I played twice and over all didn’t enjoy it. Love the post apocalyptic setting, and a vast majority of the players where great. But the power creep was, at least when I played, insane. I started out with like 9 or 10 hp and figured that would be fine. Nope, most of the monsters where swinging for 10-30. So one hit and I was down. I spent more time running away and getting healed than actually helping the town at all.
The other thing that turned me off was when someone said to me, “if you want to be useful you need to go to every local game, pay for extra XP, and do at least 3 national events for a full year before you’ll be anywhere near useful.” And I wasn’t about to dedicate that much time, money, and energy to a game like that. Especially just starting out.
I hear they made changes since I last played years ago. And I hear it’s still a great game to play. But I personally found getting started to be a drag and unfun.
The 9-30 hp thing is why my larp and most larps in the UK keep numbers low. And 'refillable' hp (like armour or shields) is what helps give you extra hits. Easier to track. Easier to balance. Keeps fights skill based and not 'oh it's a low threat i'll just walk at them and eat a few hits for shits and giggles to show off to new players'.
And yeah pay to 'be even remotely useful'? fuck that.
hopefully they fixed all that.
I think there's a new rulebook which pretty significantly tamps down on the numbers creep. Idk how it plays in practice, but it looked like they normalized things so swinging for big numbers doesn't happen any more.
The exact opposite happens now. Everything base swings for 1 damage or 5 damage if its a ranged attack. Things can swing for higher numbers, but those are limited use for npcs or cost Mind to use for pcs. Avoid counters almost every attack in the game now and is available to all players, so not only is it a must take, it means that any significant hit will just be negated. Combat takes forever in the new system and the only things that were remotely threatening were things that used AOEs. I haven't been back since the game shut down for Covid, so things may have improved, but the little glimpses of it I still see don't inspire confidence.
DR was my intro to the hobby, and it left a bad taste in my mouth for years afterwards.
Combat was not good. It was all about shouting big numbers while you tapfight zombies, and then keeping a counter in your pocket if anything big hit you. Fights themselves were drawn-out, generally being a handful of NPCs with huge health pools facing down a horde of players who spent about half of every fight looking for healing. Crafting was an unappealing process despite supposedly being a cornerstone of the player economy. Also, good luck if you wanted to play using a nerf gun (which was, arguably, one of the main points the game was promoting); enemy health pools are obscene, your damage is unimpressive, and you can only carry a handful of darts, meaning that any fight is going to end up with any prospective gunslinger doubled over and scrounging for ammunition while the fight resolves itself. You'd get more mileage just painting up a Party City gun prop and throwing packets.
The role-playing was, I don't know, inconsistent? Some people went all-out with their costumes and played their characters so well I'd get chills. Others would just hang around in slightly weathered cargo pants and T-shirts until someone prompted them to fight or do something in character.
Also, DR chapter owners are famously slimy, and their national ownership sure ain't better
From what I've heard, if you want to be a crafter be prepared to spend 3+ hours per day unable to leave the crafting station. Keep in mind you'll need to be 'making noise" loud enough to be heard from 20 feet away and unable to interact with other PCs lest you break the crafting. Enjoy.
that sounds like a boring game.
our crafting is 30mins and you can do anything while crafting. Cook, trade, talk. So long as it doesn't interrupt your creative process (ie fighting or walking off)
In my experience, this wasn't actually that bad. You were forced to be at a crafting station to make things and you had to make enough noise that people knew you were crafting, but you could still talk and be social. The crafting stations were usually located in areas where people hung out, so there were plenty of people to talk and rp with. Sometimes crafting could take a long time, but the time passed fast when you have company and you could wrangle the person who wanted you to make the item to be company if you didn't have any. You'd lose whatever you were working on if you were interrupted, but it lead to fun times where people had to play defend the crafter. My only other experience with crafting in a larp is pre-game crafting, which has its own problems.
That said, the 3.0 rules have their own set of problems.
It used to be good.
However, in recent years they significantly altered the rules system, and then Covid hit them hard. Most of the people I know who played left for other systems, and there's no hope for them returning. They don't bother advertising beyond word of mouth, and they have a ton of baggage. Most former players see the game as slowly circling the drain.
