Join us for Community Day

Photo by London Belli

Want to earn 10 additional Build at no cost? Come to Dystopia Rising New York’s Community Day, Thursday May 11th at Forestburg Scout Reservation!

In addition to the extra build, this is an excellent opportunity to give back to the community and interact with friends. 

Fill out the submission form to claim your spot and take part in our Community Day! 

You are not required to attend the full day, all help is appreciated.

What is Expected?

Cleaning and Maintenance are our core goals to give back to our site. This event occurs between 9 am and 7 pm on Thursday, May 11th… you must be able to be on site during this time. Tasks can include but are not limited to:

• Clean up commonly used areas

• Assist with upgrading the Med Sleep building

• Perform trail maintenance

• Collection and preparation of firewood

What’s the benefit?

DRNY wishes to give back to our site to thank them for allowing us to host our events and giving you a space to be the amazing badasses you are in our world of Requiem. As a bonus, you can expect the following for your hard work:

• You will gain 1 Build per hour of work, to a maximum of 10 Build per person split between your characters however you want!

• If you are asked to work over 10 hrs., you will be given Caps for your efforts.

• A lunch break provided by us!

• At 7 pm est., we will host a Potluck inspired Community Picnic where you can bring (but are not required to) your own food and instruments to cook and celebrate our community and enjoy a dinner provided by us!

There may also be additional tasks that may need to be completed Friday morning between 9 am and 1 pm Eastern.

The Value Of A Regular - An Appreciation Post

Photo by Shawn Smith

A few members of our staff were in the weekly print meeting recently, which is a meeting where national staff discuss upcoming print releases for the network. During the meeting, people talked about new players, and how we “needed to do something for them.” The urgency of taking care of new players is typical - and admirable - across Dystopia Rising: people want to make sure newcomers have a good time, and this is a good thing. We’ve also talked about taking care of returning players: people who haven’t played Dystopia Rising for some time, and how we’ve taken steps to welcome them back with our returning player drive. And we’ve talked about travelers too! We’ve talked about just about every group of people who could buy a ticket for our game… except one.

And so it’s time to show some appreciation for our regulars.

Your Attendance Is a Gift

There’s a very self-serving reason to give attention to new players: we want them to come back. If we’re doing really well with our new player experience, and we get four new players, only two of them will ever play again, and only one will make it to their sixth game (and these numbers are pretty generous). Returning players have an even worse chance of coming for six games, and most travelers who regularly play at their home game will manage only a couple of games a year. Going all out for these players is a matter of respect and courtesy… but it also helps bring them back, so we have more people to play with. 

Compare that to a player who has come to every game for a year or two. They’re likely to buy a ticket to the next game (they’re probably likely to buy an Early Bird ticket or extra XP). For Dystopia Rising New York, we know that there are about 50 players who make every single game, and another 20 players who attend almost as regularly. This is the core of our game: these are our storytellers and guides, these are the characters best known in the town… these players are essentially part of the setting. And it’s easy to simply expect that they’ll always be there.

But this is a mistake for two reasons: first… that player bought a ticket, same as the new person or traveler or returning player, and they deserve the same amount of attention. We’re not entitled to their attendance, and they deserve the same effort and respect as we give to the players we’re not sure we’ll see again. Their presence isn’t a right, it’s a gift.

Second, regulars always show up… until they don’t. One day, due to neglect, changes in game, or even just life events, they stop coming. If a regular stops playing Dystopia Rising because they move, or change jobs, or even just don’t enjoy larping as much as they used to, that’s okay. But if they move on because the game doesn’t demonstrate how they’re valued, then that’s a failure, and probably a bigger failure than if a new player tries out the game and decides they don’t like it.

Why Are Regulars So Important

Even if we could replace every regular player who quits with two new players, we’d still be losing something, and that’s because our players do so much work to support each other. It’s the regular who picks up someone’s tab at afters or drives them to the grocery store for supplies. It’s the regular who chimes in to give a ride to a game or pick someone up at the train station. The regular makes the food you buy at the game and probably has crafted more than a few of those cool boffers you use. Financially, a regular player gives us more than $500 a year in revenue… and with premiere events and advanced memberships, some give well over $1,000. Regulars are our guides, who do extra shifts and staff shambles. They’re our storytellers, who put in dozens of hours each month to produce this game. They’re the players who have been here two, three, or even five years and never get a mod designed for them. While we’re constantly talking about “players under 100 build” for items, what about the 50% of players who are between 100 and 400?

These players must be engaged, respected  and thanked for their support because this is our core group of players. And like any core group, their support becomes expected, and there’s a tendency to forget to give them positive reinforcement.

Thank You

We wanted to do more than just thank our regulars, so we’ve gone one step further. We’ve given every player who has supported (attended or bought non-attending) at least three games in a row heading into March 30 CAPs to show our appreciation. Further, we’ve gone back and given you another 10 CAPs for every game in your streak for the last year (so if March is your fourth game in a row, you get 40 CAPs, if it’s your fifth, you get 50, and so on… up to a total of 90 CAPs).  We wanted to do this to show that while we really want to take care of our new players, our returning players, and our travelers… we do appreciate that our regulars are the most important people to the success of DRNY.  Thank you.

Remember, we recently introduced new rules for CAPs at DRNY, so be sure to check out the announcement so you can use this token of our appreciation.