Shock: Social Science Fiction
A few weeks ago I sat down with a new gaming group to play through Shock: social sci fi. This a Sci Fi RPG with a more intellectual edge than most space opera type games, in which you play both a protagonist and an antagonist in the story. Unlike most games you don’t so much have a “character” you are a just one of the cogs in telling the story. I wish I’d worked that our earlier in the process, I think I might have enjoyed the game slightly more, but I’ll elaborate on that later.
We decided our Shocks (the sci fi aspects) would be brain jacks and terra forming, and our Issues (the social issues) would be moral judgement of disease, failed states, under population, collapsing ecologies and government/business alliance. It was also decided that Earth was going to be where our tale would take place. Our vision of this future Earth wasn’t a very happy one however. Dropping fertility rates had lead to massive under population, the eco-system was collapsing due to further interference from massive terraforming islands (why Earth was being terraformed was never really discovered) and the UN was in league with big business to screw over everyone. The sum of human knowledge was accessible through the “Knowledge” as long as you had a jack and were of a high enough social level. Not an overly happy place.
My protagonist was a woman named Zara Mitchell an eco-terrorist whose main Shock was terra forming (not surprisingly) and issue was failed states. From memory (I don’t have my sheet with me) her Features were that her father was a high up in the government (later in play it was established that he was the Secretary for Terraforming), UN security codes and one other that eludes me at this stage. My Links where The Revolution!! and Jerrad, my cell leader. I decided that my story goal was to assassinate my father, though exactly why I hadn’t worked out yet. Malc was my antagonist in the form of the UN Special Forces.
I also played Steve’s antagonist and was the national tensions between India and Pakistan vs his UN negotiator trying to stop a nuclear exchange between the two countries.
The game started with me describing my protagonist’s typical day. Zara was out gardening in the organic vege patch, minding her own business when she heard that there were UN hover craft baring down on her position following a large explosion further in the Arcology (a large walled city complex). After a phone call from Jared she rushed inside and managed to grab damming evidence on her father while avoiding capture by the UN forces (I won the conflict).
The rest of the game then swapped between the rest of the character’s stories, some of which interwove and some of which didn’t until everyone reached the conclusion of their little part of the story.
Eventually Zara did manage to assassinate her father, though not before being infected through the “Knowledge” with a disease called MdS and also killing the entire rest of her family as well as herself. She was a bit of a zealot it turned out.
The other 4 protagonists played out their stories to similar (all bar one being pretty much as tragic), but I didn’t take enough notes to write about them, perhaps they’ll pop up and add to this.
For the most part I found Shock to be hard work, though I think it might have been because I didn’t “get” my place in the game. I kept on wanting it to be about our character’s stories, when really the game (as pointed out during the post game discussion) is about world building and telling a story of that world. Our protagonists and antagonists were just some of the many people in that world. I kind of think of it being like a plot movie, the characters are in there but it’s more about the story that the characters are telling than the characters themselves. Having now had this explained to me I might give it another go, though I generally like my gaming experiences to be a little less hard work. However despite my issues with the game the people where what pulled this through for me, I’m looking forward to mo”re Nu School” gaming soon.