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Mutant Year Zero: un juego de rol en el fin de los días
Gra fabularna Mutant: Rok Zerowy przeniesie Was do świata po wielkiej Apokalipsie. Dumna ludzka cywilizacja upadła. Miasta zmieniły się w pustkowia. Wiatr hula po pustych ulicach, które stały się cmentarzyskami przeszłości. Jednak życie przetrwało – ruiny wciąż zamieszkuje Lud. Jesteście dziedzicami ludzkości, choć już nie do końca ludźmi. Wasze ciała i umysły są zdolne do nadludzkich wyczynów. Jesteście mutantami.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 8, 2017
La edición en tapa dura y todo color de este libro es de muy buena calidad, así como la maquetación y la gran cantidad de ilustraciones que la acompañan.
Mutant Year Zero sin duda me ha sorprendido. Y lo ha hecho por muchos motivos.
El planteamiento no es muy original: futuro postapocalíptico, las personas han mutado y viven en comuna en pequeñas arcas, el futuro es desalentador y el hambre, la sed y la descomposición es una amenaza constante. Añádele a esto los peligros que supone explorar la zona que les rodea, otros moradores, monstruos, la descomposición... Pero la necesidad de salir está ahí. Se necesitan recursos y también cabe la posibilidad de que encuentren extraños artefactos de la Edad Antigua o incluso pistas del Edén, una leyenda que habla de un refugio seguro y autosuficiente.
¿Dónde está la sorpresa? En que los mecanismos que se emplean a la hora de generar los personajes jugadores son amenos, divertidos y crea una sensación de relaciones de grupo muy interesantes para la propia trama del juego. Les da poderes mutantes, permite darle consistencia a sus motivaciones, crear por el camino importantes personajes no jugadores y abrir diferentes vías al desarrollo de las partidas. Además, entre ellos y el director de juego crean también el arca, la ubican en la zona y eso también puede dar lugar a infinidad de ideas.
El sistema de juego es muy fácil de aprender y permite muchas veces una cosa híbrida entre narración y dificultades a superar en los dados.
Y para el director de juego propone partidas de improvisación tirando de las relaciones, tramas y personajes no jugadores haciendo también uso de las tablas aleatorias de amenazas (o el uso del mazo de cartas que contiene lo mismo y parece que no saldrá en castellano). Puede parecer muy trivial y demasiado dejado de la mano de dios pero, ¡funciona! Y mucho. Basta con elegir o tirar en la tabla de amenazas, coger como referencia alguna de las propuestas que se ofrecen para esa amenaza concreta y planteársela a los jugadores personalizada a sus personajes. Y la trama se pone en marcha.
Finalmente el juego esconde una sorpresa más: la metatrama. Al final del libro nos explican muchos secretos del universo del juego. La existencia de lugares especiales u otras arcas. Dan respuestas a infinidad de preguntas que tarde o temprano se harán los personajes. ¿Qué pasó a la civilización anterior? ¿Por qué no pueden reproducirse las personas? ¿Existe realmente el Edén? Pero no solo eso, sino que provee de esta información para darle más profundidad al juego y otorgando un hilo argumental muy chulo que puede servir como conclusión final de una campaña que seguro se quedará guardada para siempre en la memoria de los jugadores.
En la práctica, habiendo tenido ya oportunidad de probarlo como director de juego, os puedo asegurar que deja con muchas ganas de más tanto al DJ como a los jugadores y se hace imprescindible jugarlo como se merece: con una gran campaña.
Mutant Year Zero sin duda me ha sorprendido. Y lo ha hecho por muchos motivos.
El planteamiento no es muy original: futuro postapocalíptico, las personas han mutado y viven en comuna en pequeñas arcas, el futuro es desalentador y el hambre, la sed y la descomposición es una amenaza constante. Añádele a esto los peligros que supone explorar la zona que les rodea, otros moradores, monstruos, la descomposición... Pero la necesidad de salir está ahí. Se necesitan recursos y también cabe la posibilidad de que encuentren extraños artefactos de la Edad Antigua o incluso pistas del Edén, una leyenda que habla de un refugio seguro y autosuficiente.
