I've read through the rules twice now, and I have a few questions.  None are a big deal, but for my first “real” game I'd like to play as close to the rules as possible before drifting.  It's become clear that the game I played at Gen Con had drifted a fair bit from the rules.

When do I get Features from failing?  Clearly if I'm the active Protagonist and I fail at my declared Intent I gain a Feature.  Based on the actual play example, it looks like if I'm declaring Intent, but someone else is active (that is I'm Minutiae and an Antagonist is rolling for my Intent), I can gain a Feature.  Is that correct?  What if I'm the Protagonist, and my Antagonist succeeds at their Intent, as the Antagonist's successful Intent usually represents some sort of “failure” for the Protagonist.

Can a roll go above 10 or under 0 courtesy of the opposing *Tagonist's d4, but before the Audience participates?  This could matter as it would occasionally remove the Audience's ability to interfere.  Example: I'm the Protagonist, my relevant Fulcrum is 8, and I want to roll under.  I roll 9 on a d10, failure.  My Antagonist rolls a d4, gets 4, and pushes my roll up to 10 or 13, depending on the potential limit.  Now the high rolling Audience member joins in with their 3 rolled on a d4.  They want my Protagonist to succeed and apply the die that way.  If there is a limit of 10, I was at 10-3=7: success.  If there isn't it's 13-3=10: failure.

How many Minutiae should Antagonists start with? Page 27 tells us about their first (their name), but nothing else.  Can they add more during play like like other Minutiae are added on the index cards?

Antonists are built out of Minutiae.  Do those Minutiae also end up on index cards on the table, or just on the Antagonist sheet?

Page 37 says that unused Minutiae dice can be used when a Conflict escalates.  I assume this means that if a Minutiae die was used earlier, that die (and it's owning Audience member) don't get any say in the escalated Conflict.  Any Minutiae dice which were unused or unable to be used (because they weren't the highest) are now considered again, and the highest one (again, with roll-off) gets to option to modify the d10.  Is that correct?  If not, what is correct?

Page 41 suggests inviting another Protagonist into the scene to challenge the active Protagonist.  As the Antagonist, how much control do I have in such a situation?

The example of the clone maturing on page 41 looks like the Antagonist player is using a Minutia to create a conflict that isn't directly caused by the Antagonist.  That certainly plays into my assumptions about play, but I may be projecting something that isn't intended.  So: can the Antagonist player create conflicts that aren't actually being caused by the Antagonist?

On page 49, it looks like Vincent (Audience) is setting the Antagonist's Intent that I would expect Ben (Antagonist) to set.  If a Protagonist is being used as Minutiae by the Antagonist in the conflict, who sets the Intent: the Audience member, or the Antagonist?  To take the example, does Vincent have to set the Intent?  Or is it fundamentally Ben's choice, but Ben is implicitly accepting Vincent's proposal?

On page 49, it appears that Vincent is declaring his Minutia before throwing (and potentially being beaten by Emily's roll).  Is this just a side effect of putting it in the sidebar, or should one declare Minutia before rolling the Audience dice?

Do I risk a Link first, then explain why I lost it if and only if I fail, or do I need to explain why the Link is at risk before I reroll?  The sidebar doesn't clarify.

Re: Protagonist as Minutia gaining features:

Can you tell me where it implies that?

I was sure it was there in the actual play example in the book, but upon review I misread it.  The sidebar on p54-55 makes it clear that a Protagonist-as-Minutia is allowed to risk Links, but doesn't say anything about gaining Features.  Sorry for the bother.

Re: Adjusting a roll outside of 1-10:

I was curious because it came up once during the game I played.  Of course, we had multiple Audience applying modifiers (more on that in a moment), so it was relatively easy to rescue a terrible roll.

Thanks for the answers!

Drift

At Gen Con Indy 2009, I played Shock in the Games on Demand area.  There were 4 of us interested in playing.  To speed the game, the organizer didn't join in but just helped up get going and answered questions.  He clearly knew the game and had a copy present.  He flipped through it a few times looking for answers to specific questions, but I believe he usually winged it.

