There will be a variety of custom mechanics that you may encounter this weekend. Many of them will not be used past this weekend, but if you’re coming to visit and looking to go Helldiving, you’ll want to know about these!

General Custom Mechanics

Here are some calls or keywords that you may hear over the weekend.

Abduct - “Abduct, [Target Name]. Never Here Plus One.”

User stands over a Subdued or willing Target with both boffers on or over them. After 10 seconds, unless interrupted, User goes Out of Character, per Master Stealth, with Target. Where the Target respawns will be dictated by mod or environment with final say by the Guide overseeing the scenario.

Countered by ‘No Escape.’
Redirection through the Benediction of the Chiroptera applies.

Absorb - “Absorb, Enter.”

Delivered by Melee Strike. This will be obvious in the moment and clarified if needbe.

Countered by Avoid

Command - “Psionic: Command, [Three Word Instruction]”

Delivered by white psionic packet. If not defended against, Target must attempt to follow the instructions to the best of their ability. Effect lasts until the Target is put into Bleed Out.

Countered by Mental Endurance

Flora - A Keyword that applies to some custom threats encountered over the weekend. There are currently no calls or effects that specifically interact with the Keyword Flora, but this may change over the course of the weekend based on player actions.

Blight - A Keyword that Player Characters may gain, and lose, over the course of the Event. Blight has no effect on its own, but characters with it may be vulnerable to other calls that target the “Blighted.”

Underwater Mechanics

This hopefully shouldn’t be a surprise, but a major part of the focus of our event involves diving underwater. This will not be the entire event’s focus, and is entirely opt-in via away modules.

Remaining Underwater without an Air Source

If swimming underwater without a source of air, you can hold your breath for a set amount of time before you begin to take damage. For ease of use, we will call this amount of time your “dive cycle.”

Under 50 XP Spent - A dive cycle is 4 minutes per current Resolve total.

Between 51 and 150 XP Spent - A dive cycle is 2 minutes per current Resolve total.

Over 151 XP Spent - A dive cycle is 1 minute per current Resolve total.

Mechanics:

If you reach the end of your dive cycle, you may choose to spend 1 Resolve to start a new dive cycle
Returning to a source of air for 1 minute will reset your dive cycle timer.
If you cannot, or choose not to, spend Resolve, you will begin to take 10 Body every 30 seconds until you reach an air source.
Resolve spending mechanics, per the 3.0 Rulebook, still apply. If you reach 0 Resolve during the Event, you may not spend Resolve (including Resolve-costing Items) for the rest of the Event, even if you no longer have 0 Resolve.
All Full Dead and Saltwise can remain underwater indefinitely without taking damage. Some specific conditions may interfere with this, and will be clarified when they arise.

Sources of Air and Other Defenses

Diving Bell

This submersible has some very limited propulsion in localized areas but is primarily reliant on a ship for navigation. It is not a submarine, and cannot navigate the entirety of the Dead Zone on its own. Its supplies of air and power are limited, which may limit how long it is useful for on a single trip before needing to be replenished.

“Ace Sears Brand” Air Cylinder

This single-use Gizmo provides up to 60 minutes of breathable air for 1 person, but does not provide protection from other environmental hazards. Once ‘opened’, it cannot be resealed in order to save the remaining supply. It cannot be shared with others.

Helscape Deathmask

This Gizmo can provide some limited protection from environmental hazards, but does not count as a source of air.

Deadzone Dives

We are including a Content List as well as a rough start time window for each Dive we plan to run over the weekend. All Dives other than the last will have a limit on how many characters may undertake the voyage. The last Dive will have no limit on participants. All Dives are currently planned to occur in the forest across the road.

Content Warnings and Estimated Start Times for All Dives

All Dives have a chance of featuring thalassophobia, environmental hazards, and the threat of simulated drowning and/or suffocation. All Dives will also take place in the Wasteland (Character v Character Conflict possibility).

Saturday Midnight - 2 am

This Dive may feature themes of underwater exploration, the Mortis Amaranthine, Coordination, Kidnapping, and Zombies.

Saturday 9am - Noon

This Dive may feature themes of Stealth, Larceny, obscured or low vision, and the threat of simulated implosion.

Saturday Noon - 3pm

This Dive may feature themes involving Medical and Wasteland Science, as well as possible hallucinations, themes of unethical behavior, lack of empathy, and limited but avoidable splatter effects.

Saturday 7pm - 10pm

This Dive may feature close quarters areas, claustrophobia, Lineage threat, and themes of revenge.

Saturday 11pm - Sunday 1am

This Dive may feature submechanophobia, temporary isolation or helplessness, temporary loss of agency, and large-scale coordination

Custom Disease

In order to strike a balance between the idea of numerically-limited teamwork while on dangerous away missions, while still enabling each person who wishes to go on one of the smaller preliminary Dives being able to do so, we will be implementing a custom “Disease” to help facilitate that. This mechanic represents being thoroughly exposed to the dangerous chemicals permeating the Dead Zone, and in that regard is not truly a “Disease” in the usual Dystopia Rising sense of the word.