¿Dónde está la sorpresa? En que los mecanismos que se emplean a la hora de generar los personajes jugadores son amenos, divertidos y crea una sensación de relaciones de grupo muy interesantes para la propia trama del juego. Les da poderes mutantes, permite darle consistencia a sus motivaciones, crear por el camino importantes personajes no jugadores y abrir diferentes vías al desarrollo de las partidas. Además, entre ellos y el director de juego crean también el arca, la ubican en la zona y eso también puede dar lugar a infinidad de ideas.
El sistema de juego es muy fácil de aprender y permite muchas veces una cosa híbrida entre narración y dificultades a superar en los dados.
Y para el director de juego propone partidas de improvisación tirando de las relaciones, tramas y personajes no jugadores haciendo también uso de las tablas aleatorias de amenazas (o el uso del mazo de cartas que contiene lo mismo y parece que no saldrá en castellano). Puede parecer muy trivial y demasiado dejado de la mano de dios pero, ¡funciona! Y mucho. Basta con elegir o tirar en la tabla de amenazas, coger como referencia alguna de las propuestas que se ofrecen para esa amenaza concreta y planteársela a los jugadores personalizada a sus personajes. Y la trama se pone en marcha.
Finalmente el juego esconde una sorpresa más: la metatrama. Al final del libro nos explican muchos secretos del universo del juego. La existencia de lugares especiales u otras arcas. Dan respuestas a infinidad de preguntas que tarde o temprano se harán los personajes. ¿Qué pasó a la civilización anterior? ¿Por qué no pueden reproducirse las personas? ¿Existe realmente el Edén? Pero no solo eso, sino que provee de esta información para darle más profundidad al juego y otorgando un hilo argumental muy chulo que puede servir como conclusión final de una campaña que seguro se quedará guardada para siempre en la memoria de los jugadores.
En la práctica, habiendo tenido ya oportunidad de probarlo como director de juego, os puedo asegurar que deja con muchas ganas de más tanto al DJ como a los jugadores y se hace imprescindible jugarlo como se merece: con una gran campaña.
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September 19, 2020Uno de los mejores juegos de rol que he leído. Parte de una idea y una estética que no resulta excesivamente original, un mundo postapocalíptico en el que los personajes (humanos mutados, en apariencia) deberán luchar por sobrevivir, pero ya en las primeras páginas, y gracias a una claridad expositiva que pocas veces he visto en un juego de rol, comienza a intuirse lo innovador de la propuesta. Estamos ante un juego que, sin abandonar lo mejor de la experiencia rolera, promete y ofrece una experiencia al más puro estilo sandbox, donde la historia se va construyendo entre jugadores y director de juego sin necesidad de preparación previa, más allá de que el director haya leído el libro y haya entendido las mecánicas generales. Mutant Year Zero está repleto de ideas tan sencillas como efectivas para generar rápido los personajes, otorgarles motivaciones y relaciones, y lo mismo sucede con las herramientas que el director de juego necesita para generar el entorno y los eventos, todo con un enfoque realmente equilibrado en el que los grupos que gusten de mecánicas sencillas se sentirán cómodos, y los que busquen mayor complejidad lo tendrán muy fácil para sofisticar la experiencia. Por mi parte, solo puedo aplaudir el resultado final y señalarlo como un ejemplo paradigmático de lo que debería ser un buen juego de rol.
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July 8, 2022I have totally slowed down my purchases from the Bundle of Holding this year. [Editor's note: I just reviewed my purchases and, in fact, I have increased my purchases this year; I only thought I had decreased my purchases because I remember several that I considered and then skipped. And I'm still waiting for them to re-issue the Bundle for Heart/Spire, which is a guaranteed purchase.]
But after checking out Mutant: Elysium from the library and liking it, I decided to take the plunge on the Mutant bundles, which include the four core books:
* Mutant Year Zero
* Genlab Alpha
* Mechatron
* Elysium
and a bunch of smaller accessories/adventures, including five zone compendiums:
* Lair of the Saurians
* Dead Blue Sea
* Die, Meat Eater, Die!
* Eternal War
* Hotel Imperator
and the adventure The Gray Death.
OK, first, as a general observation, each of the core books follows the pattern of Elysium: there's a whole RPG game (including character creation, system, and description of the world); and then there's some other game or system to keep track of the world; and then there's a campaign that basically undoes the world.
