Bravado-CON!
Howdy Vados!
It’s Jonathan here with a special feature for our summer break - our first ever BRAVADO-CON!
Over the years at DR:TX we’ve hosted a number of various online events, starting with our successful Lonestar Skies series, and continuing with tales about the legendary Barogue, the shenanigans of the Dead Man’s Hand Tournament, and interacting with places across the San Saba. This year, we wanted to take a bit of a different approach to the traditional DR online event.
Thus, Bravado-CON was born.
This isn’t actually the first time we’ve done an event like this, but it’s the first in the new world of Dystopia Rising Live. Unlike traditional online events, our goal is not to force you to be online for long stretches of times in a module, or trying to replicate the exciting live experience of our games. Instead, we want to focus on the part that matters most - the people.
This will be an online event unlike others, focusing on the social experience of spending time with your friends, like you might find at a comic book convention or gaming hang out. We want to focus on the small, intimate experiences you get playing board games with friends, exploring a fun panel hosted by some nerds like you, and getting to spend some stress-free time playing your characters in the apocalypse.
You won’t need to remember complicated online rules, you won’t need to worry about figuring out your online inventory, and you won’t even really need your character sheet! We will offer attending and non-attending tickets, so if you don’t have the time to attend in person you can still show your support of DR:TX!
The Details, Short & Sweet:
When: June 27-28th. Friday will be a soft preview, with most of our events happening on Saturday.
Where: VIRTUAL CITY! (Our DR:TX Lonestar Skies Discord Server)
Tickets go on sale on Monday, June 9th.
Ticket Prices: $50, plus you can buy up to 3 extra XP for your characters as usual
Crafting will be available! There won’t be mod rewards, but you can get a head start on Septembers crafting!
No stress, no pressure to be online, just come and hang out!
A Call to Action
The primary reason to host an event like Bravado Con is fairly straight forward.
You could just play games online with friends without a ticket, we know. You could hang out on Discord doing soft roleplay anytime, but we hope you decide to join us for this event.
The summer break is the hardest part of the year for us here at DR:TX, not only for the lack of seeing our friends at Camp Bluebonnet. Without our usual games, we don’t have a lot of funds coming in, but we still continue to incur expenses over the summer. It costs a lot to keep our game going over the summer, from storing props over the summer, paying for web hosting for our website, and paying license fees to national. And we could use your help.
Our site costs continue to increase and our license fees changed considerably at the start of the year. We’d like to get a head start on the upcoming season and we need your help! If you can find the funds or the time to participate, we’d love to have you participate in Bravado-CON and pick up a ticket (or twelve!). We appreciate your support more than you can know, and you can get some easy, low-maintenance XP to update your characters before our next season.
If you appreciate what we do at DR:TX and want to continue getting to share part of this amazing experience, we’d love to spend time with you at Bravado-CON.
What Should I Expect at Bravado-CON?
Unlike the normal DRL online event, we want to focus on the experiences with the people that attend our events. We don’t want you to have to interpret complicated virtual rule sets, or really have to worry about figuring out what module to attend or what time you must be online to figure out what’s happening with the story. This event is imagined like one big online convention, with fun panels, board games and video games, movie watching, roleplay with your friends, and even a sneak peek at the story for Season 7!
Let’s cover some of the events we have planned:
Online Crafting
The new DR Live rules for online play have two ways you can earn items for your characters. You can participate in the online crafting mechanics to earn physical item cards, and you can earn mod rewards to earn virtual items. Since we don’t do many virtual games in our neck of the woods, these virtual items are far less useful. As such, we won’t really have ‘mod rewards’, since these must go into your digital inventory. However, you’ll be able to do some crafting and gathering with your Mind points, particularly skills like Agricultural, Foraging, or Salvaging. We will even give you an option to have these rewards mailed to you, or you can simply pick them up at our first event of the season in September.
Soft Roleplay Rooms
Most of the population of the San Saba tends to shelter in place during the terrible Burning Season. As the temperatures rise, even zed and raiders take shelter from the blistering heat of the area or become crispy corpses. Over the years, the survivors of this region have gotten pretty good at either hunkering down in a safe place or finding a reason to travel abroad. Because we know some folks will still want to roleplay as their characters for an online event, we will have several online ‘rooms’ available to in-character meetings, soft roleplay, and even a few memorable interactions with some special guest NPCs run by our Room Stewards.
