Bravado Bones

Howdy Vados!

It’s Jonathan here with another signature DR:TX Rules Ramble, leading up to our August online event THE UNDYING PRINCE! 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 going to discuss how our online rules system, Bravado Bones, helps tell better stories!

Over the last two weeks, we have covered a bit of the premise of the event and why your characters might end up in the lost city of Barogue, and how crafting works in online in our blog posts. Check it out!

Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team.

a Ruleset for Online Play

It might be a bit obvious, but it’s hard to swing a boffer and call damage on an enemy in an online space. A lot of the Dystopia Rising mechanics are really meant only for live events, and they don’t translate well to an online space. So, to overcome this hurdle we first faced during the pandemic, we came up with a solution — a ruleset specifically for online games.

One of our talented staff members at the time, Sam Mars, designed the first round of our Bravado Bones mechanics, creating a way to adapt your existing DR character sheet into a new form for online play.

BRAVADO BONES is a Powered By The Apocalypse skin, originally adapted by Sam to use during our pandemic virtual game play. It is not meant to be a replacement for the Dystopia Rising LARP system, nor is it meant to replace the tabletop system published by Onyx Path. We use this ruleset during our online events, which we call “Lonestar Skies Virtual Events”. I’ve recently updated this ruleset to our new 1.1 mechanics, incorporating a few new ideas that have evolved over the years since we first designed the system.

Bravado Bones sessions are led by a Guide and are played by a 4-5 of Leading Characters (LCs). During play, the Guide will act as a narrator, storyteller, and referee.  This is a rules-light, collaborative Storytelling system, focused on the stories we tell together and not the mechanics.

Character sheets for Bravado Bones are generated from your Dystopia Rising character sheet and use your progress in game to represent your abilities in the virtual space.

Why bravado bones?

We believe that Bravado Bones captures the BEST thing about Dystopia Rising — the story we tell with our friends. During a module online, you will tell a story together, using the principles of “yes, and…” to tell an exciting, engaging story of how your characters survived the challenges of the wasteland. In the online space we get to do things we can NEVER do in live events.

As an ST, I can’t really pour a thousand pounds of sand on Camp Kachina to simulate a desert, and I certainly don’t have the budget to build a haunted lost city on our game site. In Bravado Bones, we get to explore areas of the San Saba we could never visit in game.

As a player, I might not be able to sprint across the battlefield in game thanks to an old injury, but in the Bravado Bones system, my character can speed into a fight in a way that I’ll never achieve in real life. I can do feats of daring that my old body could never accomplish in game.

As a character, I might imagine my character as this master sniper, but I know that Nerf dart will never fly 50 meters across the field to hit accurately on my target. But in Bravado Bones, I can be a marksman that never misses, or I can summon fire from my hands without the need for pyrotechnics.

In short, you get to be the HERO. And that’s really, really cool.

So let’s cover some important differences of Bravado Bones from the live events, past the obvious:

  • The rules are simple. There’s no huge rulebook, and only about 3-4 pages of actual mechanics for Bravado Bones. It only takes a few minutes to make a character, and your character sheet is only a few lines long.

  • You roll dice to determine your success during a scene. We will cover a bit more about this below, but the system is very simple, and uses a 2d6 mechanic to determine random rolls.

  • The rules system is designed for you to SUCCEED. Failure is boring, and the system is very forgiving, no matter how much XP your character has.

  • You get to be a bad ass. When you succeed on a roll in Bravado Bones, you don’t just kill a single zombie, you hack through dozens and decimate that horde with your awesome sword skills.

  • You cannot die in Bravado Bones. Unless you want to. Death is such a cool part of Dystopia Rising, and we can never do it justice in the online space. We want to reserve that experience for the live space, so unless you purposefully choose to die, you won’t lose Infection during a Bravado Bones game.

Let’s talk a bit about how this all works.

Bravado Bones Rules

We’ve posted all of the rules for Bravado Bones on our website, completely FREE! I’ll cover a quick summary, but there’s only a few things to read so take a look:

In Bravado Bones, we use your existing Dystopia Rising Character Sheet to build out your characters. You can find the complete rules above for how to do this and we will have some time on Friday before the event to help folks convert their character sheets. For now, let’s stick to the basics.

Each character in Bravado Bones has four main STATS. These will range from a score of [-1] to [+3], depending on how many total skills your character has.

  • COMBAT - This is the combination of all of your Combat skills, like Avoid, Combat Tactics, or weapon skills like Melee Standard or Firearms. You might use this STAT to change a scene with your combat prowess or skill at surviving a fight.

    • Because every character starts with 8 weapon skills to start, EVERY character in Bravado Bones has at least a [+1] in this score.

  • WASTELAND -This is the combination of all of your Wasteland skills, like Stealth, Foraging, or Enhanced Movement. You might use this STAT to change a scene based on your skill at surviving in the harsh environment of the wastes, or your ability to move about a location.

  • CIVILIZED - This is the combination of all of your Civilized skills, like Agricultural, Education, or Medical. This STAT might be used to represent your impressive skills at medicine or other useful trained skills, or even your general charisma and social prowess.

