TL-DR:

• The players made the game – all 217 of them
• Higher immersion than most US games I’ve played
• Had to do a lot of talking to finally find my niche
• I liked it and will be going back

 

As always I will start off with a few caveats:

• I have played DR twice, once for 24 hours in Southern California about 4 years ago – the review of which can be found in the blog history – and once for 6 hours at a convention
• There has been some talk about DR overall that has been less than sterling – I am not going to touch on that here. I am only going to be reporting on the chapter/game I attended. If you want to know more, google is your friend
• I will probably do some soapbox/ranting in areas. Deal with it.
• I’m a grumpy old LARPer. Expect me to be a little more critical of things.

  

The Good

These are the things that stood out for me in the game. There was probably more but this is what resonates with me.

Players
This is a tie between the first and second thing people experience when attending an event – with logistics/check-in being the other. But it is what players will have the most interaction with at any game. Not plot, not NPC’s but other players. As such, this really sets the tone for a new player (which I felt I was as I had not played in this chapter or in any DR game for more than half a decade). I have played in games where it is set up so that players form groups and cliques where a new player has very little recourse to get involved in the game unless they come in with a friend already established in a group. I have played in games where it is all about the singular player. I must be the leader, I must be the best fighter, I must have all the cool treasure flow through me, etc. Both of which turn me off rather fast. As a new player I shouldn’t have to struggle to enjoy the game.   Either the GM’s need to tailor the game to benefit/include new players as equally or even more so than existing ones or the players or the existing players need to seek out the new players and help them along.

Although the staff did some of the first (you can read it in my ‘timeline’ at the bottom) it was really the second that was amazing. You walk up and talk to any long term player and they will be more than happy to help you with any aspect of the game. And if they see that you’re lacking in something, they will readily give it to you without asking. “I see you’re a fighter. Here’s a better weapon to use. You’re a crafter? Here’s some stuff to craft with.” They will be willing to sit down and talk for over an hour (this happened to me) about options for your character and which paths to consider following based on what you want to do. And I should note that this was all done in character – although the DR system lends itself to it.

There were 217 players at this event and I didn’t come across one that wasn’t willing to help me with whatever question I might have.

One more thing to add. The opening of a new chapter is often called a “Trade Meet” or something similar where players from all over the US attend. Hence the large number. These veteran players remember how hard it was to get their games going, leveling up, finding out how things worked, etc. just like every other game. However, unlike other games, they don’t have the mentality of “Since I had to do it, everyone should have to do it.” Instead they are of the opinion of “I know how much it sucked, so let’s not have it suck that bad for new players.” They did a lot to jumpstart the chapter as far as setting up crafting, networks to other chapters, explanation of skills, abilities, unknown things that you can only find out in game, etc. Just from what I learned in this game, I cannot imagine playing on further without having been exposed to this information.

Props/Costumes
I believe that the person who owns the game is a professional prop maker from LA. The stuff he made was amazing and the stuff that was store bought was also incredible. You rarely didn’t know what was about to beat down on you. Combining this with the setting meant staying immersed was almost as easy as breathing.

The Setting/Location

The game is set in a post apocalyptic world and as such they found a great location to have it in. Roundhouse Productions is an airsoft company that rents out a portion of the decommissioned living quarters of Fort Ord in Marina, CA. These buildings are old – as being built before or during WWI. As such, dilapidated barely describes them. However, most of them are safe to walk in and some are even safe to occupy for overnight sleeping. Yes, there are airsoft pellets everywhere, but I just envisioned them being large pieces of sea salt from the nearby coast. There’s also a lot of graffiti on them which led some players to write various slogans (both in and out of game ones) that Roundhouse wasn’t too happy about. It seems though that the staff has smoothed things over with promising to cover up all unauthorized tagging. Despite that though, it worked great to keep you immersed in the game unless you had to use the bathrooms and had to head to the parking lot or happen to be on a second story of a building that you could see the outside world from.

There was some dangerous buildings we weren’t allowed into and some that we couldn’t occupy due to structural issues and a LOT of broken glass. But again, a very good site that needed literally no changes to it to set it up. But players did add their flare with props, set pieces, etc and it helped to make things look a lot better.

Choices
The game has 131 skills that can be allocated via your choice of 16 strains (aka races in other games – although some were not allowed and others required special permission), and 37 professions (classes). And then there are advanced professions that require players to meet a certain set of criteria (usually class and expenditure of XP in certain skills/abilities) above and beyond those. And yet, I never felt like this was overly burdensome. Those that affect combat are quick to understand or explain (in my experience) whereas those out of combat may be a little more complicated but you don’t have to call a hold to deal with it. Speaking of which.

