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Review of Mutant: Elysium – Judicator Bundle
Blurb from the publisher: 'The Mutant: Elysium - Judicator Bundle contains everything you need for the full Mutant: Elysium experience! The bundle contains:
• Mutant: Elysium core rulebook of 262 full-color pages
• Elysium Card custom card deck for NPCs, contacts and artifacts.
• Large full-color map of the Elysium I enclave.
A complete downloadable PDF of the Mutant: Elysium core rulebook is included in the purchase.
Mutant: Year Zero Elysium Core book
11/03/2257, 0347. Incident report by Commissar Pandora Kilgore, Patrol Leader Alpha-07, Elysium I. Operation in the Deeps, sector Cinderfalls. Suspected sabotage in mining facility Garpenberg-15. Perpetrator identified and punished. Commissar Warburg and Commissar Fortescue performed adequately. Commissar Morningstar displayed suspicious behavior. Further investigation recommended. Unity between the Houses is the bedrock on which Elysium rests. Tradition, Resolution, Courage!
When humanity falls, four powerful industrial and financial dynasties form a covenant called Elysium, after the meadows of eternal Spring of Greek mythology. Deep in the bedrock, they build the enclave named Elysium I, designed to weather the long atomic winter.
Now, generations later, Elysium I is a gilded prison, a lonely outpost in a sea of quiet destruction. Fear and suspicion grow unchecked, and the four Houses fight on each other over the dwindling resources that remain. A force of Judicators has been established to preserve law and order in the enclave.
You are one of these judicators. It is your duty to investigate all crimes, but never forget that your strongest loyalty is always towards your family. When humanity sets foot on the surface again, it shall be your House that leads the way into the new dawn.
Mutant: Elysium is the third major expansion to the award-winning Mutant: Year Zero roleplaying game. This game tells the origin story of the enclave humans, seeing themselves as the last torchbearers of human civilization. The four Houses of Warburg, Fortescue, Morningstar and Kilgore struggle for power in the Elysium I enclave, oblivious to a rising power that threatens to end their reign forever. Mutant: Elysium can also be played as a stand-alone game.
The volume contains:
• New rules for creating and playing enclave humans, including their web of contacts with rich and powerful allies. The book includes all the rules you need to play.
• A detailed description of Elysium I, the mother of all Elysium enclaves, including a beautiful full-color map.
• The complete campaign Guardians of the Fall, including unique game mechanics that give the players themselves control over the four Houses of the enclave.
• An overview of how the enclave humans can adapt to life in the Zone, and join the mutants, animals and robots of Mutant: Year Zero, Mutant: Genlab Alpha and Mutant: Mechatron.
Mutant: Elysium - Custom Card Deck
This deck contains 60 high quality playing cards for use with the Mutant: Elysium roleplaying game by Free League Publishing. The deck contains:
• 20 Contact Cards
• 17 Artifact Cards
• 15 NPC Cards
• 8 Incident Cards
Mutant: Elysium Game Map
A large (39.5cm x 55.8cm) full-color map of the underground enclave Elysium I, for the Mutant: Elysium RPG.'
What you get: Your EUR 47,84 will buy you the Mutant: Elysium - Judicator Bundle (henceforth the bundle). This comprises the following three items:
The Mutant: Elysium Core Rulebook is a beautiful 262-page hardcover book. It contains all the necessary rules as well as a campaign at the end of which unmutated humans will find their way into the unforgiving, survivalist world of the Mutant: Year Zero game line. The book fills the role of both Player's and Gamemaster's Handbook as the case is in other games. It is split in 12 chapters, 7 of which are form the Player's Section while the other 5 are addressed to the GM. More on the book and the gameplay later on.
The Mutant: Elysium Card Deck contains 60 cards. The cards utilize the exact same 56 x 87 mm, rounded corner format as the previous three card decks of the line (visited respectively at the Mutant: Year Zero Starter Bundle, the Mutant: Year Zero Genlab Alpha Bundle, and the Mechatron Cards.
Finally, the Mutant: Year Zero Genlab Alpha Map is a 40 x 56 cm depiction of the Elysium. The exact same image can be found inside the Elysium Core Rulebook. In addition to the map the image depicts twelve areas of interest. It is of note that the map is marked as top secret. The back side of the map depicts the Core Rulebook's cover, blown to size, and without any logos or other marks. In other words, it can be used as a poster.