  • ANOMALY - This is the combination of all of your aberrant Anomaly skills, like Biogenetics or Telepathy, or faithful skills like Faithful Miracles. If you didn’t choose to be a psion, you might have a [-1] in this roll. This STAT is used to change things with the power of psionics, or to resist the foul influence of the Grave Mind.

You also have two POOLS, that you can spend during the session. You don’t have as many points overall to track, as every 10 points of Body or Mind equals one point in Bravado Bones. This keeps the math way easier!

  • BODY - This determines how much damage you can take during a scene. If you hit 0, you enter Bleed Out and will need healing, just like a normal game.

  • MIND - You can spend your Mind points to change the outcome of a roll in your favor. If you have a related Achievement, it works even better!

  • RESOLVE - This stat is not used in Bravado Bones, but instead gives you Freebie Points to customize your character. Maybe you think your character would be a bit tougher and have more Body, or maybe you feel like they are better at Wasteland than their STAT would suggest.

To use your STATs during a Bravado Bones session, you will roll some dice using the /roll command. You only have to roll for important actions, where the results matter.

You might notice that the STATS are the same as the four groups of Skills. Your STATS are determined by counting the total number of skills you have, less any PFAs you’ve earned.

A Bravado Bones character sheet is MUCH simpler by comparison.

At the heart of the Bones system is the dice rolls that make up a “Challenge”.  This is a series of rolls by the players to hit a difficulty number set by the Guide.

The core dice mechanic of Bones, for reference, is:

  • 2d6 + STAT (+/- Modifiers)

So, if you had a [+2] in your Combat STAT and you wanted to show off your skills with a rifle, you would roll 2d6+2 and describe how you use your Skills to impact the Challenge. Pretty simple, right?

To make a roll, you simply describe what your character is doing, and then make a roll using the STAT that the Guide tells you to use. The goal is to describe what your character is doing in a BIG way. It’s not simply a roll to see if you swing a sword at a zombie, it’s a roll to see how you CHANGE THE SCENE. You don’t throw a white packet at that Raider, your Pyrokinetics ignites the air around you with a bone melting fury, obliterating any foe that stands in your way.

Feel free to embellish, exaggerate, and generally tell us how you are being a bad ass. Bravado Bones is about these moments where you feel like a rock star, not about you rolling a bunch of dice to deal damage to a foe. Be extraordinary and tell a story that everyone will remember!

When you make a roll in Bravado Bones, there’s only a few possible outcomes.

  • Total Failure (2-6): You do not succeed at your narrative action, and your LC gets a consequence or complication.

  • Mixed Success (7-9): You succeed, but you have a cost or downside to the action, like a penalty on a future roll or losing Mind or Body.

  • Total Success (10-11): Your character achieved exactly what they set out to do, and you had no consequences or costs.

  • Heroic Success (12+): Not only do you succeed, you get to change the scene, and narrate what happens next! This is your chance to be a big damn hero!

There’s a few ways to improve your rolls by spending Mind Points or using your Achievements, gaining temporary bonuses to the roll through Advantage [+1] or Disadvantage [-1], or using things like [Pips] and [Tags], but that’s all pretty easy to learn as you go. The dice roll is the main mechanic you have to learn. You can read more in the Core Rules, if you want to learn more.

It’s pretty simple and intuitive, and our Guides will help you during each session, so don’t worry.

Bravado Bones is a simple, easy system to help you experience the terrors and mysteries of the Lost City of Barogue, and we can’t wait to show you more!

Can’t think why I posted a picture of Resonant Raiders. Weird.

I’ve Played Bones Before, What’s actually New?

Great question! Let’s cover the few main differences for our 1.1 Rule Set.

  • We’ve added [Pips] and [Tags]. In fairness, we added this at the end of the online season, but you might have missed the change. These are ways to modify rolls in Bravado Bones in your favor, past Mind points. Pips are a temporary [+1] bonuses that can be expended on a single roll, while Tags work like another PFA and allow you even better use of your Mind points. Both of these rules help simulate item cards and equipment in the online rules.

  • You can now gain [Threats], which are negative conditions that the Guide can use to create some risk in a scene. During a mod, the Guide can offer to refresh 1 Mind Point in exchange for you failing the next roll for dramatic tension. What kind of new stories can you tell with a dramatic comeback?

  • We’ve added a new type of permanent [Threat] called EXHAUSTED and INJURED. Our good friends at DR: New Mexico first pioneered these mechanics, so we’ve adapted them in Texas. When you enter Bleed Out during a mod, you get the [Injured] Threat. If you run out of Mind points during a mod, you get the [Exhausted] Threat. Each of these Threats creates a penalty to your STATS, but they can be healed in the soft role play rooms.

  • We have a custom mechanic for this event - [NIGHTMARES]. This might be a bit of a spoiler so reader beware, but I’ve posted the complete rules in our Temporary Mechanics.

  • In general, I’ve tried to provide a few more examples of what can happen in a Challenge in the core rules, and provided some neat examples of sample rolls and scenes. Maybe you’ll see a character name you know!

The Prince Undying, by Shan Lind

Wrap up

That’s it for today Vados!

Remember, Mod Sign Ups go live next week, on Monday! Don’t miss out on your chance to experience the nightmares and horrors of the Lost City of Barogue!

Next week we will cover some last minute Logistics before the event, and share some of the Story that happens as your characters begin the event. Stay tuned!