It’s Jonathan here with another quick update for our upcoming event this weekend. I want to briefly talk about a bit of a content warning for folks about the over arc plot of VALLEY OF FEAR.
This weekend’s plot involves THEMEs and mechanics about drugs, drug abuse, Drug-related death, and drug addiction.
Given how drug addiction is a terrible illness that plagues people in real life, we understand that this topic isn't for everyone. Some of our lives have been impacted by this crisis and each person could be dealing with this trauma in different ways. Our goal is not to minimize the impact of addiction nor it’s effect on our community, and we empathize with anyone that has suffered loss and hardship because of drug abuse and drug addiction.
The themes of Dystopia Rising often touch close to our real world in ways we cannot always avoid. We believe that we can still tell these stories, but we also believe we need to be transparent about our intentions, and allow folks to opt-out of any mechanics from those stories. In our tradition of radical trust, we want to also trust in each player that attends our game to know their own limits and be able to choose to avoid topics and situations that make them uncomfortable.
Its one reason we take our OK Check-In system so seriously! We understand that this may not be a story you want to participate in, and that’s okay!
To be clear: The easiest way to avoid the addiction mechanics of this plot will be to simply avoid Criminal Influence events, and avoid using the new Variant Crystal Candy cards that are in play starting this weekend.
A large part of the experience of the horror role playing genre comes from and is experienced as a loss of control — often in horrific, and unpleasant ways. And the situation only deepens after experiencing trauma and fractures from that horror, as survivors can feel like they’re losing control of their lives as they wrestle with the emotions their experience has left them with.
This weekend’s story involves themes around the trafficking and production of the drug known as Crystal Candy. Crystal Candy and other drug items have already existed in our game since the start of 3.0. Several other chapters have introduced other drug items like Redline, or a series of new Drug items from the DR: Michigan chapter. We’ve had hallucinogenic brews and alcoholic brews since 2.0, so the themes of drug abuse and drugs have always been there, but this is the first time in 3.0 we will be dealing with an Addiction mechanic.
We will be providing options during our September game to “opt-out” of addiction roleplay and drug mechanics as much as possible (and even give those folks that don’t want to experience these mechanics a way to be part of the story), but it WILL be present in ways that you will not always be able to avoid. Even the OK Check-In system may not be enough to avoid this topic during the September event. We’d like to give you advance warning that this content will be present so you can choose if you would still like to attend our event.
We will be coaching our NPCs before each shift about how to responsibly represent addiction in the world of Dystopia Rising, and our Storytellers wrote each of their shifts with this in mind. While we can’t predict a player’s reaction to NPC’s suffering from addiction, we can gauge our output to make sure we don’t present addicts themselves in a negative way. Addiction will be an mechanical illness in our world, and will be treatable like any other illness in game. It is a disease that is identified and fixed the same way as a Fracture, caused by a specific substance.
If you have already purchased a ticket for this event and would like a refund, please email info@dystopiarisingtx.com.
We will have many other events this weekend that don’t deal with this topic, and it’s still a survival game in a world of zombies and raiders.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some of the specific mechanics of Addiction, the new Variant Crystal Candy items, Mysterious Ore, Clue Cards, and Roleplay Burdens.
See you soon, Vados!