Looking to make your own props?  We have a couple simple guides below.

Starter equipment

Starter Equipment allows players to jump right into the action with the appropriate weapons that their character would have. This gear is given out either during a player’s first game, or when a returning player needs gear to get them started. Starter Equipment always needs to be safety checked by a Guide before entering play, and must be tagged appropriately.

There are no Item Cards for your Starter Gear. just start playing!

Instead, the WHITE TAG on the weapon specifies that it’s Starter Equipment. These item tags do not expire, and can be freely obtained from the Post Office if it is damaged. This tag helps us identify your prop as yours and will include your Player Number and the Player Number of the Guide that safety-checked the weapon. Starter equipment does not have any other mechanical benefits and is not able to be turned into resources.

All melee weapons must be contact safe, and follow the use of our lightest touch ruleset.

How It Works

Starter Weapons always swings for base damage. You can find the rules for Weapons starting on page 31 in the DR Corebook. Depending on the prop you provide or borrow, you can choose a type of weapon you prefer and they have the following abilities as Starter Gear:

  • Melee Weapons automatically do 2 Damage with each successful swing.

    • There are Melee Small & Florentine weapons (under 30” in length), Melee Standard weapons (under 45” in length), and Melee Two Handed weapons (under 80” in length)

  • Bow and Firearm deal 5 Damage on a successful hit with a packet or dart. These weapons are powerful, but cannot be used in close-range fighting and have limited ammo.

    • Firearms are normally represented by a NERF gun, but they must be single-shot and cannot be fully automatic. You can find more rules HERE.

      • You can have a maximum of 60 darts, bullets, or packets on you at a time.

    • Bows are represented with an unstrung bow or heat-formed boffer prop for the Bow, but you CANNOT use “larp arrows” and must use Packets instead. Bows can ALSO be used as Melee Weapons in combat and do 2 Damage on a successful melee swing.

      • To use a Bow as a melee weapon it must follow all the rules for contact safe props found HERE.

  • Thrown Weapons do 5 Damage. These are represented by a foam projectile smaller than 13” that has NO hard material in the core or no more than 40” in length for items like javelins.

  • Brawling Weapon items do 2 Damage, but cannot block melee attacks. You use the Unarmed Combat Skill to use these weapons. These are represented by boffers under 21” in length.

  • Starter Armor is always worth 5 Armor Points. This is treated like additional Body points that are lost first, and must be repaired once they are lost. Armor requires a certain amount of coverage, that you can find more about HERE.

There is no way to craft these Starter Gear items. Instead, they are meant for players to get started in the world of Dystopia Rising.

What You Can Get

Below, we’ve listed the maximum amount of Starter Gear that you can come into play with. You will need physical representations for all of these items, since Starter Gear relies on tags rather than cards. Keep in mind that you DO NOT need to have all of these items. Instead, this is simply the maximum amount of weapons that you can come into play with as Starter Gear. We believe this is a reasonable amount of weapons to have in the post-apocalypse, and it helps prevent someone from coming into play with 500 knives strapped over their body and 100 Thrown Weapons in a giant bag.

All new characters may enter play with:

  • 1 Firearm OR Bow

  • 1 Shield

  • 3 Melee Weapons (Any combination of Small, Standard, Two-Handed)

  • 6 Thrown Weapons

  • 1 Brawling Knucks (Unarmed Combat items always come in pairs of two—one for each hand)

  • 1 Starter Armor (5 Armor Points)

If your new character has the Medical Skill:

  • Choice of 1: Dr. Ottoman’s Doctor’s Kit OR Dr. Ottoman’s Sawbones Kit

    • Doctor’s Kit improves how much you heal with Medical,

    • Sawbones Kit improves how fast you can heal

  • These are actually CARDED ITEMS with a 6-month expiration date and can only be obtained ONCE. After these expire, you will need to replace them using a blueprint and scrap as normal.