What Happens When You Die?

It’s time for another Rules Ramble with Jonathan! Death and dying in the world of Dystopia Rising are tied heavily into the setting. The Zombie Apocalypse story means the concept of Death is always close by for our characters. In fact, when you character dies in Dystopia Rising, you actually get to enjoy an entirely different side of the game. So let’s talk about a side of the game that you may not know much about, particularly for those folks that are new to the game.

Life Cut short…

When your character finishes their Bleed Out count without getting healing, or gets a Killing Blow delivered to them while in Bleed Out, you are dead. D-E-A-D. But for characters with the Infection surging in their bodies, that’s not quite the end.

• If it is possible, you should remain in play as a corpse for no longer than 10 minutes to allow for opportunities to interact with the dead character. (DR Corebook, p. 208)

There are a few reasons to stay behind as a corpse:

First, there is actually a Skill in game that can resurrect a character that recently died, known as Master Faithful Will (DR Corebook, p. 140) — provided they can Target you as a corpse. This is a rarer skill in the game, as it requires a veteran player with at least 75 XP to be able to select this skill.

This skill allows someone of your same Faith that gets to you before that 10 minute timer is up to throw a white packet, spend 1 Resolve and stop you from losing an Infection. There are even items that let them use the Skill on people not of their same Faith. Better make buddies with that friendly priest! You still experience a Grave Mind Scene if this skill is used, so we’ll talk about that next.

Lastly, staying as a corpse allows enemies or other players to take things from your Supply Bag (which is a CvC action), allows Gorgers to cannibalize the corpse to gain Body, or even let your friends experience a role play opportunity as they react to finding your body.

You can choose to ‘sink’ into the Mortis Amaranthine when you are ready, going out of character and holding a hand to your head or wearing a green headband. Any items you still have on you are taken with you into the Mortis Amaranthine. You don’t have to wait the entire 10 minutes (especially if no one is around to find you), but you should give a reasonable amount of time for folks to react and respond to your death.

After Death: The Mortis Amaranthine

When your character dies in game, their body is claimed by the Grave Mind and absorbed into the Mortis Amaranthine. This normally appears to your character as if murky tendrils are dragging your body beneath the ground, but this is mainly a trope to explain why you disappear out of character. In the fiction books of Dystopia Rising, the decay of the corpse happens much differently but we don’t have the SFX budget of Hollywood!

Once you’ve spent your time as a corpse, you’ll proceed to the Logistics building. In DR:TX, this is known as the Grave Council Annex and is located in the building known as the Hopi Lodge. This is the same place you’ll come for your NPC shift, so it’ll be easy enough to find. The first thing we do is congratulate or console you on your death, and make sure you have water and space to decompress. Death isn’t really a “lose scenario”, but sometimes you need a few minutes so the adrenaline can wear off. It’s important to take care of the player too!

From there, our STs and Guides will make sure that the GRAVE BELL is rung, signaling to the other players and designated Groundskeepers (Guides that specialize in running Grave Mind scenes), that someone has recently died. This also lets players that want to use a Death Brew or the Necrokinetics Skill know they have an opportunity to do so. These powers allow another player to sit in and observe the Death scene by your side, provided you consent and give them permission to be there.

Once the Groundskeepers arrive, they will walk you through the next steps and mark on your character sheet the changes that happen. The Groundskeeper will also have a short discussion with you that will help them build a better Grave Mind scene by understanding how you died, working with you to choose an appropriate Fracture, and helping them tailor the scene to your character and their backstory. Once you are ready, the Groundskeeper will lead you through a Grave Mind Scene tailored to your character.

Now, this is a Rules Ramble, so let’s address the mechanical impact of death:

The Price of Death

A few things happen mechanically upon death:

• You lose 1 Infection. (p. 95, DR Corebook)

  • If this leaves you with zero Infection, your character is permanently dead and will return as a zombie instead. The ST will work with you to create a unique undead threat to plague the town for what is known as your “last walk”.

  • There are ways to regain lost Infection in game, including the Pallor Mortis procedure and the Candlepin Medical Kit. Gaining new Infection costs 10 XP per point and can only be done at your home game or a national cross-network event.

• You gain 1 Fracture. (p. 180, DR Corebook)

  • Remember, Fractures cannot be resolved for the first 2 hours after you gain one and they can prevent you from using certain Anomaly Skills and equipment while you have one.

• If the character is not permanently dead, when the character finishes the death scene they emerge with full Body and 5 Mind points remaining unless there is a plot or mechanic that changes this amount. They can choose to spend 1 Resolve to return to play with full Mind points.

  • If you do NOT lose an Infection (say, someone with Faithful Will was nearby), you may NOT spend an Resolve to return with full Mind Points.