I suspect the drifting I'm seeing is a combination of mis-remembering the rule, rules from earlier editions, and simplifications to ensure that the game finished in 4 hours.  The organizer didn't mention intentional changes, so I'm guessing.

• We were encouraged to have 2 or 3 Shocks in addition to the 4 Issues.  This didn't cause any problems, although it meant that the resulting stories weren't linked by a single shared thread of a Shock.
• The Antagonist players decided upon the Antagonist's identity; it wasn't provided by the partner Protagonist player.  This worked fine; on one hand it missed an opportunity for the Protagonist player to say something about the Protagonist through the existance of the Antagonist, but on the other hand the Antagonists may have been
•  There was some uncertainty about how many credits the Antagonists should have, 12 or 13.  I don't remember what we ended up going with.
• We were encouraged to have 3 Minutae for Antagonists, and the Antagonist's name/identity wasn't one.  There was uncertainty as to where we should write the Antagonist's name.
• There was no formal Minutae creation.  The term was never used, except to explain that the Antagonist's Minutae were like a Protagonist's Features, although they don't grant dice.  There certainly weren't any 3×5 cards shared to the table.  Now that I've read the book, this seems like a real missed opportunity.  We implicitly created some Minutae as we played, but by not creating them in advance the resulting world was fuzzier.  By not sharing them beyond individual stories we didn't get any sense that the three stories took place in a single world, as opposed to four different worlds.
• Lacking formal Minutae, we didn't link the Audience d4s to the story at all.  They were pushed around as pure game mechanics that allowed the player to push the story.  While not terrible, it did miss an opportunity for the Audience member to make concrete contributions to other stories.
• All Audience members contributed their d4 to the Conflict.  As Audience pushing Protagonists through the wringer is fun, so they would typically collude in applying their rolls to exactly land on the Fulcrum if possible.  Across 12 conflicts and thus 24 Intents, we had 6 or so escalations.  This was amusing and seemed entirely reasonable to me at the time.
• The entire Audience rerolled on an escalation.  The result is identical to the previous point.
• I don't think the purpose of Links was ever explained, nor do I think they were risked, but I'm not sure.
• During the back and forth before a Intentions are formally set, Antagonist players would withhold information about the situation that the Protagonist didn't know.  For example, the Antagonist for a General with political aspirations announced that intelligence reports suggested that some rebels/terrorists were within a few days of acquiring a nuclear weapon.  Only when Intentions were stated did it come out: “I'm going to disgrace the General when he strikes first, only to have it revealed that the rebels didn't have a nuke. The information was bogus and planted by your rival and Antagonist, the Vice-President.”  I get the impression from the rules that this wasn't an expected play style, but I can't put my finger on why.

I'm “happy” to report that all of those drifts make the game worse, particularly the lack of minutiæ and the pigpile of Audience. When more than one person — even two — can stack their dice together, it almost doesn't matter what the Protag rolls. When it's three, as in a 5-player game, it really just doesn't matter. The only control the Protag has is what to ask for.

Multiple Shocks can work. There are rules for it. The rules are, don't start that way. Add them one at a time so they matter. If you have more than one at the beginning, it makes Tomorrowland.

Antags have 13 Credits. It matters in maybe one game in ten. You were probably using an old Antag sheet. For the amount of hand-wringing that rule change has caused, I'd be surprised if it's affected more than five games, ever, and never profoundly.

Escalation gets funny and silly if people can reroll. The Audience is going for the most entertaining thing, and if they don't have to say what the extraordinary circumstances are, they're just saying, “Tell us something even funnier!. It gets less fun and less fair. It also makes less coherent fiction.

I think it's OK to have as part of your Intent, “There isn't really a nuke.” as long as both Intents can come true. If one Intent is, “I get my family away from the war zone” and the other is, “There's no nuke — it's an embarrassing lie” then that's OK.

The multi-protagnist example is horrible! That's from 1.0 rules that were awkward and fucked up the pacing something fierce! Thanks for pointing that out. As it stands, I almost never get comments on the fiction or sidebars and I guess I've been operating on the assumption that no one reads them.