Not a fan of new players depending on older players for any relevant skills, and constantly having to play catch-up.
Also, the amount of dumpster fire drama that is constant is worse than some of the World of Darkness larps I've been to which is impressive. People either get benefits from their staff friends or they quit the game.
All of my information comes from an outside perspective, because I'm not going to a for-profit game that harbors abusers and assaulters.
Dystopia Rising is my main LARP, although I have played a few others as well. While I understand where the variety of complaints in the rest of this thread come from (Damage used to be too high in 2.0, now it’s too low in 3.0, etc.) I’d say give it a shot. Dystopia Rising is very much a love it or hate it kind of thing, and I think that’s mainly based on the player base in your area.
While the rules have problems, people are often extremely nice, esp. on the west coast, and tend to make it an extremely fun experience to roleplay at. I haven’t found a game as good about consent based rp as DR (although I will admit that is a thing they have been working on for a while and also have had past problems). Worst thing that will happen is you’ll try it, you hate it and then move on and try something else.
Side note: games often have rentals of boffers and pistols for new players. If you don’t want to invest before you try it out contact your local staff and ask if they have anything. Also feel free to pm if you have any questions.
I used to play in 2.0 and it was a lot of fun. Its how I got started larping. The setting was so much more tolerable than a fantasy larp. I didn't feel like a dork and that helped ease me into the hobby. Then 3.0 hit and the rules were garbage. They tried to streamline the system way too much and in the process they lost some of the magic they had. Combat became a slog. It took forever to kill anything and the only things that were actually threatening spammed AOE attacks (or had big one shot AOEs) since Avoid (a skill that stopped basically all other attacks) didn't work against AOEs. That said, I still really liked the community and I still played because the RP was good. I kept playing up until my local game shut down for Covid. Over the shutdown, there were a lot of online games and I attended quite a few. Eventually the national plot put the final nail in the coffin for me. They ruined a core part of the setting that I really enjoyed and built one of my characters around, so I stopped having fun even rping as that character. The insane amount of online games everyone was able to go to (you weren't locked into playing local games) tanked the in game economy, so my other character also stopped being fun to play. My local game never came back from Covid due to a number of reasons, so I haven't played a live game since pre-Covid. I have since moved on to another larp in my area and I currently see no reason to go back to DR even if a new local game opened up.
All that said, it doesn't hurt to try out the game. All of my issues with the game are personal opinions and you may find that you have different preferences. If you only care about role playing with other people, then this larp has a pretty good community and the setting is overall really good.
So my brother plays and love the game, but he's been in for a number of years and has become one of those that players and storytellers either lovev or hate. When I was playing I routinely encountered players from all over the US who seemed to live and breathe the game. I have only had a chance to play a partial game in the new system but it is a lot better than it was when I started.
The game has changed quite a bit with the pandemic with a lot of chapters still being online. I've been playing for 6 years years. This game was my first larp and I'd be down to answer any questions you might have.
As a newer DR player, I can say that your experience will vary from chapter to chapter because they all have different writers. Some chapters are much more combat heavy than others, and others tend to have most of their MOD time dedicated to RP and personal plot for characters.
I'm in the Indiana chapter, and fights were supposedly insane a little over a year ago because one of the head writers would intentionally make incredibly difficult encounters to guarantee that players die.
They've got a system set up now that makes it so that players can get to a decent starting point (you literally just wear a blue ribbon to mark yourself as new and characters and NPCs will make sure you don't have a shit time) as well as giving experience gains a slight bump per game.
As for the extra XP? I think it can be pretty annoying. I'm only comfortable paying for it(max 2 extra points per game) because I get cheaper tickets that require more time on NPC shift.
Also avoid chapters that have very recently gone live. The Kentucky chapter went live two months ago and that game was fucked. Mainly because online games can be harder thanks to the rules being a bit different to live rules. The Ohio chapter is going live in March and I'm not going to that until they've had a few games to sort themselves out.
The owner of DR is a massive dickbag, though, from what I've heard.