• [DR:TX ONLY] The Groundskeeper will assess your Grave Tax. This is an optional story element, reinforcing one of the laws of the San Saba. When someone dies in our game, the Grave Council normally assigns them a tax based on how they died. This is meant as an avenue for story, not as a punishment, so the Groundskeeper will help you understand how to opt in or out of this experience.

• Dying also cures you of most diseases or psionic effects you might be suffering from, restores Mangled limbs and lost organs, and ends any other effects that do not persist after death.

One final oft overlooked rule is that if you want to OPT OUT of a Grave Mind Scene altogether, you can simply spend one Resolve and return to play with full Body, but only one Mind Point (p. 183, DR Corebook). You still lose Infection but you do NOT gain a Fracture as you did not have the traumatic post-death experience within the Mortis Amaranthine. (You also miss out on a neat personalized scene, but sometimes you gotta get back to your friends quick!)

Next week, we’ll talk a bit more about what happens during and after the Grave Mind Scene with the Groundskeeper. Stay tuned for Part 2!

Faction Work Orders are HERE!

Howdy Vados!

Jonathan here with a quick update for our November event, BLOOD FEAST! I know I said I was making one last blog post on Wednesday before game, but now you get a last-last blog post instead!

This weekend will be premiering the next stage of the Work Order mechanic in our game!

We’ve put most of this on the website, and you can find the details HERE.

The TL;DR of this is that there are three types of Work Orders now in the game:

• Starter Work Orders can be completed ONCE per event, and include tasks like exploring the site and doing basic behaviors of Dystopia Rising. These are the primary way you can earn Basic Society Membership with a Faction.

• Settlement Work Orders are released periodically at the General Store and involve an out-of-character task that must be completed, like refilling the water and ice for NPCs at Ops or cleaning up garbage around the camp. If you complete these, you’ll get a reward of Brass and CAPS for the group that completes them.

• Faction Work Orders can be completed by folks with at least Basic Society Membership in one of the Factions of Bravado. These will involve more complicated tasks that are thematic to the faction and they might involve combat, exploration, roleplay, or CvC. Once completed, you can get a reward based on your level of Society Membership. You can complete different Faction Work Orders, but only ONE for each faction and some rewards can only be collected once no matter how many you complete.

These Work Orders are designed as a kind of “silent ST” that can help give you direction to get involved in the game and story we are sharing. Since you can do them on your own, you get to control when and where you do the tasks. For those that might hit moments in the game where they aren’t quite sure what to do next, Work Orders can be a great way to kickstart off activities that will help you experience the world of Bravado and Dystopia Rising.

Some commonly asked questions about Work Orders:

• Q: Can I complete both a Starter Work Order AND a Faction Work Order in the same game?

• A: Yup. Once you complete a Starter Work Order you get Basic Society Membership, so that means you can immediately complete a Faction Work Order for the faction you just helped.

• Q: What are the favored skills of the Faction?

• A: These will be listed on the Faction Work Orders this weekend, and I’ll have these updated on the website soon. Only so much time until game and I still gotta pack!

• Q: Can I do a Work Order on each of my characters?

• A: Sure! Each Work Orders can be completed once per event, per character, so if you have another character invested in a faction have at it.

Plus, at the end of the game we will be tracking how many Faction Work Orders are completed. If you have a vested interest in seeing your favorite Faction or NPC group succeed, make sure you complete a Work Order!

That’s all for today! See you tomorrow!

Blood Feast

Good morning! It’s Jonathan here with time for one last Rules Ramble before our November event, BLOOD FEAST.

I’ve posted a few notes about the nature of disease in Dystopia Rising, HERE.

I’ve posted a brief summary of the Disease mechanics in the book, with Part 1 HERE, and Part 2 HERE.

With the book out of the way, I’d like to tease a bit of other mechanics you might see this weekend, particularly ones that might be used by some nefarious enemies and NPCs.

INFLICT DISEASE: A single strike that causes a disease to be inflicted at stage one/two/three. The enemy will call “INFLICT DISEASE: [NAME OF DISEASE], STAGE <LEVEL>”

One call in particular you need to know about is INFLICT DISEASE. This is a Skill often used by monsters like diseased Zed or Raiders, but can enter play in some other interesting ways. This call can be countered in a few different ways.

• If it is delivered as a Ranged or Melee Strike, then the Avoid skill can completely negate the Strike. Plot can’t kill what plot can’t catch!

• If a Inflict Disease strike is not Avoided, a member of the Mutant Lineage can spend 1 Resolve to call “Mutated Immune System, No Effect!”. Remember, the strain advantage only protects you from the INITIAL source of the disease, so once you are infected you are impacted by INFLICT DISEASE calls like normal. Use your Resolve early if you want to avoid Disease!

• If the Inflict Disease call is delivered as an Area of Effect or Sound of My Voice call, it cannot be Avoided.

