Photo by Allana Marie
Dystopia Rising has a lot of rules. Most of these rules tell us how to play the game: everything from how to swing your boffer to how to make a Red Mist. But not all rules focus on game play - some rules help us come together as a group and play together. While the rules of the game are all written down (and most of them available for free), the rules of play are a bit more complex.
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Photo by Allana Marie
Our May event, The Reckoning, concludes a plot arc that began in January. We’re very excited about what we have planned, including the final showdown with Jim Jones, and the return of Anton Anastasia. We’re extremely excited to see what our players do when he shows up. But as we prepare for the end of The Reckoning, we have to ask… how do we end a story in a larp?
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Photo by London Belli
A big appeal of Dystopia Rising is hitting your friends with foam swords. It’s a fun activity: if you hand non-larpers a bunch of foam swords, they’re probably going to start playing around and swing at each other without worrying about hit points or genre. However, it’s also a tremendous tool for immersion, and one often overlooked by larps with more expensive designs. Because combat is so hard to simulate, but so integral to many of our narratives, boffer larp offers immersion unrivaled by other forms of larp.
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Photo by London Belli
Previously, we talked about your character not as a person in a story, but as a tool you use for storytelling. As larpers, our characters are precious to us, and often we identify with them strongly. However, we create them, and they aren’t real people but rather tools we use to role-play. As such, we should make sure they’re an effective tool, designed to help us have fun and perform the way we want. So how do we do that?
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Photo by Allana Marie
There’s no wrong way to larp… as long as you’re having fun and respectful to those around you. For the latter part - respect - we have many tools and techniques to make sure we treat other players properly. This includes the concept of “steering,” making out-of-character decisions for the sake of other players. Examples of steering include making sure you have consent, avoiding problematic or triggering role-play and purposely including other players in activities. But what about having fun? Sometimes, players should steer themselves with out-of-character decisions to make sure they have a good time.
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Photo by London Belli.
Research! The word attracts the attention of some players, and inspires dread in others, but since the beginning, research has been part of Dystopia Rising. However, we don’t have many rules describing how characters can perform research during an event, and each chapter develops its own techniques to introduce new information to players. So how do you, as a player, perform research in Requiem?
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Photo by Allana Marie.
Running a Dystopia Rising game is a balancing act. On one hand, you need to give people something to do - it’s a boffer larp so there has to be some sort of challenge or, at the very least, an enemy to fight. On the other hand, every challenge that you put in the game is an obstacle and that obstacle takes effort to overcome. If the challenge is too little, the players get bored.
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Photo by London Belli.
As we approach The Anarchy, there’s a question about one of Requiem's most controversial decrees: should the faithful be allowed to preach their religion in Requiem and the Fold? Rather than answer that question, we’re presenting arguments for and against.
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Photo by London Belli.
The Dystopia Rising rules system is huge… it consists of a 207-page rulebook, hundreds of prints, and an array of storyteller documents. With the size of the system, it’s easy to get confused about some of the rules. This is the first in a series of articles that attempts to make some of the more confusing rules calls simple.
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Photo by London Belli.
We’ve talked about Character versus Character (CvC) conflict (several times), but we never really addressed the role-play aspects of in-character rivalries. In a setting like Requiem, our focus on CvC doesn’t mean that we just have to deal with the direct conflict between characters, but the role-play of having another player character as an enemy. How do two players… who we expect to cooperate out-of-character… play bitter enemies? Here’s a few pieces of advice to help you navigate this dilemma.
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