DR Live Rulebooks
Updated 7/1/26
If you’ve had a chance to visit our Most Improbable partners at the Dystopia Rising Live website, you can find the complete listing of the available source books for the next edition, handy dandy download links, and a timeline of when to expect the next books in the series. Michael, Catie, and their whole team are hard at work building content for the new edition, and this is THE place to find the books. They’ve done an awesome job so far, and it’s a lot of neat material.
In this section, I’ve compiled a short guide to help you decide which book to read first:
Books & Rules — Dystopia Rising Live Larp
Our photos for this post were mostly taken from the DR Live website, with permission. You can find the artist accreditation for each of these pieces inside the front cover of the books.
What does a ‘living rulebook’ mean?
Unlike previous editions that you downloaded from places like DriveThruRPG or ordered physical copies of the book, this next edition is envisioned as a living rule book. The edition that you can read right now is the current version of the rules, but you can expect to see periodic updates as we continue in the new edition. The Dystopia Rising Live website is the best place to find the most up-to-date files, for FREE.
Instead of needing an entire edition update to make changes to the rules, Michael and his Network Support team will be able to update the file on this website as those changes happen in real time. If ever some rule is found to be problematic or there’s some error we missed, they can just upload a changed book and fix the problem right then and there. No more typos staring you in the face years after the book was printed!
where to start
The network page lists OVER A DOZEN books for this edition. That’s a LOT of books!
A common concern I’ve heard is being confused on where to begin, so the main focus of this guide is to help understand a bit about what is in each book, and how important it might be to your game play experience. Luckily, while Michael and the Most Improbable team have prepared a LOT of content for DR Live, you don’t have to read it all.
Start Here
The Player’s Guide
The Player’s Guide should be your first stop in your DR Live reading. This is a book you probably shouldn’t skip, but it’s only about 100 pages or so. That’s not nearly as long as core books have been in the past, and it’s a fraction of the size of rule books like D&D or Vampire. If this is the ONLY book you have time to read, it’ll generally be enough for most players.
Not only does this book have the full list of Impact Skills, Development Skills, Professions, and more, it also has a lot of the detailed rules for building a character in the system, as well as the core rules for play. You don’t have to read the whole thing in one sitting, and I recommend breaking it up into smaller sections as you go. This should be a book you read a few times if you really want to master the new mechanics, but it’s very streamlined and easy to understand.
New Player Quick Guide
The New Player Quick Guide is designed to quickly explain the core pillars of Dystopia Rising Live, introduce basic mechanics, and filter out the higher complexity systems for players who might find themselves overwhelmed by the larger Player’s Guide.
This book will run you through the main play styles available, the basics of boffer combat, and important meta concepts like “immersion” or “collaborative storytelling.”
For those looking to jump right in, the book also features a variety of Sample Starter Characters with recommended skills for different play styles. This can cut down on what you need to learn, letting you jump right into the action with your own unique character and provided skills from the samples.
virtual play Guide
This book is ONLY useful is you are planning on attending a virtual event of Dystopia Rising Live. Many branches across the network offer a chance to earn XP and items in a virtual setting from time to time, usually hosted on Discord.
If you only plan on attending in-person events, ignore this book.
The Virtual Play Mechanics use the same character sheet but replace in-person behaviors with dice rolls to simulate challenges. Crafting is also done through a bespoke Virtual Crafting System, producing items that can either be mailed to you as cards OR kept in a virtual inventory for use online.
Recommended but optional
Strained Ancestry
In the book Strained Ancestry, you will find additional information regarding the evolution and inspiration behind the different Lineages, details describing the unique evolution of each Strain, as well as Strain variants with specific advantages, disadvantages, and requirements for play. This is a great resource for inspirations for your character and backgrounds, and includes some optional advanced rules for Strains.
This book details two new variants of each Strain, each with new advantages and disadvantages. Each Strain will have a Civilized and Wasteland variant.
This Standard Strain found in the Player’s Guide is the “default setting” for character creation, and it is easier for new players to engage with (less mechanics and less nuance is simpler).
Strain Variants will allow you take on additional costuming and role play challenges for your character in exchange for slightly different Strain Advantages and Disadvantages. Some of these advanced rules can bring you into conflict with the other survivors in the game, so these should be considered carefully.
We recommend against taking a Strain Variant if this is your first time experiencing Dystopia Rising live.
DEvotion & Faith
In the book Devotion & Faith, you will find additional information regarding the various in-game Faiths and wasteland religions you might encounter in the apocalypse. It also covers how to create a Cult, and options for playing the antagonistic Doomsday Cults.
This book details the NINE different in-game faiths, including a list of their common tenets, how they fit into the society of the wasteland, their practices and rituals, and even a few more specialized subsects of the faiths.
If your character is a Priest (someone who has picked of the two Faithful skills) or just a member of one of the many faiths of DR, this will be a must read. You can learn a lot of this as you go in-game from other players or study it later it you prefer.
