Aberrancy and You! Or, How Aberrant Abilities Impact Your Settlement

This blog has been in the works since we began working on our May event, “The Dying Light,” and has gone through several revisions as we’ve seen and aimed to respond to questions and concerns from local players. The community of Will-o-the-Wisp is Dystopia Rising: Colorado’s first plot surrounding Aberrancy using the new Dystopia Rising: Live rule set. Our aim is to play it straightforward per the current lore and narrative advice given on pages 37 and 38 in the Guide’s Guide, a public document available to view and download here.

In the world of Dystopia Rising, all Strains theoretically have the ability to become Aberrant. Doing so involves learning or honing innate abilities within the Infection to acquire power. However, this power does not come without a price, as those with Aberrant powers draw Undead to them, interface with the Mortis Amaranthine in destructive ways, and can be vectors for disease. The more Aberrants there are in an area, the more dangerous that area becomes. This can lead to Aberrant characters facing social stigma and being the targets of anti-Aberrant factions. 

These narrative factors have mechanical implementations. When an Aberrant character passes through the Mortis, approximately 1-5 higher threat Aberrant Undead are sent out. When over one third of the checked-in characters at an event are Aberrant, these higher threat Undead are available to run throughout game. When over one half of the checked-in characters at an event are Aberrant, the highest threat (Apocalyptic Undead) are available to run. The disease Cerebral Scourge spreads from Aberrants. Additionally, certain Mortis procedures are mechanically more difficult if more than one Aberrant is a target of the procedure.

Choosing to make your character Aberrant is choosing to accept the conflicts and challenges that narratively and mechanically come with it. The narratives surrounding Aberrancy are about power and consequence. If you reach for your potential and learn to bend reality, your powers could help you and the people you care about. But is it all worth it? That’s for you to decide.

These narratives are intentionally filled with moral ambiguity, with no truly right or wrong answer, and characters may have opinions that span from Aberrant supremacists to militantly anti-Aberrant and everything in between. In order to align with the intended themes of choice and consequence, characters in Dystopia Rising: Colorado’s stories are always able to give up their Aberrant powers without causing lasting physical or psychological damage to themselves. Narratively speaking, this process can be as complex as a surgery, or as simple as a period of meditation.

With all of that said, because the negative impacts of Aberrancy are core in-universe canon, players should not use Aberrancy as an allegory for neurodivergence, disability, and LGBTQIA+ identity in order to prevent negative bleed for themselves and other players. Unlike any of those things in our world — in the world of Dystopia Rising — Aberrancy is actually dangerous. Characters with anti-Aberrant sentiments can hold legitimate, logical concerns about the impact Aberrants and Aberrancy have on their communities. This imbalance between the canon of Dystopia Rising: Live and the reality of these experiences can result in:

• negative bleed for players using this allegory when interfacing with anti-Aberrant plots and characters,

• can make players of anti-Aberrant characters uncomfortable with the role they are forced into when an allegorical connection is created, and;

• can make other players who have these experiences feel uncomfortable with the implication that their existence is equivalent to one with a canonical negative impact.

Aberrancy is meant to ask the question: “Yes, you can, but should you?” — which is not a question we want to ask about LGBTQIA+ identities or disabled and neurodivergent people.

Because of the narrative and mechanical impact Aberrant characters have on the setting, and the challenging narratives Aberrant characters can face, if you local to Dystopia Rising: Colorado and wish to have any Aberrant skills removed from your sheet, please reach out to the local game runners to accommodate this request either at game or beforehand.

Unholy Passengers and You: A Primer

As we head towards the end of our live season of events, one prominent plot during this upcoming event will focus on faith – the zeal, corruption and true belief that makes up Barker Meadow Reservoir. 

In this blog post, we’ll cover the Unholy Passengers, those long-dreaded parasites of faith, and the mechanics and story around them. First, the lowdown on what the Unholy Passengers are and how they will function mechanically. Second, some interaction points and themes we encourage exploring this game. Finally, attached mechanics to this particular outbreak of Passengers – the Host keyword, the ways a Passenger can be interacted with by calls: Advance, Inflame and Weaponize, the Weaponized Passenger status and two types of Bane to be on the lookout for: Host Bane and Faith Bane. 

So, What exactly are the Unholy Passengers?

The Unholy Passengers are parasites that “eat” away at the bodies, minds and faith of Lineages. They influence, addle and poison their Hosts, often ending in death and, for the faithful, loss of their faith. 

