Guardian of a falling enclave - a Mephisto review

The destruction of the world by the Red Plague and the subsequent conflicts between the Titan powers have devastated the Earth. While the Mutant Year Zero rulebook and the GenLab Alpha and Mechatron expansions have already introduced different variants of the survivors in this changed world, the Elysium rulebook takes an entirely different approach to the setting. 

Elysium is one of the Titan powers that survived the Fall and also played its part in the cataclysms. In the face of the impending catastrophe, the idea of this Titan power was to create enclaves deep underground, which bore deep into the earth as a mixture of bunker and city with many levels. Elysium has built several of these enclaves, but at the center of the plan stands Elysium I, a shelter for 10,000 inhabitants. 

Elysium is founded and managed by four large houses that control the fate of this subterranean society. Elysium I offers the survivors a civilized society based on traditional values. However, this society is also strongly hierarchical. The four great houses stay at the top, both socially and regarding their placement in the vertical enclave. The other inhabitants, who are mainly necessary workers for the houses, live below them, and the scum of this society dwells in the lowest levels of the gigantic bunker. While the so-called Crown, in which the four large houses reside, offers space and splendor, the living and working conditions get worse and worse with each level one moves down. 

Naturally, such a tightly packed society, which has spent well over 100 years isolated in this bunker, surviving attacks from hostile titanic powers, is under pressure. The power games and intrigues between the four houses also threatened the existence of Elysium I. This is why the so-called Judicators were introduced as police units provided by the four great houses. Usually and ideally, all four houses are always represented in these teams so that they can carry out their tasks neutrally and not in the interests of a single house. 

The Judicators therefore have far-reaching powers to intervene directly, and of course, the player characters take on this role in Elysium. 

While Elysium offers a wholly new setting that has nothing to do with the regular zone of Mutant Year Zero, but presents the gigantic enclave of Elysium I with its many levels, the basic principles of the rules and character creation are largely analogous to Mutant Year Zero. 

Nevertheless, there are some special features. For example, players choose one of the four houses for their characters, each of which has a small advantage in terms of an attribute. There is a choice between House Warburg, which focuses on building and creating things, and House Fortescue which is concerned with defense. House Morningstar focuses on entertainment, while House Killgore provides the scientists within the enclave. It is important to note that each house should only be represented once in a team, which ideally consists of four characters. 

Further differentiation is provided by the professions, which are presented as basic archetypes with a brief description, a special skill, and several background aspects such as appearance, relationship to other characters (especially non-player characters), but also a big dream and their equipment. Professions such as the Investigator, the Officer or the Technician can be found here. In terms of rules, they differ mainly in one special skill and the starting equipment. 

It is critical to note that the main survival problems for characters from Mutant Year Zero, namely grub and water, do not play a role, as the supply situation within Elysium I is not a problem for the Judicators. Not bullets are used as currency, but credits. As before, the player characters distribute points to attributes and skills. Here, it is the chosen age that determines how many attribute points are available and how many skill points. Younger characters are strong in attributes, while older characters have had time to acquire more skill points. 

There is a special feature among the talents: the mechanical implants called biomechatronics, which some player characters can also pick.  These implants are generally rather crude, run the risk of breaking, and are normally used by workers. Nevertheless, some player characters can pick them. 

Another special feature is the contacts, i.e., people who can help the player characters. An important game stat in Elysium is reputation, which measures a person's standing within the enclave's hierarchy. Here too, the starting value is determined not only by age, but also by profession. 

The last basic point, the security class, is the same for all player characters and is correspondingly high for Judicators so that they have significantly more access and authority than the normal inhabitants of Elysium. 

An important element of the game is the group dynamic: a Patrol Leader is chosen for each mission, which is actually voted on by the players and depends on the influence of their houses. In their role as Judicators, the player characters are supposed to investigate so-called incidents, i.e. problems within Elysium, which are usually initiated by one of the houses. However, as the player characters may want to strengthen the influence of their house, it can happen that they work as double agents in incidents where their house is pulling the strings in the background. If an incident is not solved by the player characters and ends in favor of one house, its influence increases, and with it the influence of the corresponding player character. In addition to cooperation between the characters, it is now also possible to work against each other to a certain extent. 

The skills and other rules, such as pushing rolls, etc., correspond to the standard of Mutant Year Zero and follow the same pattern. There are, of course, new variants for the new professions in the special skills, and the available talents also offer a new selection. As already mentioned, the player characters can select contacts. There are twenty contact types to choose from, which can be activated by influence points. For example, an assassin contact can eliminate non-player characters, while a mentor can be used to gain additional experience points. 