There are different pricing options for those who find the entry price steep. Setting the Bundle aside, EUR 36,31 can buy you the rulebook in both pdf and physical form (EUR 18,11 for the pdf only), EUR 12,30 will buy you the card deck alone, while EUR 9,41 will buy you the map alone.
Just like the previous bundle reviews in the series, the present review will examine every item separately as well as how everything works together as a bundle.
Gameplay: We've seen the mutants, the furries, and the robots. Elysium visits the purebred humans of the setting, those who live protected in an enclave away from the vagaries of the post-apocalyptic earth... or is it a gilded cage that is bound to be destroyed? The players take the role of Judicators, the police of Elysium, responsible for investigating crime and everything else that threatens law and order. In a twist, each Judicator also belongs to one of the Houses that compose Elysium, and secretly serves it. The rulebook contains the rules to create such characters (they differ in some aspects when compared to M:YZ characters), run the campaign and ultimately survive the suicidal machinations of the houses before breaking free into the wild. This takes place in micro mode, along with the players organizing their patrol and choosing their patrol leader, gaining and keeping their reputation, and potentially operating as double agents, creating more problems than they are allegedly solving. On macro mode the players will try to minimize and slow down the gradual, inevitable decline of Elysium I. You read that right: this is not a dump that expands and improves, as in the original M:YZ. This is a highly sophisticated bubble slowly collapsing upon itself. Elysium follows the layout of the Corebook, with each chapter being almost a mirror image of its initial entry adapted to the particularities of the new setting.
Each Judicator belongs to one of the four houses (Warburg, Fortesque, Morningstar and Kilgore), each of which is associated to an attribute. It is mandatory for players to belong to different houses if a group consists of up to four players only. There are six professions to choose from: Investigator, Officer, Procurator, Scholar, Soldier and Technician. Each profession is covered in two pages. The first is dominated by a drawing of a character of the particular profession and a small blurb of how things look like from the character's perspective. The second page is full of background and starting points. It suggests appearance, talents, relationships to other characters and NPS, big dreams and gear.It is recommended that the characters have different professions. Players may choose freely their character's age, which will influence their starting attributes, skills, reputation and contacts. Like in every other M:YZ game, each character has four attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits and Empathy. Depending on his age, a player can distribute 8, 11, and 14 points amongst them. There is no dice rolling. The character's relationship with each other PC must be described within one sentence, as well as why an NPC is hated while another must be protected.
There are 12 basic skills in the game (3 per ability) available to all characters, plus a single specialist skill per profession. These are quite different from the ones in the Corebook. As an example, the Procurator 'prosecutes' while the Officer 'commands'. Each skill is measured in levels from 0 to 5.
Talents are minor abilities that give the character a small edge. At the beginning of the game each character chooses one talent out of three which are linked to his profession. As a campaign progresses, a pool of 11 additional talents opens and is accessible to everybody, with examples including Backstab, Reputable, and Rot Resistant. Characters are allowed to use the full arsenal of Talents from all the previous corebooks, so if you have them, use them.
One of the most powerful resources the Judicators of Elysium have are their contacts. There are 20 types of contacts. Examples include the Uncle, the Grandfather and the Paramour. To use his contacts, a character must spend Influence points. These are gained every session via the character's House's total number of Control points; more on that later. No character can ever have more than 10 IP. A character can gain additional IP via actions that benefit his contact. The more risky these are, the more IP a character earns. IP usage entails a die roll, and there is a chance that bad things will happen. This might be a quid-pro-quo request by the contact, an exploitation attempt, or an outright loss of the contact.