Unholy Passengers have three Stages. All characters will enter into town with a Stage 1 Passenger unless the player expressly opts out either OOG or through mechanics. Each Stage will include an  RP Prompt and mechanics for what happens when your Passenger is Inflamed (agitated by an outside force). Faithful characters will have a base effect that makes Faith abilities painful to use and receive, while Faithless characters will experience a different issue in play with their status as Hosts. 

To be clear, while the RP Prompts can be opted into and out of at any time your character would be under the effect as usual, we do strongly encourage leaning into the RP that comes with being a Host. The mechanical effects of being a Host at different Stages, such as what happens when Inflamed, can not be opted out of without opting out of the entire experience of being Host to a Passenger. 

Unholy Passengers Stage 1 -

If Lineage is Faithful: 

Mechanics: Faith Anomaly skills cost 10 Body Damage and Agony to use or receive. When Inflamed, take 10 Body Damage and Agony 30 seconds.

Role-Play Prompt: Crisis Of Faith 

If Lineage is Faithless: 

Mechanics: When Inflamed, take 10 Body Damage and Agony 30 seconds.

Role-Play Prompt: Yearning for Faith

Stage 2 - 

If Faithful: 

Mechanics: As per Stage 1 but when Inflamed, instead take 20 Body Damage from brain hemorrhaging.

Role-Play Prompt: Corrupted Faith Zealotry (replaces Stage 1 Prompt)

If Faithless: 

Mechanics: When Inflamed, take 20 Body Damage from brain hemorrhaging (this replaces Stage 1’s effect)

Role-Play Prompt: Existential Faith Crisis (replaces Stage 1 Prompt)

Stage 3 - 

If Faithful: 

Mechanics: When Inflamed, take 1 Resolve Damage. If the character reaches 0 Resolve from this damage, they receive 20 Body Damage, Blinding and Stun 5 minutes, then 1 minute later, 10 Murder (Striker’s Coat does not immune, and this replaces the earlier Inflame effect). Reaching 0 Resolve from this damage will remove the Faith from a character and add a note to their sheet that they require a Rite of Reaffirmation to be rebaptized within the next 3 months to that faith. This removal of faith can expressly be opted out of and the note either not added or removed at any time based on a player’s choice. Death by any means purges the body of the Passenger and results in a more intense Mortis scene, during which reaching 0 Resolve will remove Faith as per above.

Role-Play Prompt: As per Stage 2

If Faithless: 

Mechanics: When Inflamed, take 1 Resolve Damage. If the character reaches 0 Resolve from this damage, they receive 20 Body Damage, Blinding and Stun 5 minutes, then 1 minute later, 10 Murder (Striker’s Coat does not immune, and this replaces the earlier Inflame effect). Death by any means purges the body of the Passenger and results in a more intense Mortis scene.

Role-Play Prompt: As per Stage 2

Whew! So the takeaway here is: Watch out for those Inflame calls, and get ready to explore faith in your roleplay as a Host! What’s it all mean though? What sort of stories are the Passengers meant to encourage and where might you take your RP of being a Host? 

Themes of the Passenger Experience

The three themes of the Passenger experience in this writer’s mind are the Give and Take of Faith in Barker, the Search for Meaning inherent in exploring faith, and the Dread of being Host to an increasingly deadly Passenger that threatens body and soul alike. 

In Barker, faith giveth and faith taketh away, as people and whole religions rise and fall with Trials big and small. The Unholy Passengers are yet another test of faith and of the community strength of Barker Meadow – including the strength of the All-Faiths. For the faithful, being Host to a Passenger is a terrible state, one’s faith turned into a weapon against oneself, but also the Hosts will be key for dealing with the outbreak (as we’ll talk more about below) and this is yet another opportunity to prove the strength of your faith in Barker. 

The RP Prompts involved are meant to evoke a winding path through the experience of faith or faithlessness, with a movement from crisis to zealotry for the faithful and a descent into the now very literal crisis that is lacking faith in Barker for the faithless. We encourage you to lean into aspects of your character’s beliefs you’ve been wanting to explore and to take dramatic action based on the RP Prompts!

Finally, being a Host is dangerous and potentially deadly. There will be calls that Inflame and put the Hosts in danger in other ways, and the fear and horror inherent in being affected by something that’s taken worse and worse root in you should be at the front of the mind of those playing Hosts. 

