Ad Astra – Mutant: Year Zero Extended Campaign

A gamemaster can use the solar system spanning adventure and supplement Ad Astra along with Mutant: Year Zero to create an extended campaign connecting a custom built ruined world with the dwindling powers still left in the surrounding solar system. Along the way, the player characters could include not just technologically advanced humans but also mutated humans, sapient bipedal animals, and sentient robots recently awakened to new freedom. After an extended campaign, these PCs gather together for a journey to the stars to face their toughest challenge and hardest choice yet.

My thanks to Free League for providing me with a copy of Ad Astra to continue my coverage of Year Zero RPGs.

Campaign Start: Genlab Alpha

This extended campaign takes place in five phases. The first four are individual campaigns that take place one after the other in real time but happen simultaneously in game time.

An easy, self-contained campaign can kick off in Genlab Alpha. The PCs are uplifted animals, leading a Resistance to escape a dangerous prison. Nine types of uplifted animals are in the prison lab, eight of which are organized into tribes.  PCs can be uplifted dogs, cats, rats, bears, apes, rabbits, badgers, reptiles, or moose. A PC will also have animal powers to reflect their untamed wild side.

An entire campaign of resisting their captors with a final escape from Paradise Valley into the Zone, the larger world of ruined Earth. This campaign ends just as the uplifted animals reach the edge of the Zone.

Phase Two: Mechatron

The Genlab Alpha remains on pause as the GM kicks off a Mechatron campaign. The PCs are robot workers newly awakened to sentience and facing the need to rebel against their superiors. 

A robot PC is built by each picking a unique head, torso, and undercarriage. Locomotion could be legs, wheels, or treads for example. Special abilities come through modules, powerful assets like a grenade launcher or tentacles.

PCs in this campaign have discovered they have developed free will. Pursuing freedom, however, puts them in direct conflict with the robots around them and their leaders. 

When this campaign concludes, the world the PC robots knew is gone. Events are paused just as they near the Zone for the first time.

Phase Three: Elysium

Humanity is the star of this campaign with PCs living underground and in ignorance of the Zone above. PCs may have biomechatronics, mechanical implants which while powerful can also lead to machine fever. Their most important asset is the influence they wield in one of four Houses and the contacts they have.

This campaign is one of discovery of the Zone above and dealing with the lies the human leaders have been telling for years. Like Genlab Alpha and Mechatron, this campaign ends when the humans emerge into the wider world.

However, in this case, they can arrive at Genlab Alpha knowing the plan was to shut it down. They will discover that the inmate uplifted animals have recently escaped and the newly arrived humans can head to the Zone right behind the newly freed uplifted animals.

Phase Four: Mutant: Year Zero

This campaign goes back to the beginning, to Mutant: Year Zero. The PCs play human mutants, with powerful mutations that slowly kill the user over time. The PCs live in an Ark with other mutants, but their community is dying. No mutants can have children and so the Ark is doomed. The PCs have powerful assets called mutations like pyrokinesis and telepathy, but their powers are killing them.

This campaign is about discovering what else is out in the Zone, learning how to save their mutant people, and finding out who their creators are.

It ends with the PCs finding a solution to save their people and about to discover a rocket that can take them to the stars in a place called Eden. When the PCs are about to enter Eden for the first time, the other PCs from the previous campaigns arrive in the Zone and meet the mutant PCs.

Play this out as long as the players enjoy having all their characters meet and interact. The newcomers may even help the mutants add to their Ark.

When the players are ready, have each of them pick one character from the previous campaigns to head into Eden. All of these PCs are the ones who may make it to the stars.

Final Phase: Ad Astra

A collection of uplifted animals, sentient robots, politically savvy cyber-humans, and mutated humans find a rocket to the stars. They can choose to board, knowing that their friends and colleagues will stay behind to continue building the Ark

Ad Astra describes not only a space station in orbit around the ruined Earth but also the remnants of humanity and their allies out in the rest of the solar system. The PCs will have to make new allies and battle new enemies as they explore high technology that is slowly failing in the most hostile environment they have ever faced.

And in the end, they have to make the most difficult choice. Do they choose the possibility of  much better lives for themselves but leave behind the rest of extended humanity some of whom will die without the PCs’ aid?

This final choice sums up the entire extended campaign of PC personal growth, changing of society, dangerous battles, a hostile universe, and tough choices with no simple answers.

Should You Run an Ad Astra – Mutant: Year Zero Extended Campaign?

If the idea of fleshing out a ruined world, exploring it with a variety of PCs like human mutants and sentient robots, and blasting out into space for a final adventure sounds exciting then yes, you want to run this extended campaign.

With the added dimension of travel to the stars, this extended campaign is unique in the various post-apocalyptic campaigns I’ve read and run. While the stars are not necessarily a solution to the problems on Earth, the possible ending of finding a new world is intriguing and well worth exploring.

And an ambitious GM does not have to stop at the end of Ad Astra. Depending on the choices made, the PCs could be in a dying space station at the end of the campaign or landing on a new planet. Either option opens up the possibility of another campaign launching from the end of this one, with new challenges and new places for the PCs to explore and build a life.

Picture credit: Pixabay