[Shock:] 0.2.3 at Dreamation: Trash in the hopper

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Dreamation does this horrible thing to you. It has a midnight to 4 AM slot that makes you think, "Oh, people play games at this time."

That was the slot we played Mountain Witch in last year, and it was a blast. But it did make me really really tired, and at least one sad ronin died because his player was too tired to keep him going. I'd kinda forgotten that part when I signed up to run Shock: Social Science Fiction in that slot, but it dawned on me eventually that it was going to be a toughie when I was getting sleepier and sleepier in the 8-12 slot.

So I knew I was going to have a ringer to make it fly. I was lucky enough to talk Judd into joining us, and Shawn De Arment and an old college friend of mine, Stephan, stepped up admirably. Stephan had just come from what sounds like a singularly irritating Call of Cthulhu LARP and is new to Narrativist design, though not the agenda.

So we sat down, started goin' through the rules, and I was hit by a stark fact: I write weird rules. What's clear to me is obviously not what everyone else is thinking about.

Aside from that, we got rolling and played a seriously intense story out. Here's how it went down.

One-shots now have necessarily only one Shock. We threw down three issues, knowing that someone would wind up owning the Shock and playing on it. As it turned out, it was me, which was fine. I pushed to come up with Issues first, then a Shock.

The Issues were: Romantic Relationships, the Need For Money, and Fear of Death. Everyone wound up owning the issue they'd suggested, which is cool. It might be interesting to write the Issues down, then distribute *Tagonists, then choose ownership and see if it goes differently.

The Shock was Transferrable Minds. I love Ghost in the Shell and have really wanted to deal with that kind of thing for a while in Shock: and this was my big chance.

The Praxis Scales were Buying vs. Selling and Acceptance of Yourself vs. Denial of Yourself.

Yessir, light and fun!

In Shock: it matters the order you're sitting, so, starting with me, I'll go around the table clockwise, describing the player, the Issue they owned, their Protagonist and Story Goal, and the Antagonist they played:

I owned the lone shock of Transferable Minds. I played Caliph, a down-and-out addict living at The Need for Money (and Transferable Minds, of course) with the story stakes, "I hope I can sustain my life". I also played Paris, a surprisingly smart and emotionally aware mistress (and Antagonist) to:

Stephan, who owned The Need for Money. He played Victor, a fabulously wealthy man at the crux of Romantic Relationships and Transferable Minds, unfamiliar with his own soul, trying to buy himself something to fill the hole it left when his wife decided to die rather than buy a new body. His Story Goal was to find the love that was in his life and stop throwing money at it. He also played a policeman on the trail of a crime that led to:

Judd owned Romantic Relationships. He played a man without a personal identity, though officially he was "Carl Goldbond". He'd been jumping from body to body for so long, he'd forgotten who he was and that there were consequences to actions. We knew he was wealthy enough to "hop" at will and buy expensive, custom-built bodies. His Story Goal was, "Do I deal with my body's issues?" He lived at the Fear of Death space on the Grid. Judd also played the sponsor to:

Shawn owned The Fear of Death. His deeply addicted character, whose addiction was both to a love and "hopping". I don't have Shawn's Player Sheet handy, so I don't remember his Protag's name. Let's call him Frank. He was a member of Hoppers Anonymous, hence Judd's sponsor character. He lived at the Romantic Relationships space on the Grid with Victor, which is awesome. His Story Goal was, I believe, to live happily with his lover. He also played my antagonist, a sleazy body dealer named The Fish.

Because no one else at the table had played the game before, I started with the first Antag (which was my assumption going in). I was playing Antag for Stephan, and he'd asked me for this "kept woman" character. It was too easy and unsatisfying to play her as a bimbo, though. I think I was thinking of Hotlips from MASH when I started playing her. Everyone at the table was expecting a dumb bimbo, but Victor didn't really want a bimbo. He wanted a soul. So I decided that, consciously or otherwise, Victor had chosen a smart, emotionally deep woman to put in the Countach body (very expensive, but trashy and unsophisticated) he'd bought for her. Car metaphors for bodies went for the entire story. He'd been up all night, trading stocks. Paris wanted him to come to bed; she could see that he was staying up for days at a time out of desperation, and that it would kill him. Stephan won the conflict over that, and wound up staying up all night, trading stocks. Paris slept beside him on the couch.

We then made the same mistake I've made before: we went clockwise in turns. Let this be a lesson to you, if you want to play Shock; go counter-clockwise. It screws up the pacing otherwise.