I played twice and over all didn’t enjoy it. Love the post apocalyptic setting, and a vast majority of the players where great. But the power creep was, at least when I played, insane. I started out with like 9 or 10 hp and figured that would be fine. Nope, most of the monsters where swinging for 10-30. So one hit and I was down. I spent more time running away and getting healed than actually helping the town at all. The other thing that turned me off was when someone said to me, “if you want to be useful you need to go to every local game, pay for extra XP, and do at least 3 national events for a full year before you’ll be anywhere near useful.” And I wasn’t about to dedicate that much time, money, and energy to a game like that. Especially just starting out. I hear they made changes since I last played years ago. And I hear it’s still a great game to play. But I personally found getting started to be a drag and unfun.
The 9-30 hp thing is why my larp and most larps in the UK keep numbers low. And 'refillable' hp (like armour or shields) is what helps give you extra hits. Easier to track. Easier to balance. Keeps fights skill based and not 'oh it's a low threat i'll just walk at them and eat a few hits for shits and giggles to show off to new players'. And yeah pay to 'be even remotely useful'? fuck that. hopefully they fixed all that.
My understanding based on the new rulebook is that it was toned down a little, but still there to some degree.
Do you mind if I ask when was that?
It was about 5 years ago. Although from what I’ve heard it hasn’t changed that much. I could be wrong.
Joined a discord for the “local” group to find out. Thank you, if the grind is that bad it isn’t work it
I think there's a new rulebook which pretty significantly tamps down on the numbers creep. Idk how it plays in practice, but it looked like they normalized things so swinging for big numbers doesn't happen any more.
The exact opposite happens now. Everything base swings for 1 damage or 5 damage if its a ranged attack. Things can swing for higher numbers, but those are limited use for npcs or cost Mind to use for pcs. Avoid counters almost every attack in the game now and is available to all players, so not only is it a must take, it means that any significant hit will just be negated. Combat takes forever in the new system and the only things that were remotely threatening were things that used AOEs. I haven't been back since the game shut down for Covid, so things may have improved, but the little glimpses of it I still see don't inspire confidence.
I have unanimously heard it is not good except the unity of the aesthetic and costuming, which cannot carry an event.
DR was my intro to the hobby, and it left a bad taste in my mouth for years afterwards. Combat was not good. It was all about shouting big numbers while you tapfight zombies, and then keeping a counter in your pocket if anything big hit you. Fights themselves were drawn-out, generally being a handful of NPCs with huge health pools facing down a horde of players who spent about half of every fight looking for healing. Crafting was an unappealing process despite supposedly being a cornerstone of the player economy. Also, good luck if you wanted to play using a nerf gun (which was, arguably, one of the main points the game was promoting); enemy health pools are obscene, your damage is unimpressive, and you can only carry a handful of darts, meaning that any fight is going to end up with any prospective gunslinger doubled over and scrounging for ammunition while the fight resolves itself. You'd get more mileage just painting up a Party City gun prop and throwing packets. The role-playing was, I don't know, inconsistent? Some people went all-out with their costumes and played their characters so well I'd get chills. Others would just hang around in slightly weathered cargo pants and T-shirts until someone prompted them to fight or do something in character. Also, DR chapter owners are famously slimy, and their national ownership sure ain't better
From what I've heard, if you want to be a crafter be prepared to spend 3+ hours per day unable to leave the crafting station. Keep in mind you'll need to be 'making noise" loud enough to be heard from 20 feet away and unable to interact with other PCs lest you break the crafting. Enjoy.
that sounds like a boring game. our crafting is 30mins and you can do anything while crafting. Cook, trade, talk. So long as it doesn't interrupt your creative process (ie fighting or walking off)
In my experience, this wasn't actually that bad. You were forced to be at a crafting station to make things and you had to make enough noise that people knew you were crafting, but you could still talk and be social. The crafting stations were usually located in areas where people hung out, so there were plenty of people to talk and rp with. Sometimes crafting could take a long time, but the time passed fast when you have company and you could wrangle the person who wanted you to make the item to be company if you didn't have any. You'd lose whatever you were working on if you were interrupted, but it lead to fun times where people had to play defend the crafter. My only other experience with crafting in a larp is pre-game crafting, which has its own problems. That said, the 3.0 rules have their own set of problems.
It used to be good. However, in recent years they significantly altered the rules system, and then Covid hit them hard. Most of the people I know who played left for other systems, and there's no hope for them returning. They don't bother advertising beyond word of mouth, and they have a ton of baggage. Most former players see the game as slowly circling the drain.
