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Review of The Gray Death
Blurb from the publisher: 'The door to the laboratory slid shut with a hiss. The battle was over, and the short man wiped a fleck of greenish fluid from his face. The lights in the ceiling flickered and cast a bleak glow over the fallen individuals on the floor in front of him. The man's two accomplices - one immense and mechanical, the other shadowy - awaited new instructions.
"It is done," the short man said.
"We have no time to lose. It is time to set our plan into motion. Soon, the entire Zone will be at our feet."
The Gray Death is an epic campaign module to be used with the award-winning Mutant: Year Zero roleplaying game and its expansions. The Gray Death is a 96-page full-color hardback book that takes the stories in Mutant: Year Zero, Mutant: Genlab Alpha, Mutant: Mechatron and Mutant: Elysium and ties them all together. Mutants, animals, robots and humans must put their differences aside and unite against a common threat to the world at the end of days.'
What you get: Your EUR 27,36 or equivalent will by you the hard copy along with the pdf of The Gray Death, a 98-page hardcover adventure for the Mutant: Year Zero game line.
The adventure builds on the events that transpired in Mutant: Elysium, and uses numerous elements from Mutant: Year Zero Genlab Alpha as well as Mutant: Year Zero Mechatron. Having played Hotel Imperator also facilitates the situation. In short, this is an adventure for those that have invested some time to the M:YZ game, and are willing to take it further by merging its components.
For those unwilling to invest as much, the pdf-only version costs EUR 13,48. The electronic version is a 104-page affair which includes all outer and inner covers of the print edition in one single file.
Spoiler warning: As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the adventure, parts of the scenario might be revealed while discussing its strong and less strong points. If you intend to enjoy it as a player, stop reading now.
Contents: The Gray Death is an adventure that takes place in five different zone sectors with different places of interest: a showboat, a trading post, a garrison, Dawnville (a new marketplace), and a biobunker. The first three can be played in any order; they can even be placed almost anywhere. All of them are however interlinked by the overarching metaplot, and the two last sectors will be placed linearly after every other location has been explored. The GMs intimate with M:YZ will immediately recognise that the special zone sectors follow the format of chapter 15 in the main Corebook ('Special Zone Sectors'). Each location describes the overview, the situation, the locations, the inhabitants, the events and the artifacts at hand, along with maps for the GM and the players. Each location occupies anything from 12 to 20 pages; they are thus substantially longer than the ones described in either the Corebook or the five zone compendia that have been published up to now. Depending on your pace, it can take anything between one to two sessions in order to fully interact with a location.
All the already published M:YZ elements will be encountered in this adventure. There are mutants, furries, and robots, most importantly of all however there are humans with advanced technology.
The adventure can be approached either as part of an ongoing campaign with three already-made hooks, or as a stand-alone affair. If approached as the former, your campaign's landscape will irrevocably change. It will become more racist, more hostile to everybody, and even more survivalist than before. It will also have a lot more tech available than before, with many settlements advancing faster than one would have expected them to, at least after reading the Mutant: Year Zero Core Rulebook. This will pave the way for even more changes in the future.
The strong points: It is evident by now that M:YZ doesn't go for small, incremental changes to its setting. It jumps from genre to sub-genre, inserting everything in the same frame in a seamless way. The Gray Death is the logical continuation of this concept; what good is a survivalist, a furry survivalist, a robot and a human survivalist game if you can't mix them together trying to answer new, even more difficult questions? Survival remains the objective, circumstances and the local landscape change fast. If you already have a few sessions under your belt as this campaign expects you to, the change of pace is very welcome.
The Gray Death plays the strengths of the setting well. There is survival, investigation, weirdness, conspiracies, combat, and a lot of change. Where previous scenarios were based on the isolated aspect of a local madman or tyrant, the organization of the adversaries and the surprises that the characters will encounter demonstrate the story's higher gravity. I enjoyed how the adventure initially feels like any other day in the zone, the more however things progress the more distinct the initially hidden threats become. I also enjoyed how the adventure embraces diversity. No matter a character's background, he will feel equally welcome (or unwelcome). Stakes are high. The zones' population is likely to be decimated unless the characters outperform themselves. Technology is more powerful than before. A contraption like a single flying ship can be an absolute game-changer in such a tool-deprived world. I had a Bond-like feeling during the events just before the adventure's resolution, I count this however as a positive. If your last adventure before The Gray Death was not Mutant: Elysium, the juxtaposition between what they are used to and the marvels that the characters will encounter during the adventure's last scenes will be very pronounced.
The book's art is at M:YZ's usual standards, yet what a cover! The ultra-realistic dead figure on the ground and the cigarette-smoking furry are all the money. This image alone could have convinced me to buy the book, even if I didn't play M:YZ.
The weak points: I would not recommend playing The Gray Death if you haven't explored at least two or even three different versions of M:YZ. The game is all about the exploration, about seeing the final image after you have fit the different pieces of the puzzle at the right place. If you have not played with furries and robots, you will fail to perceive the nuances relating to the arrival of the humans. If you have not played Elysium, the subplot will be less impactful, the humans will appear like one-dimensional baddies, while the flood of technology will feel like power creep. Indeed, this makes the adventure one addressed to the real lovers of the setting. That doesn't mean however that its locations cannot be repurposed. Even though its usability and usability will be severely altered, the locations can serve as inspiration for crafty GMs to concoct their own thing. If you find yourself in such a circumstance, don't go big. Aim for a style similar to the Corebook's, any Corebook's, keep things low-key and dangerous on a personal level, and the locations will prove their mettle.
There is plenty of racism in Gray Death, even though it is targeting fictional groups. If you can't handle that, there will be scenes that will make you uncomfortable.
I have been writing this in every M:YZ adventure up to now: the scenario locations provide bullet-points and ideas to spark your imagination. Admittedly, the content in each of these locations is greatly amped. If you do pay attention to detail however, do not expect D&D-like write-ups and decision trees with 'if-then-else'. The Gamemasters that wish to exert more control over the adventure (and there is quite a need for meaningful GM intervention) should take their time to detail things and make them even more immersive.
I am disappointed by the adventure's pdf edition, and even more so because the first pdf editions of the products in this line were practically perfect. There are only seven bookmarks all in all; one for the table of contents (which do not include live links, by the way), one for the introduction, and one for each of the five zone sectors. What is this? If I am able to identify the make-up of each different zone (Overview, Situation, Location, NPCs etc), I am sure that a competent editor could have also done it. Even more so, the sub-chapters inside each chapter need bookmarking since each sector zone is from twice as big to three time as big compared to the ones included in the Corebook. This is a silly, pointless mistake. Equally silly is the fact that the pictures are not well-defined and are thus not immediately extractable in order for your players to see what is going on. Yet, they do need to see what is going on; many of these pictures are announcements of events or what have you in the zone. They can be found on the publisher's website with some googling, yet again, would it have been as hard to either attach them as separate files, or to make them extractable images directly from the pdf? This stuff is rather basic for a GM to prepare and run an adventure the fastest possible.
Conclusion: The Gray Death is the culmination of Mutant's multi-rulebook effort to remain fresh and thought-provoking. A solid, intriguing adventure for those who have explored the strictly survivalist aspect of the game irrespective of sub-genre, it logically combines the conclusion of every previous Corebook in order to provide new challenges. M:YZ is an ever-changing world. This isn't the end; it is yet another step until the next one.
For more info on The Gray Death visit Fria Ligan at https://frialigan.se.
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