So Stephan was next as Antag, with Judd as Protag., though it should have been Shawn and me, respectively. Stephan was playing a police officer who had found one of Carl Goldbond's (played by Judd) bodies as evidence in a murder. He was waiting until Judd had to return to his original body for a transfer so that he could trap him there. I added the minutia that mind transfer is a non-digital process; that it's a philosophical breakthrough that allows it, not a computer thing. Transfer is deeply intimate, with the bodies breathing each others' breaths, looking into each others' eyes. The cop showed up a little late, though, and caught him after the transfer. "This body's a Corvette" said Carl. "It can do 1 to 20 in 1.5 seconds." It was on: is this a game, or is it serious business? The man with no name ran. The officer shot him with a bolo that wrapped around his head and paralyzed his voluntary nervous system.

It was then Judd's turn to Antagonize Shawn. I don't have Shawn's Player Sheet handy, so I'll reconstruct what I can remember. Shawn's Protag, whose name I don't recall, was a man with a problem: he was in love with a fictional woman named Lady Chatterly who held orgies at a house of hers. But Lady Chatterly was also Dorcas Liverwort (I can't remember the last name, but it was comically ugly), and Mr. Liverwort wanted to find out what was going on so he could sue for divorce and not lose everything. So he'd hired a detective to get some good pics of her malfeasance. She'd had a good thing going with Frank, and Frank was in love with her. So the detective hung out behind him in his HA meeting, tempting him to go over to her place. Eventually, they cut a deal (using the CR system): the detective wants the pics and Frank things that, once she's divorced, they can run away together. Things only got worse from there.

Now that everyone had played, we started going the other way around the table, the way we should have been going in the first place. We skipped Judd's protag so he wouldn't have to go for three turns in a row (not that he couldn't have, but I wanted everyone else to play, too, and I didn't want to tire Judd out, poor li'l feller). So we got back to Victor. When he woke up, having finally fallen asleep, Paris had logged into the computer and was looking for spiritual retreats. It was established at this point that Paris didn't even have keys to the penthouse they lived in. The apartment was keyed to Victor's, and only Victor's, mind. She had to actually talk to make things happen, but most importantly, if she left the apartment, she couldn't return without Victor letting her back in. We also established that "spiritual retreats" mean entering the bodies of the culture you're emulating, while the people whose bodies are owned have their minds transferred to brains in vats, while their families get paid their meager salaries. We chose India. The conflict in this scene was, "Does Victor go?" and "Does she convince him that he needs something?". She convinced him to go. He never went so far as to admit that he needed it.

Now it was my turn. Caliph was in a bad way. He has a neurological disorder that's treatable, but he can't afford the cure. If he could get a high-quality body to transfer to, the neurological disorder would be left behind. This was inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed: on (not) getting by in America, where one person she worked with lived in a hotel, paying exorbitant daily or weekly rates because she could never hope to get enough money at once for a deposit on an apartment. Instead, Caliph has a public servant named Jimmy who gives him a nanotech treatment of dubious effectiveness every week. This was his off-week. He'd been working hard all week and wanted a day off in a new body from The Fish. The Fish ran a body "Hop Shop" that fronted as a gym, and Caliph had been working there, cleaning the spit ("It was spleen" said Shawn) off the boxing mat, and he wanted a little time off. I lost the conflict pretty seriously and The Fish wound up taking not only the $50 I had in my pocket, but made me promise I'd bring him back a hundred before he'd let me take a body. Caliph's first Feature was, "I'm ashamed of the theft I do."

I'll skip to the final conflicts now. There was a scene or two in the middle, but I don't want to write them all down. This is already too long.

Shawn's: He's been thrown out of Lady Chatterly's orgy for calling her by her real name, been beat up by her bouncers, and is out on the street, calling his sponsor, played by Judd. She tells him that she's going to church, and she wants to meet him there, in his own body. He makes it to the hop shop, changes bodies, and... blows it. He asks his sponsor out to swap bodies and go party. She walks out on him.

Judd's: His body's been taken in to the police station. He's already been broken, blubbering on about someone in a game who wasn't supposed to die, but did... and it's totally not the same guy the detective's looking for. The guy Carl's blubbering about was hurt, but didn't press charges, and certainly isn't dead. The detective's got nothing. But Carl wants the game to continue. The cop shows him his body, with its bedsores, its yellowed eyes, and Judd rolls. He fails. His body looks up at him, expecting the one scrap of intimacy it gets. When I narrated this minutia, Judd looked at me like I'd barfed in his lap. "That's revolting," he said. Carl walks out the door. His body dies in a week, left in police custody.