1 Hold Call
That’s all I experienced in the weekend. There may have been more but that’s all I heard.

New Player Mod
All new players have to go on this, and should. It is an in game introduction to the setting, the current situation within the setting and even gets you a small taste of how combat works. Not to mention when you look around, you know it’s the first time for everyone there and so you can sort of help one another. Very well done. ((Full disclosure, I did not go on this game’s new player mod but I had been on one before and it works very well).

New Player Lodging and Armbands
Although not required to do so, a building was set aside for new players to set up camp in (you can use self standing tents in the building or simply sleep on a cot in the room) and if you wear a blue armband, it alerts others to you being a new player. This is helpful in a couple of ways. First, staff will be a little less ‘lethal’ on you (although not always – see Timeline below) as well as allowing veteran players know who might need a little extra help if they start to flounder.

Online Check-in
That’s right. You don’t have to email logisitics and hope everything gets handled. There’s a national database, you log in, say which game you’re going to, choose all the bells and whistles (updates to skills and characters are done in the game not between them) and you’re all set to go. There is a second step after you register for a game where you then click through much of the same stuff again to check in, but still it’s better than trying to find out through email if something was taken care of. This Online Check-in stops the Sunday before the game.

Consequences of Actions
I have rarely seen this happen at LARPs. Usually the staff leave crime and punishment up to the players but that just results in the strong ruling the weak. In this game, everyone is weak compared to what plot will bring into the game if someone messes up big time. As such, a character’s actions will have consequences if they act without the greater good in mind. Doesn’t mean you can’t be a sneaky, thievey, greedy person – just make sure that when you do it, it is also benefiting the town and not just yourself.

The Bad

I am usually more harsh in this section but to tell you the truth, most of the stuff below was spelled out in the rulebook so I knew it was coming and really wasn’t that big of an inconvenience. I should note that all of them are literally written into the rulebook so by going, I accepted that these things would happen. They will also all but mirror the issues I had with Hell Dorado five years ago in Southern California

Mandatory NPC Shifts
When you have 217 players showing up, I can completely understand the need for this. And I can also simply pay $30 more and be exempt from it – if I buy that option early enough (I didn’t). But 4 hours out of the 48 hours, less than 10% , it’s not so bad.

Have To Sleep In Game
I like having my 6 hours. But unless I bring a doctor’s note (not kidding) I have to sleep in game. I understand their reasoning but I’d be just as happy to leave my sleeping bag there with all my stuff and say, “Leave me a note that I was killed in my sleep if you take anything” and get rest in my car. Now, with that being said, I was woken up only once each evening so it wasn’t a major issue.

Lot of Downtime for Non Combat Characters
Apparently I made an oopsie making a Mad Scientist for a new chapter as the skills I had chosen were absolutely useless – except for me being able to read a chalk board so someone who couldn’t talk could communicate with someone who couldn’t read. In addition, crafting requires the use of Blueprints – although copies can be made by various professions in the game. However, one of the simplest of items (a drink that restores 2 mind points) takes 20 minutes at a proper workstation and making a copy of the Blueprint takes an hour at another proper workstation. I’m sure that there’s ways to batch or expedite this but that’s totally Find Out In Game (FOIG).

Lots of FOIG
Every game has this. But when I was going over a new profession with someone, my ghasts were literally flabbered with the things that I had no idea were in the game. Profession specific weaponry, Strain specific armors. Every chapter has a local only resource that can only be found in that chapter (it can travel though) For Sinn & Conn it’s Lithium for Scrap and I never did find out what the Herb one was. The good news is that a couple enterprising veteran players have put together lists of things so you can look at what you can get your hands onto – if you can find someone willing to part with such a list. Or you have to talk to someone who knows the craft (such as Farming) to learn the tricks and what it offers. They say this is a game mechanic to force interaction between players and it does work, but I hate being forced to interact with people – curse of having social anxiety. Luckily as per my first “The Good”, the players were amazing people.

Lack of Story?
So first off, the opening of a new chapter is often called a “Trade Meet” or something of that nature. It’s a time and place where people from all over the US come to meet up, trade stories, trade resources, trade Blueprints and basically have a good time seeing old friends while playing the game. But as far as a story goes, I didn’t see one other than “Keep your head down, show your papers to the Children of Abaddon and don’t get killed by any NPC.” If there was some plot happening, I couldn’t find it. I found a lot of things players were putting on though (magic shows, parties, etc) and to me, that’s a plus. Player driven plot can be some of the most fun and interesting plots of all and I hope to add more of them to this game in the future.

