REQUIRED READING: What to Know for Our Upcoming Premier Event

Barkers and Travelers alike!

Please read this blog in totality for important information about our August 2025 Premier Event at Camp Tumbleson Lake. A lot of this info is different from what we have done for events held at Camp Tumbleson Lake in 2024, and some will be specific to this weekend (e.g. we’ll be doing stuff slightly differently the rest of the season).

Where to go

Google maps will send you to 173 Co Rd 96, Ward, CO 80481.  When you get to that spot, you will want to continue down County Road 96 to the next left, which is the main parking lot.  

You may arrive on site at 5 p.m. to select a bunk, or aas early as 3 p.m. if you want to help us set up.

Check In

Right next to the parking lot is the Arts and Crafts building.  You will check in here with Seth P. to get your character sheets and make any outstanding payments, OR you will be directed to where to go in case we find a better place for Seth P. to set up.

All players will need to sign both a Dystopia Rising Colorado liability waiver (as we have re-upped our insurance) as well as a YMCA Camp liability waiver (this is new).

If you arrive after lay-on, you can check in at the Public Works (see below).

Arts and Crafts will also be the place to go for your assigned casting (NPC) shift if you have one (NPC Camp).

Cabins and Tents

Once you check in with Seth P. you will be directed on where to set up.  Most players will be sent to the Frontier camping pod, which you can drive your car to, unload, set up, and then later drive your car back to the parking lot. Once your car is reparked, we would love your help getting set up either in NPC camp or in the Frontier space, where the crafting areas and other zones are.

Please note: This area is a little more rustic and does not have any power, therefore it’s important to bring power banks or spare batteries as needed. There are plenty of glamping tents with more than enough bunk beds for our player attendance, a log cabin (called a longhouse), pit toilets, an amphitheater, and the space where we will set up a camping kitchen for food, a water cooler, agricultural area, morgue spaces, crafting areas, Public Works, and more.

If you need Medical Sleep we will have two options for you:

1. If you just need a space where your cabin won’t get attacked at night and quiet space, we will have a glamping tent set up as Medical Only at Frontier.  This space will be closer to the rest of the tents, the crafting areas, Public Works, etc.

2. If you need power or close access to the bathhouse, we will have a limited number of cabins available in Miner’s Row.  

Meals and food storage 

Food storage will be at the Dining Hall only; please, no food in the glamping tents, cabins, or vehicles, as this poses a wildlife risk.  Sealed bottles for water or beverages are fine; please remove labels/genrify your drinks.  The Dining Hall is in the main part of the camp, which is a bit of a walk from Frontier.  Please check with our kitchen leads, Lucan or Joelle, for assistance on where to keep any food that you’re bringing.  We recommend dry goods and other things that can be kept in a cooler for the weekend.  There will be a limited amount of fridge space for cold items.

Our access to the Dining Hall and the kitchen has some limitations this weekend, specifically on Friday night and all day Saturday.  As such, our kitchen staff has elected to host all meals after Thursday night, and our Saturday barbeque at Frontier, where we will be setting up a camping kitchen.  We will have our disposable cutlery but you are encouraged to bring your own mess kit.

On Thursday night, our dinner will be held in the Dining Hall.  Since opening announcements are at 9 p.m. and the opening mod will follow, you will want to be in costume.

You will be able to utilize the microwave in the dining room when it is not otherwise occupied; we are also looking to set up a microwave at Rustler’s, which is at the top of Miner’s Row (previously known as the Counselor’s Lounge, with the balcony porch).  We will update when we know for certain.

Guide Meeting

If you are a guide, we will have a pre-game meeting at 8:30 p.m. at NPC Camp (Arts and Crafts).  Please be prompt and we will do our best to be concise.

Opening Announcements

We will have opening announcements at 9 p.m. on Thursday at the Dining Hall, with lay-on to follow.  After opening announcements, all PCs will meet outside Arts and Crafts as the mustering area for the opening module at 10 p.m..  Any latecomers or people who haven’t checked in yet can get that done before 10 p.m.; afterwards, check-in will move to Public Works at Frontier.  Please be in costume for opening announcements; Frontier will be unavailable from 9 p.m. until after the opening module is complete.  This will also be a great time to return your car to the parking lot, if you haven’t moved it down before dinner.

Getting around site

While there will not be sufficient parking near Frontier for everyone, we will be allowing and utilizing people’s cars to shuttle NPCs, meal service items, equipment, and trash as needed.  Please let us know how we can help if mobility is a concern for you.

Public Works

Seth P. has secured a solar-panel set-up and a Starlink to set up Public Works at the Frontier camping pod.  Depending on the space, we will set up Public Works either in the Longhouse, the yurt, or a pop-up nearby.  We should be able to handle all Public Works requests, though there is currently an open question about blueprints.  We will either print blueprints at Public Works, or if our power solution can’t handle the printer, we will print them in batches at another location from time to time.