Skill resolution is practically identical to the Corebook. Elysium uses six-sided dice. If a skill is used, the character rolls as many green skill dice as his skill level plus as many yellow base dice as the attribute number relevant to the skill. Gear dice can also be added if gear is used. If he rolls at least one 6 (ionizing radiation) he succeeds, irrespective of the amount of dice rolled. The more sixes are rolled the better; they can be used for stunts. Each skill description states how the skill is used, what happens in case of a success or a failure and what potential stunts might be. If however no sixes are rolled, things go wrong. Rarely does this mean 'nothing happens'. The GM is actively encouraged to state the consequences of failure. However, the player can always decide to push his roll in order to change his predicament. All dice that did not come up as biohazards can be rerolled, and in the case of the skill attributed to the character's house, even those dice can. That strains the character however. For every biohazard that was rolled in either of the two rolls, the PC sustains a point of trauma to the relevant attribute. There is no silver lining, like there was with the accumulation of Feral points in Genlab Alpha for example. Explosions on the gear dice mean that the gear degrades; it might or might not get fixed in the future.
Combat is fast and decisive, a mirror image of the one in MY:Z. Miniatures are not needed. It starts with a single initiative that will be used in the following turns. In a turn everybody can perform either an action and a maneuver or two maneuvers. Rolling for a skill is an action. Pretty much everything else (moving, seeking cover, drawing a weapon etc) is a maneuver. A character can be hurt in any of his four attributes; in that sense, trauma can be damage (to strength), fatigue (to agility), confusion (to wits) and doubt (to Empathy). Within a fight nothing prohibits a character from alternating attacks: he can aggress his enemy on the first round only to try to dominate him on the second before attacking him again on the third, causing different types of trauma. Damage can be prevented through shields and armour. Rules for cover and different weaponry are also provided, as well as situational modifiers, explosions, the rot etc.
When an attribute score reaches 0, the character becomes broken. Depending on the type of trauma, the character might have suffered a critical injury, be exhausted, stop thinking straight or break down in fear. Healing or getting rest, even alone, is usually adequate. That is not however the case with critical injuries. These can be fatal instantly, within minutes or within days. The character has to actively search for a way out of this predicament. To make things worse, when broken an enemy can finish him off with a single success in a fight roll.
Experience is handled session by session. There are eight ways a character can obtain an XP: being there, sacrificing something for an NPC he wants to keep safe, sacrificing something to eliminate an NPC he hates, sacrificing something to risk his big dream, becoming patrol leader, being selected as Judicator of the day, being a double agent during an incident that the patrol failed to resolve, revealing a double agent in the group. The GM has the final say on how many XPs a character gets, however the process is handled through open discussion amongst the players. When five XPs are obtained the player can either improve a skill by a level or obtain a new talent. This is also the time where, depending on how the session went, the players might wish to adjust their characters' way of interacting with the NPCs and gain new contacts.
Elysium bears the most resemblance to the Mechatron-7 facility, due to it being a closed ecosystem with three distinct sections: the Crown, the Core, and the Deep. Each of these is divided into a number of sectors, and hosts a number of locations. The relevant chapter (Life in Elysium) describes in detail not just the birth of the Judicators, but also the enclave's history, the ruling houses, some of its most important locations, as well as its societal structures. Laws are draconian, their interpretation on the other hand is a matter of negotiation.
The Game Master's section covers the GM's job, Artifacts and Biomechatronics, the Guardians of the Fall campaign, Incidents, and Humans in the Zone.
The first chapter follows on the premise of each M:YZ chapter of the same name. There are eight principles to follow, and once again they are vastly different to those of the previous corebooks. Their titles are rather telling: 'The House Above All Else', 'Judicators Still Have a Job to Do', and the revelatory 'Judicators Are Not the Good Guys' and 'Humans are the Masters of the World'. Yes, this is not your average M:YZ campaign. And yes, this is even more depressive than the original M:YZ.
Humans would not have survived in the post-apocalyptic setting of M:YZ without heavily resorting to science. Artifacts and Biomechatronics covers all the equipment and implants that one might find in Elysium. Expext things like tool hands (literally), voice amplifiers and laser eyes. This might look like a treasure trove, pay heed however: the more mechanized a human is, the more likely he is to succumb to machine fever.
The last two chapters (Guardians of the Fall, Incidents) weigh in at 104 pages. They are the core of the adventures and the campaign that can be enjoyed in Elysium before it collapses. The enclave is doomed to fall, the actors behind its downfall however are nothing the players (or the characters) can imagine. The campaign is broken down into eleven parts ('incidents') which mostly play out as a sandbox. Expect events like a strike, riots, an epidemic, and even a signal from Genlab Alpha. The more the campaign progresses, the more the conditions inside Elysium deteriorate.
