Howdy Vados!
It’s Jonathan here with a special DR:TX Rules Ramble! This week, before we get started into our previews of our April event WHISPERS FROM THE DEEP, led by Noah Goodman, I’d like to discuss some changes that are ahead for our game on a broader network level and what it means for each of you.
TICKETS FOR OUR APRIL EVENT ARE ON SALE NOW! WILL YOU BE READY FOR THE CHALLENGES ESCAPING FROM DEEP INSIDE THE HUSK OF WAKING?
If you had a great experience at our last event GIFTS OF SUFFERING or had some suggestions for how we can improve, we’d love to hear from you! Did you get to take one of the Crowns of Suffering for yourself? Did you hear Brother Agony explain why he was “helping” the town? Did you help the Rebellion fight the first battles of the war against the San Saba Board? Let us know!
Fill out our Feedback Form!
Nominate another player for a Community Achievement!
Our photos for this post were taken from our March 2023 DR:TX event by the talented Heather Halstead.
tl;DR
In our DR:TX tradition of Radical Transparency, I’d like to cover a few big changes that are going to be implemented over the next few months, and briefly recap the past few months.
Here’s the basics, or TL;DR:
We have a new license contract with Michael Pucci, the original creator of DR.
The “national” team doesn’t really exist anymore. Everything goes through the local game now.
We have some changes to story planned to happen by the end of our season to bring our setting in line with our new contracts:
The scope of setting is going to change to focus more on Bravado and less on the San Saba Territories as a whole.
Some of our local mechanics need to change, notably our San Saba Sundries and the SES Buy List items.
Some of our DR:TX locations and factions will need to be adjusted to avoid certain Canon content from the published materials.
DR Live is still coming, and we are currently in the feedback process on the Player’s Guide and Guide’s Guide. There’s still a lot to do, but the progress is very cool!
This is a bit of a longer blog post, so buckle up. Let’s cover the specifics in detail:
Changes, changes, changes
In early January, a serious incident occurred on the DR: Michigan Discord with Kyle Elliot, the previous owner of the DR Network, that led to a week of anxiety that nearly ended the entire game as we know it. His behavior caused the closing of several chapters, and led to a lot of serious conversations about how to proceed in a network where the owner was not really someone we could reprimand. For a few days, there were very real talks about ending our chapter and contracts entirely, and it was a lot of stress for basically anyone involved with DR, players and staff alike. Shortly after, Michael Pucci made the hard decision to reclaim his license rights to the intellectual property from Kyle and formed a new company called Larp License LLC. The silver lining of this drama is that we can now license the game from the original creator of Dystopia Rising, but that means that the entire structure of “DR National” will need to change as part of the process.
In the weeks that followed, I took over the business of DR:TX from Shan Lindley as the full owner of the Texas chapter, though this means very few actual changes for our game. I’ve been in charge of the day-to-day affairs since January 2023, so most of the stuff that needs to be done every month like taxes and bills was already a thing I was responsible for. Most of this was simply updating contracts and paperwork, and updating various services we use as a business. We’ve completed most of this process now and in early February, we signed a new business contract with Larp License LLC for the right to continue running Dystopia Rising events. For our part, this has meant business as usual for our chapter with a few key differences.
First, “DR National” no longer exists in the form it did before the change to our licensing contract. In fact, it doesn’t really exist at all. The new contracts are designed in a way to prevent the kind of pseudo-franchise decisions that were common in Kyle’s National network previously from happening at all. The DR Network Support team run by Michael and Catie will be limited to the licensing support stuff, like collecting license fees, maintaining the databases, and updating general docs for our games to use to run their chapters. The new structure means that that the local chapter and not “national” is now the primary source for conflict resolution, rules changes, and pretty much everything needed to run the game.
You can find a great description of this new organization on the new website, Dystopia Rising Live. The other main difference with this new Network Support team is that we don’t really have any group with overarching control over our games like we did before, other than some rules set out in our contracts. The new focus of the Network Support is complete transparency, and publishing new materials for Dystopia Rising, and you can see a lot of these changes over at the new landing page of the national website.
Secondly, we’ve gained a spot and a voice on a new National Advisory Board where we meet with the other owners of DR chapters across the nation to decide how we structure big changes to our games and maintain consistency across the network. This is kind of the new “National”, and Amber and I hold the seats for our game. We’ve even recorded the first meeting that anyone can reference here on the Network Meeting Recordings page. This is a much more community-driven process and it’s enabled a lot more communication between the various owners of games. As long as we stay current on our payments for the license, we get to be a member in good standing on this board. This is a great way to contribute to the growth and development of each branch, while also make sure everyone is on the same page for our setting and our game. We have our second meeting coming up soon, so stay tuned for more updates here.
