How will you decide the Fate of Waking?
Waking’s fall represents a huge humanitarian crisis, plus the chaos of the Rook’s rabble rousing… So how do you get involved?
THE CRISIS CENTER!
It’s Heather here with our weekly blog post for the upcoming event, VOX POPULI!
This is the leadup for our May DR:TX event written by me, Heather Halstead, Overarc ST for our Season Closer, and Operational Storyteller for Season 5. Today we will talk about how The Crisis Center Works, some CVC Best Practices, and more!
TICKETS FOR VOX POPULI are on sale now! don’t miss OUT!!!
THIS POST WILL DISCUSS A FEW LIGHT STORY SPOILERS FOR OUR NEXT EVENT, SO WE HOPE YOU ENJOY WHAT WE HAVE IN STORE!
Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team.
“And how did you plan on paying your delinquent Grave Tax? Would you like to take advantage of our low-cost extended financing and payment deferral at a low APR of 320%?”
The Crisis Center
The Crisis Center will be set up for the majority of the game in the DEPOT (Cafeteria). Organized by Felicity Redfield, CEO of the Railroad Conglomerate, this is the place you will plan to rescue refugees, turn in needed supplies, or maybe sabotage efforts to keep Waking afloat. The Crisis Center is the primary place you will take ACTION to make one of Waking’s THREE OUTCOMES come to life.
There is going to be A TON of things to do from this board. We are working hard to really represent how IMMENSE the efforts are to affect Waking’s Fate.
This in character space will consist of:
A Map of Waking
Bulletin Boards full of ACTIONS any player can complete
A radio to facilitate occasional communication with Waking
A dropbox to drop your completed ACTION slips.
Here’s the mockup of what we are planning, courtesy of Heather
The goal of the Crisis Center is to have a very low threshold of entry.
Anyone can complete an Action from the Center and interact with the plot and have things to do that MATTER. But the Center will also provide large benefits to digging deeper into the mechanics to be strategic with your choices.
There will be over EIGHTY Total Actions available. NOT ALL OF THEM NEED TO BE COMPLETED. But I’d rather you guys have too many, rather than not enough. Hell, if you are like me and get overwhelmed by too many options.. Just pick one of the right color and go from there. Don’t worry about reading every Action on the board.
Every Outcome will have a color. So for example, all the Actions that advance the Emergency Landing Outcome will be on the same color of paper (probably green, but subject to change when we go to print.)
Some actions may not be added to the board until later in the event due to other mods that occur, so you may not see all 80+ up at game on.
There will be an equal number of actions for each outcome. And we are monitoring the total resource cost of each Outcome as well across all actions.
The Outcome that has the most Actions completed by 7:00pm on Saturday will decide THE FATE OF WAKING.
Just to highlight that again: Actions need to be completed by 7pm Saturday.
We will be tallying the actions throughout the event and will work to provide a running score for players to reference.
So, how do I use it?
The Basics
Walk up to the Bulletin Board
Choose an Action posted there that you want to complete
Use the provided slip to mark that Action “Pending”
Go complete the action!
Return to the Crisis Center, take down the Action from the board, sign it with your player number, get any guide to sign off on it and STAMP it COMPLETE!
Drop the action (and any relevant other materials) into the ACTION BOX.
BOOM.
You’ve just moved the needle on The Fate of Waking.
Action claimed by a pending slip!
Completed Action! This goes in the Action Box.
Actions will vary. Some of these actions are mods that you can request from Ops! Most of these actions are roleplay, resource gathering, or ZOM behaviors that you can complete without NPCs or a staff presence. If you need to be given a prop to complete it, the slip will tell you where to get that prop.
Each Action will be COLOR CODED and labeled as to which OUTCOME it is associated with. So, if your character’s goal is to Emergency Land Waking, take a look at all the GREEN slips of paper on the board! Those will be the actions you’ll want to complete to advance your OUTCOME.
Before we get into the more complex aspects of the Crisis Center, there are a few important rules I want to outline:
Each ACTION on the board can be completed ONCE. If there are actions that can be multiple times, there will be multiple copies of them on the board. But as a rule, one action slip = one instance of that action.
If you find a duplicate Action, please leave it for someone else if you’ve already completed one of the same action. For example, there might be three Action Slips that read “Send 10 Recovered Electronics to Waking”. Complete one, and leave the other two for other players. Or get a group together of at least 3 LCs and do all three. But no one LC should turn in duplicate actions.
Once an Action is marked “Pending” no one else can claim it until the “Pending” tag is removed. Pending tags may be removed if any action stays in this status for too long without being completed.
If you mark an Action as PENDING, you should work to complete it as soon as possible. This is a huge one! If an action is left pending for too long, the staff will remove your pending tag, and the Action will be able to be claimed by others and you will either lose out on that Action, or have to go reclaim it. We want to avoid situations where someone claims an Action, then gets stuck going to 3 meetings and 2 gravemind scenes and forgets, leaving that Action, and that VOTE, in limbo. There is no set time an action can be pending, because actions vary in difficulty level. We’re all going to work to use our best judgment and we ask you do the same.
You cannot mark Actions as pending that you do not intend to complete. The Bulletin Board itself should not factor into your strategy to beat out the competition at this event. The board is our way of helping players know what they can do to affect the setting, not a place where anything should be obscured, obfuscated, or tampered with.
Please do not Remove Actions from the board unless you have completed them. You may need take attached ZOMs or other documents if you’re working on that Action. But please do not remove action slips themselves until you’ve completed them. Actions that are removed and aren’t accounted for in the Action Box will just be reposted. And it will make me cry to have to do that paperwork. Please don’t make me cry. My cry time is strictly scheduled for post-event only.