Peacemaker

Transmission Vector: Significant, and sometimes repeated, exposure to the Peacemaker chemicals.

Description: More a debilitating condition than an actual disease, this condition occurs when a character is exposed to significant levels of the toxic chemicals known as “Peacemaker” such as full-body immersion in the waters surrounding the Dead Zone. As internal levels of the chemical increase, their side effects quickly worsen. There is no cure, although the Infection inherent in each Lineage will purge the substance over time once exposure has ceased assuming that exposure stops early enough.

Stages:

Stage 1: Feelings of contentment, serenity, and lethargy. Occasionally distracted with moments of calm. Ingested Brews and Meals take twice as long to consume.
Stage 2: As Stage 1, but increased. Lack of fear or aggression. All Injectibles require 2 minutes to take effect.
Stage 3: As Stage 2, but increased. Inability to attack or inflict harmful effects on any Target that has not done the same first. Must spend 1 Resolve to initiate aggressive actions against a single Target. This is not required once the Target attacks you.
Stage 4: As Stage 3, but increased. Inability to run or feel pain. May not move faster than a slow walk or use Enhanced Movement. Bleed Out Timer reduced to 2 minutes.
Stage 5: Painful and agonizing immediate death. Please report to Ops.

Duration Between Stages: This Disease cannot progress on its own. Each significant exposure (ie, a Dive) increase the Stage by 1. Mutants do not have an innate resistance to it, and cannot defend against it. Stage only progresses after exposure has completed (ie, after that Dive has concluded).

Resolution:

Identifiable with the Basic Medical Skill.
Not currently treatable. Disease is automatically cured at End of Event.
Return from Mortis cures Disease: No.

We're 24 hours out from our May Event, so let’s talk a bit about our Premier in June!

For a bit now, the folks in Steel Horse Crossing have been learning more about a nearby region in the Great Lake known as "The Dead Zone," a place of poison and death that used to have a thriving ecosystem primarily inhabited by a group of Saltwise known as the Kohl-Andra. As the name “Dead Zone” might imply, the property value has declined substantially since the Kohl-Andra lived there.

Meanwhile, one of the themes that we've done pretty much every summer since our chapter first opened has been that of the Helldive: An excursion into dangerous and unknown territory, to deal with a problem that threatens on a level that a single crew of individuals cannot easily solve on their own. While the original Helldive scenarios were focused on the local underground mines and their fires, we have in recent years branched out into other settings and major problems. You've probably figured out where this is going by now. :)

The focus of our Premier Event will be centered around the Dead Zone and learning how to resolve its cause. As the Dead Zone is a region out in the Great Lake, and not just down the street from the RoadHouse Bar, Player Characters will be traveling to, and setting up at, somewhere outside of the typical Steel Horse Crossing Monthly Trade Meet. Despite the temporary change in Setting, we will still be at Camp Sinawa. We realize it may feel weird, but we ask to please try to ignore the cognitive dissonance rather than draw attention to it. If it helps to reinforce the sense of being Elsewhere, we encourage you to choose sleeping bunks that you wouldn’t normally, tent camp, or make changes to your usual decorations and props around town.

We also feel it would be needless and a jerk move to deny everyone the Room Augments and Custom Crafting Zones that our players have already created at the WI game, so we are allowing them to be packed up and brought along for the ride. You will not be required to rebuild them from scratch, but instead some effort will need to be expended (such as Time and RP) in order for things to be transported in and installed. For example, an Agricultural Zone may need to have brush cleared, ground tilled, or fertilized. An Artisan Zone may need to have tools and materials laid out . We will have more details on this aspect as we get closer to June, but we wanted to be transparent with the broad view now.

In keeping with the theme of going where noone wanted to go before, we’re also likely to have some new threats you havn’t seen before, perhaps some old threats you wished you’d never see again, and likely some custom mechanics as we host our first Helldive that involves, well, literally diving. Any given Dystopia Rising game has a reasonable chance of covering a very broad range of horror topics, but we wanted to give some particular mentions of Content Warnings that are likely to come up, whether through direct experience or reference:

Thalassophobia, Submechanophobia, and Environmental Hazards such as drowning
Critters, including Spiders, Parasites, and other Creepy Crawlies
Historical References to the Ironworks, which may include topics such as fascism, torture, mass murder, and unethical medical experimentation and treatment of prisoners
Low Light Environments as well as Combats, potentially with atypical threats
Difficult-Choice and Morally Grey Situations
Splatter or Splash Effects
All of the usual things you’d expect, such as Blood, Gore, Body Horror, and Death.

As always, we will endeavor to steer modules or stories away from those who have communicated particular phobias or triggers to us, but as these will be major themes of the event we felt it crucial to be transparent about them. Players should always do what is best for them when engaging with sensitive topics, even as our Characters may be having the worst time of their short lives.

We certainly hope you’ll join us in June for this Event if this sounds like a fun time to you, but we also want to be transparent about the type of Event we will be hosting. The key to any game that revolves around cooperative storytelling is when players and gamerunners work jointly towards the story that they are creating together.

2024 Helldive - Weird Weekend WhatsIts