Howdy Vados!
It’s Jonathan with another signature DR:TX Rules Ramble about the opening virtual event for Season 8, ACES AND EIGHTS! This game will be led by Jonathan Loyd and Fable Brown. This week, we are discussing the premise of our event, inspirations, themes, content warnings, and exciting things to come at our next virtual event of the season.
Notes & Updates:
TICKETS FOR OUR November event ARE ON SALE NOW!
We’ve updated our setting materials for Essex, the City of Light and Sound. Our website is updated and we will continue to add content, like a brand new map designed by yours truly. Take a look!
Read about our recent changes for Season 8. TL;DR, our access to Bluebonnet has changed dramatically. It’s a challenging update, but we appreciate your support of our game and our community. Take a look!
Our next LIVE event will be in December and it will be a PREMIERE EVENT! You’ll be able to purchase up to 5 additional XP for your characters, and we will have some special events planned for our prom-themed event. These events attract a lot of travelers, so we hope you will be able to make it out for the Tri-City Gala!
Online Crafting is open NOW! You can begin putting in your online crafting requests right now on the Juno Database, but the window for pre-game crafting will close at 6:00 pm on Friday, November 20th.
Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team, including Lily-Jay Jones, Miranda Farmer, Heather Halstead, Noah Goodman, and Max Pohlmeier.
THE PREMISE - ACES AND EIGHTS
With that out of the way, let’s get to our next event. Each season, we share a bit of a teaser about our upcoming event. It’s one part ‘movie trailer’ and one part ‘story time’, but it covers some of the important beats of our upcoming event.
The DR:TX team has prepared some fun stories ahead, so let’s see what is in store for next virtual event, ACES AND EIGHTS!
Aces and Eights. The Dead Man’s Hand. What is unlucky for some is luck for another, provided they play the cards right.
Essex once again welcomes travelers from across the San Saba to a new celebration of high-stakes gambling and excess that only the City of Light and Sound can offer. The Dead Man’s Hand, the premiere Lone Star Hold ‘Em tournament for elite gamblers and card players across the wastes, is hosted once more in the shining halls of the Brass Rose, deep in the heart of the Thicket. The tournament offers fabulous prizes of wealth, Brass, favors, and every type of vice someone could wish for. From fabled maps to lost cities, to strange relics of the past, the top tables always offer something uniquely worthy of the best player in the Lone Star, and every aspiring card shark hopes they have what it takes.
For the most refined of guests, tournaments of blood and bone are held in the basements of the Brass Rose, pitting fighters against one another with their very Infection on the line. The criminal underworld of Essex is ready to put every service on the menu, and ambition is frequently rewarded in the vice and villainy of such events. Every bar, dive, and virtually any business with a spare table is eager to get in on the action, hosting local games and minor tournaments for players of every skill level or budget. The Scrapes are ready for a grand contest to make games of cards seem tame, an airship race through the perilous heights for fame and glory – the rescheduled Cloudskipper Regatta. After the chaos of the raider attack last month, the superstitious Cloudskippers are on edge and have already threatened to cancel the race once more, but the gambling fever of the tournament has spread to the skies. In spite of the poor omens, daredevils and hopeful racers from abroad are eager for another chance at the Regatta crown.
Though the blood and gore of the Fountain’s Heart disaster has been swept away, scrubbed clean, and seemingly forgotten, the intrigue and threat of a divided San Saba remains. The Rook has elevated her status as a demagogue and hero of Essex, recovering captives from the hands of deadly Lost Raiders aboard a doomed train to Pride’s Hold. Though there are whispers of another, more vicious story of the rescue, a solemn vigil is planned for the brave Mustang Loyalists that gave their lives drawing the raiders away from Essex. General Mustang herself has planned a trip to Essex to honor the fallen soldiers, and to seek the counsel of Boss Debs and her Straw Bosses on how to defend Essex with even fewer resources. The path forward is uncertain, and negotiations for a new member of the Alliance are fraught with conflict, especially after such a devastating loss.