We will have a few different locations to experience, each with some interesting information about the changes for Season 7 and some fun roleplay prompts to get you started. But don’t worry — there are no life shattering events that you gotta attend to keep up with the story for next season. This is mostly a sneak peek for the folks that attend and we have a few fun easter eggs in store for those that pay attention.
The City of Light & Sound, Essex - Recent elections have once again brought Boss Debs into control of the largest settlement in the San Saba. As the RRC prepares to announce a new reorganization, Debs has brought the Ox home to its newest rebuilt train station, deep in the heart of Essex! Spend some time at the Drafthouse, enjoying a fine pint of Ambedraught’s finest beverages and quiet conversations with friends, as you meet some of the newest faces of the economic elite in Essex.
Pride’s Hold - With new treaties signed, the former Bravado Militia is under new ownership. The mercenary forces of the Moss-Iverspiit elite under Corporal Hargrave are being given new orders and structure to help protect the region, starting with the indomitable fortress of Pride’s Hold. Be there in person to find out some of the changes you can expect, particular as the Grave Council recruits new faces into their faction to help protect the new Vaults of Reckoning.
Under Bravado - The tunnels underneath Bravado offer decent enough shelter for the folks too stubborn to leave during the Burning Season. The winding corridors of the Facility offer protection and profit for those that can stay focused on salvaging scrap from the strange ruins under the town. The Junkerpunk rebels have taken shelter with the town for the Burning Season and need your help as they plot the campaign to liberate their hometown of Drywater from the nefarious forces of the Drowned Sun.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - If you are the brave or foolhardy that choose to travel away from the summer heat, help us learn a bit more about your plans over the Burning Season. What are your survival tips on the roads through the San Saba? What outfits are best for beach trips to the Spoiled Coast? Do you have war stories to share from Death Con?
This is a perfect time to schedule some relaxed meetings with your crew, plan out econ plans for the new season, or just explore a bit more about what makes your character tick. Do you have a new alt you’d like to practice some role play with? We plan to have a bit of fun with Bravado-CON, so make sure you don’t miss out on the story beats!
Panels & Games
We have a few events that will be sponsored by our Admin team for Bravado-CON, including some convention style panels, board games and card games, video game hangouts, or just watching some scary movies with friends. We want to encourage you to pick and choose what virtual ‘rooms’ sound interesting to you and explore the server for this unique online event.
Heather will be hosting a fun RPG experience called “The Zone”, and hosting a movie night!
Jo will be hosting a panel on “How to Build a Backstory”. Learn how to get involved in our backstory stories for Season 7!
Ren will be reprising a panel we ran for AnimeFest, called “Crafting on a Budget”. A perfect kick start for a summer of crafting!
Joel will be hosting a discussion on “A Day in the Life: Pushing Character Growth Through Play”, and will be part of our Room Steward experiences
Noah has something very special planned for those with keen eyes. Follow the White Rabbit to find out more.. If you can solve the puzzles they’ve planned out, there’s a special reward for those that cross the finish line first!
Jonathan will be hosting some games on Board Game Arena, a conversation on “Econ in DR Live”, and maybe a few games of Magic the Gathering via webcam.
Lastly, the whole admin team will be present for a “Ask Us Anything”, a special Q&A to make sure we can answer any burning questions you have about Dystopia Rising Live or anything really!
Host Your Own panel Event!
Our last event is built around YOU! If you’d like to prepare a fun activity for Bravado-CON, whether it be something like hosting your own movie event, playing some rounds of JackBox games, or leading a team of Helldivers to spread managed democracy on Steam, we’d love to have you participate in our event with your own convention style experiences.
If you host your own panel-style event for Bravado Con, you can earn XP - FOR FREE!
The goal of Bravado-CON is to be a low-maintenance convention experience online our Lonestar Skies server. For each hour you host, you can earn one bonus XP for your characters completely free! You can only earn up to the normal 3 bonus XP, of course, but this is a easy way to get a bit more from your ticket for helping out.
Send us an email at info@dystopiarisingtx.com with your panel pitch and we can add you to the show!
Wrap Up
That’s it for today Vados!
We hope that you will join us for our summer event, BRAVADO-CON, and spend some time with the people behind the games and your friends outside of the kits and costumes. We want to have an online event that you don’t have to feel pressured to stay online for 30 hours, and you can pick and choose the events to attend. This is a bit of an experiment and if it is successful, we’d love to start a new tradition for DR Live!
We will be back in a few weeks with some more information on BRAVADO-CON!!!!
See you soon!