Now, after reading a bunch of OSR material, where there's usually kind of an open sandbox and a lot of random tables to define things -- and consequently, no real guarantee that there's a coherent story or that the PCs will experience that story -- it's real interesting to read something that has a story to tell and a world to undo.
So, for instance, Mutant: Year Zero is about a post-apocalyptic community of human mutants led by an elder from before the fall; besides adventures to go on as you explore the poisoned Zone around your safe Ark, you can also help shore up the community through projects. (That's sort of the mini-game here, and, I've said it before, there's no mini-game I love more than "building a town/headquarters.") Now, besides struggling for food, water, and equipment, the mutants face another type of existential threat: they are sterile, and if you want your species to go on, you have to deal with that.
And you also have to deal with mutant animals and even robots from the before-time. There's a real Gamma World feel here, and even some of the art has some of the goofiness of that early RPG; or even the early D&D adventure, Expedition to Barrier Peak, where your medieval goons stumble into a crashed spaceship.
Which kind of makes me wonder what the tone here is supposed to be: grim struggle against death or wacky silly adventures in the aftermath?
Anyway, through the included adventure (which is maybe about half the book), your PCs will slowly put together the real story of the world and their place in it. (Spoiler alert: they are not human, they are mutants made by one of the four titan companies/countries that survived the nuclear war.)
Genlab Alpha doesn't continue the story, which is both a brilliant and funny move: brilliant because you can just pick up any of these four books and play a game; funny because... are you supposed to play through one core book, learn the real history of the world, and then play another where you pretend not to? Well, maybe that's why the games are so distinct in location and action: whereas in Mutant, you play mutants who think they're humans trying to recover the past (quite literally in terms of the artifacts that will show you the true history), in Genlab Alpha, you play mutated, sapient animals who are kept in a prison valley by these robots. The mini-game that goes along with this is tracking the population and rebelliousness of the different animal tribes, from the mostly loyal dog clans to the naturally rebellious rabbit warren.
Because, no shock here, the campaign is all about finding a way to destroy the robot wardens and escape the valley.
(And just like the mutants were created by one of the titan groups, these animals were made by another. I think--I might have misplaced one of those titan enclaves. Also, the game system is so similar: where mutants had their own powers, the smart animals of Genlab Alpha have feral powers that let them do, you know, animal things.)
Now, the GM notes for this note that, while animals can be funny, this is not just a comedy, that this is a dark fable--and yet, again, I don't really get that from the art or from the story line. Like, the fight for freedom has an elemental quality, I get that, but pair that with a picture of a badger skiing down a mountain while a drone chases him, and I don't know that "fable" is the word I would use.
Mechatron is, I think, the third book in the series. (I'm not judging by print-dates but by which books mention which other books.) And this follows a robot rebellion in an undersea robot factory: another place set up by one of the post-nuke titans, but abandoned by the humans, and given the final command to build whatever they need to win the struggle. So now the robots are living out these commands, and some of them have developed consciousness, which the central intelligence does not like.
In a bit of comedy setup out of Paranoia, your sapient robots get recruited into special units to destroy sapient robots--only, I don't think that the writers were going for some black comedy here. I do appreciate other bits of the set-up though, that do have a more grim note, like how the factory is built underwater, but water is sort of the big enemy of machines and robots, so you have to reinforce the crumbling factory while also struggling for independence and helping others.
(A quick note: you can tell the authors like robot stories since once of the robots here is named Eando, after author Eando Binder, which was the pen name used by Earl and Otto ("E and O") Binder, and who had an early series of robot stories starting with one named... "I, Robot.")
I like this game and setting, but I'm not sure about the tone, and that is not helped by the artwork (again), which is both grubby and colorful, grim and whimsical. I also find it a little odd that this story doesn't end with the robots freeing themselves (which might be too close to Genlab Alpha), but with the robots having to fend off an attack from mutants and humans. So on top of the usual mini-game of how is your settlement doing (here, how is the factory faring in its struggle to survive), we get a mini-wargame at the end.
I covered Elysium in its own review, but just a reminder: a grotesquely unfair city is coming apart at the seams as the four main families engage in covert struggles for power, until the whole city falls and the survivors have to escape onto the surface--to live peacefully or not with the mutants, sapient animals, and robots from the other stories.