In terms of a complete set of rules, the book also offers combat rules and rules for social interaction. It is important to note that the equipment is very different from that of Mutant Year Zero, as it is equipped with state-of-the-art Gauss or Gyroject weapons. There is also high-tech equipment that normal mutants would probably dream of. Vehicles are also mentioned, as the Judicators can use hoverbikes or hovercrafts to move quickly around the gigantic facility. 

An extensive chapter describes life in Elysium and also gives an impression of the size of the enclave. It is divided into different levels, some of which are large enough to accommodate multistory buildings and streets, while a central shaft runs from the top level to the very bottom. While the correspondingly influential personalities reside at the top, their influence decreases the lower down you go. 

Naturally, the four great families and their current patriarchs or matriarchs are introduced, and examples of a few of the smaller houses are also given. 

The background chapter also introduces the different sections and districts within Elysium I and provides selected locations. It is important to note that, from the perspective of Elysium I, the surface of the Earth is completely uninhabitable, so no one can leave the enclave, which offers a complete game world. The aspects of exploration from Mutant Year Zero play no role here.

Of course, the obligatory game master chapter explains the role of the game master and also provides a few examples of how to improvise scenes or generate missions by rolling dice. There are also a few artifacts and the aforementioned biomechatronics. 

The associated campaign, in this case, The Guardians of the Fall, makes up a good half of the book. This is a campaign with eight individual missions or incidents. What is essential here is that the incidents can lead to shifts in the power of the Houses in certain sectors, which may give the corresponding characters more influence there. In this way, the campaign creates a dynamic environment for which a record is kept of which house gains or loses influence and where. 

The players also select the missions on a metagame level, playing the houses their characters represent. This means that each player has missions to choose from and tries to get them into the game through voting. If the Judicators fail the incident later, their house gains a corresponding advantage, which can make it interesting to sabotage the mission. 

While there are several more generic missions that can be played at will, there are also three essential missions that drive the game's metaplot forward and thus thoroughly change the situation in Elysium I. 

The title of the campaign already emphasizes that life in Elysium I will not exist as it is. The fact that many of the non-player characters in the campaign already appear in the relationships of the player characters during character creation is very exciting. As a rule, one or two characters in most incidents already have a positive or negative relationship with one or more of the non-players, which adds an extra dynamic to the whole thing. 

With the number of missions, the campaign should fill quite a few game nights. Here you get an exciting mix of kidnapping cases, riots, and similar challenges, each presented as usual for Mutant Year Zero with a starting situation, maps, non-player characters and scene suggestions, but not with a predefined course of events or solution. The level of difficulty can lead to the failure of the player characters. 

The book concludes with a chapter on how to integrate normal humans from Elysium I into the zone, and how the different game stats of the various Mutant Year Zero systems interact. When Elysium player characters play on the surface, aspects such as house control, influence, contacts and so on are transferred into a collaborative game. 

Elysium is probably the most unusual of the four Mutant Year Zero settings, as the characters start here in a completely isolated world, namely the enclave Elysium I. The whole thing has a futuristic, dystopian feel, and the teams, which may work with and against each other in intrigues, also convey a different game dynamic. 

The approach of linking the characters with non-player characters and these with the campaign creates a very vivid setting, and the basic story arc of the campaign is fascinating and once again reveals spectacular secrets for the entire metaplot. 

However, Elysium is not a role-playing game that offers the typical post-apocalyptic flair of Mutant Year Zero at the beginning, but rather introduces an entirely different society and thus provides a different atmosphere. Nevertheless, the game succeeds in integrating Elysium into the larger game world by linking the metaplot with Genlab Alpha, for example, and possibly continuing it as a shared game system after the campaign has been completed. 

Above all, Elysium is largely decoupled from the background of the rest of the Mutant Year Zero universe. This means that it can be played without any prior knowledge, but it also offers an entirely different gaming experience. In particular, the majority of the background is used exclusively for playing the campaign, which radically changes the setting and merges it with the regular Mutant Year Zero. In other words, unless you expand the eight incidents with additional storylines, the setting of Elysium comes to an end, and you need Mutant Year Zero to continue the story along with the other storylines. Whether this is a disadvantage or an advantage depends on the individual gaming group.

The book is excitingly written, very well illustrated, and offers a successful introduction to the Mutant Year Zero world, both for veterans of the previous systems and for newcomers. The book can therefore be recommended to Mutant Year Zero players and fans of dystopian role-playing games.

(Björn Lippold)