If luck is on your side, anyone could find fame and fortune among the cards and chips of the tournament. The competition is fierce, the cards are dealt, and it is up to chance to determine the new winners and losers of the Dead Man’s Hand…
Lessons Learned
October was our first return to Essex and the Virtual Play space after several years, and it felt a bit like riding a bike. I’m very proud of the stories we told, the mods we ran, and all of the wonderful role play I got to see on our Discord server during the event. We had over 80 people attend our last online event, and we had a really fun time telling new stories in an online space. It was wonderful to see some faces I haven’t seen in over a decade, and I loved the energy that each of our players, our Virtual Storytellers and Room Stewards brought to the event.
We learned a lot of lessons over the course of this last event, made a few mistakes, and created some new structures to support our version of online play, but we greatly appreciate your patience as we navigate this new space together. I’d like to take a moment to talk about a few of the upcoming changes we have planned to support the online events, as we always want to try to get better during each event we run. We really appreciate the feedback we got, and we have some cool new plans for this event to keep what worked, and revamp some of the things we think we can do better.
We have a new planned system for LIT Mail Outs. One thing we could have done better was speeding up how fast we got our item card mail outs completed after this last event, and I want to apologize for any delay you might have experienced. Outside of a few logistical hurdles to get the cards to the right people, this last event launched some new database structures for crafting and item card use, but it made for a huge volume of cards to had to be filtered into another Excel spread sheet for mailing out cards. We have a better plan this time to capture that data in a way that can help us write the cards more efficiently after game for mail out, plus some new quality of life improvements to the database that should make this much easier on Ren and our team. Our goal is to get all item cards mailed out within 10 days of our online event.
We are changing up some of our Mod Rewards. While we got some glowing feedback on the ‘pick your reward’ style mod rewards we introduced for this game, there were a few of the packages that felt like auto picks and some that were completely avoided. One thing that became obvious was that the mods that offered important gear like weapons and armor were really only useful ONCE, as your per game limit would prevent you from claiming a chunk of that reward on the next mod. With this next event, any player that attends the event will get a reward of a weapon/armor/shield/trap right at the start of the game in the form of a separate ‘gearing up’ mod spot on the database. Because this is the strictest limit of equipment for online, we are going to decouple this from other rewards to let you craft your perfect rewards a bit easier. Stay tuned!
We are paying attention to the mod lengths during the November event. We have no plans for changing up our mod structure yet, but we noticed that many of the mods went over the 2 hour mark during each Act and made the content feel a bit cramped. We always want to aim for about six hours of planned content for a Full Experience Ticket, but it might be a better plan to do two three-hour mods as opposed to three two-hour mod slots, similar to how our friends in DR:CT plan their events. Would you like more, shorter mods, or fewer longer mods in our last two online games of the season? We’d love to hear your feedback on this, so send us a message or join us on a thread in Discord.
Our Stage Mods were fun and worked fairly smoothly! While we will always be at the mercy of Discord a bit for this kind of thing, our last mod gave players a fun new way to be involved in the mod by voting along for the players on stage. You can expect to see a few more Stage events during this upcoming game, as this was a great way to support a narrative beat during the game while still letting folks feel involved.
We found a sweet spot for online role play rooms over the event. We didn’t have enough spaces for folks to interact in rooms at first during our last event, but we quickly opened up some more role play areas that will continue into our next event. We want folks to have a nice balance between a popular hang out spot and smaller, more intimate spaces to break out for smaller groups. Luckily, Discord made this expansion pretty easy, so we have some cool spaces planned for our next event.
We got a lot of positive feedback on the ‘Story Thus Far’. Players enjoyed having a channel where they could keep up with the major story beats of the weekend, and I enjoyed writing a bunch of content for this space. We will be using this space for a few more updates, and some potential audio and video additions to the space to help keep you connected with the story during the weekend.
We have a lot of fun stories ahead, and I’m excited to get to share them with you in a few weeks!
What is Virtual Play?
In case this is your first event with us, let’s cover some basics of the online game.