Closing Announcements

We will be calling lay-off at 3 p.m. on Saturday.  We will do a quick closing announcement, and then we will tear down most of our play space and NPC camp.

Folks who need to leave early can do so any time afterward cleanup; the camp will be available for folks for the rest of the evening for…

Community Gathering

Saturday after cleanup we will have our out-of-character hangout, board games, barbeque and more.  Non-attendees, friends and family members are welcome to join us and should RSVP so that we are sure we have enough food for folks.  Players are free to spend one more evening on site.

WHEN WE HAVE TO BE Off Site

We will be looking to be off site by 12 p.m. noon on Sunday, so any remaining cleaning, packing and loading will be done in the morning.  Breakfast will be available at 8 a.m.

We’ll see you all very soon!

Gear Up for a “Home Coming” — Our Premier Event This August

Tickets are now available for our August Premier Event! Join us at Camp Tumbleson Lake on Thursday, August 21st through Sunday, August 24th. This event has some slightly different scheduling and cadence compared to our regular events and past premier events, so be sure to read the whole post.

While you’re here, we also included some exciting updates pertaining to the event site, Community Action Points (CAPs), and more.

Event Details

When you get to the site, please check in at Arts and Crafts rather than the main office, which is being used by the increased camp staff as an office and store. It’s right next to the main parking lot.  

Unlike past four-day/three-night events, this event will offer just the normal base XP (e.g. no +1 bonus), and it will also be the same price as a normal weekend event. Like other premier events across the network, you will have the option to purchase up to 5 extra XP.

Opening Announcements will start at 9 pm on Thursday, and the in-character action will continue through 3 pm on Saturday, August 23rd.  Most of the plot line items will be occurring on Thursday night and Friday all day so if you are coming up on Friday evening and not on Thursday, you may miss a lot of the stories that we’re running this weekend.

On Saturday morning and early afternoon, we have reserved time for community-driven plot and events.  This will be your time to participate in the Diesel Jock races, have religious ceremonies and inductions, host a bazaar, or whatever else your character would like to have the extra time to engage in. If you have a fishing license and a pole, there’s a lake you can take advantage of as well.

At 3 pm on Saturday, we will lay-off (end the in-character portion) from the game, do a little cleaning and packing, and have a Community Gathering. Board games and personal crafts are encouraged, and we will have a barbecue in the evening. We are also inviting any players who can’t make the main event, new players, veterans, players of other LARPs, and LARP retirees to come join us at 4 pm. This event is open to everyone — including family members. Please RSVP so that we know that you’re coming and planning to eat with us.

Players will have the option to head home early on Saturday or spend one more night at the beautiful campsite out-of-character, under a moonless sky in a part of the country dark enough to see the Milky Way galaxy on a clear night.  

Camp Tumbleson Lake Updates

The areas around each of the three longhouses have all been heavily constructed since we first started using this campsite. Each area is now arranged as a “pod” — named Sky, Fortis, and Frontier respectively — with each area having a constructed log fence, an entryway, ten large tent platforms with 14 bunks each, and a yurt likely to be used for Public Works.  We will use a couple of the tent platforms for buildings as needed, and the longhouses will host our Artisan and Culinary areas with an Agricultural area nearby.

For our August event, we will be using Frontier for our sleeping area and are looking at Fortis for some modules on Friday. There are pit toilets nearby both of these pods.

Please note that none of the pods are currently running power, so please plan for battery operation or power banks as needed, and genre lights. Folks who need power for CPAP or other medical purposes will have access to a limited number of cabins in Miners’ Row, which is closer to the shower house and the dining hall.

Frontier Camping Pod (longhouse is behind the tents, to the right)

The shower house was also completed this year and is just east of the Sky pod. We will have some of our meals at the dining hall, and others will be held at Frontier. Stay tuned for updated information on our Discord server.

Thanks to the support of our players and visitors from around the network, we were able to order some additional infrastructure support for this and future events, including the ability to provide meals and host Public Works in remote locations.

CAPs update

The staff and the writing team are pleased to release our CAPs Rewards and CAPs Redemption lists.

For those who may not know what CAPs are, they’re rewarded for performing particular tasks, making donations, and otherwise helping out the local Dystopia Rising Live chapter. Each chapter has their own list of rewards and redemptions. People can earn CAPs in any chapter, but these are not transferrable between chapters or players.

For those who remember CAPs from 3.0, there are no “National” or “Network” CAPs anymore, as these were decommissioned last year. If you see some in your player profile in the DRL Database, reach out to the game you are attending to see if they will honor them.

The Rewards list is how you can earn CAPs and the Redemption list is for what you can redeem CAPs.

