It’s Jonathan here with our next weekly blog post for the upcoming event, VOX POPULI! This is the leadup for our May DR:TX event written by Heather Halstead, Overarc ST for our Season Closer, and Operational Storyteller for Season 5. Today we will talk a bit about the BIG CHOICES you will be able to make during our season closer as your characters can decide the final fate of the sky-city of Waking Prime. Your choices will matter and will determine the future of the San Saba!
We have a lot in store for the finale of Season 4!
We have a special LIVE Q&A planned on our DR:TX Discord server on Thursday, April 20th at 7:00 PM CST. Join us in this voice chat on Thursday to hear from Heather and Jonathan about the next episode; Vox Populi, and answer your questions about SURVIVING THE WAKE, our big siege-style fight at the end of the event.
Our next event will feature options to use the ZIPLINE and the POOL at Camp Kachina! Make sure to pack those swimsuits! Tickets will go on sale soon for the Zipline Passes!
Our Feedback Form is still up for our last event! Did something really amazing, exciting, or tragic happen at game? Was there a person who helped make your time better and welcomed you to the community? Perhaps nominate them for a Community Achievement! Tell us what you loved about game so we can make more of the content that you love and enjoy. Conversely, if there is something you did not enjoy, or something which needs to be addressed, we would really like to hear about that too.
We’ve added some new ways to spend your hard-earned CAPS from the last event. Check out the new items you can purchase with your Community Action Points!
TICKETS FOR VOX POPULI are on sale now! don’t miss OUT ON YOUR CHANCE TO MAKE A BIG DECISION!!!
THIS POST WILL DISCUSS A FEW LIGHT STORY SPOILERS FOR OUR NEXT EVENT, SO WE HOPE YOU ENJOY WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!
Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team.
I’m sure all those Resonant Raiders showing up in Bravado had nothing to do with what’s happening to Waking…
The Best of Bad options
This is a bit of a repeat from Heather’s post last week, but it bears repeating:
A central theme in any zombie post-apocalypse, to Dystopia Rising, and to our setting in Texas is “the best of bad options.”
You will rarely find a solution to a problem that is perfect. Complication drives story. Our world is deeply flawed, and that is what makes these stories exciting and impactful. At Dystopia Rising: Texas we want to encourage you to explore roleplay about making difficult choices and then living with the consequences of those actions. What does that look like for your character? How do you grow from that? Or how does your sense of personal ethics slowly degrade in a world that constantly asks the worst of you? Can you feel like a hero while knowing saving those people meant dooming others?
Like we mentioned last week, we’ve spent the last two months gathering all your ideas for the Fate of Waking. Both in research, letters, form submissions, and interactions with NPCs, we are creating a story to let you enact some of these plans.
But there is no “perfect” solution.
While there’s a bit more granularity in the decisions and events that will occur during the game, each of the decisions you make during VOX POPULI will lead to one of three possible “endings” to the crisis facing Waking Prime.
Emergency Land Waking near an established settlement
With the right choices, you may be able to “land” Waking in a (mostly) controlled fashion somewhere in the San Saba.
This choice will still cause immense chaos, ecological damage, and will greatly impact the power and numbers of the people or faction that location represents. The proximity to Waking will tie that area or faction deeply to the politics of the Board and will reshape them in significant ways for Season 5.
The Board will be unhappy, but not actively antagonistic to the town’s choice.
Keep Waking in the air, no matter the cost
Great sacrifices may have to be made to achieve this, but it will be possible to keep the floating skyship-city in the air, despite the failure of the Capacity Engine.
Waking will continue to leak pollution and runoff on the area it sits over, causing ecological damage wherever it passes, but the Board’s Seat of Power will be maintained. No faction or location will be specifically removed or heavily reduced.
This Choice represents the Status Quo, and allows the San Saba Board to continue business as usual.
Shoot Waking from the Sky
The Rook has a plan to end the threat of Waking once and for all and intends to remove the Board’s seat of power with extreme violence.
A skyship of this magnitude will crash land with the force of a high yield bomb and will annihilate the faction and the area for miles in every direction, resulting in untold lives lost and ecological devastation that the area has not experienced since the Hiway War. The area the destroyed skyship-city crashes into will be decimated, and the faction and Waking will be largely wiped out.
The LCs will have to choose where the husk of the destroyed city falls, and which faction is impacted by the destruction.
This is an open act of aggression against the Board and will have long-term consequences for the story and Bravado heading into Season 5.
The time for new ideas is over.
There will be no Option D.
choice points and you!
The choice on where Waking will land (or crashes), will be decided by your actions at a new mechanic location inside the Depot called THE CRISIS CENTER. We will dig into this aspect of the event in a later blog post, but we want to practice Radical Transparency with some of the BIG CHOICES you will be able to make during our season closer.
The FALL of Waking is a CHOICE of physics and gravity, and hard choices.
During this event, your LCs will have a chance to decide what exactly happens to the flying skyship-city of Waking Prime, the current capital of the San Saba Territories. The doomed city is falling from the sky slowly, but inevitability. Through your actions like sacrificing parts of the city to gain elevation, shifting ballast to change the direction it is falling, or creating a burst of engine speed to hasten its demise, you will be able to impact the trajectory, destination, and the elevation of the city throughout the event.
While most of the choices you make at the Crisis Center will apply to one of the three resolutions above (Controlled Landing, Stay in the Sky, or Crash Landing) there will be a few planned Choice Point Events that will determine major decisions in the eventual destination of Waking. With the help of your allies and certain away mods, you will be able to take charge of how the fall of Waking resolves.
We are sharing WHEN these choice points will be made in advance, so that LCs who want to be a part of that choice can be present. This will help you plan around player events and NPC shifts to make sure you can participate in the “voice of the people”.
Here are the three times to plan for:
Friday @ 12:30 AM
Saturday @ 11:30 AM
Saturday @ 6:30 PM
During these times, Waking will be in an area or situation where a choice on a new trajectory can be made. Moving a flying city as large as Waking is largely a matter of momentum and speed. A slight change in the course can dramatically alter it’s final destination, but the mass of the ship is not easy to move. It’s not some Road Royal race car that can turn on a dime, it’s a monstrous behemoth that is on a collision course with Widow’s Peak.
Let’s talk a bit how this will work…
STEERING THE FALL OF WAKING
During these three Choice Point Events, you will have some agency in deciding where the city of Waking goes next. During each choice, you will get to make some limited choices by “steering” the skyship-city through your actions.
Waking can be moved by firing all the engines in the appropriate district, or performing a similar action that changes the trajectory of the city. Wherever this occurs, there will be a chance that some portions of the city will collapse, and will no longer be accessible. In addition to a tremendous loss of life, you will not be able to evacuate valuable technology, refugees, and resources from that portion of the falling skyship.
During a Choice Point, you will have a few choices to make:
The LCs will choose to move Waking either to the Left (West), Center, or Right (East) or to have it hold position.
The choice point will be made based on the majority vote of those PRESENT AT THE TIME, and this challenge will be TIMED.
If a consensus or a majority is not reached by the end of the timed event, Waking will automatically move forward one step on its current trajectory.
Momentum means that a gargantuan airship is descending forward whether you make a decision or not. If you don’t take action to change the fate of the city, it will reach it’s eventual destination of Widow’s Peak. With a massive sandstorm rolling in from the Dune Sea, wind currents mean that some of the obvious easy choices for safely landing Waking Prime are no longer an option.
Heather has prepared a slightly [REDACTED] map of the remaining choice points below:
The options above represent a pyramid of choice, loosely based off our map of the San Saba Territories.
To illustrate, let’s assume Waking is the Red Dot, approximately where it will be at the start of the event as the fall begins.
At each choice point, it can move ONE SPACE to any circle that is connected to with lines.
Waking can only move forward on the pyramid map and cannot go backwards. Sorry!
So for Choice 1, Waking can either move to the Left, towards Widow’s Peak, or to the Center, to line up with Bravado and Essex.
It is important to note that if the City isn’t moved in a certain way, it will eliminate some options as Landing (or Crash) sites.
As you make decisions (or fail to make one), the momentum and mass of the city will limit your future options for a choice. For example:
In order to land (or crash) the city on top of Killhouse:
Choice 1 would need to move it Right towards the center line.
Choice 2 could either Hold Position, or move it Right.
Choice 3 would need to be either move to Right, or Hold Position.
A couple of different choices here will drastically limit your options.
If you moved the city to the Left on your first decision at Choice 1, there is no possible set of choices that will allow you to land on top of Killhouse.
Even if you managed to get the skyship to take a hard right at each remaining choice, you won’t be able to steer the ship sharply enough to reach Killhouse. There is no multi-track drifting on this trolley problem, sorry!
Your early decisions will be the MOST impactful on the eventual destination of Killhouse, so these will be the crucial events to attend if you want to have a say in the fall of Waking.
Your LCs will need to be strategic in where they move Waking and at what point.
Don’t worry if this is a bit confusing!
We will have an NPC there to guide this and help further explain the mechanic during each choice point, and we have a neat Discord Q&A planned with Heather and Jonathan on Thursday, April 20th at 7:00 pm if you have any other questions that might come up.
Wrap Up
That’s it for today Vados! The time to start politicking starts now! What decision will you make in the fate of the San Saba? Can your vote at the Choice Point be swayed by Brass or favors? Will you vote to shoot down the city, or help maintain the status quo? Will you be able to steer the finale towards an enemy or a friend?
Waking’s fate is in your hands. And the San Saba will never look the same. TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW!
Pre-register and get your choice of NPC shift to maximize your experience!
See you soon Vados!
