Sanctioned Events

What are Sanctioned Events?

Sanctioned Events are player-run games set within the Death Unto Darkness universe. They are officially recognised by the Game Team and form part of the ongoing canon of the setting.

Alongside Campaign Events, Sanctioned Events allow members of our community to tell their own stories within the Prosperitas Sector, explore their characters, and contribute to the wider narrative of Death Unto Darkness.

Anyone may organise a Sanctioned Event, and the Game Team will support organisers wherever reasonably possible.

Before committing to an event concept, please discuss it with the Game Team. Early conversations help identify conflicts with ongoing plotlines, answer setting questions, and ensure your event fits naturally within the wider narrative.

Standard Rules Adjustments for Sanctioned Events

When playing/running Sanctioned Events the following rules ammendments are in place;

Corruption Tracks are suspended during Sanctioned Events - however an event team may choose to introduce their own custom tracks for an event should it be relevant to their plot - these do not need to follow the same format as standard Tracks (they can even be one stage) but should follow the same layout/structure of individual corruption levels (ask the game team if you are uncertain how this works as an Event Runner)

Complications from power tests that say Get a Ref should be discarded and a new effect drawn when encountered, these are mainline use, Sanctioned Event teams may choose to replace these with their own effects of course, with the exception of Unique Traits, which only the Game Team have oversight of, and often advance plot that cannot be resolved at a Sanctioned Event.

Playing a Sanctioned Event

When taking part in a Sanctioned Event, please follow these guidelines:

Treat the Event Team and Crew of a Sanctioned Event with the same respect expected of the Death Unto Darkness Game Team. Their wellbeing and comfort are a priority, and poor behaviour at any event reflects on your standing within the system. This is not a situation where standards are relaxed.

Sanctioned Events are canon fate spent at Sanctioned events is deducted from your character's total, a character death at a Sanctioned is that characters death in the game.

Please inform the Game Team of any significant changes to your character resulting from a Sanctioned Event.

If you are playing a new character, you must submit it to the Game Team for approval at writingteam.deathuntodarkness@gmail.com, even if you do not intend to take that character into Campaign Events. Character approval sits with the Death Unto Darkness Game Team, not the Event Team.

Please be timely in reaching out to the main Game Team regarding Unique Traits, Scars and Madness if you do not have them. Sanctioned Event teams are not able to write or assign these for you, so they must be handled directly with the Game Team in advance if required.

All standard System Policies and our Ethos continue to apply.

Crewing Sanctioned Events

Sanctioned Events are an important part of the Death Unto Darkness community, and we encourage players to support them in the same way they support Campaign Events.

Anyone who crews (and runs) a Sanctioned Event will receive a standard crew credit for the purposes of booking future Campaign Events.

Strong Sanctioned Events strengthen the setting as a whole, and the Game Team is committed to recognising those who help make them possible.

Running a Sanctioned Event

If you want to run a Sanctioned Event then the first place to start is chatting to us, and after that, submitting a form we try to be permissive with those using our sandbox but we also need to coordinate the plot across multiple main and sanctioned events and having oversight of what you're doing means we can make your story fit into the narrative;

In order to be sanctioned do:

Follow all Death Unto Darkness policies, safety standards, and community ethos.
Inform players of any amendments to the standard rules before the event.
Submit a copy of all rules changes, monster stats and lore at least two weeks before the event.
Report significant character developments and event outcomes after the game so they can be integrated into ongoing canon.

And do not;

Admit individuals excluded from Death Unto Darkness events.
Run an event for profit, we are a fan group and all money is raised to cover props and site hire and no individual is personally enriching themselves from our events.

The Game Team reserves the right to refuse approval for any event that we believe conflicts with our community standards - where we provide suggestions to avoid certain plots and planets will only be due to them having a role to play.

Game Team Support

We want Sanctioned Events to succeed and will support organisers wherever practical. While obviously in the months running up to an Event we will be able to provide less support, outside of that we are keen to provide our aid wherever it is needed, you may rely on the Game Team to;

Provide setting and lore guidance.
Help develop plots and adventures where invited.
Assist with event administration where practical.
Review event concepts before submission.
Loan props and equipment where available.
Attend as Refs if invited and able to do so.

Organisers remain responsible for planning, staffing, and delivering their own events, including managing finances and ticket sales. While we will always aim to help, our primary responsibility remains the delivery of our Events.

Because we rarely get chances to experience DuD from the player side we often choose (where we can) to play Sanctioned Events - we appreciate that in some LARP circles there is a certain fear of game teams playing events, so we will always intend to play characters who have reasons to be oblivious of the wider lore.

Plot Guidelines

The best Sanctioned Events tell memorable, self-contained stories with meaningful consequences. These are not intended to be inferior to Events run by the main team, but rather complementary. The Wiki contains a vast number of plot hooks and ideas that have been woven into the history and worlds of the Prosperitas Sector. Many of these may never be directly addressed, so please check with us first if you are planning to use one, in case it is a thread we already intend to resolve. Otherwise, this is a shared sandbox we are all contributing to.

How self-contained your event is will depend on what happens in play and what you tell us you want the consequences to be. We have approved everything from tightly contained time-loop scenarios, through to full-scale daemonic incursions with consequences severe enough to threaten entire worlds.

The best way to think of it is this: when sharing a sandbox, it is impolite to knock over other people’s sandcastles. The Game Team’s role is simply to ensure that your event does not unintentionally disrupt our work, or that of other Sanctioned Event teams, while still giving you freedom to build something bold, creative, and impactful.

Things to Avoid

Previous versions of this document had whole sections on what not to do, we'd rather move away from this, but what we've included beneath is a list of things we've been asked about before that we'd just rather you not consider including;

Please don't write about a Heroic Imperium, write Heroic Humans. The Imperium is not humanity’s noble last stand, but an ancient, decaying fascist and feudal empire built on lies and the consolidation of power under a single tyrant. While individuals within it can still be heroic, the Imperium itself should not be framed as heroic, and humanity would ultimately be better served by its absence.

When including aliens/xenos we'd really encourage you to plumb obscure alien species from lore or make something up that's original to your story - sole survivors, obscure isolated populations on worlds, ancient guardians of forgotten relics, we tend to keep aliens more as individual examples there are no Xenos "armies" in the region - if you do bring an alien into your event please contain it to the narrative of the event.

We do not currently approve the use of T’au, Necrons, or Tyranids in events (with the exception of Genestealer organisms and their Cults, which are permitted). These factions do not fit within the established narrative framework of the campaign.

We will not approve copyrighted IP-Owner "canon" characters appearing as NPCs and would simultaneously discourage you from using factions you do not know to be present in the Sector, such as Astartes Chapters of Reknown.