Timeline

This is a timeline of my involvement with the game, including character creation until I drove off the site.

So, first off, I had played DR before, so I had a character on the books. He was not one that I enjoyed playing (way too extroverted for me) and was a restricted class for this chapter so I asked for a rewrite (you can do this up to your third game). I asked the staff if there was a certain strain or profession they’d like to see or something that was missing that they would want and I got the usual answer “Play what you’d like to play.” Well I like to play a character that can help out the other characters as a whole but not too keen on healers. After going back and forth for a bit with myself, I came up with a Bridgewalker Mad Scientist called Professor Lawrence. I went with Baywalkers because they can learn stuff quickly, their main defining feature is visible tattoo(s) and lots of pockets on their characters. In addition, in the setting, a huge colony of them live at the Stanfjord Citadel and many are book learners. So that played into my Mad Scientist choice because – well there’s not a lot of games I know of or can attend that have Scientists.

They gave me the beginning number of XP and I asked why this was since I have an older character. They said that all new characters start with the same XP but I have 8 extra XP (12 once game starts) that I can spend in game when another player teaches me something. So I chose what I would as a beginning character. I took Literacy so I could read. Then I took Repair so I could help repair people’s items and I took SCIENCE! as this allows me to lend my mind points to help with massive science experiments. Oh, and I had to spend my remaining points so I put them into my mind pool so I had 8 health and 12 mind.

I made an appropriate costume, had no combat abilities so didn’t need a weapon, loaded up my car and drove the 3 hours to the site. When I got out, I walked up and saw someone holding a bunch of papers. I said “I’m a new player (technically), where is the new player lodging?” She pointed to a map and showed me the building and then asked if I had completed online registration. I said I had, she looked through her stack of papers, handed me my character, found out I had no weapons to check so said, “Have fun!”

I made 4 trips from my car to the building I was staying in, choosing the farthest back corner on the second story, hoping I would be safe. Foolish me (later). And I ran into a person I larp with at another game so my social anxiety lessened as I latched onto him.   Then about an hour behind schedule (SOP for many games I’ve attended and I expected it with a brand new chapter), the opening announcements were made. They were succinct, simple and we were off. And, in my case, that meant to NPC as I chose first shift to get it out of the way.

I was going to play a soldier of the Children of Abaddon – basically the people who were currently ruling Sinn & Conn Valley as an authoritative regime/police state. They kept the zombies (zeds) at bay and we did what they told us to do. Even had a list of laws we had to obey. Most carried penalty of death. We were to help out with the new player mod with helping the players experience some combat. So we waited for the zeds to be made up. And waited. And waited. I think it took them over an hour and a half to make up a dozen zombies. Now granted, the main makeup artist was also the person running the game and we couldn’t find where his makeup stuff was and being a makeup artist, there is pride that goes into the work – but as a long time larper, I learned that the nuances detailed work on zombies that are appearing at 10pm at night without any outside light source is lost to the players. Especially when the zombies respawned only 3 times and then the players left. But the zombies would be used again and again that night.

I then went back out as a Raider – think Mad Max crazy raiders – that hid in a mine shaft and we waited for the players to open it, then ran out twice trying to cut them down but they bottle necked us at the mine opening so it was nothing. I then sat around for the rest of my time, left, headed to my cot and went to sleep.

And was woken up by someone swinging into my gut for 7 points of damage. Startled and incoherent, I managed to hear someone ask to see my identification papers. I held out my wrists and said, I’m Professor Lawrence. I’ve been a resident of Sinn & Conn Valley for the last 7 years. My lab blew up last night taking almost everything I own with it – including my papers.” One of them recognized me as a resident and told me I had until noon to get my papers or else I would be executed. I nodded and eventually went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I went to the Post Office (aka logistics for many games) and told them that apparently I needed papers but wasn’t told that since I was in the first wave of NPC’s. They quickly wrote me out my papers and I was back into game. I gave some simple introductions to players as to who I was and what I could do for them however there was no SCIENCE! happening at this game apparently and people already had other people that could repair their items. So… I went back to my cot and slept, walked around seeing what was happening, investigated some buildings, built my mad scientist lab (that doesn’t do anything IG) and so on for most of Saturday morning. Basically lacking any usefulness (aka fighting) abilities, there really wasn’t anything for me to do that I could find. Granted I wasn’t talking a lot because I was still a little sleep dep from the waking up in the middle of the night and mixed with my normal aversion to talking to strangers, I wasn’t putting myself out there.