This bundle also included several zone compendiums, which are locales that you can drop into the game--complete with NPCs and little storylines; and a big adventure against some villainous survivors of the fall of Elysium and dealing with how the four groups of people coexist. Curiously, it seems like the canonical end of that adventure is unhappy, and that the answer to how these groups coexist is "uneasily", which is an interesting take, but not sure that's a future I want to play in.
Would I play this? Yeah, all four seem like fun, though, well, see the next answer.
Is this inspiring? It really leans on so many tropes and seems to pull from the history of RPGs that I'm not sure I find anything really original and interesting here, EXCEPT for the fact that we have four ways into the same question of "how did the earth die?"
But after checking out Mutant: Elysium from the library and liking it, I decided to take the plunge on the Mutant bundles, which include the four core books:
* Mutant Year Zero
* Genlab Alpha
* Mechatron
* Elysium
and a bunch of smaller accessories/adventures, including five zone compendiums:
* Lair of the Saurians
* Dead Blue Sea
* Die, Meat Eater, Die!
* Eternal War
* Hotel Imperator
and the adventure The Gray Death.
OK, first, as a general observation, each of the core books follows the pattern of Elysium: there's a whole RPG game (including character creation, system, and description of the world); and then there's some other game or system to keep track of the world; and then there's a campaign that basically undoes the world.
Now, after reading a bunch of OSR material, where there's usually kind of an open sandbox and a lot of random tables to define things -- and consequently, no real guarantee that there's a coherent story or that the PCs will experience that story -- it's real interesting to read something that has a story to tell and a world to undo.
So, for instance, Mutant: Year Zero is about a post-apocalyptic community of human mutants led by an elder from before the fall; besides adventures to go on as you explore the poisoned Zone around your safe Ark, you can also help shore up the community through projects. (That's sort of the mini-game here, and, I've said it before, there's no mini-game I love more than "building a town/headquarters.") Now, besides struggling for food, water, and equipment, the mutants face another type of existential threat: they are sterile, and if you want your species to go on, you have to deal with that.
And you also have to deal with mutant animals and even robots from the before-time. There's a real Gamma World feel here, and even some of the art has some of the goofiness of that early RPG; or even the early D&D adventure, Expedition to Barrier Peak, where your medieval goons stumble into a crashed spaceship.
Which kind of makes me wonder what the tone here is supposed to be: grim struggle against death or wacky silly adventures in the aftermath?
Anyway, through the included adventure (which is maybe about half the book), your PCs will slowly put together the real story of the world and their place in it. (Spoiler alert: they are not human, they are mutants made by one of the four titan companies/countries that survived the nuclear war.)
Genlab Alpha doesn't continue the story, which is both a brilliant and funny move: brilliant because you can just pick up any of these four books and play a game; funny because... are you supposed to play through one core book, learn the real history of the world, and then play another where you pretend not to? Well, maybe that's why the games are so distinct in location and action: whereas in Mutant, you play mutants who think they're humans trying to recover the past (quite literally in terms of the artifacts that will show you the true history), in Genlab Alpha, you play mutated, sapient animals who are kept in a prison valley by these robots. The mini-game that goes along with this is tracking the population and rebelliousness of the different animal tribes, from the mostly loyal dog clans to the naturally rebellious rabbit warren.
Because, no shock here, the campaign is all about finding a way to destroy the robot wardens and escape the valley.
(And just like the mutants were created by one of the titan groups, these animals were made by another. I think--I might have misplaced one of those titan enclaves. Also, the game system is so similar: where mutants had their own powers, the smart animals of Genlab Alpha have feral powers that let them do, you know, animal things.)
Now, the GM notes for this note that, while animals can be funny, this is not just a comedy, that this is a dark fable--and yet, again, I don't really get that from the art or from the story line. Like, the fight for freedom has an elemental quality, I get that, but pair that with a picture of a badger skiing down a mountain while a drone chases him, and I don't know that "fable" is the word I would use.
Mechatron is, I think, the third book in the series. (I'm not judging by print-dates but by which books mention which other books.) And this follows a robot rebellion in an undersea robot factory: another place set up by one of the post-nuke titans, but abandoned by the humans, and given the final command to build whatever they need to win the struggle. So now the robots are living out these commands, and some of them have developed consciousness, which the central intelligence does not like.