Victor's: They're returning from the "retreat" which none of us had the stomach to describe in any detail. Suffice to say that it was shallow and horrific. One of Paris' Features is "I want a good home." The conflict was, does Victor realize that what they just did was so totally desperate that he has to figure out how to heal his life? Paris' was, "Does Victor make me a member of his home?" My mouth was open to say something encouraging to Victor, but Stephan said, "Paris, baby, I'll give you the keys to the house."... and we rolled... and she was bought. Victor didn't stand a chance. And he lost her when he bought her.

Caliph's: He'd stolen from Jimmy, the nurse who helped him with his treatments. When caught stealing, he'd hit Jimmy and bloodied his nose. He'd gotten his $100. But he was ashamed of being a thief. So he was taking matters into his own hands. Now, n every roll in Shock: there's a 10% chance (modified by the participation of the other players) that you will be forced to escalate the Intent. Caliph had decided that he was going to steal one of The Fish's bodies and run for it. He'd been getting sloppy seconds, the bodies that were worn out and abused. Now he was going for a good one. Shawn ran out of Credits opposing me, but I had to escalate. So I decided to steal The Fish's body: a boxer's body, only used a few hours a day, in very good physical condition. But again I had to escalate. So he caught me stealing. So I had to kill him and run — he would have hunted me down and killed me if I hadn't. So we roll. Caliph was beaten to death, wearing the body of the man who killed him.

All told, an intense and very sad little set of stories. Very much like a hideous Ray Bradbury story. Ben Lehman, who watched the last half of the game, said that it was worse than the Philip K. Dick and Bill Burroughs stories we were likening it to, because in the Dick and Burroughs stories, it's reality that's horrible. In this story, the characters opted out of a painful life for one of soul-consuming rot.

The rules worked well as far as I could tell, but when it got late enough, we were fucking them up left and right. They seemed to be working better at the beginning, which is a good sign. My explanation of them was never clear, though.

Here are the minutiæ we had by the end:

Mind Transfer is analog and intimate, almost sexual.
Tracking the users of a body is problematic: you have to destroy the brain in the process.
Cops have a Hopper Unit, with special, police-issue bodies.
Bad mind-transfers cause Multiple Personality Disorder.
Mind remotes (mind control for devices)
Hoploc (the technology used to pin a person in a particular body, like a soul tazer)
"Trads" are anti-hopping, sort of identity teetotalers.
"Hop Shop" is where you get illicit bodies.
Tacky ethnic hop retreats: peasants sell their bodies to the retreat, their brains are put in tanks, their families get their pay.
Bodies need intimacy.
Hop retreats are a glorified ropes course.

[Andy Kitkowski]

It's probably been enough time that you can't remember, but I'd love to see the rules going on behind some of the above conflicts.  Do you remember What was rolled, Dice used, Results found, ect in any of the above?

-Andy

[Judd]

You know you are fucked when the lightest game you have played all day is Polaris first thing in the morning.  This was the last game from midnight to four in the morning in a long day dark gaming.

It must've been me, one dark game after another. 

Due to the hour and my exhaustion, the dice mechanics aren't fresh in my mind.

The table where we made the world is fresh, though.  Making the characters on the nexus of a shock and a social issue is brilliant and it makes for a character ready to roll and do what Shock says it does on the cover, make social science fiction.  Putting a different player in charge of their own issue is nifty.

And for whatever reason, we made something really dark and terrible.  I felt like my story was tapping very much into my own issue with spending too much time spent on the internet.  As a matter of fact, we got done and I said, " Ineed to spend less time on the damned computer."

But here I am.

Fun game, Joshua.  Thanks.  When the print version comes out, I will be in line to pick it up.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Yeah, I was trying to remember as I went, but it was so late at night then, and already a couple of days ago...

I can give you an abstract rundown, though, of one of my conflicts:

Victor had a feature called "Denies he's empty". It's Deny Self: 1. That means it gives him one extra die.

Paris had a Feature called "I want a good home" which was at the Buying end of the Praxis scales. Antags don't have a number on their Features; the number of dice they throw is the number of Credits they're spending on the conflict.

When you roll, you get 1d10 and 1d4. The d10 is for your interests. The d4 is against your Opposition's. Then you get a number of dice for the Feature you're using, which has to match the Praxis you're rolling on. Those dice can be any combination of d10s and d4s.

