On a Friday afternoon, Oregonian/OregonLive columnist Samantha Swindler and I parked in the lot on the edge of a Lutheran summer camp outside of Cheshire, west of Eugene. We walked across a bridge and entered the world of Dystopia Rising Oregon, also known as Dead Mist Valley, a make-believe village where adults dress in costumes, pretend to be 800 years in the future and fight each other with foam weapons.
It was pretty amazing.
For 24 hours we didn’t check Twitter, didn’t engage at all with the news cycle and instead focused all of our energy on not being eaten by Mist Cats and zombies. Except when we took our turn focusing all our energy on terrorizing the townspeople.
It was as magical as it was confusing. Even if you aren’t ready to don a suit of armor and fight zombies all night, you should get to know what it is all about, just in case you have to depend on some LARPers when the world ends.
Live Action Role Playing — LARPing — is basically playing a game where you yourself are the game piece. Think: Monopoly but with real houses and a jail and you are actually a top hat. Or: Milo in the “Phantom Tollbooth.”
Dystopia Rising, the game we did, is a nationwide “post-apocalyptic LARP network” with franchises in New Jersey, Texas, Washington, Colorado and Oregon, among others. It began on the East Coast in 2008 and has spread like, well, a zombie infection, throughout the country.
LARPers are serious about what they do. Before the game begins, they gather, eat, costume themselves, and chat in out-of-game mode. But once the director of the game says “Game on,” they are fully immersed in the character they are playing. That means 24-hour adherence to character, including going to bed in character, ready to fight any bad guys who might attack in the night.
Choosing a player character:
Before you play the game, you have to pick a character. In Dystopia Rising, you must pick your character from a selection of “strains,” which are basically post-apocalyptic races. The strains are identified by make-up and clothing. Example: A “Vegasian” dresses in a trashy fancy way. A “Retrograde” has a rotting face.
The strain you choose will determine what your profession can or can’t be, how many lives you get before you permanently die, how smart you are and how tough you are. It also determines what skills and weapons you have access to.
You get to do the rest. Name your character and decide what kind of person they are.
In Dystopia Rising, you are given cards for your weapons and armor, as well as things like serums that can bring you back to life. It’s up to you to make a “phys rep” or physical representation of whatever your character has.
The story:
LARPing is basically active group storytelling with specific rules. It’s like improv but if improv went on for 48 hours and was mostly serious. The story is determined on an overall level by the directors of the game but it is broken down into parts, called “mods” or modules, that are controlled by individual storytellers. The storytellers work using a database of characters and previous stories and create storylines that force the townspeople to work together or just run for their lives. Those stories are told on the ground by “Non-player Characters” or NPCs.
Who are the bad guys?
In Dystopia Rising, everyone must take a turn as an NPC. Before the game begins, you sign up for at least one four-hour shift making the game run. As an NPC, you are a tool of the storyteller, who will assign you a character with specific skills and qualities and will tell you what you’re supposed to do. Then, they set you loose into the world. One thing that is frequently reinforced: As an NPC, you’re there to make the game fun and let the players win. Don’t kill everyone, if possible.
How does battle work?
Every weapon, for players and non-players, has an amount it can hurt you, which is predetermined and numerical. For example, your melee sword (represented by a foam covered piece of PVC pipe) could be worth three points per hit. As you hit a person, you shout that number. Important: You can’t just swing with abandon. You must start each swing at a 90 degree angle. You can’t hit someone in the same spot over and over again.
Each character also has a numerical amount of life or “body” points. So, you may have nine body. That means if someone hits you three times, yelling three each time, you are dying. “In bleed out.” When you’re in bleed out, you scream for your life. You have five minutes in bleed out before you really die. In those five minutes you can be rescued — healed by a doctor or a priest or by a shot of some life-saving serum.
There are other things weapons can do, depending on the skills of the wielder: mangle a limb or block an attack.
What happens if you die?
It’s actually pretty hard to die in Dystopia Rising, because everyone else is trying really hard to keep you alive. But if you do lose all your body points and then bleed out for five minutes without getting rescued, you go to the “Grave Mind,” (basically a tent) and get your own, personalized Grave Mind scene from a storyteller. Depending on your strain, you get to die and come back — albeit a little crazier — several times before you become “Full Dead,” a zombie, and then your friends kill you for good. Then, you have to pick a new character.
What do you do when you aren’t fighting?
Dystopia Rising is really a social game. Multiple people told us that you will die in the game if you don’t get help from your community. No one character can do everything, even the ones who have been playing for years.
Most of the game play actually isn’t battle. It’s hanging out in different places, doing your jobs. That means, role playing “tinkering” by knocking a hammer on a table, or eating, literally, but in character, or telling stories around a fire or debating the ethical and moral merits of executing someone for murder.
Why play?
People LARP for many reasons. We met veterans who said LARPing helped them deal with PTSD by giving them a positive outlet for their military skills and a safe environment to deal with fear. We met people who got into the game because of significant others. We met a 34-year-old guy who said he worked at a “conservative financial institution,” a 41-year-old guy who said he worked at a call center and an 18-year-old college student who was one of the many women playing the game.
Dystopia Rising Oregon is ultra-inclusive. The rules state you must ask people what pronouns they want you to use and you can’t even mention rape, let alone use it in a character backstory or role play around it. Everyone asks before they touch you, “Do you want to consent to physical role play?”
Even in character, players are ethical and follow the rules. They are kind when they are trying to kill you and communicate with each other well. It’s a structured universe where everyone is accepted and anyone can be as powerful as they can make themselves.
Also: it’s a weekend in the woods, once a month, without cell service, in an imaginary time that is post-politics. It costs $45 for a full weekend — $20 for your first time, you provide the food and the phys reps.
— Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052
lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
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