of the book Outside the Box, How Sweden Conquered the World of Role Playing. Welcome to Magnus Sita. Hello there, Magnus. Hello.
- [02:45]
A
I'm happy to be here and thank you for inviting me. It's sort of unreal being presented as a role playing historian, but I guess that's something I'm gonna have to get used to. I'm not really a researcher. I wrote this book and I had a couple of Swedish books as a basis for this. And this book contains about the sum of my knowledge about the Swedish role playing history.
- [03:11]
B
Yeah, and it's very much a Fan story, isn't it?
- [03:14]
A
Yeah. And that's something that I think that Fenrig, who publishes the book, they chose me to write this partly because I've been writing role playing games in Sweden since 1989. Well, I started writing for the Cyberpunk 2020, but then I quickly started writing for Swedish games. So I know a lot of people and I'm a role playing fan first and foremost, but I'm also a role playing game writer. And when we did the book, we wrote the book, we thought a book like this sort of tends to become just sort of like this year this happened and then this company started, and then this company started and this company started. So I thought that we have to bring something into this. And also, since I've been involved in the Swedish gaming hobby since professionally, since 1989, and I've written some of the games or for some of the games that are in the book I mentioned in the book, it was difficult for me to sort of like stay neutral if I tried to put myself into the history, which is. Well, it wouldn't be strange, but it felt kind of strange to say, well, this game, which I incidentally also worked on. So I cut myself out of the history parts of the book and instead added these interludes quite late in the process, actually, to breathe more light into it and to put, like you say, you're the first one who's mentioned that, I think, is to put the fan perspective into it. Since I'm a fan of role playing games, that's why I've been doing this since 1982, playing role playing games. So it was important for me to sort of not put that much distance between me and the reader. I'm a gamer just like anyone else.
- [05:06]
B
Basically what you get a sense of in this book, Magnus, is that Sweden's got a relatively small population that you can actually put your arms around the people who are engaged with the hobby and that sense of community. And one or two people who are influencers have actually determined the path that the games have taken in Sweden. Is that fair to say?
- [05:37]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. When I grew up, we used to say that Sweden had 8 million inhabitants. Now it's about 10, I think. And the first Swedish role playing game, which is now known as Dragonbane, was a huge hit and it was sort of like played by every boy, a teenage boy, during the 86, 87 period, something like that. Everyone knew about it and everyone had tried it. So that was sort of a huge, huge group of people. But then we, who stayed with it we weren't that many. So as you say, we are quite small community compared to like football fans or hockey fans or people like that. But we also tend to meet at conventions. We have two or three conventions that are sort of every year. And the same people kept on going to these conventions again and again and again. So we sort of started learning to know each other. And then when the Internet came, foreign platforms also made it easier for us to connect. And also over the last actually 20 years or something, the people who produce games in Sweden have started cooperating a lot more than they did during the 90s or during, well, maybe early 2005, 2006. After that, people started to cooperating more. We don't have a huge talent pool. We have huge talent, but we don't have a huge talent pool. So if you want something done, you tend to ask the same people, same freelancers and stuff like that. So I like it. I like the community and it's very friendly. And I just met with the effect podcast guys during free leagues gaming convention, yearly gaming convention. And they also mentioned that they find the community very friendly and welcoming.
- [07:48]
B
Yeah, because fairly early on that year, what's the name that you give to it this kind of community that was created? Is it Sevock?
- [07:59]
A
Oh yes. That's also a big, big part of it. In Sweden we have a. And this is. This was the most difficult part of the book. In Sweden we have a strong tradition of coming together and creating nonprofit organizations. Like your local football club will be a nonprofit organization and you will have rules and have a board. You will have people working with sort of being in charge of the economy and voting and stuff like that. Sort of like, sort of like the basis for our democratic society, basically. And those small nonprofit organizations are often organized into a larger nationwide nonprofit organization. And for us gamers, we of course, because you get money from the government, if you create one of these nonprofit organizations, you get some support from the government. It's not a lot of money, but when you're 15 and you want to buy games, everything helps. So you would arrange meetings and since game you play and every time you play you have five, six people and you can cross off well, these five people were here, you get 20 like £2 for each people person in the gaming group and per occasion and it can add up for a gaming group. And then all these small gaming groups got together into what is Sverok S V E R O K not C S V E R O K which stands for the. The Swedish role playing and wargaming organization. And that was also a huge driver of the development of role playing games in Sweden because they would help all these nonprofit small organizations to meet and teach them how to run an organization which is sort of similar to running a company, if you want to draw that parallel. And also running conventions. So all our big conventions were organized by Svirok and small or Svirok associated organizations. Our gaming conventions weren't organized by companies by the publishers themselves like in the States, which means that anything were played there, anything AD&D was played. But also the Swedish games and the lot of Call of Cthulhu and everything. And people weren't sort of behoven to having to produce for the dominant Swedish publisher. We could do whatever. And that also helped us experience different game styles and different games and different ways of playing and also trying it out with people.
- [11:05]
B
And the way you describe it, it's almost instinctive that as soon as this kind of social hobby appears in Sweden, people start to organize and all the resources all together.
- [11:17]
A
Oh yeah, absolutely. It's like you say, it's almost, it was almost instinctive. We then had of course the society stuff like that developed and the. Since it's non profit, it's non paid and people aren't as willing to put in that much time into non paid work now. So we have actually seen a decline in these types of organizations, small organizations over the years. But like someone said about the Free League convention now that they were so happy to. That there were so many young people there and so many young enthusiastic people and they are organizing now again. So I hope it's, it's on the uptick again because it is a very important part of the Swedish gaming community that it's also a question of, to be part of that organization. You have to accept anyone. You can't put up boundaries and say that this is only for boys, this is only for this and this. You have to accept anyone. Uh, me and my, me and some friends, we had one, one of these organizations in, in the town where I grew up and I think we had like 30, 30, 40 members or something like that that played occasionally and about 10, 15 who played religiously basically. So, so we had a big community of people that that sort of was pulled in. You know, us gamers, we, we oh, there's a game where we accept anyone you want to play then well, come, come and play. And that was also important part for many people as well. To be accepted into a community where you could be geeky basically. Like you could Be interested in history and horror and science fiction and everything. And you could find other people who also enjoyed that and you could play with them.
- [13:20]
B
Just go back to those beginnings and your beginnings. Because what was striking, listening to you, hearing your story, is how important White Dwarf was and that connection with what was going on in the uk.
- [13:37]
A
Yeah, that's something I bring up. Maybe not that much, but I bring it up in the book. For example, I know that in Sweden, Warmfans Roleplay is a hugely well regarded game and it was kind of popular as well. And Graham Davis, for example, he's a very, very well regarded game author as well. So. So what happened? I don't know why this happened, but for me, my personal journey with that was that I started playing in 1982 with the Swedish Drocarok de Mohner, which is now known as Dragonpin. I started playing with that and then they released Chill in Swedish and then they released Mutant, the first Mutant. So we played that a little bit. And then my dad came home from abroad, he traveled a lot and he had bought the Red Basic and the Blue Expert Dungeons and Dragon sets. So I started looking into that and I found the world's the Blue Basic set, the mentor, I guess it is. Basic includes a world which Dragon Mae didn't have at the time. So we quickly transitioned to that. And since role playing games had become so popular in Sweden, there was a bi monthly, I think, magazine from the publishers called Sinkadoose that covered their games. But since I didn't play their games, I was like, oh, so what did I do? What did I do? What can I try? And then someone introduced me to Call of Cthulhu. So I managed to buy the Games Workshop version of Call of Cthulhu. And then one day when I was in the newspaper agents, I don't know what you call them, but where you buy your magazines and newspapers and tobacconists, sort of like a corner shop, basically. I saw something called White Dwarf and there were two, three orcs on the COVID questioning someone who they tied up. It was a brownish color and it was, I think it was number 68 of White Wolf. So an obscure gaming magazine was on the shelves in Sweden. In my little town of 30, 40,000 people, I could go down and buy White Wolf in a tobacconist or a corner shop. And that opened up so many new avenues of discovering games for me and my friends. And I think we sort of quickly discovered that, okay, this, it's not just Dragonbane, it's not just Mutant. We also have Call of Cthulhu, which is one of my absolute favorite games ever. We have Dungeons and Dragons, but we also have Judge Dredd and we have this game and we have these superhero games that I never got into, but still they were there.
