Ideal Play Order: If you were starting fresh, what would be your ideal order for playing through the campaigns and adventures? Should we follow the chronological order of publication, or is there a sequence that you feel might enhance the experience in terms of how the universe and meta-plot unfold?
1a) MYZ core: This can be played at any time.
1b) Zone Compendium 1: Lair of the Saurians. This booklet contains four special sectors. There are also two more special sectors (The Doom Sphere and Denizens of the Sink Hole) available at DTRPG. These special sectors can be played at any time.
1c) Zone Compendium 2: Dead Blue Sea. Contains some rules about ships and such and four more special sectors. These special sectors can be played at any time.
2a) MYZ Genlab Alpha: Some threats and events in the core campaigns exists about when the animals comes to the zone. This campaign should be played before those threats and events. One idea could be that you first play MYZ core up to the point when an animal threat happens in the campaign and then you take a pause in that campaign and start playing the Genlab Alpha campaign, which explains how the animal came to the zone and then continue with the core campaign.
2b) Zone Compendium 3: Die, Meateater, Die. Contains four special sectors with animal mutants in them and also some spoilers about the Genlab Alpha campaign. This should be played after the Genlab Alpha campaign.
3a) MYZ Mechatron: This could technically be played at any time. At least I don't think it contains any spoilers of the campaigns and adventures mention in 1 and 2 above.
3b) Zone Compendium 4: The Eternal War. Contains four special sectors that can be played after the Mechatron campaign is complete. One of the special sectors can be integrated in the campaign. At least it was so in the Swedish campaign, the campaign was re-written for the English version, but I do think you still can integrate one of the special sectors in the campaign (you can play that special sector after the campaign instead if you want to).
4a) MYZ Elysium: Should be played at least after Genlab Alpha since it contains major spoilers for that one, but probably should be played last since humans coming to the zone can change things in the zone.
4b) Zone Compendium 5: Hotel Imperator. Contains four special sectors. Some of the special sectors contains rules from Genlab Alpha and Mechatron books and should be played after those.
5) The Gray Death: This contains spoilers from the Elysium campaign but also from Hotel Imperator and should be played after all the expansion campaigns.
6) Ad Astra: This one takes place after the core campaign. It also contains things from Genlab Alpha and Mechatron (I don't remember, perhaps even Elysium), so the best is probably to play this after those.
Evolution of Rules: Did the rules change across different expansions? If so, what significant additions or removals should ideally be introduced from the beginning?
The rules was fine tuned in the expansions, but not by much. The special rules in the expansion for the most part only concerns the expansion. But there are small adjustments in the combat rules that can be used in the core book, like Overwatch.
Incorporating Zone Wars: Should elements of Zone Wars be introduced from the start, or is it better to leave it out, or maybe wait until we’re more familiar with the core game? Is the original gameplay primarily theatre-of-the-mind? My players are used to using flat minis (from playing Dragonbane), but personally I can go either way.
When we played this game we used the Combat Map rules (p.82 Core) and they work fine. We for the most part just used the maps and draw directly on them, but we did use minis and terrain sometimes with those rules. If Zone Wars have existed when we played, I would have used it sometimes.
Additional Adventures: Are there adventures published (including good third party stuff) outside of the core expansion campaigns? If so, where would they ideally fit into this "ideal play order"?
I included the Zone Compendiums above.
