Howdy Vados!
It’s Jonathan here with another signature DR:TX Rules Ramble, leading up to our September live event BENEATH THE CORPSE OF WAKING! Each week, I’ll discuss in detail an aspect of the upcoming event, compiling the rules and lore into one easy place to read! This week, we are covering the premise of our event, some content warnings, and a few logistics changes for Season 5!
TICKETS FOR OUR SEASON OPENER ARE ON SALE NOW! DON’t MISS OUT ON THE FIRST EVENT OF SEASON FIVE!
We’ve finished shipping out the last of the Grab Bags from THE UNDYING PRINCE, so if you were one of the lucky ones that got their cards shipped you should be seeing them soon. We’ll have the last batch of item cards ready for our local players to pick up at Check In!
Our Admin team and some other DR:TX volunteers will be at ColossalCon this weekend! Stop by our booth in the Dealer’s Room for a chance at some sweet swag and a raffle for a cool prop!
Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team. The art pieces for this post are some new sticker concepts featuring art designed by Shan Lind.
The original obelisk, within the boiling waters of Lake Bravo, by Shan Lind.
Beneath the Corpse of Waking
Here’s the premise and summary of our first event of the season:
The San Saba Board has been bloodied with the fall of Waking. Never before has the San Saba Board’s power been challenged so successfully as the fall of Waking Prime. Despite the threat of strange Obelisks and the impending struggle against the dangerous Oxkiller Alliance, the Board is focused instead on containing the crisis that is the barely landed wreck of Waking Prime.
The wreckage of Waking Prime lays burning with fire and radiation on the doorstep of Bravado, leaching into the water, the soil, the Gravemind and the hearts of people who rely on the land for survival. The devastation is immense, and the clean up efforts will need to be just as extensive to restore the land to its previous state.
But beneath the corpse of the once mighty flying city is a brewing problem. The morgues are churning forth the undead in larger numbers than before, bringing back creatures that have been unseen since the Hiway War alongside the threat of radiation sickness. Somewhere within the underbelly of the city is the answer to stop the horde of undead, but the radioactive husk of Waking is lethal to even Retrogrades.
To fix the problem, the Railroad Conglomerate has contracted a series of Liquidation Runs into the corpse of the city for any brave enough to risk the delve. Brave the deadly radiation, get out alive, and you will be handsomely rewarded. However, the deadly threat of radiation kills more surely than the claws of a zombie or the cruel ax of a raider.
A certain and insidious death awaits those runners that tarry too long on their mission, get trapped by the undead, or get lost in the maze-like pathways inside the city. Stay too long on a liquidation run, and no amount of medical assistance or meals will save you. If you survive the lethal radiation, you’ll still have to contend with the raiding parties of the Oxkiller Alliance trying to stop any from saving the monument of the Board’s failure.
Can you survive beneath the corpse of Waking? Can you stem the tide of radiation and undead before it is too late?
Zombies! by Shan Lind.
A Radioactive Season Opener
Oh my. Radiation and undead sounds like a lethal combination, but that’s probably not all the dangers that are in store for your characters during our Season Opener.
If you attended our online event, THE UNDYING PRINCE, we will be continuing our saga of the San Saba Territories into a brand new season with new mysteries, new dangers, new nightmares, and new stories. We have new threats, new allies, new zombies, and more! We even have a brand new currency item this season to join Amaranthite, the Shards of the Red Crown.
Over the next few weeks, we will be covering more about this season opener event during our regular Wednesday Blog Posts, including an update on some important story changes for the season, new NPCs to watch out for like the Oxkiller Alliance and the Families of Waking Prime, some more traditional Rules Rambles on the dangers of Radiation, and more!
Content Warnings
The themes of Dystopia Rising often touch close to our real world in ways we cannot always avoid. The DR:TX team believes that we can still tell these stories about challenging topics, 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 these may not be stories you want to participate in, and that’s okay!
You can always find a list of our Content Warnings on our website, but let’s talk about some of the specific things you might want to be prepared for during this first event of the season.
Disease & Radiation
Disease, infection, and consequences of diseases
One of the themes of this upcoming event is the consequence of crashing a giant airship powered by a nuclear reactor right next to Bravado. The choices made during our last event in May left a lasting effect on our tiny town, and many of the events of the weekend will deal with the insidious danger of Radiation. It’s a threat you can’t defeat with a boffer, it’s invisible to the naked eye, and it can be quickly lethal. One aspect of this threat will be in the form of RADIATION POISONING, a common disease associated with the dangers of irradiated threats in Dystopia Rising.
During the September event, you might encounter ways to contract this disease for your character, particularly if you purposefully enter irradiated Hot Zones, like the WAKING EXCLUSION ZONE, or encounter certain Radioactive Zombies. These areas will be clearly posted, so you’ll be able to see how to avoid most of these mechanics if you want, and we will have the mechanics and roleplay guidance for this disease posted near the Post Office.
This is a dangerous disease that can lead to character death if untreated, but this is a well-known malady. Any doctor with Basic Medical can treat and cure this disease, and the treatment is well known through the wastes. Next to Bad Brain, this is probably one of the most common diseases in the world of Dystopia Rising. It’s a pretty slow to progress disease if you avoid irradiated areas, so you’ll have many opportunities to seek out a cure before it spells an untimely end for your LC.