How to Interact With This Plot Other Than Being a Host

There are some ways you can interact with this plot other than suffering from being a Host,  including Research and Removal. 

First, the Passenger outbreak will need to be Researched in order to understand how to deal with it. This Research will be made available during play, and provide a chance for the educated to put their book learning to use. One thing to note ahead of time about the Research: it will require at least one Host involved in the process. While it will be possible to remove the Passengers in town, it would make the overall problem much harder to deal with without Host researchers. 

Second, the All-Faiths have a ritual for removing Passengers that will be made available to town. Of course they do! This ritual requires some heavy faith RP, ritualists, a surgeon and a Sunbloom. The problem with this ritual is no problem for the All-Faiths – it does not work on the faithless. There may be other ways to remove a Passenger discoverable during game, however, with different methods taking variant resources and having their own complications. 

There will be more ways to interact with the Passengers and more for Hosts to do to understand their predicament and importantly, protect themselves against the Passengers within them that will be unlockable through play. 

What Mechanics to Know

You’re going to want a quick mechanical rundown of relevant calls and keywords for the Passenger outbreak this month: Host, Advance, Inflame, Weaponize, Weaponized Passengers and Host and Faith Bane. 

Host: A keyword targeting all who currently have Passengers. 

Advance: A call that impacts Hosts, bringing a Passenger one stage forward, to a maximum of Stage 3. There is no progression beyond Stage 3 and Advance does not impact those without Passengers (there is no advancement from “Stage 0” via this call, unlike some Diseases).

Inflame: Inflame is a call that has different effects at different Stages of hosting a Passenger and can be delivered in a variety of ways, defended through its base defense – a melee-delivered Inflame would be Avoided, a Psionic Inflame countered with Basic Mental Endurance, etc. – as well as specific mechanics to negate Inflames overall. 

Weaponize: Now this is where things get spicy. Weaponize is a call that turns a Passenger into a Weaponized Passenger. Exactly what this means is to be discovered in-game but for transparency, let’s go over the Weaponized Passenger status. 

Weaponized Passenger: A Weaponized Passenger acts as per the Passenger’s base mechanics, but adds the following – 

• The Passenger will Advance every 2 Hours up to a maximum of Stage 3. 

• When about to Advance, make sure to tap a Guide familiar with the plot (Brom or Emily are your best bets) to make the appropriate calls that result from Advancement of a Weaponized Passenger. 

• Dying while under the effects of a Weaponized Passenger is a dramatic event above and beyond the experience of death – make sure to get a Guide as detailed above as well.

Host Bane: This is a Bane that deals double damage to anyone or anything (spoilers: not just Lineages can and will be Hosts to Passengers…) with a Passenger. 

Faith Bane: This one is simple. If you have a Faith, this effect will deal double damage. 

With the rundown of a big threat this weekend complete, we look forward to seeing you at our September event, “Politics and Religion!” If you haven’t grabbed your ticket and checked in on the database yet you can do so here.

Local Custom Mechanic: Lights Out

As part of our two-part June and July plot, we'll be running a custom mechanic called Lights Out. Here's how it works:

A guide will enter a building and call “By This Zone: Lights Out.” All characters not immune to blinding will be under the effects of Blinding and Stun until the guide specifies otherwise, calling “Lights Up.” All players affected by Lights Out will be asked to cover their eyes until tapped by a guide or NPC.

Any character that is not blinded does not have to cover their eyes during this time, and does not take the effects of the Stun. They are considered to have needed cover for Stealth, and can move to intercept NPCs as long as the NPC is not under the effects of Basic Enhanced Movement or Stealth.

If an NPC is intercepted, play will briefly pause while the combat is moved to an open space. Any players that are needed to be moved for safety will be informed by the guide. Once a combat space is cleared, play will resume.

Why would something kill the lights to a building? To snatch helpless victims, of course!

There will be times during our June and July events where NPCs may attempt to abduct your character. If you wish to opt out of being kidnapped, inform a Logistics Guide to receive an opt-out wristband.

If your character is abducted, your kidnapper will attempt to take you to a certain checkpoint. If you are rescued or use the Larceny skill to slip your binds before this checkpoint, you're free! Otherwise, you and the NPC will go back to Ops, where you will be presented with 3 options:

1. If you have Basic Larceny and the mind to do so, but chose not to slip your binds while being taken, you may escape and return to town without drawing enemy attention.

