Mutant: Year Zero might be my favorite system, both in that I like it more than almost any other RPG, but also because I adore post-apocalypse and its themes, and the way M:YZ does them is excellent. I have all the currently released Compendiums and Sectors, I'm looking forward to the new Expansion, and I want to use all that content in some way. The only way I can think of is to integrate it all into one big campaign setting, however - partially because I love the way the adding of these layers and expansions captures the concepts of an expanding world and the challenges of a recreated society, but also because I have very limited access to people who want to play Mutant, and we use the narrative-heavy format of play-by-post.
Here's the question, though... how would you (or, how have you) tied everything together? Do you set your campaign in the Dead Blue Sea, or do you visit it? How do you integrate mutant animals at the end of Genlab? What do you do after the mysteries surrounding Eden have been resolved? I have thoughts, but I want to hear yours.
I'll put my thoughts right here, for critique or advice or whatever:
I'm starting with an Ark in Year Zero, and I plan on using either the Dead Apple, the Big Smoke, or a coastal Zone of my own creation. I like how Year Zero is the most vague in terms of setting and actively obscures the truth of things. I'll probably put in the Sectors from Compendium 1 and the two Zone Sector PDFs right off the bat. Assuming things go well with the Ark and the metaplot gets resolved, anyone who makes it through that experience will be able to wrap up the immediate plot in the Ark; either way, once either the metaplot has resolved or the original Ark falls to obscurity, we'll cut to Genlab Alpha. Hopefully that goes well, because I look forward to seeing how the animals integrate into (what I hope) is the growing society of the Zone. We can work on new plots and integrate the Sectors from Die, Meat-Eaters, Die! as the animals settle down.
My big outstanding question is how to integrate Dead Blue Sea. I really love it, and want to use it, but I don't want to start there or set an Ark there. I had considered using the Derelict Oil Rig Threat as a plot hook to get them out there - perhaps there is an Ark out in the Dead Blue Sea, or some other reason to go out beyond the "Zone" as the People know it. That would be easy from the Dead Apple (it's very coastal), but I don't like that Zone; it would also be easy from some custom Zone, but then I'd have to make it. The Big Smoke is my favorite overall, but is so far from the coast that... I guess an oil rig could somehow wash all the way down the Thames, but... really? I also don't know when to do all that. A whole new Zone to explore is a big undertaking, and it would take them far, far away from the world they'd have worked to understand and develop.
Thoughts? Concerns? Stories from your own grand campaigns?