- [16:37]
C
And.
- [16:37]
A
And that also influenced a lot of Traveller, for example, we played a lot of Traveller because it is such a brilliant pickup game. We thought it was a brilliant pickup game because only one person had to know the rules and the rest just got a, well, is there a character sheet? Roll two dice and that's it. And it would always end in sort of some shootout or something anyway, so. But we tried a lot of those games and they were very influential on the people who are now writing games in Sweden because they sort of opened up the new, the larger world. Because Dragonbane, for those who are not familiar with it, were basically basic role playing. It was basic role playing and it was magic world translated into Swedish. And it's gone through some iterations. But the basic role playing dogma is sort of like so ingrained in Swedish role playing gamers of my generation and maybe one generation after that. Now, if you would ask young people today, they would go like, oh, year zero is so easy to learn because that's what every game has, because everyone is playing the Free League games. But when I grew up, the basic role playing percentage dice game was sort of the dominant system that you were supposed to play. But then through White Wolf, you learned about Traveler, which had the 2D6 plus skill modifiers. You also learned about Dungeons and Dragons more. You learned about Call of Cthulhu, which of course was very popular because it is the quintessential basic role playing game. And you learned about RuneQuest and you learned about other games. And then Warmth's Roleplay came along and that really blew our minds in Sweden because it's such a story heavy game. Sweden has never been. There are exceptions, but Sweden has always been leaning more towards plot than dungeons, stories and motivations and NPCs and stuff like that. Again, Kolbatil. But fantasy, of course, is really popular. So when Graham Davies wrote Shadows of a Bogenhaven, which he has described as Dungeons and Dragons, you play what you think is a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, but you realize that you're playing a Call of Cthulhu adventure. And that sort of vibe was really, really cool to discover. You can do this as well. You can have heavy story elements, but you can also have the quite crunchy rules then and even more crunchy now. And that sort of geared us into what we See, now we have sort of dark. Not Dragonbane, of course. Now that's not dark. But Simbarum, for example, is quite a dark game. Cult is from Sweden. That's quite a dark game. And even Mutant Year Zero, as it is known, can be a quite dark game.
- [19:51]
B
The other thing that struck me reading the book is not only how these games, as you said, these different influences. So Chaosium and Warhammer come to Sweden. But you're not only translating them, what's actually happening is that they're being rewritten and changed to form the games that you play, in essence, isn't it? Because that's at its heart. And Dragon bane came from RuneQuest, isn't it?
- [20:23]
A
Yes, absolutely. Dragon Bane, the first dragon magic world, it came from Chaosium, basically, and it was there. I'm not really sure if Greg Stafford had done Runequest. I'm a bit hazy on the details, but basically we were inspired by Runequest quite a lot for our Dragonbane rules and the development. And also the Greg Stafford philosophy of even monsters have feelings and monsters are intelligent and even monsters learn from experience. And that was sort of brought into the Swedish mindset as well. But what has happened after that is that. And I think that maybe we can go back to what we talked about earlier is that we have. We're not in a huge country, so we have sort of like a small group of people who are creating these games, at least compared to the US so what we've been doing for the last. Since 1999, when target games, who made the original Dragon Bay and Mutant and Colt and stuff like that, when they shut down, people sort of started picking up their licenses and rewriting those licenses like they would have wanted them to be back then. So what we're seeing now, for example, Dragonbane is not a direct descendant of the 1982 rules versions. This version that we have now is the Free League putting their very clear stamp on it and saying, this is meant to play Dragonbane as we played it. We don't want to recreate the rules, but we want to create the experience. So it is a descendant of the basic role playing system. But there are some people will call 5e mannerisms as well. Like you have death saving throws after you reach zero hit points and you have short quick rests and stuff like that. Just to bring it into the modern gaming frame of mind, I'm guessing. And that's for Mutant as well, for example. Mutant Year Zero is very much not the game system that it was. Free League wanted to put their mark on the world. And they wanted to work with it and be faithful to the feeling of the world. But they wanted their own Year Zero engine. So they created the Year Zero engine and the Year Zero version of Newton. But it feels like mutants. So because the first Mutant was also a basic role playing it.
- [23:03]
B
A mutant's quite interesting, isn't it? Because you say that there isn't really the concept of mutant in Swedish culture. Or if you look at the development of the idea of Mutant Mutant Chronicles, it becomes like a key factor within Swedish games, doesn't it?
- [23:20]
A
Yeah. I'm not really sure why, actually. Because it's like you say, it's not as if we look back on our. Of course we have Ragnarok, which is the Viking apocalypse that's been sort of like etched into our minds. It's like, okay, the Vikings thought about the Ragnarok, where the gods would face the giants and the other, I'm gonna say evil forces. But I don't know if you could. There are other forces anyway. And then the world would be destroyed and be reborn again as something else. But apart from that, mutants. We didn't grow up with post apocalyptic fantasies that much in Sweden, but Mutant, it sort of appealed to us, the post apocalyptic version of also, that you could be whatever you wanted to be. You could be a flower that walked around and talked if you wanted. You could be a bear. The big thing about Mutant was that it was set in Scandinavia. For us, that was the big thing. And also because it was a system, that Dragon Bay system at the time, it was basically the same system. So we were familiar with the rules. But then you got to explore Scandinavia. That was unknown to us but familiar at the same time. And that set fire to people's imagination. It's like, okay, I can be a bear with a hockey club. And I think that this is some sort of web, the dustbin cover as a shield. That's cool. And we like that. It's sort of like a quirky humor as well. I would say that there's a schism in Swedish role playing culture where there are people who hate ducks in fantasy or mallards, as they are called dragonbane. And there are people who see mallards, ducks in dragonbane as essential to the play experience. So the humor is always sort of like lurking beneath the surface. I don't know. And I think that's maybe why we also connect to British games or British media as well. We love Monty Python, we love Faulty Towers, we love a lot of British culture and we love War of Fans. Of all play, for example, because it's so silly while at the same time being really serious. And I think that's a mix of serious and silly. That is something that we Swedes really enjoy. And the Mutant for us was, I think the first real clear cut version of this is silly, but it's also deadly serious. And we like that.
- [25:55]
B
And the other element is the idea of base building as well.
- [25:59]
A
And that's one of the specific free league quirks of their games. That's not something that I would say that is Swedish when it comes to role playing game design, but it's more a free league thing that they have the base, the Ark. It was present in Swedish games before that as well, but they have sort of made it. One of their signature parts of their game design is that we have this community building thing. And that's one of the strongest things I think with Mutant Year Zero as well, is that you're not only out for yourself, you're out for the community. You want to save your community. You have people to interact with, you have social imprint, you have social consequences for what you do as well. And that's also something that I think that we Swedes really like is like what you do in the game has consequences for how the game develops. Whereas we sort of look askance at Dungeons and Dragons where you just go in and you clear out the dungeon. And that doesn't have any, that doesn't have any consequences on anything in the world basically. But we like to interact with worlds a lot more than just interacting with dungeons. I also play dungeon death games and I love it. And I played, I played Dungeons and Dragons up to level 26 something basic Dungeons Dragons expert companion and master set. So I really love that type of gaming. But. But if I'm speaking about the Swedish gaming community as a generalization, we are more into interacting with. With the. The society around us as gamer, as the. The player characters should be more a part of the world than just floating on top of it.
- [27:50]
B
When you were telling the story of your experience of designing games and writing games, you mentioned that in the early 90s, that's when role playing games hit the rocks in Sweden. And I really like that in the story as you tell it. And I was surprised that the Satanic Panic, which was hit quite late, didn't it really, it was 94 or something like that.