In a bit of comedy setup out of Paranoia, your sapient robots get recruited into special units to destroy sapient robots--only, I don't think that the writers were going for some black comedy here. I do appreciate other bits of the set-up though, that do have a more grim note, like how the factory is built underwater, but water is sort of the big enemy of machines and robots, so you have to reinforce the crumbling factory while also struggling for independence and helping others.
(A quick note: you can tell the authors like robot stories since once of the robots here is named Eando, after author Eando Binder, which was the pen name used by Earl and Otto ("E and O") Binder, and who had an early series of robot stories starting with one named... "I, Robot.")
I like this game and setting, but I'm not sure about the tone, and that is not helped by the artwork (again), which is both grubby and colorful, grim and whimsical. I also find it a little odd that this story doesn't end with the robots freeing themselves (which might be too close to Genlab Alpha), but with the robots having to fend off an attack from mutants and humans. So on top of the usual mini-game of how is your settlement doing (here, how is the factory faring in its struggle to survive), we get a mini-wargame at the end.
I covered Elysium in its own review, but just a reminder: a grotesquely unfair city is coming apart at the seams as the four main families engage in covert struggles for power, until the whole city falls and the survivors have to escape onto the surface--to live peacefully or not with the mutants, sapient animals, and robots from the other stories.
This bundle also included several zone compendiums, which are locales that you can drop into the game--complete with NPCs and little storylines; and a big adventure against some villainous survivors of the fall of Elysium and dealing with how the four groups of people coexist. Curiously, it seems like the canonical end of that adventure is unhappy, and that the answer to how these groups coexist is "uneasily", which is an interesting take, but not sure that's a future I want to play in.
Would I play this? Yeah, all four seem like fun, though, well, see the next answer.
Is this inspiring? It really leans on so many tropes and seems to pull from the history of RPGs that I'm not sure I find anything really original and interesting here, EXCEPT for the fact that we have four ways into the same question of "how did the earth die?"
March 18, 2022
Like all of Free League’s stuff, Mutant: Year Zero is excellent. The birthplace of the “Year Zero Engine,” Free League has developed this system across multiple lines (with significant customization) showing that it is a robust system with a large amount of flexibility and ease of use.
I originally picked this up because I was looking for a modern Gamma World replacement. Mutant is not that game. Yes, you play mutants in a post-apocalyptic setting, but this game is NOT the wahoo over the top style of Gamma World. This shit is serious - and dark. In fact, some groups might find it too dismal and full of despair to actually play.
Still, this is an excellent game focusing on exploration and hex crawl. There is a lot of gaming here, but GM’s be warned: There is really only one story here. It will probably take a year or so of playing to resolve it, but there isn’t a lot of plot flexibility. Nevertheless, the metaplot is actually good and likely very few groups will play long enough to completely exhaust it.
I originally picked this up because I was looking for a modern Gamma World replacement. Mutant is not that game. Yes, you play mutants in a post-apocalyptic setting, but this game is NOT the wahoo over the top style of Gamma World. This shit is serious - and dark. In fact, some groups might find it too dismal and full of despair to actually play.
Still, this is an excellent game focusing on exploration and hex crawl. There is a lot of gaming here, but GM’s be warned: There is really only one story here. It will probably take a year or so of playing to resolve it, but there isn’t a lot of plot flexibility. Nevertheless, the metaplot is actually good and likely very few groups will play long enough to completely exhaust it.
July 1, 2018
La última edición de D&D le dio un nuevo empujón a la industria de los juegos de rol, y en Suecia hay una suerte de "renaissance" en el mundo del hobby. Mutant: Year Zero es una muestra excelente de lo que los nórdicos están produciendo en RPGs. A pesar de que la temática post-apocalíptica puede estar un poco desgastada, la combinación de reglas, campaña, metatrama, mapas y sistema tipo "sandbox"ñ logran hacer de este juego una verdadera maravilla. Las reglas son lo suficientemente sencillas para que sea fácil de jugar o dirigir y tienen sufientes elementos para proveer de constantes retos y amenzas a los jugadores. Además el balance entre reglas y narrativa es tal ayuda a reflejar el ambiente hostil del setting. Además la posibilidad de adaptar el juego a cualquier ciudad en ruinas (la tuya propia) le da grandes posibilidades. El rpg va de jugar mutantes tratando de sobrevivir, poco tiempo después del fin del mundo. Su lucha es por agua, comida, y descubrir sus orígenes y pasado. Una combinación de Fallout, Mad Max y Gamma World con posibilidades infinitas.