Lastly, we have some new rules and frameworks that we need to abide by as part of our new licensing contract. Our contract allows us to use the Dystopia Rising world under certain conditions. While most of this is common sense business needs like maintaining contracts, community engagement, bank accounts, insurance and such, we have a few promises we need to keep regarding the genre of the game we run, how we use the licensed canon content, and what the scope of our local game is. These obligations mean we need to make a few immediate changes to keep our game in line with the new contract and make sure we can comply with the rules going forward.
How does this impact us?
As part of our new contracts, we have pretty much total control over our own “town” narrative space, providing us a canvas for creative storytelling and the immersive experience you know and love. We get to control our own local story, and we can tell a narrative that fits into the thematic essence of the world of Dystopia Rising.
However, this creative freedom comes with some responsibilities to adhere to our scope of setting, genre guidelines and canon world details. Right now, we need to make some changes to fully uphold these responsibilities.
Our goal is to implement these changes by the LAST GAME of the season in MAY 2024, and fully shift our story and setting over the summer.
In order to meet these guidelines, I’d like to talk about the immediate changes you’ll see as we continue our season.
Scope of Setting - the big one
Currently, the scope of our game needs to change to focus away from the San Saba Territories as a whole, and instead bring the story back home to Bravado. As part of our new contract, we no longer have any actual or implied broad authority over the entire state of Texas and instead only really control our town of Bravado and the immediate surroundings. This is a pretty big change to be honest, but I’m confident that we still have plenty of stories to tell about our town.
This means that far away areas like Barogue, Widow’s Peak, the Clutch, Star City, Fort Worthless, the Dune Sea, and even Essex will need to take a step back from our story as we continue. These places won’t stop existing in our story, but they will fade in priority as we shift our focus closer to Bravado. It also means some of our player story areas like Lucky Town and Falken Castle will likely remain in the background going forward. Some areas may need to even change slightly, but I’ll cover that shortly.
However, we’ve only scratched the surface of some big mysteries of closer areas that ARE within our scope and nearby locations like the crashed airship city of Waking, the strange underground Facility below the town of Bravado, and the nearby Junkerpunk settlement of Drywater are great examples. We still have some fun ideas that can build on these locations and help draw our focus back to Bravado proper.
Luckily, Heather and I were already planning on a similar shift of focus in our stories and the new Bravado Rebellion and war against the San Saba Board will provide us an excellent story reason to support these upcoming changes. As the war continues, you can expect to see Bravado cut off from some of the other areas in the San Saba, and several of our allies and enemies moving closer to our town so they can remain relevant in the stories to come. I’m working on a new local map of our surrounding areas, and Heather and I have a lot of cool plans for updating our setting over the summer with our new and current Storyteller Senate.
Genre Guidelines
This is probably the easiest change to consider, as I believe we do a pretty good job of enforcing our genre in DR:TX. While the technology of the wastelands remains at a pre-Industrial Revolution there are a few specific exceptions of our setting that push this limit. However, there will be some impact on the complexity of our Local Rules and Mechanics. I know I love crunchy custom rules, but I honestly think this is a pretty good thing overall, especially for new players.
The general genre of DR is described as “brutal, charming, and believable enough”
You can find more information about these two Guidelines here:
One big place that will be impacted is the San Saba Sundries, the items tied with the various factions of our game. Our Factions are generally tied to the larger world of the San Saba Territories, and these other locations in the setting. While these aren’t being removed right away, we want to encourage you to use these items for big and cool scenes as we finish out our season. It’s possible we will try to revamp these over the summer, and I don’t want you to miss out on getting to do the cool thing with your factions.
The second place impacted will be our SES Credits, so we want to give you time to use these points before the end of the season. While these were originally tied to the Red Ledger, a national faction created by the DR:TX team, the way these National factions work in the future will be determined by plot kits released by the licensing company and future publications. This is another big area we will need to revisit over the summer, so be prepared for changes here.
Lastly, the scope of our War Mechanics will eventually be reduced, as these are still heavily tied into the greater world of the San Saba Territories. We will likely keep some of the core mechanical framework in our other local setting stuff, but we want you tell big stories with the Rebellion as we continue towards a new and exciting future for Bravado.
Canon World Details
The last big change is that we need to be careful with the impact of our story on Canon events and canon world details of the greater world of Dystopia Rising. A big chunk of our setting is based on the 2.0 Dystopia Rising sourcebook, Embers of the Irradiated Wastes, but most of this material is canon material not specifically licensed for our game to use ‘in game’. This means that while our setting and characters can always refer to big places like Star City and New Austen, they will always need to stay just ‘off camera’ and we can’t really directly interact with them. However, some of our in-game locations and events tread a bit too closely on this canon content and will need to change.