- [28:15]
A
Of course we struggled with it when role playing games came to Sweden but. But it wasn't that big. Some articles, something in some of the magazines and stuff like that. But then Cult came along and Cult is a. On the face of it, it's a BDSM Clive Barker inspired Satanistic agnostic horror role playing game where you sort of try to reach enlightenment by doing stuff. There was sex magic and there were a lot of violence and chains and trench coats and stuff like that. And the religious people in Sweden didn't really like that for some reason, I can't imagine why. And that received such a response that role playing games were actually pulled from the shelves in Sweden. But it was late, it was like 93, 94 that this happened. And it was also brought up into our. I don't know the equivalent. What you call. You. Do you call it Parliament in Parliament? Yeah, yeah. It was brought up there in Swedish equivalent of the Parliament. And someone wanted to ban the role playing games, but it never got any traction. Partly because of this organization, Sverok that we talked about earlier, that they went on an offensive saying that, no, this is not what you're saying, that it's not satanic. This is a good hobby for young people to learn a lot of skills, to learn how to organize themselves into these organizations and to take care of each other and to include other people in wholesome hobbies. Of course there are weirdos in the role playing game hobby as well, but most of us were just nerdy kids sitting in the basement playing games. I remember When I was 15, 16, we had our gaming group, gaming club. After we were done playing Saturdays, we would go back to where I lived, my house, and we had sort of like a big house. So my parents were always happy that we were at home and we weren't out doing that stuff. So they would come home from whatever, shopping or whatever, doing whatever they did, and they would sort of like see 20 or 30 pairs of shoes in the hallway. And they were like, okay, good, we know where they are, we know that they are here and we know that they are friends and they are doing things together. That's great. So they never bought into this satanic panic thing that some people tried to drum up the panic part of that. And of course that also meant that it sort of like dipped because they were pulled from the toy shops. They were playing as with pull from the toy shops. And that also had been a great strategy for Target Games to reach out with their games. It was sold in the toy shops so grandma could buy one or you could just pick up some role playing game from the shop for Christmas or for birthdays or things like that. It was easily accessible. You didn't have to go to a specialty shop to buy role playing games during the 80s and first half of 90s. But then it sort of started. But it's also difficult to separate that from. Because magic became a craze. And I know that we've had a lot of arguments about did magic steal gamers from role playing games? And there are people who say no, of course not. Completely different target group for role playing games and for magic. But so it's very difficult to sort of sort out what was the reason for Swedish games having a dip at the end of the night 90s and then slowly being built up again to the popularity that it is now. And of course we have to be honest and say that Swedish role playing games are or have been at least has been a nostalgia driven hobby for quite a while. And it's now that we see the young people who are not not driven by nostalgia. But as soon as guys like me have gotten out of the system how to we want to make this old thing, but the good version this time when all that is done, maybe the young people can start doing well. It's you old people. We always talk about these books, we don't care about them. We want Murk Borean, we want something else. We want something that's cool. You don't want your old dusty Runequest inspired things here. We want something spectacular or we want anime, we want Japanese inspired role playing games, stuff like that. And I hope, and that's what I've been trying to think at least about the book that this. I'm hoping that we don't need another book talking about the old times. Now we have the books saying okay, this is how it started. These are the old guys, this is what they did. And now, okay, are we done with this now? Can we look forward instead of looking back? So at the moment I'm just so happy looking forward and just seeing other people creating new cool stuff here and in Britain and in the US and everywhere. Actually I'm most interested in non US games at the moment. I spoke to Francesco Nepetello, he created the One Ring role playing game and so that's sort of like comes from the Italian mindset. And I still haven't really seen a French role playing game get big in Sweden, but I would love for that to happen. Or a traditional in German, not the Schrader because that's basically Daniel Rangs clone but something which with the sensibilities of other countries. Spain for example, they had this Spanish or Italian who did the spaghetti fantasy role Playing game like a spaghetti Western, but was a fantasy Brancalonia. I think it was Spanish or Italian. Fun stuff. And from other countries than the us.
- [34:56]
B
I have this theory that in the uk, I suppose in northern Europe it helps that it's an indoor pastime because where we are is very wet. So maybe disproportionately it's a popular thing in northern Europe.
- [35:13]
A
It could be we are not as wet as you are, but we are colder than you are during the winters. And it's like you say, we can sit inside during the winters and play games and do inside activities. And that might be one reason why it's sort of stuck.
- [35:33]
C
Thanks, Magnus.
- [35:34]
B
Thanks for writing this book because it does have that enthusiasm. It's very informative, it tells the story, but it is infused with that enthusiasm that you've conveyed today. So thank you.
- [35:48]
A
Well, thank you for that and I'm happy to hear you say that. And it's a shared history as well. I would love for someone to write this book about the French role playing scene, the Spanish role playing scene, the German role playing scene, the Italian role playing scene, and I haven't read of Dyson Men yet. It's somewhere here in the member shelf. But maybe a more lighthearted general book about the UK gaming scene. You could write that. I think I would pick it up directly. It's something that it. And also I almost also want to say that one of the. Of course, conveying the creative aspect of the Swedish gaming hobby, of course was one of my goals, but also putting a book into the hands of the Americans. This is mostly for the American audience and I wanted to contribute to a book that we could put in the hand of Americans and say, look, you're not the only one doing this. You have such a Dungeness Dragons centered worldview, but go outside the American sphere, which is huge. Of course, if you want to make money in rope against you. Right, for Dungeons and Dragons 5e or something like that. But there is a lot, lot more. Look, here's one country that produces games that you see on the shelves today. And this is the history of us. And I think that like we've been sort of touching on, I think that we have a lot more in common with the UK gaming scene than we have with the American gaming scene in Sweden.
- [37:40]
B
Thank you. Speed rating. Welcome to the room of role playing Rambling. I've got Blythe with me. Hello there, Blythe.
- [37:50]
C
Hello there.
- [37:52]
B
It's been a while since we've done this speed rating.
- [37:54]
C
I know. God Know what to do.
- [37:56]
B
I think the concept was that it was like a speed dating thing where we would go and find out everything about a particular game and do all the sections in one section.
- [38:05]
C
Very quick, but very quick.
- [38:07]
B
We don't do things very quick.
- [38:09]
C
Don't we? No, we don't. We intend to. And then find two hours later, we're still talking and not really going anywhere.
- [38:14]
B
We're rambling. We're ramblers, aren't we?
- [38:17]
C
Yeah, we are.
- [38:18]
B
It's 50 years this year. Do you know it's the 50th anniversary of.
- [38:22]
A
Of what?
- [38:23]
C
Do you know me turning seven? No.
- [38:28]
B
Well, nearly. Of course it's KSCM's anniversary. Yeah, KSCM, it's been going for 50 years. The longest running continuous.
- [38:37]
C
Should have known that.
- [38:38]
B
Yeah.
- [38:39]
C
I'm here involved in a podcast. I forgot that.
- [38:42]
B
But we'll talk about that next time.
- [38:44]
C
Okay.
- [38:46]
B
It's 50 years since protect and Survive.
- [38:49]
C
Oh, the.
- [38:51]
B
The film.
- [38:51]
C
The film. It's filming like a little public information film.
- [38:54]
B
Yeah, public information film that did. Was suppressed for a number of years, wasn't it? It was like kept under wraps. This guide to how to survive attack.
- [39:05]
C
A nuclear attack. A war. Yeah, A nuclear strike.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, It's a famous one that includes, you know, taking your doors off the hinges, putting up against the wall and suitcases.
- [39:16]
C
Fog up your granny, if she's died. Yeah, yeah.
- [39:19]
B
She'll start to smell after a few.
- [39:20]
C
Years, like it's all done in the most matter of fact where. Yeah. As if every member of your family is dead or dies. Just put them in a bag and I'll put them outside.
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A
All right.