March 20, 2023
A "fun" take on the post apocalyptic TRPG.
Still havent played with the year zero engine, but I have read a couple of different takes on it by now and I must say, I really like it. It seems to be so simple and clean and with a few adventures under the belt I think it will be really smooth.
The world building is pretty dark, or rather it could be pretty dark. I see a lot of possibilities to play this more optimistic of you are so inclined. As I am. But hope work best after struggle so we will see.
Also, as always when it comes to Free league. Excelent production! Gonna pick up more of this line.
Still havent played with the year zero engine, but I have read a couple of different takes on it by now and I must say, I really like it. It seems to be so simple and clean and with a few adventures under the belt I think it will be really smooth.
The world building is pretty dark, or rather it could be pretty dark. I see a lot of possibilities to play this more optimistic of you are so inclined. As I am. But hope work best after struggle so we will see.
Also, as always when it comes to Free league. Excelent production! Gonna pick up more of this line.
January 19, 2017
Great book with a fantastic theme and lots of cool ideas. There's a few mechanics that don't make sense thematically (e.g. finding artefacts by observing a sector from an observation point, or having maps with stuff on when noone is supposed to have gone out of the zone), but ultimately, the book is a guide and it's easy enough to make up reasons in game for that stuff.
I cannot wait for future collections of this stuff to come out.
I cannot wait for future collections of this stuff to come out.
November 6, 2017
Una sorpresa, la verdad. El sistema, sencillo y fácil de enseñar, pero lo que me atrapa es la metatrama que los personajes van descubriendo, llena de giros argumentales dignos de una buena serie de televisión.
February 2, 2023
Buen juego con historia y campaña propia muy chula, con mecánicas de comercio postapocalipticas muy interesantes, aunq el sistema year engine no termina de gustarme en cuanto a daños y traumas se refiere
March 6, 2017
Inspired me to create my own system! The mechanical and artistic design showcased in this book is absolutely top notch.
April 11, 2022
Great start to a great new system and a new era for Mutant, one of Swedens oldest role-playing games.
But reading through it I also feel that it lacks the humor of earlier editions.
But reading through it I also feel that it lacks the humor of earlier editions.
June 1, 2024
Commentaire sur le livret de présentation (je n'ai pas encore lus le livre principal) : Cette "présentation" m'a fait l'effet d'une expédition vite fait bien fait. L'univers est esquissé entre les lignes, les règles sont présentes sur les livrets de personnage etc ... Ce livret correspondrait bien plus à un accompagnement d'écran qu'à une première entrée dans ce jeu de rôle que je me sentirais pas de masteriser après sa seule lecture. J'espère grandement que le livre principal est mieux agencé que cela.
Commentaire après lecture du livre principal : Beaucoup beaucoup plus intéressant et alléchant que le livret de présentation qui faisait décidément bien mal son job. J'ai très hâte de jouer mes premières parties dans l'Arche !
Commentaire après lecture du livre principal : Beaucoup beaucoup plus intéressant et alléchant que le livret de présentation qui faisait décidément bien mal son job. J'ai très hâte de jouer mes premières parties dans l'Arche !
December 27, 2016
A stunningly beautiful and evocative RPG, it isn't hard to see how this has quickly become seen by many as the definitive post-apocalyptic game. Simple but genre supporting rules, great sandbox tools and a meta-narrative all lend themselves to creating all the structure a GM requires to create a fantastic and atmospheric campaign.
October 27, 2015
An exciting blend of indie ideals and old school mechanics. The books a joy to read and I devoured it in nearly one sitting. The proof is in the play of course, which will hopefully be soon.
November 17, 2015
A complete delight of a game. Rarely have I seen a system and setting so well enmeshed with one another.
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May 28, 2016Un juego de rol con una ambientación muy interesante y sencillo en sus mecánicas.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews