Howdy Vados!
It’s Jonathan here with another signature DR:TX Rules Ramble, leading up to our September live event THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD! This is our second part of our Season 5 finale, led by Heather Halstead and Jonathan Loyd. 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 some teasers about our upcoming event!
Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team, including Max Pohlmeier, Lauren Guzaldo, Sidney Betzina, Maddeax Cole, and Jason Dumas.
The Premise
Revenge.
It’s been the only thought on Arthur Lovelace’s mind. Brought low by the Bravado Rebellion, the Chairman has spent the Burning Season meticulously planning his last attack against the insolent town. There will be no offers of surrender. No place of succor.
No stone can survive, no workstation intact, no land viable, and not a soul left alive. He seeks to scorch the earth on which Bravado stands, so that the town cannot survive the new future they have created
In the last days of the War of Antlers, Arthur Lovelace turned his own firepower on the town of Essex, punishing them for daring to defy his iron-clad rule of the San Saba. He rained shell after shell onto a helpless population, collateral damage be damned. You know that he is capable of worse, especially for an enemy that denied him so long. His revenge is long coming and has finally arrived on your doorstep.
Bravado is staring down the barrel of an all-out attack from the powerful Praetorian Guard, lead by Lawrence Graves, and joined by the mercenaries of the Red Ledger. Utilities, supply stores, helpless civilians, infrastructure - it’s all a target. The town will need to rely on its allies, the Bravado Militia, to hold the line against a brutal enemy. Many of these soldiers will not return from this battle. But war demands sacrifice.
The ace card in your hand is Arthur’s white-hot rage. He’s too focused on hurting the town, too focused on salting the earth, too focused on revenge to see what is right in front of him. A town eager to break the back of the last remnants of the San Saba Board once and for all. You can use his anger, and his memories, to your advantage, if you can survive the wrath of the Chairman. He will be here in person to see this ending, and that’s your chance.
You get one shot to stop Arthur. Make it count.
Inspiration & Tropes
This season in Bravado we have focused on bringing some new elements of Survival Horror to the forefront of the story. In our tradition of Radical Trust, we want to share some of the inspirational bits of media and movie magic that we feel help capture the themes and feelings of our upcoming event. If you are looking for a movie to inspire your role play for this event, here’s a list of our favorites to get ready for THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD:
Assault on Precinct 13
The Raid
Seven Samurai
One big theme of the weekend in September is “revenge”. For the Chairman of the Board, Arthur Lovelace, everything he had dreamed of has been taken away. His dream of a future is gone, and there’s only one person to blame in his mind - the town of Bravado. This attack on the town isn’t about ego or victory, but simple and petty revenge. Arthur doesn’t want Bravado to succeed, even if it costs him everything to ensure that it happens. His mission of scorched earth is something that must be achieved no matter the cost.
Many of the stories this weekend will involve our characters being outnumbered, outgunned, and attacked by a vicious enemy that has cast aside any forms of fairness, ethics, or rules in the name of simply hurting Bravado. He’s here to hurt the infrastructure of the town, kill his enemies, and find some way to sooth the burning rage he feels toward the town. All that stands between him and his goal of revenge is the plucky townsfolk that stand in his path.
Like many of the movies above, this story will focus on the fights of the weekend. Several events will occur throughout the game, forcing you defend key locations in town and prevent serious damage to the things that make life easier in the wasteland. If you can hold on long enough, it may be possible to stop the Chairman for good.
Concluding Stories & Finale Events
In our tradition of Radical Transparency, we want to be clear about some of the content of this next event as the architects of this overarc story. When Heather and I were faced with the idea of wrapping up the major loose threads and events from Season 5 and telling our BIG story, we reached that the conclusion to that the story was simply too big to try to cram into one event. With villains like the Prince Undying and the Chairman, Arthur Lovelace, we can’t really do them justice if we try to make them share the limelight. We’d have to cram way too much content into one event, and it wouldn’t really be the satisfying conclusion we want to see.
So, we won’t make them share the story, or the conclusion.
While the May event was PART 1 of the conclusion of these stories, and we told the story of the Prince Undying, Sister Mammon, and Felicity Redfield we started with the revelation of Barogue three years ago. In September, we will use PART 2 to tell the story of the War that finally reaches Bravado, and you’ll be able to personally see to the final end of Arthur Lovelace, the San Saba Board, and the final end to the Rebellion story. Instead of rolling dice and pinning item cards to a bulletin board, you’ll need to fight actual skirmishes against enemy troops, defeat dangerous commanders on the field, and challenge the power of the Board itself in a final conflict. You’ll need to fight against some intelligent foes that use tactics against you and defend points around the camp from dangerous attacks. We are very excited to let you face the Chairman in a way that feels worthy of this foe, and we want to allow it to be the entire focus of the story.
With the natural ‘break’ created by our National Event in October, our focus for September is to wrap up the stories we told last season and create a new beginning for the stories that happen after Downfall. Our new edition is coming soon enough, and these next few games are the last step of our transition of the story into the new world of Dystopia Rising Live.
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 set proper expectations for our content. 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.
It’s important to watch for descriptions, situations, or events that you might want to avoid. You may find new limits that are unknown to you because the matter never came up. We encourage you to take the necessary steps for your own emotional safety. We want you to be comfortable with the types of horror in our events so you can enjoy the thrill of the zombie apocalypse and the nightmare creatures we introduce into the game space.
It’s 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! Remember, you can always use the OK Check-In System to choose to leave a scene, even CVC!
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 May event.
Overall, this next event focuses heavily on the themes of SUDDEN VIOLENCE, PHYSICALLY DEMANDING ACTIVITY, and WAR TIME STORIES. These can be some serious themes, so let’s talk about some content warnings of note for THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD:
SUDDEN VIOLENCE, JUMP SCARES, DEADLY SURPRISES
The Board threats this weekend don’t intend on fighting fair. They will use ambushes, artillery, snipers, and more to prosecute the Chairman’s final revenge on Bravado. The rules of war are kind of thrown out for this event, so the enemies aren’t interested in taking captives or prisoners of war, and are here to cause some damage.
These will be intelligent enemies, capable of opening doors, picking locks, and finding other ways to surprise our residents of Bravado. They might plan nighttime attacks, even on sleeping characters, and sudden bursts of violence should be expected as the attack continues.
While you’ll be able to mitigate some attacks through clever uses of Combat Units, War Supplies, SES Credits, and more, not every attack will be preventable. Some of these fights will be brutal and have a few surprises you’ll have to experience in game.
Physically demanding activity (running, simulated fighting, etc.)
The goal of this weekend is to bring the War of Antlers home to Bravado. That means instead of using dice-rolls or the War mini-games we used last season, we intend to instead have several large set-piece fights over the weekend. This is primarily a combat overarc, and will involve your characters surviving deadly threats over the weekend.
These battles will require a certain amount of coordination, planning, and adaptation to shifting tactics, and might stretch for longer than a normal combat encounter. Some of these fights will require kinetic events to be completed during the fight, providing some options for non-combat interaction, but these may be physically demanding activities.
War and War-time stories, particularly involving off-screen conflict against enemy forces.
When the Chairman attacks Bravado, he is intent on salting the earth and ruining the town for generations. This war has finally come home to Bravado, and the major threats of the weekend will be the soldiers and mercenaries still loyal to the San Saba Board. These will be stories of brutal conflict and heroic sacrifice, and there will be elements of the horrors of war.
The consequences of the battles this event could carry over into future events if unchecked and being you might find your characters actively involved in sending soldiers to their deaths, risking other settlements prosperity, or investing your valuable resources in the war effort. For many of the Combat Units, this will be a last chance for them to shine before they ride off into the sunset, so we want to provide opportunities to make big decisions over the weekend.
the last hurrah
One last part of the FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD will be the sunsetting of several in-game mechanics we’ve used over the past few seasons, as I discussed last week.
With a big shift for the new edition coming, our big focus this season will be on reducing the mechanical complexity in our games. Over the years, we’ve introduced a lot of custom mechanics, custom threats, custom blueprints, and more, and it’s time we get back to the basics. One big part of the new edition change is that we will not be able to introduce new custom mechanics for about the first year of play as part of our new license. This change means we’d rather start to wean our players off these custom mechanics early, rather than adding to the culture shock of the new edition.
The following custom mechanics will be sunsetted during our upcoming season. As of the end of September 2024, the following mechanics will be removed:
LOCAL BLUEPRINTS & ITEMS
LOCAL DISEASES
LOCAL THREATS
SES & THE SES BUY LISTS
FACTION BUY LISTS
PLAYER LED FACTION ZOMS
We are planning one last hurrah for these custom mechanics during our September event, THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD, including new ways to spend your remaining SES credits, use and purchase Faction Items, and use your other cool custom items. Here’s how this will work:
SES Credits will be able to be used to either trade in for items, currency, or powerful buffs over the weekend as part of a new temporary SES Buy List. If you want to instead change the outcome of the story and the final fights, there will be an opportunity to use your remaining SES Credits to pay off the mercenaries of the Red Ledger and convince them to abandon the cause of the Chairman. Without their help, the final fights could be much easier, provided you can coordinate with the other Strikers to pitch in and change the tide of the fight.
Player Faction ZOMs will be posted for FREE for this last event. You will be able to enjoy these unique buffs for the entire weekend without paying the usual 50 Currency to activate the ZOM. Bring the full power of your crew to fight Arthur Lovelace without breaking the bank!
Faction Buy Lists items will be available for purchase for anyone with Society Membership, regardless of the level. You’ll be able to buy a Basic, Proficient, and Master item from a faction of your choice for FREE, and you can even buy additional items for your other factions for Brass as normal (1 for Basic, 5 for Proficient, 10 for Master). These items are no longer limited to one purchase per event, but keep in mind these items will expire at the end of the year.
War Supplies and Combat Units will have unique uses during this event, and there will be ways to even ‘cash out’ your excess War Supplies from last season for Scrap or Currency. Your Combat Units will provide powerful Upsurge effects and allow you to hold the line against the Board’s invasion of Bravado. Any War Supplies or Combat Units not used during this event will simply be collectibles for the future, and have no further uses over the season.
Any existing local item cards or local blueprints obtained in September will still be usable through the end of the 2024 year, ending with our game in December. Since all Local Mechanic Cards normally have an expiration date of 3 months, this will mean that you can still use the items for all three remaining 3.0 games we have planned for 2024 (since our October National DR Live event won’t use 3.0 item cards). At the end of the year, these items will be fully removed from our game.
Our Work Orders and Research mechanics will continue through the end of the year, but you can expect a few updates to the Work Orders in the absence of the San Saba Board. We expect Work Orders to continue into DR Live, but the Research mechanics will be replaced with the rules in the Player’s Guide once the new edition launches. For now, you can still research your hearts out!
wrap up
That’s it for today, Vados!
We hope that you will come join us for our next event, our second part of the finale of the Season 5 story. We have some fun surprises in store for you during this game, and we hope that you are ready to try and ensure the FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD. Will you be able to help to finally serve justice to Arthur Lovelace? How will you protect those you love from the vengeance of a petty tyrant? Can you save your town from the imminent destruction?
Next week we will recap some of the important events from our last game and catch up to speed on all the story continuity you’ll need as we face the Chairman! See you soon, Vados!