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Tired of being cooped up in your house, weekend after weekend?
Do you miss the days of playing pretend with your friends, whacking each other with ‘laser swords’ and sticks and only coming home when the streetlights come on?
Are you a fan of table-top role-playing games? Do you maybe get a little too into your character?
Have you tried things like Escape Rooms, VR experiences, Renaissance Faires or Lazer Tag, and found yourself wanting even more?
Do you sometimes wish you could ditch your phone and run away into the woods, even just for a few days?
Most importantly, are you seeking an inclusive community of nerds, creators, and role-players that are super open and welcoming to new folks?
Then you might be interested in Dystopia Rising: The Anvil.
Read on…
So What’s This All About?
Dystopia Rising: The Anvil is an 18+ fully-immersive Live Action Role-Play game that takes place once a month in Washington state, and is part of a greater network of games all across the country. It’s set in the post-apocalypse, and features hungry undead, raiders, an intuitive and engaging foam-weapon and NERF blaster combat system, economic intrigue, a robust crafting system, and a well-established community of players that are extremely welcoming to new players. You will play a Survivor, a ‘Spark’, a character that you design based on the strains and skills from the Dystopia Rising guidebooks, and immerse yourself fully into your character for three full days of combat, survival, and making new friends and enemies alike in the Wasteland. We have a keen staff of writers, settings guides and staff that creates the world around you as you participate in the event, so you will not lack for friends, people to talk to or things to do!
Where does this happen?
We rent out Scouting America camps one weekend a month, and transform them into our ragtag apocalyptic town of Emberforge. We have exclusive access to the campsite, so we are able to fully immerse ourselves into the post-apocalyptic world without the outside distractions of phones, news cycles, on-lookers and the outside world as a whole.
Starting in May for the remainder of the year, we will be at Camp Sheppard in Washington state. Our Event Dates are on the front page of the website!
What would my first Event look like?
Our events run from Friday 9pm to Sunday at noon. Our staff gets to the site around noon to set up the camp and make sure it’s all ready for us, and then players are invited to arrive starting at 4pm. Players will then set up their ‘bunk area’ and decorate any other spaces they bring decor for, often their character’s religious shrines, crafting areas and hang-out spaces. Some players even bring their own tents and cots, although there are plenty of cabins to stay in!
Players spend those first few hours getting their spaces ready and getting into their ‘character’ costumes and makeup, as well as safety-checking their costumes, props, foam weapons and dart blasters with our Safety Guides. Opening Announcements are at 8pm, at which time all event attendees gather and get oriented, receiving information about the plot, special mechanics, and getting re-oriented to game rules and reminders.
At this point, as a new player, you would split off with our New Player Guides, who will get you completely oriented to the game world, go over all of the combat rules, show you what your ‘sheet’ looks like and how to use it! They’ll also take you through your first in-game experience and teach you how to fight a zombie, what to do when your ‘body’ total hits zero, and how to generally interact with the game as a whole.
Game-On is at 9pm- after this point, we fully dive into our characters, and remain in-character throughout the weekend!
For more detailed information on your first event and what to bring, check out:
What would my character ‘do’ during the event?
Your character will arrive at Emberforge escorted by a member of a group called ‘The Emberlights’, which is a Society that focuses on helping New Players- or ‘Sparks’, as they are called in-game- get established. Several players are also members of the society, so you will come into the gamespace with people ready and willing to help you out! They will give you a pamphlet of missions and goals to complete that are optional, but have in-game item rewards like currency and resources that will help your character get better gear and equipment. There will also be jobs throughout the weekend that are tailored specifically to newer players, not to mention roving threats of zombies, raiders and ne'er-do-wells that you will need to protect yourself and others from! From the moment your character arrives, the actions that you take and the missions you complete will impact the world and the story around you. Dystopia Rising is a living, breathing setting that is shaped by its players- every decision made sends ripples across the Wasteland, and every victory and defeat impacts the story being told.
That being said, if your character dies, don’t worry! There is an in-game mechanic that allows a character to die and come back to life, as well as ‘infection’, which acts as ‘extra lives’.
What does a ‘character’ look like?
Our characters are as diverse and varied as we are. We have our rule books that outline the different ‘strains’ of humanity, each with their own perks and drawbacks, and our backstories can be anything- a pampered princess of wealthy parents that wants to walk on the ‘wild side’, a hardened fighter from the wasteland, a traveling merchant seeking to gain knowledge of all the different settlements, a priestly healer who wishes to Do Good for the world, a cook who moonlights as an assassin, a jaded loner who lost their ‘found family’ and is looking for another, or a humble farmer whose home was lost to raiders. As long as it fits in the setting, your background is up to you!
The guidebooks for character creation are available as free PDF downloads on our Home Network Website.
One Serious Moment-
We only have one Black-List topic that is against the rules: Sexual assault and rape do not exist in the world of Dystopia Rising. It cannot be a part of your backstory, and it will not ever happen to your character in-game. We don’t talk about it, joke about it or even mention it as a concept. For more details, you can visit our Content List.
Back to the fun stuff-
Do I stay in-character the whole time?
Dystopia Rising is a 24-hour immersive game! You will walk the trails, craft, hang out, eat and sleep in-character. There are even zed and raiders that may try to break into your cabin while you’re sleeping to try to steal your in-game resources, so stay on alert!
However, if you are someone who needs uninterrupted sleep, we also have a ‘Med Sleep’ cabin that does not get disturbed. We are an inclusive community that includes players who are veterans, those who have invisible disabilities, and those who have medical needs like c-pap devices, and we work hard on accommodating those needs!
Who portrays the zombies, raiders, and the other non-player characters?
The only time you will not be in-character is during your ‘NPC Shift’, where you spend time portraying a zombie, raider, merchant or whatever other Non-Player Character (NPC) critter or person the Storytellers have devised for the players.
All players have a shift like this during the game, whether as a guide that helps the game run smoothly or as an NPC going in to wreck other players’ days. When you register for your first game, you will sign up for a 4-hour ‘NPC Shift’, which tells you what time to report to ‘NPCland’ (aka The Depot). In-character, we call this ‘doing your civic duty’, as you’re assumed to be patrolling the walls of the city or licking stamps in the post office, or ‘civvies’ for short. For your NPC shift, we ask that you wear black clothing that’s appropriate to the season (long-sleeve or sweater in winter, short-sleeve in summer or the like), as we provide costume pieces and makeup that can go on over a base layer.
How do I get started?
All of our Rulebooks are free PDFs available for download- we recommend starting by reading the New Player Guide to get a feel for what the system looks like, then when you’re ready, come Join our Discord and take out a ticket to get registered on the database! Our New Player Guides are very active on Discord and will walk you through building your character on the database, as well as answering any questions you may have! The Discord is where we all hang out as a community, where we share pictures of our costumes and props, give and solicit advice on foam-weapon building or character builds, and share memes and silly character stuff.
Our website is another great resource, where you can view photos of past events, get caught up on the Current Lore, and look at the Event Dates for the rest of the year.