Shock playtest 0.2.0

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Hey, folks. Shock: Social Science Fiction has entered version 0.2.0. A lot's changed, so if you're planning on running your existing games with it (and I wholeheartedly recommend it), make sure you read everything before continuing.

What happened was this:

Resolution sucked. Sucked hard.

So I went to fix it.

But resolution starts at Protag creation.

... which, it turns out, changes Antag creation.

Fortunately, the problem didn't go as far back as World Creation.

So now, I think resolution doesn't suck, though I may have written it unclearly. Please let me know.

I would really like to use worlds from Actual Play in the text as extended examples, so if you've got some that you don't mind me using, that would be most excellent. Of course, you'll get credit for the world design.

[Bret Gillan]

Link to new text? :)

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Sorry, Bret. Link above fixed.

[Matt Machell]

Link to the PDF on the linked-to page is also broken...

-Matt

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

You see what happens when you stay up for 24 hours to work on something? Who knows what's inside the file. Probably pictures of chickens.

Anyway, fixed.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

There have been some changes to Shock: 0.2.0. I strongly suggest using these additional rules when playing.

1. Between stories, you can add a Shock

or Issue to the grid and move your Protagonist there. It is owned by whoever owns the fewest Shocks and Issues, or if everyone owns the same, whoever wants it.

2. Antagonist Players get a different amount of Credits for the scale of the story. For a one-shot, the AP gets 12 coins. For a "short story" length game, the AP gets 50. For a novel length story, the AP gets 75.

3. If someone is particularly into a particular Minutia — the physiology of a creature, a map, a deck plan, a robot design — sie can own it. Whatever that player draws or writes about that thing is canon and can be used as a resource for all players as normal Minutiæ. This doesn't require the "cool" rule, but if no one's using your ideas, you might have discovered that you're investing your energy into something irrelevant.

4. APs spend normally, but, if sie has gotten to the end of the Conflict and still wants the Protag to lose, sie has a dirty trick up hir sleeve: sie can spend one Credit per die to roll a number of dice. Those dice are added or subtracted (whichever is appropriate) together to the final Praxis total and, if the roll has successfully pushed the total into Failure, the AP narrates how the Antagonist has snatched triumph from the jaws of defeat. If the AP doesn't succeed, the PP narrates how the Antagonist was defeated and takes a new Trait or adds 1 to an existing Trait. Either way, the AP loses the number of Credits equal to the number of dice rolled, plus the total showing on the dice.

5. When the AP has three Credits left, it's time to confront the Story Stakes. You can do it before this, but you must do it once there are three or fewer Credits left.
[/list]

#4, deserves particular attention. It's there to give the AP a method of dealing out buckets of grief. It's expensive and could bring the end of the story about prematurely if abused. It is the AP's responsibility to husband hir Credits to make a story of satisfying length.

#2 is untested. Those numbers are a best guess based on the number and speed of conflicts I've seen, but they might turn out to be wrong. Please let me know how they work out.

#3 should appeal to people like me who like drawing spaceships.

#5 is implicit, but I thought I should say it out loud.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The distilled rules for Shock: 0.2.4 are here. You can also get the materials over here.

A notes page is forthcoming. Several things have changed name, for instance.