2. If you don’t have Larceny and are OK with your kidnapped character being "offscreen" until one of the rescue missions run the next day, you may NPC for CAPs or play a different character during this time.

3. If you don't have Larceny and don’t want to be offscreen until the next morning, a guide will spin up an escape scenario for you, and you can find out how you managed to escape and what state you find yourself in as you make your way back to town.

We hope to create a tense game with a sense of danger lurking in the dark. Will you find a way to hold back the darkness?

A New Tree for 2023: Updates to the Overgrowth Pinemaw

With the resurgence of last November’s apex Overgrowth threat right around the corner, we want to tell you all about some of the changes we’ve made to refine and balance the Pinemaw into the challenge we always dreamed it to be: it will still pose a deadly threat, but our hope is that these changes will bring it from being just a hard fight to a hard and fun fight!

The Pinemaw WILL still require the feeding of a special Herbicide to harm it. The Print for this Herbicide will be seeded several times throughout the coming event and will be used for further Pinemaw encounters in the future.

The Pinemaw WILL NOT require a count of Root NPCs to be killed to knock it into Bleed Out. Instead, the puppeteer inside the Trunk will have a Body tally, and players will be able to attack the monster directly with Ranged Attacks and Strikes to the puppeteer’s arms, shoulders, and torso. Attacks to the exterior of the puppet will have No Effect - beat the player, not the prop!

Pinemaw Roots WILL still be present, but they have been very heavily nerfed to better serve a role as small harassers of PCs attempting to engage the Trunk.

The Pinemaw WILL still have a mix of Pheromone and Psionic calls. We have refined them, however, to be distinct in their functions, and more heavily favor Psionics. Pheromone calls are, as before, resisted using the Proficient ability of the Helscape Deathmask, while Psionic calls are resisted with Mental Endurance as normal. If an AoE or BMV call does not possess either of those carriers, it follows other resistance and counter rules as normal!

These changes are OOC knowledge related to what is fundamentally a mechanics patch; in-character, survivors are not intended to take this as a cue that the Pinemaw has mutated, evolved, or changed in any way.

Thanks for reading! Good luck out there, Survivor, and happy hunting!

"Apotheosis" August Premiere Event: Mechanics Highlight

Dystopia Rising: Colorado is excited to introduce our August Premiere event: Apotheosis. We're set to unveil some innovative game mechanics for our coming game. To pave the way for your planning and maintain transparency, we share a high-level overview of three main mechanics: Abyssal Distortion, Corruption, and Marks.

Each mechanic interacts uniquely with differing play styles and we can't wait to see how they cater to a wide range of experiences. Let's delve into each.

Abyssal Distortion is a spatially located and represented mechanic in the gameworld symbolizing an abnormal liminal space in the game world warped by the Abyss, abode of the Archons, that demands your character's intervention. This mechanic immerses players into areas twisted by unseen forces, altering how characters perceive and interact within the game. The air of uncanny mystery will appeal to enthusiasts of intellectual puzzles, unique mechanics and unusual props, offering an opportunity to claw back the everyday from the intrusive and warping horror present in the gameworld.

Abyssal Corruption, on the other hand, targets enthusiasts of medical role-play and uncanny body horror. It centers around themes like contamination, irreversible damage and death, stirred by foreign contagions and threats that require thoughtful intervention to resolve. Players have the choice whether or not to engage with this mechanic. Relish in terrifying body transformations, research and treatment if you opt-in.

Last comes Abyssal Marks - another completely optional mechanic that immerses players into psychological horror by introducing fragmented, alien character thoughts linked to the Abyss for you to roleplay. You may decide to bring your character into game bearing a Mark which can cause unique mechanical interactions during play as well as role-play prompts and their consequences that you’ll work through over the weekend. The experience for Marked characters is akin to DR:CO’s Fixations; these characters may also be potential targets throughout the weekend event but beginning as Marked is not required for plot participation. As a reward for opting in? A unique souvenir representing the ordeal you can take home post-game! Who doesn’t like horror and swag?

Stay tuned for more interesting tidbits on Apotheosis as we near the big day! We eagerly await the shared experience of weaving thrilling stories at this unique event. Meanwhile, join the discussion on Discord, Facebook, and Instagram! Prepare yourself for horrors the likes of which DR:CO has never seen before at this event and the stories we’ll get to tell together at Apotheosis.