• This skill is most commonly delivered as part of a Cannibalism attack while you are in Bleed Out. Remember, while in Bleed Out you can’t use most skills, so it’s not normally possible to avoid an Inflict Disease call like this. Mutants can still use their Strain advantage, though!

• If you have been Inoculated against a particular disease (see my blog post HERE), then you can call “No Effect, Inoculated!”. However, particularly infectious Diseases can OVERPOWER your Inoculation.

  • If you try to use this effect more than once an hour, the NPC can call “OVERPOWER, INFLICT DISEASE” and you’ll have to either Avoid the strike or be infected with the disease. Inoculation is a temporary protection, but won’t last during a long fight.

Lastly, this is a bit of a Spoiler (sorry!). Sometimes a source of INFLICT DISEASE can be a trigger to causing Diseases to get worse. This means that an infection can quickly become deadly if you are exposed to it again and again. Best to avoid those monsters completely!

POISON DAMAGE: (Damage Augment) Add “MIND DAMAGE” to spike damage attack. The Target hit loses an amount of Mind points equal to the damage called INSTEAD OF LOSING BODY.

Particularly nasty or infectious monsters can sometimes use “Damage Augments”. These modify a normal strike to also do an additional effect. Normally, this is things like Lineage Bane or Body Damage, but one particularly terrible call is POISON. This is normally used by tribes of Raiders that coat snake venom on their weapons, or particularly poisonous Critters.

If you are hit by a monster that is using POISON damage, instead of losing Body damage, you lose MIND points! This means it will be harder to use that next Skill later, especially once you run out of Mind! This is a particularly insidious type of damage, as using Avoid to block a small source of Poison Damage often costs you as much as the damage would have inflicted in the first place.

The only Damage Augment more deadly than Poison is RADIATION, as when you take Radiation damage you not only lose Body, you also lose Mind. It’s like a combination of Poison and Body damage in one Strike!

We have a few more days to go, but I can’t wait to see everyone at our November event. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence I’ve mentioned these two rules above. :D

Introduction to Disease Mechanics, Part 2

It’s time for another Rules Ramble with Jonathan! This week is continuing our coverage of the Disease Mechanics in the Dystopia Rising Corebook! Today we are learning about how you actually deal with the Diseases you encounter in the game. This might be SUPER important soon, considering that our November game is dealing heavily with a Disease problem in Bravado…

This is a long post, so apologies in advance. It’s split basically into two sections - Researching a Disease and Resolving a Disease.

If you missed my first part of this post, you can find Part 1 HERE.

The full Disease rules can be found starting on page 190 in the DR: Evolved Corebook. You can download a free copy of the rulebook HERE.

When a Disease first starts to spread in the game, there are number of ways that your character can deal with it. For this next game, we are also adding an additional mechanic to “opt-out” of the Disease experience in case that’s not a story you want to tell.

Let’s look at a sample Disease, Bad Brain, from the DR Corebook on page 206, and pay particular attention to the Resolution section at the end.

Bad Brain Disease, commonly spread by most types of Raiders

RESEARCHING A DISEASE

So your town is in the middle of an Disease Outbreak. Oh shucks. What can you do to find out how to fix it? Once you encounter a strange new Disease (like a Disease that isn’t printed in the book like Bad Brain), the first thing to do is to learn more about it!

• When you use Basic Medical to examine a person, you can identify the Disease they are suffering from for zero mind using the “Check Status” mechanics. The infected character will reveal the name of the Disease they are suffering from and the current Stage of that Disease they are suffering from. This is the good place to start, but how do you learn more?

Luckily, the Corebook actually has a mechanic for how this works. Characters wishing to research a new Disease can do so per the mechanics on p.186 of the DR: Corebook. 

• After 20 minutes examining the patient with Lore: Medical, a character may spend 5 Mind points to learn more about the Disease and learn ONE fact about the Disease. Each 5 Mind points spent in addition to this may learn one additional fact about the vectors of transmission, stages, or treatment conditions. 

• If a Research Center room augment is used, the character with Lore: Medical may learn TWO facts instead of one when they spend 5 mind to research.

• If a Doctor Ottoman’s Disease Control Kit gizmo is used, the doctor may learn THREE facts about the Disease by spending 5 mind and 5 minutes of roleplay with an infected victim. This is a MUCH faster way to Research and doesn’t require Lore to use. (But what kind of doctor doesn’t have Lore: Medical?)

• These mechanics will see play through a series of RESEARCH CHALLENGES during our November event. These will be found normally in the Research Center in the Terminal Station Depot. Our goal is to be able to provide these answers quickly, without making folks wait for someone at the Post Office or have to track down an errant Shan or Jonathan.

So let’s talk briefly about how you build a Treatment Plan. Once you understand a bit more of how a Disease impacts the patient, you can be begin testing ways to cure the Disease.