Please do your best to avoid reading actions for the OUTCOMES you are NOT working towards. This will help everyone avoid unintentional meta-gaming. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it will help us keep competition and CVC more organic. If you SEE someone tampering with Waking circuit boards, by all means, call them out! Fight about it! But don’t camp the circuit boards because you read on the Bulletin Board that there was an option to sabotage them.
We are quite literally putting all our cards on the table to help everyone get as involved as possible, but in order for it to work, we need you guys to help us, by being diligent with this mechanic so everyone can have a chance to enjoy it.
Now, let’s look DEEPER.
This is for the folks who want more STRATEGY.
Districts and Threat Scores
Waking is going to be divided into 5 DISTRICTS. Actions will be evenly distributed between districts. Each District has a THREAT SCORE. This score represents how likely that District is to become inaccessible during the event. This is a crashing ship, after all. A district might fall off, or collapse, or be intentionally cut away by a group of n’er-do-wells in a desperate attempt to maintain altitude…. You know, the usual.
So if District A has a THREAT SCORE of 5… you should probably focus on getting those Actions done first because that District has the highest CHANCE of being destroyed.. And if its destroyed, all Uncompleted Actions for it will be removed.
So what might cause a District Collapse?
The primary way a District will be in danger is during one of our STEERING EVENTS. We covered these events in last week’s blog post.
These STEERING EVENTS are how you decide where on the San Saba Map that the city of Waking ends up. But moving such a massive ship causes heavy strain. So if at 12:30AM Friday night everyone wants to MOVE THE SHIP RIGHT, all the engines on the LEFT side of the ship will have to fire… and the Districts on that side of the city have a chance of being destroyed. So hold your breath when you radio Waking on where to steer.… and wait to hear what, if any, the damage is.
Out of game, this will be determined by rolling some dice by the ST. The higher the threat score, the higher the chance the dice say it collapses.
There are some Actions that might affect Districts if completed. Either by removing them from play, or by raising their THREAT SCORES.
Actions for each outcome will also be evenly spread across districts. We don’t want one Outcome to get fucked over just because of a couple unlucky dice rolls.
Some Actions are marked “Duster Only”
This should be self-explanatory. If you aren’t a Duster, don’t claim these actions.
If a Duster asks you for help on an action they’ve already claimed, go ham. Hell, maybe enlist a few Dusters to join you on your quest to achieve an outcome, and get them involved proactively! If a Duster Only action is completed by someone who is not within their first three games, it will be excluded from the tally.
There will still be the normal, scheduled mods we all know and love, and some of these mods will have choice points that affect the Outcome as well. These choice points will be telegraphed so that you know what your choices in the mod are affecting. We will also keep these opportunities equal across the span of the event.
WHEW! That’s a lot.
Thanks for sticking with me so far. We’re very excited to give you guys different avenues to affect this wide sweeping plot, and we hope you really dig into this mechanic.
If there is a slow moment for you (which is…. doubtful, given how packed this schedule is that I’m eyeballin’ right now, but I guess could happen!), go to the Crisis Center, claim and action, and get to WORK.
CVC Best Practices
We covered this previously, but its such an important topic, I want to cover it again.
Jonathan has written excellent posts about CVC, how to keep it fun, and how to get the most out of the experience. Check them out!
In this event, there is more likelihood of CVC, especially Social CVC than in some of our previous events, because we have LCs vying for DIFFERENT OUTCOMES. And that’s awesome! Responsible CVC can lead to some truly amazing and impactful moments for everyone involved.
So what does ‘Responsible CVC’ mean, then? If you came out to the Live Q&A last week, you heard my request to everyone, and about My Best Practices for Successful CVC.
Responsible CVC is largely about your GOAL and MINDSET.
As a PLAYER, your goal in a CVC encounter, whether it be social (maybe it’s a yelling match!) or physical (the conflict comes to blows!) should NOT be “to win”. If your PLAYER goal is to win, then if you don’t, you are just left feeling disappointed and frustrated.
However, if you shift your GOAL from winning the encounter to “having a badass scene with another player” then the actual outcome of the CVC scene is way less important. Because regardless of if you convinced them to vote your way, or you didn’t, you had a cool, memorable, impactful scene… and that’s what it should be about.
Some of my most memorable and fun CVC moments were ones where I got the shit beaten out of me (physically or emotionally/socially), because while my character’s goal was to win, my goal as a player was just to have a cool moment.
That being said, it’s okay to calibrate a scene that is too intense.
This best practice takes.. Well.. practice.
We always have the OK Check in System to calibrate an intense scene in the moment to either ramp it down, or up, if that’s your jam. Also, you -are allowed to break character- to tell someone to scale it back. We like to preach about the OK Check In System because it keeps everyone immersed, but if you feel like you are getting overwhelmed, we would much rather you break a little immersion than suffer a scene that you aren’t into.
If you are averse to this type of in game conflict, we recommend instead sticking to the Crisis Center Actions, and avoiding the big Steering Events. There are plenty of Actions that you can complete that don’t have CVC baked into them.
Wrap Up
That’s it for this week! If you have any additional questions, please let us know! There will be instructions posted at game as well for everyone to reference.
Waking’s fate is in your hands. And the San Saba will never look the same. Remember that tickets are on sale now.
Pre-register and get your choice of NPC shift to maximize your experience!
“See you soon Vados!”