Photo by Allana Marie
At Dystopia Rising New York, we have an amazing player base who’s always asking us “How can we help out?” Unfortunately, at events we’re often so busy we don’t have a good answer other than “Um, pick that thing up and put it down over there.” So between events, we came up with five things our players can do if they want to help out the staff.
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Photo by Allana Marie
Larp is about making meaningful decisions: your character is presented with a challenge and you have to decide how to act. During a war game like our June Premiere event, Dogs of War, you’ll be given the chance to make choices that will decide the Battle of Requiem.
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Photo by London Belli
There’s a disconnect between the problems that larpers talk about and the problems that they really care about. Some concerns are pretty clear and constant: people want a safe game with supportive players, for example. Other worries are more insidious. One in particular rarely gets talked about… it’s one of the biggest problems our players worry about before the weekend, but rarely gets a second thought afterwards. We’re talking about the bunk problem… and our unique solution to it.
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Photo By Shawn Smith
At Dystopia Rising New York - and to a degree, the network as a whole - we think a lot about new players… how to recruit them, how to make them have a good experience, and how we can bring them back for more. And this emphasis is important! New players are the lifeblood of any larp, and there’s a good reason we focus on them. But sometimes, in our zeal to improve the experience for new players, other groups get left behind. And one group in particular needs some attention these days: returning players.
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Photo by London Belli
It’s finally here… Honor’s Fall is tomorrow! As you get ready to join us for our game of the year, we wanted to offer you some tips for how to prepare for the game. Some of these are very practical, while others are emotional: pre-gaming for moments of frustration or anxiety will help you manage your experience at the event, and help you enjoy it.
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Photo by London Bellie
Dystopia Rising New York is a Character-versus-Character (CvC) oriented game. Despite this, there’s not much more CvC than you might find at other chapters - even at Honor’s Fall, there have not been many instances where one character attacked and killed another. Instead, our CvC has many levels.
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Photo by Allana Marie
This is part of a series of articles that attempts to make some of the more confusing rules calls simple. In this one, we look at some reminders from our Rules Guides. Don’t forget to check out Part 1 (particularly for Damage Reduction) and Part 2 (about ways to incapacitate someone).
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Tips for Travelers
With over 100 travelers expected for Honor’s Fall, it’s possible the locals might actually be outnumbered by visitors. While we’ve designed our modules, such as the Hot Zone and the Bacchanal, to include people with little to no experience with Requiem, traveling to another game, particularly for the first time, brings specific challenges. How do you get involved when people already know each other, and probably already have specific plans? We have two tools to offer travelers, as well as a request for locals to help them out.
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There are games, and then there are games. A Dystopia Rising chapter typically runs between 8 to 12 games a year, and for the most part, they’re relatively uniform: a chapter has a typical level of attendance that remains constant, plots players can expect, and plenty of time for socializing. However, once a year we all get to host a premiere event, and when we do, we want to make it into an event. It is, after all, our game of the year. And so we’ll promote it, offer more build, and do everything we can to attract players. But doing so makes a problem for our players: with great hype comes great expectations. How can a large event live up to expectations?
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Photo by London Belli.
Before we talk about the dirtiest word in Dystopia Rising, let’s call out one other problematic larp behavior: splitting (also called black-white thinking). Splitting happens when we look at something as “all good” or “all bad” instead of realizing that the thing is actually a mix of both.
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