Mid afternoon, I finally approached someone named Bremmer (or Bremerton) who seemed locked into the game and told him my woes. That I was a scientist that didn’t seem to have anything useful to contribute. He told me that I should become a Farmer. He then rattled off a lot of things that I could do with that combination as well as the benefits of being a Farmer. I asked another person, they too said Farmer. I found THE Scientist of the game – the one everyone knows throughout the chapters whose name is currently escaping me – and the second thing he suggested (I again forget the first) I do is become a Farmer. I should note that my conversations had more than just this.  We talked about how to do Science, the weakness that come with being a mad scientist, that I need to get a long white coat, etc. But I then walked into a building and asked if there was a farmer who could teach me how to farm.

There I met Rico. I’m not going to say that he’s THE Farmer of the game but he sure seemed like it to me. We spent over an hour talking about farming, how to maximize production and yields, what boosts I need to get to get even more out of farming and how working in conjunction with another farmer can, through other buffs, double both our yields. This man knew how to play the system. I am, however, years away from being able to do this (unless I buy a lot of XP) but at least I had a new direction and spent 10 of my 12 XP getting my second of a maximum of three professions. Now I had a goal!

And then some players killed some Children of Abaddon soldiers. The town went on lockdown and we were stuck in our lodgings for over an hour as the CoA searched for the murderers and even tortured some of the new players as they were using their lodgings as their base of operations. They killed one visiting player who surrendered and executed another publicly (which the townspeople thanked them for) and the lockdown was lifted.

Most of this time I spent paling around with my friend from the other game who was playing a large meat shield named Misha. So he hit things and I ran to get other people to help him hit things. But during this time, something hopped out of the darkness, hit me once and dropped me to the ground. Luckily I remembered I could speak while down so people found me and healed me up with a couple minutes of RP doctoring.

Then some other people killed some more CoA. This is something that gets my goat at many games. People bring in 21^st century American/Democratic ideals into a non-21st century American/Democratic game. The Children of Abaddon may be militant asshats who will execute you for loitering but they are the ones in charge and the ones who are defending the town against hostiles. Not doing a fantastic job but doing it nonetheless. The other players are playing people who come from different lands with different ideals and decide that we need to fight these fascists. That’s all well in good, IF they are going to stay in town from now on and help not only fight the Zed and other invaders but any reprisals from the Children of Abaddon. Someday we may get to the level where we don’t need them but the town isn’t there yet (or at least we the townsfolk don’t feel we are). So you may kill the baddies but then you leave and we’re left with the repercussions. Whether or not people want to believe it, in a post apoc setting, democracies will always fall to militant regimes. Strict obedience is required to survive or else someone else with more fire and stricter structure will simply overrun and absorb you. It’s either that or be on the run all the time. But nope, we hate it in modern society so we much rise up against it in fictitious societies.

As I was trying to make my way back to my lodging without being arrested, I came across a group of players outside. One of them mentioned that they had broken the law 17 times so far and that he did it so much that the CoA just shake their head and walk away from him at this point. I told him that was not good but left him alone as I headed home. However, I got sidetracked to the bar in town and while there, the CoA came in with that 17 law breaking character in tow, stated that his flagrant disregard for order of this town would not be tolerated and he was executed on the spot. So I decided that it was best if I turn in for the night. During the night, I was woken by soldiers to be told I would be needed for a major offensive the next day. I told them I couldn’t fight nor heal. They asked what I could do, I said “Science!” and they responded with that I couldn’t Science something to death so I was useless. Yay! Validation!

I woke up the next morning and ran into Rico who gave me a Blueprint for a mind healing brew and a lot of herbs to get me started. I then ran into Bremmer again and it turns out he was the person who surrendered and was executed the day before. I had come across his box of Blueprints while he was dead and had turned it over to a friend of his and through some sleuthing, we figured out who it was and managed to get it back into his hands. He then introduced me to a major trader within the game world. The trader said he needed someone who wasn’t out killing things to help run a new branch of his business here so I volunteered. He paid me a credit as a new employee and wrote on my character sheet that I had a new faction I belonged to. He also promised to send me a care package (have no idea how that works) to help get me started. So after laying the groundwork Saturday, I have found a couple of different angles now to work within the game and not feel so useless.

After that, I had to leave early so I packed up my crap and did my required cleanup of policing trash on the outskirts of the site for 20 minutes. Turned over my character sheet and headed home.