So, in the final conflict between Victor and Paris, it went something like this:

I'm playing Paris. Her Praxis Scales look like this:

Buy          |--------x-| Steal (9)
Accept Self  |-------x--| Deny Self (8)


Stephan is playing Victor. His Praxis Scales look like this:

Buy          |-------x--| Steal (8)
Accept Self  |--x-------| Deny Self (3)


I'm almost out of Credits (I think I had four), so this is the big moment.

We're in a private cabin on an Orient Express type spaceplane. Maybe the plane belongs to Victor, even. We're coming back from our retreat. We have a few minutes of free and clear where we're setting ourselves up. Victor is saying, "Well, that was a big waste of time..." but isn't quiiiite believing it. Paris is just about to say "Baby, we're going to have to figure this out for ourselves." It's a meatball down the plate for him. He has every opportunity to get her on his side: she, herself, is an Accept Self Feature, and his are all about Buying; if the Intents are stated well, she could totally convince him to live a life of love instead of the hollow, alienated one he's been living. But then, he says "Honey, you can have the keys to the house."

All of a sudden, he's triggered my Buying Features. My mouth was open to throw the meatball, and Stephan intercepted. So it was on. His Intent: I want to buy her by offering her what she wants. My Intent: I want him to acknowledge me as a part of his home. We roll. Stephan's got 2d10 (he's using a Feature with a 1: "Buys to Fill the Void") and 1d4. I'm rolling four dice. She was going to roll against him buying her. Now that she can get a home (or at least a house...) she's in it for herself. She's using "I want a good home."

My d10s: 1, 2, 4, 4.
Stephan's lone d4: 2

That 1 is my savior! The d4 only moves it to a 3, still well within Paris' ability to buy and sell. I achieve my intent: I'm acknowledged as part of the household. Now, to see what it means:

His d10s: 5, 9
My lone d4: 2

My d4 changes that 5 to a 7. Not enough. If I'd rolled more d4s against him, I probably could have saved him. But he bought her with the one thing she wanted.

Questions?

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

(Just to clarify, I rolled one more die as Paris. that's an error above.)

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

You know you are fucked when the lightest game you have played all day is Polaris first thing in the morning.  This was the last game from midnight to four in the morning in a long day dark gaming.

... and I can't say how pleased I was to have you there.

It must've been me, one dark game after another. 

If it makes you feel better, I think I was the person who recommended the "seedy" feel.

Due to the hour and my exhaustion, the dice mechanics aren't fresh in my mind.

Does the post above help explain? I think I was tired enough that I was screwing things up, too.

The table where we made the world is fresh, though.  Making the characters on the nexus of a shock and a social issue is brilliant and it makes for a character ready to roll and do what Shock says it does on the cover, make social science fiction.  Putting a different player in charge of their own issue is nifty.

Thank Paul for that. That's the Czege Principle at work there: setting up your own opposition is lame.

And for whatever reason, we made something really dark and terrible.  I felt like my story was tapping very much into my own issue with spending too much time spent on the internet.  As a matter of fact, we got done and I said, " Ineed to spend less time on the damned computer."

Yeah, Ben Lehman, who plays audience in so many of my games, pointed out that the "Issues" in Shock: often aren't the issues that get actually addressed in the game. I think it's that there's a synergy between the Issues that brings up new ones. In a recent game, "Torture" and "Surveillance" got turned into a story about slavery. It turns out, you start making statements the moment you can.

But here I am.

Yeah, no shit. I hear that.

Fun game, Joshua.  Thanks.  When the print version comes out, I will be in line to pick it up.

Rock on.

[Shawn De Arment]

First off, the game did exactly what it was supposed to do. It allowed us to make us intense stories about social issues.

The Midnight to 4 AM game slot is not easy. I get up at 3 AM in real life, so I was coasting on fumes.

Judd/Paka is an incredible antagonist. The detective seemed so despicable that I couldn't help but want my protagonist (who I never named) to succeed.

There was a definite gloomy/bleak/soul crushing vibe at the table. I don't mean this in a bad way. Everyone at the table was on the same wavelength; these were just the stories we decided to create that night.

After finding my tagonist and cheat sheets, I realize now that I could have called on more resources for my protagonist's last roll, but I guess I was too tired.

I definitely want to play again, but this time start earlier.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

You know, Shawn, it's interesting that your character was never named. Identity was an issue throughout the story: Judd's character had a name that was never used, too.

Yeah, we both had resources left at the end to save our sorry, borrowed asses, but we were falling apart, all of us. Too bad about that.