Dystopia Rising EVOLVED (3.0)

The Scope of Technology in Our Setting

The level of technology inherent to the DR 3.0 setting is roughly equivalent to the American 19th century (1800-1899). Where the following scope documentation cannot be applied, disallow any device invented following the year 1899. In our setting there are no humans, no computers and no automation.

Technology in Dystopia Rising 3.0 is Brutal, Charming, and Believable-Enough.

Transport:

Wagons, Caravans, Motorcycles, Automobiles from 1-5 Axles, Warfare Vehicles, Watercraft with and without Steam Technology, Airships, Locomotives etc. Vehicles should be robust and evocative of either amalgamated detritus, a keenly kept and artisanal ride, or the rare effort of an intellectual elite. Alloy metals allow for lighter chassises and stronger frames, advances in Psitech mean you can strap a psion down to the floor of some rides and the harder they scream the faster you go.

  • Caveats: Most transport vehicles are private and are often motorcycles, small land vehicles or ships. Only the elite can afford air transit and only the truly elite can afford to own their own. Sea travel is dangerous, but steam power lends sailors survivability. Railway-Locomotives are rare and owned only by the wealthiest and most powerful personalities and factions in the wastes.

Machinery:

Construction Equipment, Metal Furnaces, Engines, Appliances, and Farming Equipment. The Machinery of the setting is everything that is pressed, poured, melted and melded into a useful and (generally) metallic shape. Hulking, ponderous and totally mechanical - Machinery in the setting can assume the presence of complex alloys behavior in most cases and is generally going to be constructed of poured and cast metal - rather than forged.

  • Caveats: Machinery should be robust, heavy, largely unmovable outside high-effort scenarios, created for a purpose, and treated as reasonably easy to uncover (from pre-fall detritus) but incredibly difficult to manufacture in contemporary.

Mining:

Any technology that supports the industry of uncovering raw resources from the earth’s crust and extracting them for purpose. From Drills, Dynamite, Digging machines, Pans, Pickaxes and Power Tools to the design paradigms behind mining operations; how a shaft is constructed, how the surrounding land is impacted as a result of a mining operation, etc. - all resemble the technologies of the Klondike Goldrush.

  • Caveats: Because the technology emerged in 1910, Gold Dredging is the only Klondike Gold Rush Mining process not supported by the current Scope of Technology.

Material Sciences:

Hybridizing metallurgy, ceramics, solid-state physics and chemistry; the material sciences deal with all substances created by the fusion of other substances. Primarily in our setting this deals with the alloys and the level of technology supported by implicit access to blended metals. For example, we will see vulcanized rubber in our setting - the process responsible for mass producing vehicle tires. But we will NOT see stainless steel because the process for manufacturing it was invented in 1912. Materials in Dystopia Rising are like its other technologies, robust enough to have survived the fall, or simple enough to have been reclaimed. Mostly we see cast iron, copper, and occasionally repurposed, reclaimed steel. Any material that was discovered, or invented post 1899 should be treated as inexplicable and the result of oldcestor technologies beyond our ken.

  • Caveats: None, so far.

Textiles and Fashion:

Reclaimed, repurposed or upcycled, the fashion of the post-apocalypse is a story that’s seen a thousand retellings and, subsequently, has mutated and redefined itself endlessly since the loss of the defining cultural narrative that accompanied The Fall. While some of the most commonly held aesthetic values have been maintained (for example, nudity is often considered crude and risky), most of the Survivor’s ensemble is chosen on the basis of utility, convenience and occasionally, actualization rather than trends or styles. There is no unified look to a denizen of the post-apocalypse, but even the finest pureblood looks dusty and windblown.

  • Caveats: While it is reasonably true that new, clean, nice-looking clothes could be constructed and maintained in the post-apocalypse - in the interest of a unified genre and visual immersion there should always be at least a veneer of filth on the clothing of a Survivor or NPC.