The Player’s Guide doesn’t have a lot about faiths inside, unfortunately. To help out, I’ve created a list of the current documentation for faiths on our DR:TX website, that you can read for yourself.
Read more about Choosing a Faith in DR Live
Save For Later
illicit business
This book details the criminal organization known as The Black Market in Dystopia Rising Live, which is unlocked by taking the Development Skill called Criminal Influence.
I’d consider this book SPOILERS if you aren’t part of this group. If you don’t want anything to do with illegal activities in-game, you can skip this one.
This book covers the Underground Economy, the hierarchy of criminal factions, and the central Criminal Pillars. The Black Market is made of 3 core groups: Vice & Violence, Social & Mental Control, and The Dead Market. Each Pillar features their own unique focus and specialization.
A killer’s Mind
This book details the shadowy organization known as Murder, Inc, which is unlocked by taking the Development Skill called Criminal Influence. Anyone who has played The Elder Scrolls games might see similarities between Murder Inc and The Dark Brotherhood.
I’d consider this book SPOILERS if you aren’t part of this group. If you don’t want anything to do with MI, then you can skip this one entirely.
Included is the organization’s rites, practices, and separation into 3 sub-groups; Adherents of Betrayal, The Silenced Knell, and The Watch of the Bone Chapel. Each group has their own focus and specialization.
A Grave Place
The last few books of note that you might want to read concerns the mysterious Mortis Amaranthine. These books can kind of reveal some of the mystery behind death and dying in the world of Dystopia Rising, so I’d consider them a bit of a SPOILER in general.
One cool thing about this book is that it details the Timeline of the Apocalypse and exactly when the zombie plague first began. This is an important book to read if you like the lore of the world, and it details a LOT about the Grave Mind.
If you plan on engaging with Necrology at all, this is a must read. You can find this info starting on page 46.
social creatures
This book details information on how players can interact or join in-game societies including the Network-Wide societies that are primarily encountered at events like Downfall, Uprise, and DeathCON.
For play at Dystopia Rising: Texas, this primarily gives the mechanical limitations for joining societies at our game or other branches. Society Memberships primarily work as a way of showing your allegiance or loyalty to a group and interact with a small collection of mechanical items or procedures.
As these mechanics are limited and require your personal interest in joining a society, this is a book that can be saved for later.
Staff Requirements
Guide’s Guide
This book is almost entirely for Storytellers and Guides as it details how you design stories for DR, build your region of the world, and discusses setting materials. This book can be a neat read for normal players but is an absolute must for staff.
A very useful section is the opening Genre and Technology summary. You can also find helpful supplementary articles on the DR Network website.
Threat Guides
These next few books are ones that I would consider SPOILERS, but have also been made available to everyone, including players and staff alike. These can provide an important glimpse behind the scenes of Ops and the NPC Shift, but these are entirely optional to read for most players. If you are on Staff, particularly as a Rules Guide or Storyteller, the monster guides should be recommended reading.
Corpse Catalog, the Zombie Guide - This covers all available zombie threats you can expect to face off against. If you want combat against zombies to bee a surprise, I’d hold off digging into this one, a luxury Guides and staff unfortunately do not have. This is a great look at the common threats of the DR Live world and what to expect at most any event.
Banners of Blood, the Raider Guide - This covers all the Raider threats you can expect to face off against. It also features a lot of history and lore about where Raiders come from. If you played previous editions of DR, you’ll notice Raiders are significantly more dangerous. Raiders are fearsome threats and its worth considering to run or hide when they show up. Lots of very cool narrative materials, if you don’t mind SPOILERS.
Animal Almanac, the Critter Guide - This book is designed as a tool box for your local staff to create new and terrifying mutant flora and fauna to populate the wasteland. This outlines all of the various Threat Skills that might show up on a Critter, based on their tier of threat, the scope of play, and the environment and surroundings the creature favors. This is primarily useful to Storytellers as they craft new and unique critters to pit against players.
Pathogen Primer
This book covers the core of Disease Mechanics in Dystopia Rising Live, including both common diseases found in the wasteland like Bad Brain Syndrome as well as Apocalypse Grade Diseases like The Omni Plague.
A variety of common diseases are featured on threat stat-blocks so this one is a must-read for any Guide or staff member. Their core mechanics and cures/treatments are also found here, which is important for any player seeking to research a disease.
This book also includes mechanics on how branches can develop their own local diseases. So look out for any diseases that aren’t explicitly written in this book.
Standing Orders
This book covers the use of the four Network-Wide factions at a local chapter. It discusses the core culture, tone, and intention behind each of the societies to ensure they read the same at all games across the network. This book is almost exclusively useful to Guides, Storytellers, and particularly branch owners.
The Network Factions are detailed in Social Creatures
The Blacktide Hunters
The Ossuary Society
The Wells Society
The Arbiters of the Bond