Branch Application Pamphlet
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Welcome to Dystopia Rising! We’re thrilled to
hear you’re interested in opening your own local
DR Chapter and we can’t wait to see what you will
contribute to our international network of games.
Dystopia Rising started in a Connecticut backyard,
and though the apocalypse has now spread coast
to coast, the game has lost none of its independent,
player-focused spirit. If you’re looking for a chance
to make your mark on the LARP community’s hottest
persistent world, grab your chainsaw and strap on
some hockey pads: Your story starts here!
When you join our team as a franchised Game
Director, you hit the ground running with the
resources and expertise we’ve amassed over the years.
Here’s what you get...
Networked database software to keep track of all
player characters at your game. With point and click
management for character sheets and experience
points, you’ll have all the information at your
fingertips. Plus, since the leadership of the company
monitors the entire network of databases, you can
easily welcome visitors from other games – their local
branch use the same system you do.
A forum, and basic website design. Players love to
have a place to hang out and share war stories between
games – a forum will prolong the life of your Chapter
and encourage repeat attendance by keeping your
players interested. Each branch has a section of the
network forum dedicated to their branch, plus website
guidelines to help kick start your online presence.
The core setting materials and a helpful starter
guide. You’ll get all the info you need about the
Dystopia Rising world. You’ll get a bestiary of
antagonists from Toybox to Tank and everything in
between, plus explanations of the overall setting. In
addition, we’ll provide you with our Storytelling and
Operational Manuals so you’ll be armed with all the
knowledge you’ll need in the months to come.
Over 1000 Blueprints for in-game items. In the DR
economy, no one can make it alone: The Blueprint
system facilitates the in-game economy and allows
your PCs to make everything they’ll need to survive
from raw materials they can acquire or produce. The
average item takes between three and four players to
create: When you use our Blueprint system, you’re
encouraging inter-character roleplay at the most basic
level. We’ll also create custom blueprints for your
local game, so you can offer your PCs items they can’t
get anywhere else and enhance the local flavor.
Currency and Item cards. We’ll create a unique
plastic backed currency that is used at each branch.
Easy to use, but hard to duplicate, these cards are the
lifeblood of a successful in-game economy. We’ll
also make available to you the official Item Cards for
resources like Scrap and Herb, equipment like Armor
and Weapons, or consumables like Brews and Meals,
as well as the RP-rewarding Creature Comforts, the
versatile Gizmos and the Larger Unique Item cards
complement these core materials. These materials are
made available in one convenient Directors Store on
the website, for easy replenishment any time.
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Sounds good? Great! Here’s how it all works.
Our contracts are for five years with up to three renewals. We require a two year commitment from your
team to give the concept a fair trial. You can choose
to terminate the contract after the second, third and
fourth years. Just give us between two and six months
of notice before the contract anniversary date and you
can step away. Any characters in play at your game are
automatically transferred to a nearby game, so there
won’t be any drama if you decide to take things in a
different direction. All game provision materials that
are provided to you via the data share remain the property of the network, and all of the network provided
materials are destroyed or returned to us.
Training for your staff. To support your vision for
your local game, we’ll help get your Storytellers,
Marshals, and Coordinators apocalypse-ready with our
industry-leading program. A Dropbox with everything
you need, when you need it. Access this resource
wherever you are, and you can save money by printing
individual documents on demand instead of in bulk.
Marketing and promotional assistance. From
DR’s official groups and forums to pre-game
announcements to our social media feeds, your game
will enjoy an equal piece of the spotlight. Don’t be
surprised when a caravan of players starts asking for
rides from the airport to your site! Cross-game play
is a major aspect of our network, and we’ll be happy
to work with you to provide or build the toolbox you
need to build your player base.
A wholesale account for Eschaton Media products.
Eschaton publishes the DR core book – used for
tabletop games, and packed with canon information
about the LARP world and its inhabitants. You can
order these books and all its supplements straight from
the source, then resell them to your players. They save
money when they order from you instead of the online
store, and you pick up a profit with every book sold.
Your turf is your own. We won’t open another DR
branch within a preestablished radius mileage within
your state, typically 250 miles, depending on population, from your game. If you’re in an area with more
unique demographics, we’ll work with you so that we
don’t cannibalize our own games. Branches work hard
to establish their own unique player base and although
there are no restrictions on the players branches may
recruit, the nature of the community has been to not
compete with each other to make sure players keep
coming for the next chapter of their branch’s story.