Because of the changes this year with Bluebonnet, we’ve elected to run several VIRTUAL events over the next few months. The funds from your generous support of our online games will make sure we can finish out this last season at Bluebonnet, and help build up story for future seasons. These online events feature a number of differences from our live events, but feature he same story experience you’ve come to expect from DR Texas. Let’s talk about some of the key differences.
Virtual Play uses the new DR Live Virtual Play rule set, as found out our network website. This system uses your existing DR Live character sheet on the DR Database to let you experience the apocalypse through a series of short modules run by our Virtual Storytellers, and lets you role-play for hours in our Discord server with friends from across the Network. These games don’t require you to pay for gas to travel to a remote site, be out in the Texas heat while camping, or even need you to swing a boffer weapon.
These games are perfect for bite-size pieces of the wasteland, as you can engage with the content over the weekend while safely at home on your PC. Many of our sister chapters run Virtual Events through out the year, and these virtual games can be a great place to earn XP, gather resources for our next live event, and really get to flesh out your role play of your character in some unique ways.
Virtual Play tickets are also a little cheaper than your regular live event tickets, but include ALL of the bonus XP you can earn in a month. In addition you can get up to 6 hours of ‘virtual crafting’ where we send the physical cards you make to you in the mail, just in time for your next live DR Live event!
Here’s the two primary ticket tiers we are offering for this event:
full build ONLINE TICKET - $75
his is the premium general admission ticket to an online DR:TX event. This ticket includes three (3) extra XP points for each of your active characters with an Advanced Membership, or a character of your choice (8 XP base, 13 XP for new players, Player’s Guide, p. 15). This will allow access to online crafting, roleplay rooms and up to three (3) small group modules led by a DR:TX Virtual Storyteller.
RP ONLY ONLINE TICKET - $50
This is the general admission ticket to an online DR:TX event. You’ll earn XP for each of your active characters with an Advanced Membership, or a character of your choice (5 XP base, 10 XP for new players, Player’s Guide, p. 15). This will allow access to online crafting and roleplay rooms, but does NOT include access to group modules.
The Full Virtual Ticket gives you access to multiple virtual mods, crafting, and all of the roleplay spaces of our online event. You’ll earn the max XP you can earn in an event, and still get to get online crafting items sent to you after the event. This is the best way to help our chapter with the changes this season, and get access to a bespoke role
The RP Only Ticket still allows you access to crafting and role-playing with your friends on our Discord server during the event, so it’s perfect for folks that may not have the time to directly attend modules but still want to earn XP and get access to crafting time. This is a great budget way to attend the event and still get most of the advantages of a full ticket.
Virtual Play uses a simple d20 system to simulate your character actions in the game, like a D&D game. You’ll describe your actions, roll a die when it matters, and narratively tell the story of your character in the virtual wasteland. For actions that progress the scene, you’ll roll a d20, add a bonus based on your Impact or Development Skills against a Difficulty Rating (DR). If you meet or exceed the DR, you’ll be successful. You can expend your Impact Skills, Mind Points, and Resolve during a scene to add to the rolls, re-roll, and give you new actions in combat, simulating your use of Skills during a live event. While it’s not quite the same as our live events, the Virtual Play experience leans into its own strengths — you get to explore places we could never replicate on a campsite, fight monsters in a narrative combat that doesn’t need boffer combat skills, and be a big damn hero in stories that are unique to our Virtual Play events.
You can still craft items during a Virtual Game, and you’ll have your full Mind Point pool and six hours to craft as much as you can. These item cards will be mailed directly to you after the event, and may even include some special goodies for our collectors. You can even earn virtual rewards during your online mods, adding to a virtual inventory of item cards, blueprints, scrap, and more. You can check out some of these details and restrictions in the Virtual Play Guide.
While your carded equipment in your Supply Bag for live events can’t really be used in these online mods, there’s much less need to have a virtual item card overall, so it’s perfect for folks that don’t have an arsenal of item cards. There’s a few other complications and ways to use your various virtual equipment and such, but I’ve covered some important considerations in my Surviving in the Virtual Wasteland blog post from last month.
Virtual Crafting is open right now, and will continue until 6:00 PM the day of the event, on Friday, November 20th.