A Treatment Plan will generally consist of a few things:

• Time - How long you need to spend treating the Disease

• Components - Some particularly deadly Diseases also require the use of item cards to fix. This is often an item that is expended, like using Infectious Material or a healing brew of some kind. Sometimes, the cost simply requires you to have something like a Candlepin Medical Kit that is used but not expended.

• Mind Points and Skill Use - A resolution to a Disease will generally cost some amount of Mind points to complete. Generally, this cost goes up as the Disease gets to a worse Stage. Most Diseases are cured by some combination of Lore or Medical skills.

• Treatment Frequency - A Treatment Plan will instruct you on how often a patient needs a treatment, whether it is one treatment or done over multiple stages.

• Stages of Treatment - Each stage of a Disease will be treated in a different manner. Generally, the challenge of treating a Disease increases as the Stage goes up.

• Remission versus Cure - Some Diseases cannot be permanently treated, but rather sent into Remission. They are still infected, but most of the negative effects are avoided. Other Diseases can be cured completely.

• Role-playing Requirements - A treatment will generally provide some kind of guidance for what kind of roleplay might be required during the process. Some Diseases might require a blood transfusion, while others might simply need you to eat a hearty meal.

You can always spend MORE resources that a Treatment Plan lists, but there will always be a MINIMUM amount that is needed to be successful.

For instance, in the Bad Brain cure above, if you didn’t have all the Research completed, you might need to guess and spend 15 Mind points for the Treatment Plan. Since it’s over the minimum 10 Mind needed, the cure works but you wasted 5 Mind points that could have been used on something else! It’s important to be thorough in your Treatment Plan so you can conserve your valuable Resources.

Once you have developed a Treatment Plan, you can begin to try to RESOLVE a Disease.

Resolving a Disease

Diseases generally need to be resolved in some form or fashion. There are four main ways to deal with a Disease, and a 5th way that will be available for our November event, BLOOD FEAST. Remember that Mutants can resist an initial source of Disease by spending Resolve, but once infected they still need to be treated like any other patient.

• Treatment - Common Diseases like Bad Brain and Radiation Sickness have well known ways to permanently fix the problem of the Disease. Once a cure is known, it can be applied by any character with the right Skills and materials as part of a Treatment Plan. Often, curing a Disease will simply reduce the Stage of the Disease by one step, but sometimes a Treatment just removes the Disease completely - especially if it’s still at Stage One.

• Remission - Some particularly deadly Diseases may not be able to be cured right away. In these cases, the Disease is simply suppressed for a short time, much like how you might temporarily relieve a Fracture. You are still infected by the Disease, but you do not suffer most of the side effects for a time. Since you are still infected, it means you might even still be contagious, so doctor beware!

  • If the Disease is somehow reactivated (like through another source of infection, or not getting timely Treatment the next game), it starts at the same Stage you were at before the Remission started.

• Inoculation - When a Disease is particularly contagious, the most common way to stop this is to actually prevent the Disease BEFORE it infects the patient. If a Disease is in an Outbreak stage, an Inoculation is a simple procedure for any character with the Basic Medical skill.

  • A character with Basic Medical may Inoculate an uninfected character by spending 5 mind and 5 minutes of roleplay protecting the patient from a particular Outbreak Disease. The next time an INFLICT DISEASE effect is used on this character, they may call “No Effect, Inoculated!”. This is only a simple treatment, so some particularly deadly Diseases might even overpower an Inoculation effect after an exposure. It’s always best to avoid the Disease source altogether!

• Equipment - The gizmo Dr. Ottoman’s Disease Control Kit is a powerful tool when dealing with a Disease. The effect of the Master Medical use is particularly potent, as it renders a patient IMMUNE to a Disease call for a short time.

  • Requires Master Medical. User may spend 10 Mind. After 5 minutes of Full Engagement Role-Playing taking samples from a Diseased Target, user makes a 2nd Target without the Disease immune to the 1st Target's Disease until the next 12s. The protected character may call “No Effect” until the next 12s when exposed to an INFLICT DISEASE mechanic. This is superior to the Inoculation effect as it cannot be overpowered.

The last way you can deal with a Disease is unique to our November event:

• Natural Immunity (OPT OUT MECHANIC):  

  If you would like to OPT-OUT of this Disease plot during the November 2021 event, you may write NATURAL IMMUNITY on your character sheet(s) before Game-on and if exposed to a situation where you would contract <REDACTED> at any level, you may call “No effect, Natural Immunity”. This immunity cannot be applied to any character, other than your own, through any in-game mechanic.

That’s about it for my Disease summary. Sorry for the REDACTION, but no Spoilers yet!!! Next week, we’ll divert a bit to talk about some common Rules and Skill calls that might be important during our upcoming event!