Mutant: Year Zero vs The Quiet Year
Compare Mutant: Year Zero and The Quiet Year side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mutant: Year Zero | The Quiet Year | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Post-Apocalyptic | Post-Apocalyptic |
| Play Style | Sandbox, Survival, Exploration, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, Narrative | GM-Less, Worldbuilding, Collaborative, Narrative, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Fiction-First, Map-Drawing |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s (attribute + skill + gear). Each 6 is a success; one success is enough. You can push your roll to reroll failures, but 1s on attribute dice cause trauma and 1s on gear dice cause damage to equipment. Mutations cost Mutation Points and can misfire with unpredictable side effects. | No dice, no GM. A deck of playing cards drives play — each suit is a season, each card a weekly prompt. On your turn, draw a card, answer the prompt, and choose to Discover Something New, Start a Project, or Hold a Discussion. Draw on the shared map to represent changes. Projects take multiple weeks to complete. The Contempt Token signals when a player feels unheard. The game ends when the Frost Shepherds arrive (King of Spades). |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | Diceless |
| Complexity | Medium | Very Low |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Community | Medium | Low |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Free League Publishing | Buried Without Ceremony (Avery Alder) |
| Year | 2014 | 2013 |
| Best For | Post-apocalyptic campaigns where mutant survivors explore a deadly Zone, build up their home settlement, and search for the mythical Eden — with the Year Zero Engine that spawned a family of games. | Groups who want to collaboratively build a community's story through map-drawing — 52 weeks of discoveries, projects, and tensions before everything changes. |
| Highlights | Push mechanic creates tough choices, Ark development gives players a shared home to build, Zone exploration is tense and rewarding, eight distinctive roles with built-in relationships and dreams, launched the Year Zero Engine family | Card-driven structure — one card per week across four seasons — paces the narrative through 52 turns, map-drawing produces a physical artifact of the session, Contempt Token mechanic signals when a player feels unheard, works as a standalone game or worldbuilding tool for other campaigns |
| Considerations | Mutation randomness can frustrate planners, metaplot requires significant GM commitment, Ark development bookkeeping adds between-session overhead, Zone travel can feel repetitive without varied encounters | Contempt mechanic can create genuine inter-player tension, no way to revisit or undo earlier map decisions, map quality depends on group comfort with drawing, limited replayability with the same group |