In general, we won’t be able to really use NPCs that are mentioned in the books (like General Mustang, the Violet Princes, etc.) without written permission, impact any major city or faction in the published material (like the Rangers), or effect much outside the confines of our immediate local area of Bravado. We won’t be able to blow up whole cities, kill off major characters, or really cause any major changes to the setting outside of our town.
One of the major reasons behind this change is that Michael intends to write several new books to support the next edition of Dystopia Rising, including the first updates to settings locations since 2.0. This is a real exciting update, as it will be a great opportunity to update the canon of the world with the stories we’ve told since we started DR:TX back 12 years ago. I’m currently working on a document to send to Michael regarding major canon events of our game over the past 12 years. My goal is not to invalidate these years of story, but make sure that the big things get to be honored in any upcoming publications concerning the setting of the Lone Star and the state of Texas.
While most of our DR:TX locations are in the gray spaces of the map and won’t really impact the canon setting as a whole, our story of the San Saba Board will come to an eventual conclusion. While this was always the plan, The Board represents a major settings defining organization, so you won’t see anything similar emerge from the ashes of its fall as the rebellion continues. The fall of the Board will be designed to move our local setting back closer to the status quo described in the books with individual locations being mostly unconnected. Likewise, this means we will never really impact Star City, Fort Worthless, or General Mustang in a major way, as these are published canon locations and characters. Even as we move to end the war with the Board and the new Mustang Loyalists, you can expect our villains to be a bit more local in the future.
This also means many of the larger San Saba factions like the Grave Council, the San Saba Republic, the RRC, the Junkerpunks, and more will need to also adjust their setting focus and where they are based. We want these factions to continue to matter in our stories to come, so you’ll see these groups establish a few more local faces and nearby locations rather than focus on far away locations outside our purview of the hometown setting. But it’s not really possible to keep tying these groups tied to a bigger San Saba area as a whole, so we need to bring the focus back to Bravado proper.
Lastly, Essex, the City of Light and Sound, will need some significant changes in the near future. Originally, this location was designed as a stand-in for the canon location of “New Austen”. While we didn’t really ‘replace’ New Austen, this location was always supposed to be nearby to Essex, and we just eventually stopped referring to it as we shifted to 3.0 and even removed it from some in-game maps. It’s my hope we can still keep a lot of our local lore about this location intact or make some slight adjustments, but it’s technically outside the range of our setting and too close to the canon location of Austin. We’ll have more information on this soon.
DYSTOPIA RISING Live
As the new edition of Dystopia Rising approaches, we will need to be mindful of the various unique items, our impact on the canon story, and the scope of the story as we move forward. However, the most exciting part of all of this is that a BRAND NEW EDITION of our game is on the way. All of these upcoming changes are really just going to help us support the shift to a new edition, and I’ve never been more excited about the future of our game and our shared stories.
The next edition of our game, Dystopia Rising Live, is currently in the feedback and editing stages with the various owners of the National Advisory Board. I’ve had the privilege of reading the new Player’s Guide and Guide’s Guide and I’m very excited about the new materials. We’ve been going over the books, suggesting edits and updates, and preparing for the next round of feedback from our Admin teams and other Directors. We’ve already seen some really promising changes to the books based on feedback from the owners, so it’s definitely a community-led effort to get these books ready for our games. Once that step is done, you’ll likely see the new rule books for yourself soon enough, and a chance to provide your own feedback.
If you watched the last recorded Advisory Meeting, you likely saw a preview of the brand-new database and a teasing glance at the character builder for DR Live. However, this is only the first part of what we will need to start true play testing, so there’s still many, many, months of this process ahead. There are some possible play-test events happening next fall, but a lot of that is still very tentative and in no way set in stone.
there is no real firm timeline for all of this — DR Live is still a ways off.
While the core books are in the process of being edited, there’s still a lot of work to do on settings materials, blueprints, threats, and more. Only a portion of the books are at the editing stage, so this isn’t something you’ll need to worry about immediately. There’s a lot more to finish before we can move to larger play tests of the next edition, but it is slowly getting there. As we get more information on the next edition, we will share everything we can with you, so stay tuned to see more. I’m already chomping at the bit to write a few Rules Rambles over the new mechanics.
In the meantime, you’ll start seeing some new Local Items that start including some teases of future mechanics and ideas, and we may even schedule some play-test DR Live combats and similar mechanics soon if you’d like to be involved directly in helping get the next edition ready.
wrap up
That’s if for today Vados!
Next week, we will dive into the WHISPERS FROM THE DEEP, our next DR:TX event led by the talented Noah Goodman. Rumors have it that the recent occupation of Waking by the Mustang Loyalists has stirred up some trouble deep in the husk of the city, and new and dangerous threats are emerging from the depths.
Tickets are on sale now, and next week we will talk about the premise of the event, some of the inspirations you can consider, and some of the key mechanics for the game. See you soon Vados!