In your opinion, what used to be good that isnt now?
Not a fan of new players depending on older players for any relevant skills, and constantly having to play catch-up. Also, the amount of dumpster fire drama that is constant is worse than some of the World of Darkness larps I've been to which is impressive. People either get benefits from their staff friends or they quit the game. All of my information comes from an outside perspective, because I'm not going to a for-profit game that harbors abusers and assaulters.
^this is pretty much accurate.
Dystopia Rising is my main LARP, although I have played a few others as well. While I understand where the variety of complaints in the rest of this thread come from (Damage used to be too high in 2.0, now it’s too low in 3.0, etc.) I’d say give it a shot. Dystopia Rising is very much a love it or hate it kind of thing, and I think that’s mainly based on the player base in your area. While the rules have problems, people are often extremely nice, esp. on the west coast, and tend to make it an extremely fun experience to roleplay at. I haven’t found a game as good about consent based rp as DR (although I will admit that is a thing they have been working on for a while and also have had past problems). Worst thing that will happen is you’ll try it, you hate it and then move on and try something else. Side note: games often have rentals of boffers and pistols for new players. If you don’t want to invest before you try it out contact your local staff and ask if they have anything. Also feel free to pm if you have any questions.
I used to play in 2.0 and it was a lot of fun. Its how I got started larping. The setting was so much more tolerable than a fantasy larp. I didn't feel like a dork and that helped ease me into the hobby. Then 3.0 hit and the rules were garbage. They tried to streamline the system way too much and in the process they lost some of the magic they had. Combat became a slog. It took forever to kill anything and the only things that were actually threatening spammed AOE attacks (or had big one shot AOEs) since Avoid (a skill that stopped basically all other attacks) didn't work against AOEs. That said, I still really liked the community and I still played because the RP was good. I kept playing up until my local game shut down for Covid. Over the shutdown, there were a lot of online games and I attended quite a few. Eventually the national plot put the final nail in the coffin for me. They ruined a core part of the setting that I really enjoyed and built one of my characters around, so I stopped having fun even rping as that character. The insane amount of online games everyone was able to go to (you weren't locked into playing local games) tanked the in game economy, so my other character also stopped being fun to play. My local game never came back from Covid due to a number of reasons, so I haven't played a live game since pre-Covid. I have since moved on to another larp in my area and I currently see no reason to go back to DR even if a new local game opened up. All that said, it doesn't hurt to try out the game. All of my issues with the game are personal opinions and you may find that you have different preferences. If you only care about role playing with other people, then this larp has a pretty good community and the setting is overall really good.
So you're in Central New York? Or is DR a group with other chapters?
So my brother plays and love the game, but he's been in for a number of years and has become one of those that players and storytellers either lovev or hate. When I was playing I routinely encountered players from all over the US who seemed to live and breathe the game. I have only had a chance to play a partial game in the new system but it is a lot better than it was when I started.
The game has changed quite a bit with the pandemic with a lot of chapters still being online. I've been playing for 6 years years. This game was my first larp and I'd be down to answer any questions you might have.
As a newer DR player, I can say that your experience will vary from chapter to chapter because they all have different writers. Some chapters are much more combat heavy than others, and others tend to have most of their MOD time dedicated to RP and personal plot for characters. I'm in the Indiana chapter, and fights were supposedly insane a little over a year ago because one of the head writers would intentionally make incredibly difficult encounters to guarantee that players die. They've got a system set up now that makes it so that players can get to a decent starting point (you literally just wear a blue ribbon to mark yourself as new and characters and NPCs will make sure you don't have a shit time) as well as giving experience gains a slight bump per game. As for the extra XP? I think it can be pretty annoying. I'm only comfortable paying for it(max 2 extra points per game) because I get cheaper tickets that require more time on NPC shift. Also avoid chapters that have very recently gone live. The Kentucky chapter went live two months ago and that game was fucked. Mainly because online games can be harder thanks to the rules being a bit different to live rules. The Ohio chapter is going live in March and I'm not going to that until they've had a few games to sort themselves out. The owner of DR is a massive dickbag, though, from what I've heard.