Liquidation Runs & Timed Events
Physically demanding activities, intense emotional situations, where characters may be pushed to their emotional limits.
During the September event we will be debuting LIQUIDATION RUNS. I’ll cover more about these in detail in a later post, but these will be high risk, high reward events during the game that you can participate in at set times during the weekend. These events will deal with delving into the corpse of Waking, the crashed airship outside the city limits, braving the deadly radiation in search of stemming the tide of undead flowing from the wreck. One of the intensely scare things about radiation is that when a person dies of exposure, they literally start to melt as the cellular bonds decay. It’s like you are being liquified!
These Liquidation Runs will involve potentially character deadly events that will be timed, repeatable mods, similar to the supply runs we ran last season during our closer. If you stay too long in the mod area, your character will DIE from lethal exposure to radiation. Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect 200 Brass. This risk will be telegraphed in advance, and these events will be entirely optional. You don’t have to enter the radioactive belly of the beast if you don’t want to.
Additionally, during these events you’ll have to complete a series of stressful challenges while dealing with undead and other threats of Waking. Many of these challenges will involve physically demanding activity (running, simulated fighting, etc.) or kinetic puzzle events. Similar to the quick events we used during the 4-hour Siege last season, these events won’t be so much about how many Mind points you can spend, but rather how clever, coordinated, or quick you are as a player. This makes these events perfect for characters of any tier of play, as it won’t be a matter of how much XP you have, but how well you can communicate and coordinate with your team and react to the dangerous events we throw your way.
Heather and I have some devious challenges in store for you, and we hope you decide to take the risk! Just don’t take too long, or you’ll be LIQUIDATED!
Another bit of obelisk art by Shan Lind.
logistics Changes for Season 5
We have a lot in store for the story this next season, but let’s make sure we cover a few big out-of-character changes that you’ll need to be ready for during our next season:
Zuni is now NPC Land!
The area of Camp Kachina known as Zuni (formerly The Breach) will be reclaimed as an NPC only space during Season 5. During our live games, this area will be off-limits unless you are participating in an away mod in the space, as it will now represent the heavily radioactive area known as the WAKING EXCLUSION ZONE.
We apologize if you had your hopes set on staying in the open-air cabins there, but we have a lot of cool events in store that will benefit from having a dedicated mod space. We appreciate your understanding and your grace as we make this adjustment for Season 5. We still have plenty of beds and cabins available elsewhere on site, including several climate-controlled spaces like Kiva, Wigwam, and Wikiup! You are always welcome to set up a tent in most areas on the site too, and there are many open-air cabins in Hopi and Yuma!
The Morgue is Moving! (again!)
Based on player and ST feedback, we will be moving the Morgue to a new location during Season 5. Last season, we experimented with the area behind the kitchen in the breezeway, but we found it to be easily disrupted by noise from players in the Depot despite the cool ambiance it offered. This year, we will be housing the entrance to the Mortis Amaranthine in….
The Treehouse (aka The Maw)!
This space is an exciting area that can be easily set up for a black box experience, and we have a lot of neat death scenes planned for this year with our new Specialized Storytellers. It is far enough away from the major population centers to be remote, but still close enough to Ops to allow us to include it into our stories for the season. The Treehouse will give us a space where you can experience the deathly quiet of the Grave Mind, and delve into the mysteries of what happens when we die and are reclaimed by the insidious forces beyond death itself.
ticket prices have been updated for season 5
We posted about this last week, but in case you missed the announcement from National, you can read up on how we are implementing these changes in our blog.
Saturday NPC Shifts & the Siesta
Based on player feedback and operating with a slimmer ST team this year, we are making a slight adjustment to our NPC schedule. Players appreciated having a low-threat time during the afternoon for our Siesta, but we had repeated feedback about how it disrupted the flow of the event and led to some boring afternoons. To fix this, we’ve changed up the schedule:
Our first NPC shift on Saturday will now start at 10:00 am, and run until 2:00 pm. That’s right, you can stay up late without worrying about a zed attack right at 8:00 am.
Our Siesta will run from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. This is a time where we will have little to no dangerous NPCs in the world, making this a perfect time to get lunch, take a shower or get a quick nap, or plan those fun player-led events. The Post Office will still be opened for all your crafting and econ needs!
Our second NPC shift on Saturday will begin at 4:00 pm, same as last season.
We appreciate all of your feedback, and we will continue to work tirelessly towards improving and iterating on our processes as we go. We are excited to try some new things this season and we hope that you will appreciate all the hard work!
Wrap Up
That’s it for today Vados!
Thanks for sticking around after a long, hot summer, and we can’t wait to get back into our favorite zombie game. Next week, we will be right back at it with some of the in-character changes you can expect for Season 5, including some monumental changes to the San Saba…
Remember, tickets are on sale now, so don’t miss out on your chance to return home to Bravado!
See you soon Vados!
This is a cool sticker we will be handing out at our booth at ColossalCon!