Humans in the Zone is the book's final chapter, and the transition between Elysium and M:YZ proper after the successful resolution of the former's campaign. The laws have changed and the powerful families may have collapsed, yet the grim harshness remains.
Elysium closes with a three-page index. A one-page enclave sheet and a one-page Incident Sheet are provided at the end of the rulebook, taking up the last pages along with the names of the backers that participated in the kickstarter.
The deck of cards covers the new material from this volume. The 15 NPC cards repeat fully the NPCs that the rulebook covers. That means their description, their stats, as well as their image, on the card's obverse side. The Artifact cards do almost the same. All of the rulebook's artifacts are reproduced as cards. Their texts are abridged to fit in the cars. The image is not shown on the obverse side, so that the cards can be randomly picked. The Contacts cards follow suite. Again, all Contacts from the rulebook have been reproduced as cards, with slightly abridged texts. Idem for the Incidents. Don't expect all the information from the rulebook to find its way in a single card. The objective is to randomize the incidents, all of which are reproduced as cards. Each incident card states its section, its starting effect, and its final effect.
The strong points: M:YZ meets Paranoia, Judge Dredd, and I Am Legend in one! This isn't about survival in a post-apocalyptic world; this is about your House gaining the upper hand while the others lose face and power in an enclave that is slowing collapsing. This is by far more distanced than any other premise that M:YZ explored up to now. Freedom, individuality, and the exploration of the self have been substituted by a devotion to the status quo, by characters that some would potentially call fascist. Your characters will be objective only up to the point that it suits them; it is all about nepotism after that. Motives don't matter. Your actions might be caused by well-meaning camaraderie towards an NPC, or due to your allegiance to your house, the result however is the same: you will probably not do your job the way you were meant to. The message is once again serious, nuanced, and thought-provoking, while remaining wildly entertaining. Take that for a post-apocalyptic premise.
This is in fact one of the book's biggest strengths. Elysium will fall, yet what comes out of Elysium will permanently reshape the world. Unaffected humans and the overbearing technology they have access to will create new adventure opportunities, new enemies, new plots, new centres of power. In short: even if you don't care at all about ever playing the Elysium campaign proper (a case in which I would very strongly disagree with you), Elysium is still worth it as a supplement only for the original M:YZ premise. I am personally at awe by the designers' ability to reinvent the setting. I simply didn't see things heading that way, nor could I have imagined that a campaign of this type would have breathed fresh air in such a wonderfully created world. Yet, it did. It might not be the easiest thing to pull off a campaign with characters from all four rulebooks (mutants, anthropomorphic animals, robots, humans), yet if you do it will be infinitely rewarding. Just think how each operates under a slightly different premise rules-wise, and how each gets rewarded for doing slightly different things. Brilliant!
Once again, the well-tested principles of whom a character likes, whom he dislikes, whom he will protect and what his dream is produce very interesting results. How long will you keep supporting your house, when you start having indications initially, proof later on, that the power-hungry houses are ready to blow everybody up? Character interaction during the sessions is highly dynamic. The premise is tightly done: you don't have to like anybody in your group. Yet you have to be present, and to a certain degree you have to cooperate lest your House misses out. How come no other game thought of this before?
I enjoyed the campaign. It is a sandbox, or rather, it is non-linear up to a certain point. The aesthetics of the scenes are as gorgeous as the setting itself. Elysium has opted for a 19th feeling when it comes to many things, from the uniforms of the Judicators to the style of its buildings. The word Dickensian fits like a glove when one reads about the conditions under which a big chunk of its population lives. The political parallels are rather obvious and make for thought-provoking sessions. The characters might be Judicators, the campaign however is likely to create a political discussion that encompasses a broad range of subjects. That's what one gets when he creates a resource-scarce society and entrenched institutions. The plot is dense, and there are many things going on. Thankfully, these are not overbearing on the characters who, in the hands of a good GM will find space for personal development.
