#storypath

"People don't need a reason to be awful to each other. They just need to survive. But people don't need a reason to survive, either. They just need each other. Figure that one out, you've got a shot of understanding why we're all still here."

- Tribeca Rockaway, sniper of the Dead Heroes gang

No one knows how long it's been since the world was blasted with nuclear radiation and became infected with the undead. Major cities were all but destroyed; transit is reduced to animals, wagons, and the occasional iron horse. The survivors of the Fall were the first strain of deviation from the human condition and were able to make it through the rapidly spreading epidemic.

Humanity has just started to rebuild, but large sections of the world are still irradiated or completely overrun by the undead. Small communities come together in a world where the concepts such as "democracy," "freedom," and "government" are newly reborn. Finding a community of decent size in this world is rare; finding one that has any concept of equality or morality is rarer still.

Oh, and people have the unnerving ability to come back from the dead, regrown from the very virus that destroyed the world.

This is dystopia. The world is broken. It is up to you to pick up the pieces and make a new world from the remains of the old.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution is the latest edition of the Dystopia Rising post-apocalyptic tabletop roleplaying game, which quickly grew into a live-action sensation, and now comes full-circle back to it's tabletop roots. Onyx Path is pleased to update the earlier edition and incorporate elements from the live-action setting with Dystopia Rising: Evolution, a tabletop roleplaying game that presents a fresh and exciting take on the post-apocalypse genre.

The Dystopia Rising: Evolution Kickstarter campaign is designed to enable us to create a hardcover core rulebook that will introduce the world, as well as setting up room for expansion and further exploration of the setting. We also want to get at least one print run into traditional distribution and available for sale at game and hobby stores.

We want to create an 8.5" x 11" hardcover with a beautifully designed, evocative cover image, and full-color interior art. We estimate the book to be more than 250+ pages, and will be traditionally printed on high quality paper stock.

                            Cover design subject to change.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution will be powered by Onyx Path's Storypath system, and includes all the rules you need to play as a survivor in the post-apocalypse, including rules for creating characters for up to 24 different Strains, variations on humanity that survived the Fall. It also has details on the powers of faith and psionics, along with advice on running action-adventure stories, webs of personal intrigue, or procedural investigations. And, finally, dozens of antagonists, including a variety of zombies and raiders to use in your series.

Chapters include:

Chapter One — A New Age: A look at the background of Dystopia Rising: Evolution, including some insight into the people that live in this post-apocalyptic world.

Chapter Two — Your Brothers and Sisters: The survivors of the Fall can be categorized into eight Lineages, which each have a handful of Strains that fight to reclaim the world that was destroyed.

Chapter Three — Knitting the Flesh: How to make a character for Dystopia Rising: Evolution.

Chapter Four — Rolling the Bones: The core rules of Dystopia Rising: Evolution, which stem from Onyx Path’s Storypath system.

Chapter Five — Acts of Violence: How to hurt people, and avoid being hurt.

Chapter Six — Wild Wild Wastes: How to survive the variety of environmental dangers in Dystopia Rising, as well as rules for salvaging and scavenging items and gear.

Chapter Seven — Birds of a Feather: You can’t survive without making friends, and several factions and groups have popped up all over the wastes.

Chapter Eight — What You Believe: Faith in a higher power, or in something else entirely, helps many survivors get through the harsh days and long nights.

Chapter Nine — Brain Bleed: The Fall of humanity lead to a few benefits, including the discovery and cultivation of psychic potential.

Chapter Ten — Campfire Stories: The Storyguide is the person who helps the players experience the world of Dystopia Rising.

Chapter Eleven — Threats of the Wastes: Living in the wasteland is no picnic. If the weather and the lack of supplies won’t kill you, the zombies and raiders will.

Chapter Twelve — The Wasteland: No one is quite sure how things got to bad. But at least the new settlement of Philly del Phia offers a new chance for people to start fresh.

Chapter Thirteen — Let the Dead Lie: Every story has a beginning. This might be yours.

Throughout this Kickstarter campaign, we will be posting complete previews of the Dystopia Rising: Evolution playtestmanuscript as backer-only updates.

         Click HERE to see the Manuscript Preview download links

The Storypath system is Onyx Path's rules set designed specifically to allow the sort of rules scaling necessary to seamlessly enable players to play ordinary people as well as characters with psi powers, and everything in between.  

The basics of the Storypath system should be familiar to anyone who has played many other Onyx Path games of survival or personal horror, as it is a 10-sided dice pool system, where in order to resolve an action you basically roll a number of dice equal to the character's Skill + Attribute and must roll an 8 or better a certain number of times in order to succeed in the action.

That is the very basic resolution system, but we expand on that to further enhance how your gaming group can build their stories. Failing to hit your number of successes, or having more successes than your required amount, are built-in options in the rules. Here is a handy graphic that illustrates what we mean:

To further explain the basics of the Storypath system, here is a small PDF download that goes into more detail: SYSTEM PREVIEW PDF.

The primary goal of this Kickstarter campaign is to create the best version of Dystopia Rising: Evolution that is possible. Your support allows us to fund the best production, use the most appropriate components, and possibly even contract more art for the core book. We hope to not only deliver a beautiful hardcover book to all of our backers, but also fund at least one print run to be sold through distribution and into book and hobby stores that are so vital to our community.

Beyond that primary goal, we hope to gain additional funding to explore more of the world of Dystopia Rising: Evolution, possibly expanding into supplements or other accessories, as well as possibly building a portal for more community development. The greater our funding for this project, the more resources we are able to explore this shattered world.

Thirdly, we want to celebrate and build on the existing Dystopia Rising fan base, further exploring and developing the world that they've built and forging a shared and strong community. We'll have opportunities for some crossover and integration as we move forward by presenting special Reward Tiers and Stretch Goals.

Beyond all of those campaign-specific goals, we hope to do what our games have always done — open a path to a new world; a setting for our community to build new stories and entwine imaginations. Every person who participates in this campaign is joining with the goal of bringing this game into the world — and like our protagonists, this creed binds us with with common purpose. When you back this project, you join our burgeoning society and we evolve and grow together.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, September 21 2018 6:59 PM BST

In the city of Greyhawk, five individuals are united by circumstance: a brewer priest, a haunted swordsman, a living relic, a caustic criminal, and a golem without a past. Their lives are about to be turned upside-down by the drawing of a single card. -----

Music by Matt Weber

http://mattwebersmusic.wordpress.com/

  Find us online at:

http://thechimera.space

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[email protected]

  Josh Hall-Bachner: [Everywhere in time and space]

Braden Lamb: http://twitter.com/bradenlamb

Jeffrey Bard: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/

Kacey Smith: [stand in front of a mirror at midnight and call her name three times]

Kelly Weisman-Asprooth-Jackson: http://www.firstparishbeverly.org/spiritual/ministers-page/

Vin LaBate: http://twitter.com/mrreciprocity and also http://twitter.com/rarecandypod