Your game is unlike any other. We’ll work with you
to develop items unique to your game, like herbs that
only grow in your area, or blueprints tied to your
individual theme. You will spend time working with
the game world creator to ensure that your world has a
place within the Dystopia Rising universe. Supplies,
materials, and local resources become unique items
that your game ‘creates’ as a needed resource across
the network as a whole. Somebody across the country
might need the weed that grows in your game’s back
yard. That makes for a traveling community. DR’s
rising tide lifts all boats:
Your game is yours. When we give you an area for
a DR Chapter, you have both its geographic location
and its narrative location to work with. You’ll develop
your own settlement in the DR world and whatever
happens there is up to you and your Storytellers within
the genre guides we provide you. We won’t ever force
a plot on you without your consent: You decide what
goes on in your game, plain and simple.
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Some of the Dystopia Rising source materials published by Eschaton Media INC.
Start up costs are often smaller than expected. We
can’t give you a concrete number for what it will cost
to start a game up, given how widely some aspects
vary by location, but we estimate an initial cost of
between $4,450 to $9,750, including certain expenses
for an initial three month period of operation. We
require an annual franchise fee of $2,000 per year,
payable in advance. You will also purchase certain
logistical equipment from us, including a starter set of
game currency, herb/produce, meal/brew, scrap, and
item cards, weapon tags, staff pins and staff t-shirts,
which we estimate will cost $750. Each month, by the
10th of the month, you will pay us a 5%royalty fee for
your gross revenues received during the prior month.
You will also pay us at the same time 2% of gross
revenues as a marketing fund contribution that we
use to promote the games. You will have additional
costs after the starter fees going towards insurance,
site rental, props, costuming, make-up, all the various
game supplies and other costs of doing business.
Insurance varies by state and you should check
with your agent. Costuming and supplies are often
gathered over time and by donation. Site rentals can
be anywhere between $500 to $4,000 per month. We
will work with you to make sure you open the doors
on your first event with the things you will absolutely
need and a good idea of how to build the supplies you
want.
Ready to get started? Here’s what we need.
Contact us via the short form on the website to express
your interest. Once we have confirmed that there is an
opening for a branch in your area of interest we will
get you the application, so you can share your vision
for your local branch. This will be reviewed by the
network staff. Applications are reviewed on a quarterly basis, listed in the application. Your application will
be reviewed at the end of the quarter it is received. We
will contact you within 2 weeks of that quarter closing
with our response.
Once your application is received, we will provide
you with the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD),
including the form of contract and related documents
for review. Then if you and we mutually agree to
move forward, it is a simple matter of waiting the
requisite time and signing the contract. You can
always ask us for more information or guidance at any
step of the process. You may want to set up an LLC
or link the contract to your existing business entity,
to make sure you’re protected legally and financially
from third party obligations as you move forward. You
should talk to your own lawyer or accountant about
the benefits, disadvantages and tax consequences of
different business entities. We cannot offer legal or
tax advice.
We’d like to thank you again for your interest and
welcome any comments or questions you have.
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Sample Support Materials
Sample currency taken from the Trade Union.
Chapter Directors work with the Network to produce
unique currency cards that are produced for each region. Each chapter can work with their own artists in
addition to our team to ensure that the currency provided fits the visual needs of the individual branch.
A sample of one of the 1000+
blueprints available to each game.
While all games have access to a
communal pool of prints, each game
also gets a total of 20 unique local
prints over multiple years that help
represent the economic culture and
crafting focus of each Chapter’s ingame towns.
Brewing towns, mining towns, and
even farm settlements that serve the
interests of rusted out metropolises can
be easily recreated by working with the
network designers to make your games
unique addition to the world.
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Chapters are provided a series of standardized item
cards that they can readily order from the network.
These resources make it so that individual games can
not only have readily available resources at low prices,
but also ensure that their chapter is using the same
standardized materials from game to game.
When a player from another Dystopia Rising Network
Chapter comes to your game, you will easily be able
to review what items, materials, and resources that
players is bringing into your individual chapter. Each
chapter is allowed to review, approve, and deny materials as needed to ensure that the quality and quantity
of items that are introduced into your game meet the
high standards that both you and the network as a
whole hold.
With spaces set up for material descriptions, resources provided for the standardized process of what is
available to players, and guidelines on how to create
localized flavor for your game the Dystopia Rising
Network can ensure that your local games independence, and the networks standards, are taken care of at
the same time.
Thank you for taking a few moments to review these
materials, and again, we are looking forward to hearing from you.
Contact us today about how to join the
Dystopia Rising LARP Network!
Ashley Zdeb & Michael Pucci
Co-Founders Dystopia Rising
[email protected]
Dystopia Rising LLC, PO Box 8504 New Haven, CT 06531; 860-913-6899
This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information
purposes only. Currently, the following states regulate the offer and sale of franchises: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. If you are a resident of one of these states, we will not offer you a franchise unless and until we have
complied with applicable pre sale registration and disclosure.
Dystopia Rising, Dystopia Rising LARP, and Dystopia Rising LARP Network are trademarks of Michael Pucci.
Dystopia Rising rules, published content, and materials are Copyright Dystopia Rising LLC 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013.
All rights reserved.