Why the Year Zero Games Are My Favorite Type of Trad
It's all about pushing, resource management, and more pushing.
I don’t always want to play trad games, but when I do it’s usually one using the Year Zero Engine.
To be clear: “trad” is doing a lot of lifting there. What I mean is an RPG with a conventional authority structure (one GM, many players) whose rules mostly address material, not thematic, concerns. Resolution is about success and failure, and failure consequences are left to the GM’s discretion. Probably a skill or talent or ability list. You know: a normal roleplaying game.
There are so many house systems out there. Obviously, there’s ye olde d20 System Resource Document and Basic Roleplaying, aka BRP, aka Call of Cthulhu and Runequest. Modiphius has their 2d20 system, while Monte Cook Games has Cypher, and Green Ronin has AGE. Is Cortex a house system? Agon? Fate?! If you’ve bought an RPG in the past decade you probably see the branding of its underlying engine, design jams for folks to play with it, and so on: Rooted in Trophy, the Breathless SRD, Mörk Borg, Powered by the Apocalypse if you want to start fights. You get the idea.
But then there is Free League’s Year Zero Engine. I just love it.