- [39:29]
C
Like the rubbish. Okay, yeah, we'll do that. Yeah, Take that off the list. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. Because that's. Everyone's going to be after a nuclear attack, isn't it? Perfectly thinking, perfectly clearly obeying government instructions on how to survive.
- [39:43]
B
Course, at the weekend, I was at a loose end in Nantwich and that's.
- [39:52]
C
That sounds like a recipe for disaster. At least. At least I didn't nanteweet.
- [39:57]
B
I had to. I took Mrs. The dice to an event in Nantwich and I said I would take her.
- [40:03]
C
And pick her up.
- [40:05]
B
And I found out that there was actually a nuclear bunker, a secret nuclear bunker, hat green that used to be part of the Royal Observer Corps during the war and it used to help the RAF. But in 1984, 82, it was recommissioned as a bunker, secret bunker, where the British government would pile in 160 civil servants to be the regional government for Mallory, Merseyside. Amazing.
- [40:40]
C
Yeah. They would all go there and then starve to death because there's nothing left.
- [40:47]
B
There's nothing. There's nothing that's in the middle of nowhere, for one thing.
- [40:50]
C
Those things are only slightly farcical because I think I've said before, where I worked at a council I worked at, they had a nuclear bunker and I remember being taken in there and it was both creepy that it existed. So the idea of it is quite creepy to think, oh, I see. So what are you saying is you're expecting potentially there's this nuclear attack and we are all dead or dying, but you lot are in your bunker. Yeah. Our own things. That's kind of creepy. But equally, equally, I would say. I'm no expert, of course. I would say. Slightly ridiculous. Yes, Slightly ridiculous, because when you looked, remember at times we were documentaries reading about the. The amount of nuclear warheads that could be fired at Britain. The idea that you are in a bunker. I used to have a friend of the family who was a fireman at the time. Hey, you knew. Dave. Dave, you knew. Yeah, didn't you? He was a fireman and he. Remember him once telling me that they used to do like drills and training stuff about nuclear attack. And he said it was. It was just found. Farcical. It's just farcical. The idea that. Just a fantasy. Yeah, the fantasy of surviving, you know, in the same way that the whole idea of nuclear war was this like, nightmare that was ever present in the 80s. And I suppose it's somewhere. It's kind of becoming a thing again, isn't it, really? Yeah, it was almost. There was this fantasy that somehow society would rebuild itself and something could be salvaged from it, which. Yeah, one nuclear bomb on Manchester, there might be some chance of, you know, you could kind of pull things together, but you were talking about hundreds of nuclear warheads. There's nothing left, is there?
- [42:33]
B
The other thing that has struck me since playing Unknown Armies, because we've come across some of this prepper.
- [42:42]
C
Prepper stuff. Yeah. People keeping all of the food in tins. The end of the world.
- [42:48]
B
There's an underlying assumption, isn't there? There's an underlying assumption by having 160 civil servants piled into a bunker that somehow what has to be maintained is some technocratic state.
- [43:04]
C
So bureaucracy has to be maintained and as long as that's maintained, we're okay. Yeah, Yeah, I don't think that's the case. No.
- [43:13]
B
And that was what was amazing about Going through those rooms. Now, bear in mind it was early on a Saturday morning. I was the only person there other than the person taking the tickets. And as you move through this place, it was motion activated.
- [43:31]
C
Right.
- [43:32]
B
So you got the lights coming on and then sound effects coming on. I was terrified. I would say it was the most terrifying experience I've ever had. Because the other thing is that along with this short.
- [43:47]
A
Yeah.
- [43:47]
B
Missiles. Decommissioned missiles that they had.
- [43:51]
C
All right, this is what would have killed you.
- [43:53]
B
This is what would have killed you. And they had all the telecommunication systems, they had a decontamination unit, they had a hospital, but it was all populated by these badly dressed mannequins.
- [44:13]
C
So bad. Did you want to bag them up and leave them outside?
- [44:15]
B
Yes, I did, yeah. Slightly wonky T pair.
- [44:23]
C
Look, to be fair, if Britain had endured an all out nuclear strike from the Soviet Union, your two pair would be wonky. It would be wonky. I mean if, if you walk away from that with your wonky two pair, you're doing all right, aren't you?
- [44:37]
B
Yeah.
- [44:37]
C
You know, bring yourself looking.
- [44:39]
B
So I was like going in between that thing of being very. It's very insightful and being very moved about trying to appreciate the level of planning and several contingencies that being put in place. To keep us alive.
- [44:55]
C
You said to keep us alive. I'm not sure that would have been the case.
- [45:01]
B
But it was extraordinary to think the amount of investment that piled into this place. But then thinking this would make a great site for an Autonom scenario with.
- [45:14]
C
These mannequins, the Autons from the nuclear bunker come alive.
- [45:18]
B
So post apocalyptic gaming was a feature of 2020. And during that time we've played a lot of Mutant Year Zero. And you've gone back to it this year, haven't you?
- [45:29]
C
I have gone back to it this year, yeah. Yeah, I think I saw the supplement. There's a supplement they've done called Ad Astra, which is in space kind of thing where you get into a rocket and you explore the solar system where there's. There's still. Because the setting is a kind of. There's an apocalypse in the kind of near future. So the idea that man has populated the solar system is that idea. And I got that and yeah, I went back to it. And again they say sometimes, isn't it, you move on from games, you play them a lot, then you move on and they sit down your shelf and then sometimes you go back to them and think, you know what? This is quite a good game. Yeah, it was Good. Then it's still good.
- [46:07]
B
I genuinely think of the games that I've discovered since us coming back and doing this over the last 10 years. I'd say that music year zero is one of my favorites.
- [46:17]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [46:19]
B
And there's a couple of reasons for that. First we'll talk about the mechanics. They work well, but let's put them aside for a moment. Is the actual setting, I think works really well. It is a good combination of what makes a post apocalyptic game good.
- [46:35]
C
Yeah.
- [46:36]
B
Because it's gritty, but not too gritty. Yeah, it's a bit gonzo, but not too.
- [46:43]
C
Yeah, it's not too gonzo. Yeah, that's true. You can be a mutant with flies wings. You can fly around, which is a bit gonzo. But at the same time the setting has a gritty element to it, doesn't it? Because you go exploring. The Zone is called.
- [46:59]
B
Yes.
- [46:59]
C
Cheers.
- [47:00]
B
That's the basic premise of. So if you bought the core book. Because that's the unusual thing about it. They're all core books in a sense.
- [47:07]
C
Yeah. So you've got Union Zero, you've got Genlab Alpha, which is the animals one, and then the Mechatron, which is the robot one. You could buy any one of them, couldn't you? So you could buy Genlab Alpha and play the game.
- [47:18]
B
Yes, yeah.
- [47:21]
C
As mutated animals. And that's what you would play.
- [47:24]
B
Yeah.
- [47:24]
C
All the same rules. It's quite good from that point of view.
- [47:26]
B
That is good.
- [47:27]
C
And.
- [47:27]
B
And what I think about it is that it's a rich source book. It's not just a rule book. It's like a rich source book for you to build this world.
- [47:37]
C
So yeah, it's post apocalyptic, but at the same time it has a very clear sense of setting. So whilst the apocalypse isn't. I don't think the apocalypse is defined because the people you are playing, whether it's animals, robots or people, don't know what caused it. Yes. You're a kind of new generation of people who live in this world. So you don't know what caused it. Could be anything. But it does. It's quite carry. It's kind of quite flavorful, the old setting, isn't it? And it encourages you to use your own. A lot of free league games do this, but of course this is the first free league game, really, that did it. To use your own town, really.
- [48:19]
B
Yes.
- [48:19]
C
You know, I mean, it has two, doesn't it? I think it is like a London setting and a New York setting, isn't there? Yeah, you could.
- [48:25]
A
Could.
- [48:25]
C
You could use Manchester.
- [48:27]
B
Yeah.
- [48:27]
C
Which is a bit grim in it. I was like, I used to live there and now it's all wiped out.
- [48:33]
B
But you could populate it with landmarks from your local area but like repurpose them.
- [48:39]
C
Repurpose them and rename them and also have fun as mutants. Re imagining what your mutant thinks of it.
- [48:48]
B
Yeah.
- [48:48]
C
So you could set it in. I mean that's kind of off the top of my head. You set it in Blackpool and have Blackpool tower there. But the mutants think of it in a very different way. They don't think of it some tourist attraction. They see it sometimes. Observational observation tower or something religious or something like that. So. Yeah, encourages you. It does encourage you to do that.
- [49:09]
B
It has the feel of something that has been. Got the benefit of a lot of gameplay. So it's a setting that feels like people have inhabited it a lot. You know, some games, you do get that, don't you? Where the. You know it's based on Mutant, isn't it? So it's a sort of love letter to a game that they played a lot of.
- [49:29]
C
Yeah.
- [49:29]
B
And you do get that sense the purpose. The core activity changes on in some of the supplements so we'll perhaps cover that. But the, the real core activity is that you play characters are playing stalkers and there's archetypes to choose from which we might talk about and that your role is to go out of your ark, which is your settlement, to find stuff to bring back.
- [49:58]
C
That's it. So you can, you can play. And I have run some. One shop like this, you can play it like a regular rpg. So you can say, right, you're a bunch of mutants, you live in this ark, as it's called, this settlement, and you've got to go and do this and just do it like a normal role playing game you could do. But the. Yeah, the core game as it's set out is the idea that you build a settlement. You have a settlement and the settlement has its own set of statistics like technology and culture and agriculture and all those kind of things. And yeah, you go out and you find artifacts and those artifacts, you bring them back to your art and they enhance its statistics. I suppose we want them a better term. Yeah, yeah. It's like, let's see if you've got say technology, a technology score on your arc. If you bring back some high tech computers or something like that, that adds to your technology score. So that's the idea. And you build a settlement based on what you find. And in A way you can. I suppose you can. I suppose you're encouraged as a gm, to run it in a. In a kind of procedural way, aren't you? Like a hex crop. You go out, you randomly generate what's in the hexes, different hazards and things like that, and you randomly generate what can be found in those. If anything can be found in those hexes. And you've got things like grub and water and booze. And booze, which I'll talk about later in a bit. But you've got these kind of resources that you have to manage as you're trekking around, you know, and if you run out of food, you can, you know, which you always hear people groan and go, God, resource management. But I think it does it in a very, very. It does in a simple and effective way. Because I'm not a massive fan of resource management in games. I'm one of these people who. People say, so. So I've got some. Running the convention. Have I got some arrows? Then I go, yeah, because you've got some arrows. Yeah. And the arrows of it, like, as many as you want. I'm bothered. I can't be bothered with that.
- [52:00]
B
Yeah, but.
- [52:01]
C
So it's not. You would think, it's not quite my game. But I think it does it very, very well, very simply. And we might talk about that.
- [52:10]
B
It's a motivational factor for stalkers, isn't it? Because, I mean, we found this when we did the campaign. There is a tendency to want to disdain the arc because there's lots of activities.
- [52:22]
C
Yeah, well, there is, yeah. That's another aspect of it, isn't it? That not only does it have the idea that. That this arc is just a set of statistics where you've just got to bump your scores up. There are actual. It does develop what it calls threats, which are actual threats in it, are threats within your arc. So it's like different bosses. So it's almost like a kind of. It has a feel of. Like a crime gang, almost. You've got. There are bosses who run this place, but those bosses are always in danger of being overthrown by other people, you know. And of course, the other thing it does is the character sheets. It does that thing freely does with a lot of its games where it gives you relationship statements, doesn't it? So some of those relationship statements are how your character hits one of the bosses.
- [53:19]
B
Yeah. Just fits into that arc structure, doesn't it?
- [53:23]
C
Yeah. So there's one. There's. I think there's one which is like, there's one thing. It can be a dog handler, which I think I played into a dog handler. He's got a dog. And one of the relationship statements is that such and such a person, one of the bosses, had your last dog killed, and you'll never forgive him for it. So you've. It sets you up to hate one of the people in charge, One of the NPCs, who's in charge of the Ark. You hate them, and that makes you.
- [53:50]
B
And that is the first time that I've encountered that when. That was the first game that I played that really used that to full effect. And it was really effective because, as I say, you wanted to stay in the art to resolve some of these relationship difficulties that you're all having.
- [54:07]
C
I think when we played it, didn't me and Andy have one of the bosses murdered?
- [54:11]
B
Yes.
- [54:12]
C
And then the mutant rabbits got the blame, didn't they? Yeah, I felt bad then. Then Little meat and Rabbit's got the blade. But anyway, never mind.
- [54:18]
B
We did it off screen.
- [54:20]
C
I did. We didn't tell the other players. Didn't tell the other players. And they. When we went back to the arc, it was like, oh, he's. Oh, he's dead, is he? Someone's murdered him. Yeah, we have.
- [54:28]
B
Yeah. And you left. You left a gun there that. The rabbits.
- [54:31]
C
That's right. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Literally, who framed Roger Rabbit? Me, Andy. I mean, that's who framed him.
- [54:40]
B
Yeah.
- [54:41]
C
Well, that was a great part of the game. I think what was really interesting when we played it was you were running a campaign, which was a story kind of campaign, like a traditional campaign. I think at the end of it, you said, do you know what? It would be more fun to not run that campaign and just let you explore and plot against these NPC villains in your own heart.
- [55:02]
B
I've forgotten the term the user in the rules, but there are, like, special zones that they populate, and that's what this campaign did. It had, like, a series of zones.
- [55:13]
C
That they pre populated.
- [55:14]
B
Pre populated with a bit of a backstory of these emerging factions. And as I say, I think I've said previously when we talked about it on the podcast, that really, that was a bit of a distraction from all the fun we were having.
- [55:30]
C
Yeah, we got into more stuff. Yeah, I got into more kind of scraps of our own adventure, didn't we, really?
- [55:35]
B
Yeah. So let's do this, then. Let's do Judge Blithey's Rules. This is part of the segment where you pick three highlights and One bum note. Okay. And we'll see whether we agree on this. So what's your three things that you're highlighting?
- [55:54]
C
I think the three rules I like about it are. I like the mutation point economy. Mutation point. Let's call it a mutation point. Let's call it that. The mutation point economy.
- [56:05]
B
Yeah. Like that's why it's better for it. We're starting to say that. One of those game design ones.
- [56:10]
C
Oh, we are, aren't we? Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's call it the mutation point thing.
- [56:15]
B
Yeah, that's what we're doing.
- [56:16]
C
The mutation point stuff. Yeah, yeah. Get the word economy. That's one rule. The other. The other rule I like is we've touched on this is the rules around resources and also the kind of rules around items breaking.
- [56:31]
B
Ah, yeah.
- [56:31]
C
In it. And quite like those are. Well done. Very well. And I suppose the other rule I like and again we've just touched on it is the ark building rules. Yeah. The rules around finding items and what they actually do for your ark and that kind of thing. Yeah, they're the three. What don't I like? Oh, I don't know. What I don't like about it? Oh, well, that's. Maybe we'll come back to it.
- [56:54]
B
We'll come back to it.
- [56:54]
C
We might find that, discover something we don't like is we talk about those rules. So go on.
- [56:58]
B
Let's talk about this mutation point thing. Yeah.
- [57:01]
C
Not economy thing as mutants. And it does the same thing with the animals. The animals have these feral abilities and the robots have abilities. The same thing. For all the games, it's just described differently. Different terminology. But let's stick to mutations. You have a mutation and you can get more mutations. And when you power mutations, they can or supercharge or they can backfire. So there's a whole lot of rules about mutations, but the way you power mutations is by mutation points. And you start the game with one. You start the session with one mutation point. I can't do much with that. You know, you map to use your mutation once, but not very effectively. The way you get more mutation points is by pushing rolls. So in the game, so probably fair to say it's the more complicated end of the year zero games. I would say.
- [57:51]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [57:52]
C
But when you push a roll, this is common thing with all three league games. You fail. You roll. You're all a handful. You roll from D6 is based on.
- [57:59]
B
Your skill and you fail surprisingly a lot.
- [58:03]
C
You fail more than you think.
- [58:05]
B
Yes.
- [58:05]
C
You don't get it.
- [58:06]
B
It's hard to get a six. It's hard to guess.
- [58:09]
C
It is, yeah. Hard than you think it is. But when you've done that and if you fail, you've got the choice of pushing a roll. You can push a roll, and when you push a roll, there is a risk that your statistic gets harmed. So if you've got four in Strength four and you do a skill roll linked to strength, you roll, reroll. And for every one you get, or if you've got ones on your first roll as well, again, it's a bit convoluted. You lose strength points. So you might lose two points of strength because you pushed yourself. Right. But when you do, you gain to your mutation point. So there's this kind of push and pull between when you push in your mind or your body as a mutant, it charges your mutations. So there's that kind of thing of, well, I could push this role and I might succeed, but I might suffer. But if I suffer, I will get some mutation points. And whenever I've run it for people, once they caught onto that, it is a really interesting element of the game, knowing that.
- [59:08]
B
Well, it's motivational, isn't it? It kind of encourages because it is hard to get a six. It has to be said, it is quite deadly as well.
- [59:15]
C
It is deadly. So to start people from kind of.
- [59:19]
B
Hold, holding back and turtling a little bit and thinking, I'm gonna be a bit hesitant if you know that you might get a payoff with mutation points, it makes people more likely to have.
- [59:31]
C
A punt, doesn't it?
- [59:33]
B
Take a risk.
- [59:33]
C
Yeah. So I like that. I like that. I think it's an interesting thing, rather than just saying to people, you know, a lot of games would say you've got so many mutation points and you can heal so many mutation points every day, that's. They'd leave it at that, wouldn't they?
- [59:46]
B
Yeah.
- [59:46]
C
You know, but this, what this does, it links the two together. Yeah. You got many mutation points. If you want some more, you're gonna have to take some risks. And then you get more points and then you can really kind of use your mutations in a far more powerful way, because they are quite powerful and.
- [60:03]
B
You get criticals as well, can't you? Where mutations might suddenly.
- [60:07]
C
Yeah, you roll. I think for every mutation point you spend, I think you roll a D6. And if you get a one, I think you have to roll on the Misfire tab. And the misfire can supercharge it or it can backfire as well. So You've got that element as well. So there's quite a lot going on, really, in terms of players choosing what they do and how much risk they want to take with these things.
- [60:30]
B
There was an occasion, wasn't there, where Jonathan, who was playing with us, was playing a character who was trapped in a room and was trying to see off kind of this ghoul, whatever it was, and it turned against him. But all of a sudden he. He got a mutation that erupted. He suddenly got covered in spines, didn't he?
- [60:51]
C
Yeah. Because you can get a new mutation, can't you, when you charge a mutate. When you fire a mutation up, you can get a. Like a. They say you can get a. It can misfire, but it can also give you new mutations.
- [61:03]
B
Yeah, yeah. So that was a great moment, wasn't it, where he was like panicking, but suddenly erupted into spines as a defense mechanism.
- [61:12]
C
So I like. I like that. I think that's good because it gives players a lot of choice about how they operate as a character in terms of the powers and how they use those powers or don't use them or make tactical decisions. Yeah. Kind of interesting.
- [61:24]
B
Yeah. And I could say that the mutations are handled mechanically really well. And as long as having, like a lot of color, they do add a little spice, don't they, to your character.
- [61:36]
C
So. Yeah, they do. They're quite kind of. Yeah.
- [61:38]
B
Character without getting out of hand, of being too much like feet or something like that, where you're thinking, all right, hang on, can I use this? Or is this a prop?
- [61:47]
C
Yeah, they're quite straight. Yeah. They're quite well handled. They're quite straightforward. They're straightforward and they just work. They work as well. So if it does this much damage, it just does it. Yeah. That's what makes them powerful. You don't have to roll, but to get them powerful, you've got to kind of have this trade off between your own well being. I suppose your character's well being. Yeah, yeah. Will fuel your mutations.
- [62:11]
B
Yeah. Okay, what's next?
- [62:13]
C
I lay the rules around resource management. I think that's a worse than economy, doesn't it? Resource management.
- [62:20]
B
Yeah. What's come over here?
- [62:21]
C
You become man. No, I like the rules around using stuff that's better.
- [62:26]
B
Yeah.
- [62:27]
C
That's more us. But I think it does. It has grub. It has grub, doesn't it? Water.
- [62:33]
B
Booze.
- [62:34]
C
Booze has booze as well.
- [62:36]
B
I like any game that has as part of its economy, a part of.
- [62:41]
C
Its resource management economy. Yeah. Oh, no. But it's quite well handled because it's quite simple. You get grub points, you get water. So if you find rations, it all translates into points. And you need one grub and one water a day, otherwise things start happening. And you can use grub and water and booze, I think as well to kind of heal conditions, can't you? Things like that. But it's handled in a very simple way. It's very easy to kind of explain. And again, when I've done one shots, it's very easy to explain to people and for players to understand, I suppose, what they need to stay alive.
- [63:23]
B
Yeah.
- [63:23]
C
You know, because in some games you.
- [63:25]
B
Because on the one hand it's very mechanical. Yeah. And as you say, like bean counter.
- [63:32]
A
It.
- [63:32]
C
Yeah.
- [63:32]
B
But on the other hand it's quite abstracted as well.
- [63:34]
C
Yeah.
- [63:35]
B
So you can. I think we had like some stale tins of mulch, didn't.
- [63:41]
C
Yeah, mulch, which are worth a good point, a grub or something like that. But it's good because players, whilst it is. It is abstract and you say, you're right, it is like being genti. But at the same time it's good because players know. Know what they've got, not got, because it's a game about survival. They know what they've got, not got what they need to stay alive. So if you. If you know you have so many hexes from home and you can travel through one hex a day, you've only got one grub and one water, you then know we've got a problem, haven't we?
- [64:12]
B
Yeah.
- [64:12]
C
So we need to find more points to get us home. And it. It's better than. If it was just vague things about rations of water, you'd think it doesn't really work, does it?
- [64:23]
B
I've just had a flashback to a moment in the campaign because this was 2020.
- [64:28]
C
Yeah.
- [64:29]
B
Covid was going on.
- [64:31]
C
The end of the world was happening.
- [64:33]
B
It was happening. But there's also the phenomena of fatbergs. Do you remember fat burgs?
- [64:39]
C
Yeah.
- [64:40]
B
So fat birds were where people were.
- [64:42]
C
Putting tissues into the sewers and it.
- [64:44]
B
Was causing a buildup of fat that.
- [64:48]
C
Caught in the tissues and the wet wipes, didn't it? And.
- [64:51]
B
Yeah. And they were emerging these great bergs of lard and fat. And I think there was one that.
- [64:58]
C
There was a fat burg that you found you could eat. You eat the fatberg fat as if we're surviving. Yeah. Lovely.
- [65:06]
B
You kind of hauled it into your arc, didn't you? And it's like there was Teeth in it and all sorts.
- [65:11]
C
Yeah, But I think it does that really well. The other thing it does really well though is how items kind of degrade. So if you've got a found item from pre apocalypse found item or even a. You've got what you call these usage dice. So for example, a pair of binoculars might give you a couple of extra dice on scouting for things, but if you push a roll and you get a 1 on your usage dice, you lose a dice. So it's the idea that these binoculars are very old and are falling apart because they're not made by your culture, they're made by this other culture. And so things can break. But again, it's a nice way of dealing with that in a quite a simple way, but also like a, a gamey, almost dramatic way. Cause you think, well, I'm gonna push me robe and I'm gonna use me binoculars or I'm gonna use me radio, or I'm gonna use me whatever. But I know that there's a chance it, it could break a bit or become worse or become useless. Cause all you do is you KN off. That's all you do.
- [66:16]
B
Yeah.
- [66:16]
C
So use binoculars, push your roll, get a one, knock a dice off. Now you just get one dice on your binoculars. And there are characters who can fix things and have dice and all that kind of thing, but it's done in all done in a very.
- [66:29]
B
It all fits together, doesn't it?
- [66:30]
C
Fits together. So when I've run it for people as one shots who've never played it before, they immediately get it. Yeah, they immediately understand it and think, oh, I see, yeah, I need a grub point a day. I need water a day. I've got five of them, I've got four of them. And when I played at Expo, people were going, right, well I've got. How much water have you got? How much grub? Right, do this do. And again with the usage dice, people immediately got the idea, oh, I've rolled a one, right, okay, I've sold one dice less dead easy to do. But it somehow creates that idea of resources being scarce or resources being slightly knackered and broken. But it does it in a very simple way. It's very, very clever. And next up, it's the ark itself, isn't it?
- [67:14]
B
Yeah.
- [67:14]
C
So the rules around your ark, I think more than, more than the rules around your ark. Because we've talked about that previously. We talked about that earlier, didn't we, about the NPCs that are in your ark and all that kind of thing I think I like the idea of the artifacts. So again all the artifacts that you can find, no matter how apparently pointless they may be, are worth getting because they will boost points. So I think in your game didn't we find a fashion magazine? Yes, we found a fashion magazine copy of Cosmopolitan. Kylie on the front, Kylie on the front. Cosmopolitan. And of course I think the item is lifestyle magazine or something like that, isn't it? Which of course in some games you might think oh so what? So what you would care about that we just want guns and bombs and weapons and food. But it added to your kind of cultural kudos the cultural kudos of your settlement. So people would then start to go from far and wide to look at this ancient manuscript that out that detailed the pre apocalyptic world. Beach bottoms. How to get a beach bottom. But it's a clever mechanic because again then it says oh you found an old set of golf clubs or you found well golf clubs can't be useful, use them as a club. But you found like that you found the lifestyle magazine or you found this or you found. And you think well in some games they'd be pointless but they're not pointless. They're actually quite valuable if you get them back to your art because it will boost culture, technology, food, it'll boost these things. So it's a very clever way of doing it. It so that. No, no artifact that you find is utterly useless. No.
- [69:02]
B
And again it gives a reason, a motivation for you as a stalker to leave and get more stuff.
- [69:09]
C
Bring in things and bring. Yeah it's worth. And the idea that it's worth taking the risk to get them because it will bring benefits.
- [69:18]
B
My first encounter with Mutant Year zero wasn't the role playing game game I played the. I played the Switch video game. I was never. I'm not into video games these days and I wouldn't want the time Sync but in 2020 somehow managed to have a bit more time. I can't remember why but anyway I had a bit more time to spend on doing it.
- [69:44]
C
That's what was happening.
- [69:46]
B
And I played this game and it was a turn based game where you were stalkers and you had little encounters and he really emulated the role playing experience very well. But one thing to note is that in the game, in the video game in a throwback to Free Lead history.
- [70:06]
C
You could play a duck, a dog, a mutant duck.
- [70:10]
A
Yeah.
- [70:11]
C
Well you can play me and duck in general of Alpha guys.
- [70:14]
B
Is it. But it's not listed though, is it?
- [70:16]
C
No, the duck is listed.
- [70:17]
B
I don't think it's canon in vivo.
- [70:19]
C
No, I don't think it is actually thinking about it. No. But trying to think of the general things. Yeah. You've got like bears and rats. Bears and rodents and apes and.
- [70:29]
B
So let's talk about anthromorphic animals because it's something that we normally disapprove of. Why are we giving it a thumbs up in this case?
- [70:39]
C
I think we give it a thumbs up because it's done very well. If you read the Jam, we've never really. We've played mutant animals in our new Zero games, but we've never played Gen Lab Alpha. But Gen Lab Alpha is a whole different sort of setup, isn't it, where your animals in this kind of compound, aren't you. This scientific research thing where you've suddenly got your freedom to some extent. Although there are robot guards out there. Yeah. So it's called Paradise Valley. I think maybe wrong. I think it's Paradise Valley. But it's this idea that your experiments. So I suppose it's a slightly different. It's not like Beta, it's Potter, is it? You know, it's not the idea of, oh, well, you're all. It's not like some of these games where, oh, you all play like mice or you all play woodland animals, but as fantasy characters and you think, oh, okay, all right, fair enough. That's what Florcy bought. It's not quite that, is it? It is like you've been experimenting on. Yeah. And I like. One of the things I really, really like about genlab Alpha is the naming system for the animals. So it's got things like, again, might be wrong here, but I think it's like rats are all named after famous composers. So you've got Mozart 52. And I think apes are named after spacemen. So you could be Aldrin42 or something like that. They've all dogs are named after. I've been dogs named after spacemen, actually. No. Yeah, so the apes named after scientists. So it could be. Yeah, that's. That's quite a clever to give that.
- [72:12]
B
Sense of a taxonomy within the laboratory.
- [72:16]
C
You were experiments. Yeah. This is where you come from, you know, and it says like some of the animals don't use those names because they consider them to be slave names and all this kind of thing. So there's a whole. Like we said earlier, the great thing about it is if you. If you wanted to try Mutant View Zero, you could go and buy GM Lab Alpha and you'll get a Full game. It's a full game, yeah. In the same way that Mechatron is a full game where you play robots. Suddenly become self aware. It's a whole game.
- [72:44]
B
I want to mention Elysium as well.
- [72:46]
C
Yeah, Obviously I've not got that one.
- [72:48]
B
So Elysium is a really great concept. Anybody who has watched Silo, you know the one with Rebecca Ferguson.
- [72:57]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:57]
B
It's a similar sense that these are deep underground bunkers. A bit like, you know, you hack green.
- [73:06]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [73:07]
B
Where civilizations, they're running out of resources in there. So in that game you're not playing stalkers, what you're playing is adjudicators.
- [73:19]
C
Yeah.
- [73:20]
B
So there are four houses that implemented these silos. There's this Elysium and you play representative. Each player is a representative from a different house.
- [73:32]
C
Right, yeah.
- [73:33]
B
And there are these incidents and you play it into two levels. So on the one level you're adjudicator and the other level is like a strategic phase where you play people in the higher echelons who determine. Right. Which of these incidents are currently occurring in the Elysium are we going to resolve? And there's a bit of a debate and a vote because you want to make sure that you further your house's interests. So. And then you send your team of players into a particular incident to resolve it.
- [74:08]
C
To resolve it, yeah.
- [74:09]
B
So it's got a different gameplay.
- [74:11]
C
Yeah.
- [74:12]
B
But within the world of Mutant Year Zero, the other factor of it is that it's all in 1930s, 1920s dress like. So the military look like.
- [74:25]
C
Yeah.
- [74:26]
B
1930S Germanic type of look. And so when they come out of into the Zone and perhaps find another ark, they look really unusual because they're not mutated, they're pure strain.
- [74:41]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [74:43]
B
And they dressed completely different than everybody else.
- [74:46]
C
That's interesting. Yeah. But I suppose it's interesting and I suppose it does follow in line with a lot of the Free League stuff, doesn't it? The idea that.
- [74:54]
A
That.
- [74:56]
C
There'S always some kind of home base, isn't there? Yes. A lot of these games they do have this idea of a home base. So it's either your ark or like that These upper echelon factions running this society, they're always bringing you back to the idea that there's some bigger thing going on that you're in charge of. Even in verse and where you're building your castle, it's the same kind of thing, isn't it? Such a Repeated.
- [75:22]
B
The thing with Elysium and I was reading it Last night and thinking, I've got to play this because it's so imaginative, the places within the Elysium.
- [75:32]
A
So this.
- [75:33]
B
Yeah, this construction that goes deep into the ground is incredible. And some of the encounters and the way.
- [75:42]
C
That's the thing about it as well, they are. It is very, very, very imaginative stuff. So the Ad Astra supplement, the one about space is great. I mean, it's not. Probably not the best starting point for Mutant Year Zero because it does change the game somewhat because you're in space. As a development of the game, it's really inventive. You know, the idea. The solar system is populated by these communities that are not post apocalyptic. They are post apocalyptic because they've lost touch with Earth and they've lost touch with each other sometimes. So there's all this stuff going on in the solar system on Mars or the moon or around Jupiter and all that. And it's. Again, it's really, really creative and clever. I think sometimes it's a little bit underrated.
- [76:26]
B
Yes.
- [76:27]
C
I think there's a lot of excitement about Free League games, but Mutant New Zeroes can. Because it's the original one, it sometimes gets. That should be me and my kind of experience of it. But sometimes it's a bit forgotten about.
- [76:39]
B
Yeah, well, it doesn't feel as supportive as some of the ones where they're bought an IP and they figured out, I think early on they had like little splat books and.
- [76:51]
C
Yeah, I've got some of them. They did these compendiums which were like set, not.
- [76:55]
B
Not setting like special zones out.
- [76:57]
C
They were like zones where you go to this zone, you find, oh, an old submarine that's related by a hotel. Yeah, a hotel or. Yeah, things like that. Yeah. So they have. There's quite a bit of stuff for it, actually, but sometimes it feels like people overlook it a little bit, you know.
- [77:14]
B
Yeah, definitely.
- [77:14]
C
Yeah. I'm trying to think of something I don't like. What do I not like about it? Because what's odd about it is if you play a Free League game like this and. Or Tails and Balloon, if you then come to Mutiny. And I did this. I did this because I encountered those games before Mutiny 0. If you then go to Mutiny 0, there is a tendency to think, oh, this is a bit more complicated. It is more. It is a bit more crunchier. I don't think it's that complicated. But by comparison to some of the other Three League games that came later on, it's a little bit more complicated.
- [77:52]
B
It is complicated. And what I'd say is that it is pretty risky as well. It is dangerous. Dangerous game. If you get a critical hit, get stuffed out.
- [78:04]
C
Well, when I played it as a one shot, what I've said to players is you can have a free. Free re roll on the political table. Because I'm very conscious that if you roll a 65 or 66 on a D66, you're dead.
- [78:19]
B
Yeah.
- [78:20]
C
Headshot or your heart. That's it. No rolls, nothing, you're dead.
- [78:24]
B
Which is a bit of a throwback to Merc, isn't it?
- [78:27]
C
It's kind of a joke. Yeah. But I would say, I suppose that's. It's not really a criticism. I think it's just maybe a cautionary note that if you've played Tales from the Loop, for example, and then you go to Mutiny zero, you'll go, oh, it's not complicated. I would say it's not a complicated game.
- [78:49]
B
But what I would say is there's more going on.
- [78:51]
C
There's more going on. And the layer. Some of the later free league games are perhaps a bit more refined, a bit more streamlined. Whereas with this there's more going on.
- [78:59]
B
And what I'd say and my point that it is tough. It is, yeah. It is dangerous. I suppose if you're coming to it from a game like Twilight 2000 or Blade Runner where they give you a higher dice.
- [79:13]
C
Yeah.
- [79:14]
B
You'll find that it's hard to get a six. One six on three or four dice.
- [79:19]
C
I suppose as well. And this is perhaps a good example of how it's slightly more complicated is you have to have different colored dice. Yeah. So rather than just. Rather than just rolling a handful of D6s based on your skill and your attribute, you have. I mean you could use any course, but you have to distinct. You have to use yellow dice for your attribute, green dice for your skill, black dice for your equipment. So if your strength was three and your skill was two, you roll three yellow dice, two green dice. And it matters because you can re roll the green dice irrespective of whether you get one. It doesn't matter. But it's the one. When you roll ones on the yellow dice, they're what damage your attribute. So that's kind of an indication of the later freely games. It's like, yeah, there you go. Get six D6 and roll them. And if you get a six, you're fine. Whereas in this there's slightly different. Yeah, definitely some. These, these colors are for this. These colors are for that. These colors are for this.
- [80:17]
B
Yeah, no, it's really enjoyable. I want to play more of it. When I always said hat green.
- [80:25]
C
Which you had fly wings. Fly wings, yeah, spikes and all over.
- [80:29]
B
But I also thought it's a perfect location for grog meat. It'd be a perfect location to play post apoc apocalyptic games.
- [80:38]
C
Well, when I played Gonna Book it. Well, yeah, when I played them, Adams is Limit Uncare.
- [80:44]
A
That.
- [80:45]
C
That involved a nuclear bunker up in Edinburgh. Yeah, one in Edinburgh. Yeah, that was. Yeah. They're fascinating places, aren't they? You know, because they're part of history. Part of a weird. I mean, sadly, the. The nuclear war, that kind of thing is just sort of becoming more of a worrying kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, but we.
- [81:04]
B
We don't need to worry because we're up top of the list of Technocrats will be top of the list, do you think?
- [81:09]
C
Local government.
- [81:10]
B
Local government, yeah.
- [81:11]
C
They will. They'll know. They'll meet.
- [81:13]
B
Stuff sorted, ain't it?
- [81:15]
C
Someone's on the website. Or someone to run democracy in a post apocalyptic world.
- [81:20]
B
We need to get that up and running as soon as possible.
- [81:23]
C
Yeah. You have a vote on who do we eat next? I'll run that. I'll be the last one to be eating.
- [81:31]
B
Cheers, Blade.
- [81:32]
C
See you later. Hello, Grognards. This is Mike Mason of Mason and.
- [81:37]
B
Fricker's Eldritch Stories and I'm just here.
- [81:40]
C
To tell you about our new season.
- [81:42]
B
Of Eldritch stories coming at you.
- [81:48]
C
Come and find us@eldridgechoice.com keep it eldritch. Yeah, you can turn it off now.
- [81:56]
B
There isn't another bit. I found the conversation with Magnus fascinating. I'd like to thank him for spending the time with me and providing such an interesting insight into Swedish gaming culture. Fire Drake, the publisher of Outside the Box have kindly provided three copies for me to give away to you. The Grog Squad. I'm going to give one of them away at grog me in January 2026, but the other two will be sent to you anywhere in the world. All you need to do is to share this episode somewhere via email or on a forum, Discord or some other social media channel and. Or you could do a review or however you choose to pass on the message of the Grognard files. Once you've done that, email me@dirkthedicegmail.com that's dirkthedicegmail.com and you can enter the draw, which will be pulled out of the beret live at grogmeet on 10th January 2026. Please contact me before 31st December 20 if you want to be included in the draw, that's a reminder. Dirkthedicegmail.com thanks for listening to this and a big thank you to those patrons who keep this show on the road. Thanks to the generous tips in the Beret. Every month we have some new patrons to thank. We'll start with Steph Z. Rox has joined at a Fancy poof and I'm level if you join at the sofa. So good level. Then I roll on a table apparently at random and give you a virtual gift from a game under discussion. This time we're stalking in the zone to retrieve these special artifacts to fear to take back to your ark. First off, M. Easthope and they get a soda can. A soda can with red and white with some wriggly text on it. It enjoy Hobbit. Well, Hobbit gets a cassette player and an unraveled cassette. If only you could find a pen to spool it back in. Next is J. Moldenhauer Salsa gets a perfume bottle with that Lynx effect. And finally, Claire W. Do you find a tuxedo? Oh yes. Very impressive. Thanks to you all. If you've joined recently and I've missed you or I have mangled your name, let me know and I'll put it right. Last time I said that an episode of Dirk's Dossier would be released. The Patreon Exclusive podcast featuring offcuts and additional editorial. It is coming and will feature some more extra bits from Magnus talking about his writing. I'll put it out in the main feed as a gift sampler to everyone. Until then, adios amigos.
- [85:26]
A
Sa.