Wave Technology:

An exception to the 1899 rule, radio and vision technology are understood, in the Dystopia Rising setting, to be significantly more sophisticated than the other technological disciplines. Radio stations exist and their physical locations are often subject to bizarre grave phenomena. Radio towers exist and extend a roughshod communication network across the Greater Wastes. There is some amount of understood overlap between the waves we employ over radio and the waves that carry the logic of the Mortis Amaranthine. But the nature of that overlap and the functional ramifications of it are the scope of plot, not this document.

  • Caveats: There is no video-calling in the post-apocalypse.

Grave Technology:

Though still a poorly understood science, the Grave Technologies are at least, now, recognized as one. Concerning the underpinning logic of the Mortis Amaranthine, the nature of Infection, Imprints, the cyclic reuse of matter via the Morgue system, the Sunless Gardens and the model used to communicate these processes to the layman, Graverobbers are the subject-matter-experts in this discipline. The Grave Technologies are the pseudo-science logic by which our world is functionally discrete from a nonfictional setting. The extent of the Grave Technologies and their ramifications are demonstrated at any given time by the Nationally Supported blueprints that exist in the world and the rules that support psionic play.

  • Caveats: Grave Technology should NEVER be used as an excuse to do bonkers shit in your setting. It is not magic and should not be treated as a catch-all for inexplicable phenomena. Grave Technology should be bizarre, uncanny, visceral or deeply cerebral. When interacting with Grave Technology, characters in the setting should never possess mastery over it, only a passing understanding and a working model.

Psi-Tech:

This technology deals explicitly with the physical structure and nature of psionic crystals and only recently has it been recognized by academics as substantially distinct from the Grave Technologies. Any Psionically Active thing, a descriptor which has been applied to plants, livestock, people and populations, manifests a crystalline, biological precipitate in the thinking-fibers of their bodies. Generally, this organic coagulate is called a “Psion Crystal” and can look like anything from a bulbous gallstones lodged in gray matter to splendid and multicolored crystals that grow in the gums of unfortunate psions to the tiny particulate-crystals in the blood of legendarily huge, aquatic monsters. These crystals, and their place in the model of the times, is still being determined by the efforts of wasteland scientists all over. But, the fundamental proof of the science as it is currently understood is that, Psion Crystals are captured Imprint.

  • Caveats: Psion Crystals are technically a form of fuel like gas or coal. But the consequences must be horrible. It should hurt someone, the idea of someone, or the ideals held by a population. Psi-Tech is not moral when used as a power-source or as a means to an end. Psion crystals can be removed from the brains of strains, but only with great pain and cost and such operations are generally fatal to the patient.

Medical Technology:

Surgeries, medication, our understanding of virology and pathology, Medical Technology covers any aspect of technology that deals with the curative sciences. Close to Grave Technology insomuch as the necrotic processes of the Mortis are eerily similar to the visceral processes of strains, but diverging at the moment of death. Much of the physical process of healing is quickened by the Infection that resides in all things. But what medical play the patient does see is bloody, painful, quick and generally concerned with “putting something back the way it ought to be” rather than a more high-minded description. Certainly some experts exist in this field, and can speak robustly to the practice.

  • Caveats: All medical technologies should have a brutal underpinning, a painful kickback, or a visceral and invasive process. Curative medicine is not well-understood in our setting and we do not have the tools to even perceive the molecular structures of the world. It is, however, incredibly difficult to kill a strain and so most of the slapdash efforts of sawbones work as well as they are expected to given the nature of the Grave and how it manifests.

Reclaimed Tech; Post-1899

None of this should work as intended, offer any insight as to the nature of the Pre Fall World or lead the Players to believe they have found some exception to the 1899 rule. Inert circuit boards, calculators and scavenged Nokia phones should be treated like raw salvage. All tech post-1899 must be approved by a member of the DR Network Support Team.

  • Caveats: Currently none.