Hi, Dennis!
One of the fundamental principles in Human contact is that everyone, everyone, everyone is a person. They are just as subject to misplaced pride, greed, and ill-conceived acts of desperation as they are to self-confidence, sympathy, and powerful acts of far-sighted subtlety.
That means that envoys, after their long isolation of distant study very well might decide that the cat's away, and they're going to be despotic shits. They have the equivalent of the guns, germs, and steel, after all. That's a lot of temptation for one so inclined.
culturally sensitive agents of empowerment.
They were, and, while that's their job, I'm perfectly happy to see failure. I mean, that's interesting, too. In a lot of ways, Shock: is a game of negative examples.
In the first game we had, there was a real possibility that the third and final envoy was going to die, too. Were that to happen, we'd still follow the society around for seven years, seeing if it was going to resolve the concerns. Maybe the arrival of the envoys was enough, and the society would sort itself out before the starship arrived. It still might work out for the best for that society.
I was hard-pressed to choose the side of the feature my character was not well versed in.
You don't choose Features to roll, at all! You just roll as many Features you have. You can think of it as two things that coincidentally match: the number of Features and the number of dice you roll. The choice of what to roll is in the Links — those are highly context-sensitive. You reroll those when circumstances threaten your relationship to one of those things.
It's your job to find ways to succeed as often as possible. You're advocating for that character. You don't need to self-censor.
If, on the other hand, you want the little shit to go down in flames, allocate your Fulcra that way, so the guy's always failing. If all goes well, you'll have a ton of dice at the end for a redemptive scene, which you will very likely want.
And since I didn't have the presence of mind to do so in person, thanks for creating a sci-fi roleplay system that does what sci-fi does best (ask big questions) without getting bogged down in what it does worst (quibble over minutiae). Heck, you even used the word minutiae as a game term! Even more bonus points!
My pleasure! It helps me find other people who like the same science fiction I do, too! It works out really well for me.
P.S. Read a review which called the genderless pronoun disclaimer pretentious. I disagree; I feel it's merely unnecessary.
Well, unnecessary for you, perhaps. But here we are, talking about it. People who find that sidebar interesting or irrelevant love the game. People who find it distracting or pretensious are a toss-up. It's there for two reasons: to inform people who haven't heard the terms or ideas; and to alert those who have, that this is the game for them.
It was a pleasure playing with you guys. Maybe we'll get to again, sometime!
Where do you live? I might know of some Shock: enthusiasts in your area.
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