Good morning!
Today I'd like to talk about a sensitive topic and our upcoming November game, BLOOD FEAST. This is a bit of a CONTENT WARNING, so the goal is to get this information out as soon as possible so folks can make an informed decision about attending our upcoming event.
During the November game, we will be featuring themes, stories, and mechanics involving disease and searching for a cure for a disease.
Given the state of the global pandemic and the impact Covid-19 has had on us all, we understand that this topic isn't for everyone. Each of our lives have been impacted by this crisis and each person is dealing with this trauma in different ways. Our goal is not to minimize the impact of this disease nor it’s effect on our community, and as a person who has lost a family member to Covid-19, I empathize with anyone that has suffered loss during this pandemic.
The themes of Dystopia Rising often touch close to our real world in ways we cannot always avoid. In our tradition of radical trust, we want to also trust in each player that attends our game to know their own limits and be able to choose to avoid topics and situations that make them uncomfortable. Its one reason we take our OK Check-In system so seriously!
We will be providing options during our November game to “opt-out” of disease mechanics as much as possible (and even give those folks that are mechanically unaffected a way to be part of the story), but it WILL be present in ways that you will not always be able to avoid. Even the OK Check-In system may not be enough to avoid this topic during the November event. We’d like to give you advance warning that this content will be present so you can choose if you would still like to attend our event.
If you have already purchased a ticket for this event and would like a refund, please email info@dystopiarisingtx.com.
The zombie story is inherently tied to a story of disease. Most of the original zombie movies deal with a virus that spreads and infects the living. Movie like “Night of the Living Dead”, “21 Days Later” and games like “Resident Evil” deal with diseases mutating and changing folks into flesh-eating monsters. You could argue that the the zombie trope is really about about a “fear of disease” as an element of horror (though the argument of Romero on consumerism is still pretty spot on..). Regardless of the source, disease remains a big element of the genre and is ever present in anything that deals with the idea of zombies and the undead.
Mechanically speaking, in Dystopia Rising we have a character trait called “infection”, diseases like Bad Brain that are always present in the Tainted strain and can be spread by Raiders, Radiation Sickness that can be gained from exposure to certain types of irradiated Zed or radiation effects, an entire Lineage of Mutants that enjoys a Lineage advantage of disease resistance, and several items that exist in game to deal with the mechanics of disease exposure and inoculation. Functionally, disease is baked into the both the story of the game and it’s mechanics.
Even despite this connection to disease that is included in both the zombie genre and the mechanics of our game, we want to be respectful of this unique time and the content we tell. However, we want to give you a chance to explore agency in a world where you can actually do something about this type of problem. Our goal with the BLOOD FEAST event is to tell a story where you can be big damn heroes and deal with a problem by the end of the weekend. We’d like to tell a story of risk, zombies, survival horror, cannibalism, darkness, and yes, disease.
We hope that you will trust us to tell this story well, and we hope that you will choose to join us in November.
If you don’t join us in November, that’s perfectly fine! We will have other stories and other events for you to be a survivor of the zombie apocalypse, including our upcoming PREMIERE event in December.
Over the next weeks, I’ll cover a few of the mechanics and items that might be important for dealing with disease in my Rules Rambles, so stay tuned!