Virtual Schedule
Each full ticket comes with up to three VIRTUAL MODS, a short adventure for your characters to experience in our Discord Server, led by our talented Virtual STs. During these mods, you’ll get to experience part of the story of the weekend over a module that should take about 2 hours or so to complete, with interludes between for Roleplay in our Discord rooms. Our Room Stewards will be portraying fully costumed NPCs via video chat through out the event, and provide other ways to interact with our story without needing dice. Our final mod of the game, our Story Spotlight, will be hosted live on our virtual stage, where anyone can attend and vote on the threats and outcomes of the final story beat of the event.
Our anticipated schedule for this event is pretty simple, spread out over two days, Friday and Saturday. The roleplay rooms will still be opened on Sunday for final stories, but there won’t be planned events on this last day.
Friday, October 16th
ACT ONE - 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
ACT TWO - 10:00 PM to 12:00 AM
Saturday, October 17th
ACT THREE - 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
ACT FOUR - 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
ACT FIVE - 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
ACT SIX - 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
STORY SPOTLIGHT MOD - 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM
We are hard at work on our online modules for this event, and we plan on releasing our Virtual Mod Signup next week, on Friday, November 13th, barring any technical difficulties.
What you do during the Dead Man’s Hand Tournament?If
Our online setting: Essex, the City of Light and Sound
The City of Light and Sound has been featured in four different online events previously – the three games of the first Essex arc during the pandemic, The Fountainhead, The Crystodyne Principle, and Galatea, and the 2021 national event Dead Man’s Hand. We’ve run hundreds of hours of total content in this setting, and it’s been a frequent off-camera character to our home game of Bravado. During the War of Antlers, Essex was the seat of the San Saba Board after the crash of Waking Prime, and was the site of the final climatic battle of the mini-game that the players used during live events to decide the major conflicts of the war.
Without these original online games, it’s likely that DR:TX and most of the Dystopia Rising Live network would have struggled to continue. It’s fitting that with the changes these season we return to the place that we shared together during that time, Essex. Our leaders at the time, Aesa and Shan, made an important decision during those online events — to feature the stories and places around the setting, as opposed to our home town of Bravado. These events created memories, introduced important characters, and allowed our characters to persist in the shared stories of the wasteland, while not trying to replace the live events that we love so dearly. We hope that this new arc will honor the stories we told in the past, while bringing the characters and places of Essex to life in a new way for the world of Dystopia Rising Live by featuring stories and places around setting. We know that it will just help make the special stories for our last games at Bluebonnet during live events even more special.
This setting is our home away from home, and we are excited to share some new stories in this setting, updated for the new edition. There have been some important changes in the city hinted at during our live games, some returning villains, some fan favorite characters, and settings that are evocative and full of intrigue and adventure. This city is a deeply lived-in city, full of context, history, and years of stories come to life, so it’s an exciting sandbox for our virtual events. We can tell stories of airship racing through the towers of the Scrapes, criminal intrigue at the Brass Rose, terrifying fights with Raiders and worse, and stories that help add context to our games back at Bluebonnet. Our Virtual Storytellers have some exciting modules planned, and I’m excited to share this experience with you in October.
Essex really captures for me our story of the wild west wasteland we’ve told with the San Saba over the past 14 years, with struggles to survive inter spaced with moments of heroism, villainy, and everything in between. It’s also a love letter to some of our past stories, like the Tribes Disparate, Queensgrace, the Archon Incursions, the War of Antlers, and more. We hope you enjoy what we’ve prepared and we can’t wait for you to be involved in our newest return to the City of Light and Sound for the first time in Dystopia Rising Live
Read more about Essex Here
Wrap Up
That’s it for today, Vados!
We hope that you will come join us for our next virtual event of Season 8, ACES AND EIGHTS! What will you do during your return to the City of Light and Sound? Will you earn a fortune by playing in a high stakes game with lives on the line? Will you take a stand for those that gave their all to defend Essex? Will you risk it all for fame and glory amid the towering Scrapes?
Let’s find out together! See you soon, Vados!