If you contributed to a Dystopia Rising: Colorado event this year, you may have earned rewards that are not reflected in the database yet. These will be entered into the database over the next couple of weeks.

Redemptions may be made in anticipation of any future event (including the Premier Event). For some rewards, you may want to make the request early (e.g. not the Monday before the event) to ensure any in-game impacts are taken into account for that event.

Available reward amounts, reward types, redemption values, and redemption types are subject to alteration in the future, as we balance out what we want to prioritize.  We are also looking for additional redemption possibilities for community artwork or videos, so please let us know if you have any ideas or if you’re interested in contributing.

The Important Links

• Premier Event Tickets

• Database Checkin

• Community Gathering RSVP

• CAPs Rewards (how to earn)

• CAPs Redemptions (what to spend them on)

• Join us on Discord

"Resurgence" Event Overview and Expectations

We are excited to bring you, “Resurgence,” our July event this weekend! Before the event, we’d like to detail what you’re walking into for transparency and to get you excited, as well as set some expectations for the event and going forward.

Event Overview

The Barkers have been called to Resurgence, a new settlement formed in the shadow of the old Everliving Wood. Groups from the Darksky Natural Ones to some of the ever-persevering Irons of Ironwood have formed a settlement in dangerous territory based on tenuous alliances, unfriendly to outsiders – except the Barkers, who many of them owe or have entwined destinies with. They’d make a key and powerful ally in retaking Barker, but how will you convince this settlement of mostly Natural Ones dealing with their own problems to take on that amount of risk and inevitable death?

Resurgence has been dealing with the Devouring Pines who see the Overgrowth as a brutal way to enlightenment, the Overgrowth itself’s dangers (including Diseased Critters transmitting Feral Wasting Syndrome), and zombies aplenty. Worryingly, there’s even rumors of a Raider Den in the area…

Helping Resurgence with their issues and navigating their internal and external politics via. diplomacy, strength of force, and more, will be key to gaining their help with retaking Barker.

Expectations and Themes

We hope this game will mark a return to form and the intended genre of Dystopia Rising as a survival horror game. Let’s break down what each of those words mean in this context, starting first with horror.

Horror

Horror is rooted in threats both physical and psychological to the characters in the story. We look to bring a level of threat, danger and scares to the game that will excite fans of horror. 

This includes a  return to late night threats, and a potentially deadlier game for your character
As far as themes we may tackle that are difficult or disturbing, here is an ingredients list of the spicier ingredients this weekend:

• Kidnapping 

• Body Horror

• Torture 

• Medical Horror

• Depictions of loss and grief

• Plants 

• Animals in peril, including diseased animals and animal death

We hope that by returning to form and tackling difficult themes along the way, we can deliver a great horror experience. - 

Survival

Simply put, some plots do not have heroic outcomes. For example, running away is not “losing,” and not all stories are written with some “win” condition. Tragic narratives are intended to open story and character opportunities in both the setup and aftermath of the tragedy.

A “loss” is not the end of a story. This is, as much as we can make it, a living world LARP where we aim to expand on stories no matter the outcome of an encounter and we encourage you to roll with the dynamic story as well.

All that is to say, we want you to come to the game and have a fun time. We want to facilitate excellent character beats and role-play. We want you to be scared and traumatized in-character and have a ball out-of-character! We hope to see you this weekend at Camp Lazy Acre for “Resurgence.”

Ease Back IRL into the Wasteland at our April Day Game

The Hordefront—a zed horde of historic scale—is tearing through the Dead Range. Regrouping at a Tal-Servi Rover way-station, our survivors must band together, build and prepare for taking back Barker Meadow. Join them and help them fight for their future!

We’re hosting a day game event on April 26th at Lakeview Ranch! As a thank you to our amazing community and the support we have received over the years, we are offering a variety of ticket prices for people who show up to this event, which is our first in-person event using the new Dystopia Rising Live rules. All attending tickets (aside from Opt Out and Non-Attending) are the same; they include full XP (the same as a normal weekend event), a 2 Hour NPC shift, and lunch. You choose what you want to pay for this event.

Some other things to know for our day game:

• You may arrive upon site at 7:00 am to help set up or put up your own areas (e.g. pop-ups, tables, etc).

• Opening announcements will be at 8:45 am.

• Lay on will be at 9:00 am.

• We will be playing until 6:00 pm, with closing announcements and tear-down to follow.

Get your tickets now by clicking here, and make sure to register in the database.

Don’t forget our Community Day this Saturday

Prepare for this event by joining us at Lakeview Ranch for our community day this Saturday, April 12th. We’ll help you build or rebuild characters, exchange cards, get your fighting chops back, and more.

NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE DYSTOPIA RISING LIVE RULES?

Make sure to check the rule books (at the very minimum, the Player’s Guide) for the changes you’ll need to know. A quick rundown is also available in our past blog post. Don’t fret if you feel overwhelmed. We’re all still adjusting to the rules, so please feel encouraged to ask questions if you have any.