The production values are as high as those of any other M:YZ hardcover book out there. Once again the exterior is matt and grainy exterior while the logo is bright and glossy. The drawing style follows that of the previous book. It is comic-like, yet it does not come out neither as cartoonish nor as funny. I wish the line had integrated cloth book marks, yet it won't lose any points because it doesn't. The map's art is also cool, even though its direct in-game usability is not the highest.
I commented on previous bundles about how fair priced they were. This bundle is even friendlier to your pocket. I won't even go into how it costs as much as other lines charge for their rulebooks. This bundle's price is cheaper than the line's last bundle's price, something that I can't but applaud. The map and the card deck do not include additional information, yet, for that price, it makes sense to buy everything together and GM in style. In any event, if someone wants to get a glimpse of M:YZ before he gets into it, I strongly recommend the Mutant: Year Zero Starter Booklet. Not only it is handed out free of charge on pdf form, it also contains all three major types of beings that can be encountered in the M:YZ world: humans, animals and robots. If anything, it will give you an idea of what your characters will encounter once they are out of Elysium.
The support behind M:YZ is impeccable. The series doesn't publish splatbooks, it publishes independent, alternate rulebooks with obvious distinctions in game. Post-apocalypse, furries, robots, and now the elite. What more can one ask for?
The weak points: It is blatantly clear that the tone of Elysium is totally different to the one of the previous M:YZ products. The world is based on the hostility towards the other, here however things are taken to a whole new level. If you are uncomfortable about playing the Nth generation of a supremacist who has been conditioned for years about perceiving things through a monochromatic lens, you will have trouble enjoying this. I personally found it excellent, contemporary and pertinent at the same time, no matter how it explores an isolated setting that would be alien to every one of us. Want to see it as a serious attempt at Judge Dredd, or a toned down Paranoia? The analogy wouldn't be unfair.
Just like Genlab Alpha, I had issues both with the pacing as well as the presentation of the campaign. When it comes to the former, the GM will need to prepare thoroughly. The two chapter approach means that all locations and protagonists are in a different chapter than that of the campaign's main plot. The advantage of is that, once you have run the campaign, you can easily cannibalise the locations (even though you will have to change some of the areas drastically; after all, Elysium I will no longer exist). Running the adventure within the premise of the campaign however will prove more daunting than it should have been. Be prepared, and you will face no issues.
The pacing is reminiscent of TV series where everything happens at the same time. I binge-watched Designated Survivor recently, in order to see a US president tackling every single issue that all the US presidents have faced together since the founding of the state. Elysium adopts a similar approach. The incidents that the Judicators will face are all grave, yet the game itself advises to allocate one session to each. Honestly, don't. Develop each incident further; you will need to do this anyway. Go for two, even three sessions deep where merited. The characters must take the time to meaningfully interact with the setting and develop gradually. They will have to change their mindset at some point after all, lest they look like comical Victorian wannabees when their world collapses around them. The players will also need to assimilate all the new information and the changes that they experience. At the end of the campaign Elysium as a location will no longer exist. Its locales can no longer be visited. Rushing through the plot when the place will ultimately become a ruin is a rather short-sighted concept.
This is probably my most serious gripe with Elysium: I would have liked to see more adventure ideas that can be inserted in-between the bigger incidents. They needn't be that long; the book telling me however that this or that sub-plot can be tackled as a personal rescue mission (a side-treck if you wish) without laying any groundwork is a cop-out.
The rulebook's pdf is disappointing when it comes to bookmarks. These only denote the book's main chapters, not the subchapters nor anything else. Character Sheets inside rulebooks are not that useful nowadays. These four pages at the end could have been put to better use. The table of contents is not linked. The index appears linked, yet all links lead to its two front inner pages. Come on, Free League, make your pdfs usable. It's less than an afternoon's work to put all the right subchapters and links in place.
I found a few typos in the book, they are however unlikely to reduce your enjoyment of the product.
Conclusion: Elysium is a must-buy product. If you never explored M:YZ, you can safely begin here. If on the other hand you did, you can continue with it in knowledge that this book, along with the initial Corebook, provide the setting's absolute best. Moral ambiguity; a nuanced setting; hard choices; revelatory surprises; this is a game for the ages.
For more info on the Mutant: Elysium - Judicator Bundle, visit Free League Publishing at https://frialigan.se.
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