To be fair, the 40 people who signed up for a bit of costumed fun one July weekend in 2011 did receive advance warning. “This module involves flashing lights, dark spaces, mature themes, horrific visuals, contact boffer [foam] fighting, psychologically unsettling scenarios, and potential scenes of gratuitous violence,” read the introduction to the controversial live action role-play that game designer Michael Pucci had prepped for DexCon 14, at the Morristown, N.J, Hyatt and Conference Center. It continued in all caps: “PLEASE BE WARNED THAT THIS MODULE MAY NOT BE FOR THE SENSITIVE OF HEART, MIND, OR STOMACH. IF YOU ARE UNSURE IF YOU ARE ABLE TO DEAL WITH SUCH SCENARIO CONTENTS, DO NOT ATTEND.”
Shoshana Kessock, 31, was one of the players who had traveled to Morristown from Brooklyn, N.J, that Friday to attend the gaming convention and play Pucci’s shortened sample version of Dystopia Rising , the live action role-play franchise owned by his Eschaton Media. The game is designed to provide a mixed bag of absurdities: Players, who range from teenagers to adults, engage in improv theater (where they are audience and actors at once) and role-play combat, fleeing vicious human-hybrid monsters and otherwise conniving for their characters’ lives—all while fighting a deadly zombie infection somewhere in the 21st century, after world powers have inadvertently annihilated 95 percent of humankind. With nuclear bombs.
From Tablet Magazine
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