Important updates and our first live-in-person event of 2024!

Survivors!

Join us at YMCA Camp Tumbleson Lake in Ward, Colorado on May 31st, 2024 for our first live-in-person event of the season! Tickets are on sale now, but please scroll through here FIRST for some very important updates:

New Site!

As previously announced, we are going to be at Camp Tumbleson Lake this year. YMCA of Northern Colorado recently purchased this 100+ year-old campsite from the Boy Scouts of Colorado and are currently in the process of making renovations and new construction, so availability of amenities will fluctuate as the season progresses. In June and July it will be used for day-camp, but the plan is that it will be used for overnight camp in 2025, so they will be adding tent pads and renovating existing buildings to accommodate larger volumes of campers and volunteers.

Want to check out the site? Join us for the Work Day and get XP!

If you want a hands-on preview of the site, you should join us for the Epic Day of Service volunteer day on May 18th. You’ll get to meet up with players and other volunteers, and in doing so earn 10 XP, thanks a special offer from the Dystopia Rising Network! Get all the information from our previous blog post about it.

Kitchen being renovated

While the campsite has a sufficiently-sized dining hall, its kitchen was old and too small to handle overnight camping attendees, so it’s undergoing renovations and refurbishing with new equipment. Since we don’t currently know the state of the kitchen, we will be delaying food service sales until closer to the event, when we’ll either have access to the new kitchen or choose a more rustic option.

You might need a new COVID-19 vaccine

CDC has updated their guidance and vaccinations prior to September of 2023 are no longer sufficient for protection against the current strains of COVID-19. This was made very apparent when several of our players tested positive after the October 2023 event! For the safety of all, we have updated our COVID-19 policy and you can see those updates on our local expectations page.

Price changes

On October 1st, 2023, the Dystopia Rising Network changed prices of tickets across all chapters. The current nationwide price structure is as follow:

• No Casting: $120 (was $105)

• Minimum Casting (2 hours NPC): $105 (was $85)

• Standard Casting (4 hours NPC): $85 (was $65)

• Maximum Casting (6 hours NPC): $45 (no change)

• 10-Hour Play (2 hours NPC): $35 (no change)

• New Players: first event free (was $35)

• Extra XP: $15 for 1, $30 for 2 (no change)

• Non-Attending/Buyback for local players: as Standard Casting

But wait! We’re going to make a few changes here

We have analyzed our business model, past attendance, site costs and have come up with some amendments to Network Pricing to start the 2024 season, some which may be familiar to our players.

• If you pre-register for a Standard Casting ticket via this website, you will have three options:

  • Get a pre-registration discount of $10 - that’s right, it’ll only be $75 instead of $85 for the standard ticket.

  • Oh what the heck: if you pre-register and choose the Pay at Door option for the Standard ticket, we’ll give you the $75 price as well! We accept cash and cards with a chip or tap function at the door.

  • Support our chapter a little more with the full-price High Altitude Ticket! It’s the Standard Casting option at the normal DR Network price of $85 and we’ll give you an unique, personalized Event Chit as well! Check out our past blog post about Event Chits, under “Dishes Network Update”, for details about Event Chits!

• We will have a limited number of Max Casting tickets, as this ticket actually costs us money to offer (e.g. it does not generate enough revenue to cover the site and royalty costs). However, we will continue to have an unlimited number of Casting Champion tickets (Max Casting plus 2 Extra XP) for $75, the same price as before.

• We will presently not be offering the No Casting or Casting Only options, but we will have a limited number of Sunday Minimum Casting tickets for $105 each. For this one, you will do the Sunday morning casting shift, after breakfast and before lay-off/closing announcements.

• Our Star Line program will continue to be available! This will be at the Network-standard $85 price for a donated Standard Ticket, and we will continue to offer 1-for-$1 on CAPs and a special Chit for all benefactors as well.

• Note that Buybacks for prior events are sold at the Standard Casting price for when they were originally offered. So Buybacks of live events for 2019-2023 will still only be $65, and Buybacks of events going forward will be $85.

Wait! Not so fast!

Before you buy your ticket, you may want to double check your emails because if you’re a local player, it’s highly likely you purchased a ticket for the November 2023 which ended up getting cancelled due to site complications. If that’s the case, you’re going to want to see the Cancelled Event Reconciliation option. We will honor any tickets that were sold for that event for the upcoming events, or you can pick a different option, but please use that ticket to get registered or make a decision about the ticket you’re still due.

Phew! That was a lot

You can get your tickets on this website now. Also make sure to check on the Dystopia Rising Database to register your ticket and secure your Casting shift. And join us on our Discord to chat with members and get hyped for the first live-in-person DR:CO event of 2024!