Inspiration
- Jan 5, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 25, 2020
Here you can find some links to materials, that fit well with the world of Mutant: Year Zero. You can use them for inspiration when developing your character.
Mutant: Year Zero Materials
Playing a few sessions of Mutant is perhaps the best way to get a tyste of the setting. Please note we say play, not read. The game and supplements are systems, tool sets, characters, factions, monsters and ideas rather than stories. We suggest picking up the supplement “Dead Blue Sea” and perhaps play the early adventures of the silver ark. Future blog-posts will include more notes on how to play Mutant: Year Zero as prep for this summer. The second edition, “Underbångens Arvtagare” is heavier on story and world-building and it can be fun to see what may lie hundreds of years into the future of the ark.
A short musical film by Anders Muammar performed by the late great vocalist Freddie Wadling and written by Karim Muammar. Even though it is set a century after MUTANT: Year Zero it’s a great inspiration for aesthetics and themes.
If you read Swedish, we highly recommend getting the short-story collection “Kaknäs Sista Band” by Anders Fager who has given kind permission to use characters, cultures and concepts from his book. Also check out the stories in “Zonen vi Ärvde” by the author collective “Fruktan”. Both are available in Swedish bookstores like SF-Bokhandeln and as e- and audio books on Storytel.
Other Materials
Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033, 2034, 2035 - Good novels, especially the first. Only thirty years after the end his Metro is an alien kingdom. Think of this as Mutants gloomy post-soviet brother. More hopeless, yes, but also about human stubborn ingenuity. The computer games are great sources of inspiration for the look of Year Zero.
Waterworld and to a far lesser extent; The Postman. Not great films but certainly interesting post-ap setpieces and concepts.
Stalker. Both the book and the Tarkovskij movie describe the weirdness and surreal nature of the Zone and the grim determination of the Stalkers that navigate them.
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. The story of the dysfunctional friendship between the two men who bioengineered mutant humans to survive after the end.
Tribe 8. French-Canadian tabletop RPG has a fantasy tinge with its magic and demons, but the tribes, their cultures, the way the old world has faded and so on is perfect fuel for Zone Dweller cultures. Horizon: Zero Dawn is a similar tribal post ap world created for the hit PS4 game and worth stealing some amazing designs and ideas from. The 100. There. We said it. It’s all very “The CW” but holy shit its a setting close to Year Zero and through the many seasons the show touch on almost every trope of post-apocalypse fiction.
The webcomic Stand Still & Stay Silent is also set in Scandinavia, in overgrown deserted cities, haunted by mysterious things that change people.
Also Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, the Planet of the Apes movies of various eras, Snowpiercer, the Hunger Games novels and the Jeremiah comic books and also the old TV show with the same name all have something to offer in visual or thematic inspiration.
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