Sci-Fi Week at RPG.net was fantastic. There were four reviews of Shock: and, if you haven’t seen them, here they are.
Thanks, reviewers!
Jono DiCarlo, the owner of one of the most interesting jobs in the world just wrote a review of Shock: for RPG.net’s Sci-Fi week and reposted it over on his blog.
Synopsis: he loves it. From the review:
My closing thought is this: because a game of Shock is built around real-world issues that you care about, your game is going to be a little deeper than just entertainment — it’s going to be a story that’s about something… In Shock, I think we might finally have an RPG that does what the best written SF does — help us learn to cope with the rapid social and technological changes occurring in the modern world.
He mentions the confusing text in his review, of course. Another reviewer said that he wished that he’d seen the Compilation of Tips, Clarifications, and Explanations put up by intrepid Shocker Mattijs Holter, so I offer it here for anyone who may need it.
Over at RPG.net, there’s a goodie a-cookin’ for science fiction game fans, Sci-Fi Review Week.
This is the part where you come in. Have you played Shock:? Do you have something to say about the experience? Awesome! Do so! Have you not played Shock: but are curious about it and want to write a review of the text? Sweet! I’m here to facilitate that.
I’m here to facilitate that in a particular way, actually. Shock: hasn’t been available in PDF form (except to one guy who asked nicely when he bought the book) until now. Email me for a review PDF and I’ll happily send one along with the understanding that you will write a review of it for publication during Sc-Fi Review Week.
As with the error bounty, those who review Shock: will be at the top of the list for the next version of Shock: when it’s released.
Chris, the guy organizing the thing, has written a little article about how to write a review. What he recommends is great. I look forward to reading what you’ve got to say!
Shock: Social Science Fiction has landed again at Indie Press Revolution. It looks like my printer woes are ended for the time being, Publisher’s Graphics having swooped in and done a good job for a good price.
The new matte laminate is very nice to touch and the illustrations look good. Let’s hope they don’t get bought by Alphagraphics.
(The image at the top of a post is modified from a picture by Kane Quinnel of lightning hitting his house out of a clear sky.)
Emily Care Boss (Breaking the Ice), Tony Lower-Basch (Capes), Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard), Judd Karlman (Dictionary of Mu), Malcolm Craig (Cold City), and I (Underpants for Rude-Looking Vegetables) have joined together to form some sort of Voltron where we make a giant game designer who combines only at the last moment to defeat the space monster when we could have joined at the beginning and won more easily. Dig the Playcollective site! We’ll be updating frequently.
Indie Press Revolution, purveyor of fine, independently-published games and books, has a mailing list for said publishers. In it, a particular publisher said,
I know the owner of Dragon’s Lair somewhat, and have shown him [My game] in the past. His comment (which probably applies to many of my IPR brethren), was something like, “The indie format”–by this he meant the physical format of many of our books; [My game] is 9×6, landscape–“doesn’t sit well on the shelves”.
My response was the following:
I encourage everyone to see this for the bullshit it is.
Go to a Barnes and Noble. Look at all the different shapes of books.
Now go to a game store and notice the homogeneity.
What he wants you to do is fit the format so your book literally doesn’t stand out. Your book will be lost. It will be a bunch of work to redesign the book and it will dampen your sales because it will lose its distinctiveness.
This is a general principle of design: if you make something designed simply to be inoffensive, you are designing it simply to not be noticed. If you design distinction, though, things will be different. The game (or whatever it is) will be noticeable. What that store owner is doing is sacrificing the distinctiveness of his individual products in favor of the size of bookshelf he’s purchased.
Now, the be clear, if you made a game that’s eight feet to a side, weighs 150 pounds, and costs 40 cents, you’ll have a hard time getting a retailer to show much interest. It’s not worth it for the shelf space that could be better spent on more normally sized books. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is that the store owner is uncomfortable because things are different than he expected.
Much of the time, when I’m meeting with a design client, I’m listening for some keys phrases they might say. One of them is, “I like it.” This, believe it or not, is a bad sign. It means that a) nothing’s lept out at them (if it had, they would have said, “I like how there’s this little shape here” or something), and b) sometimes a client just doesn’t want to say anything critical and says “I like it” to keep from having to express displeasure, but it sounds like satisfaction.
But sometimes, they say “I don’t like this.” What that usually means is, “I noticed this.” Often, they’ll then say, later, as the meeting goes on and they’ve looked at things more, “This one’s growing on me.” Again, if they actively dislike something, they’ll be able to identify exactly what it is that they don’t like.
Consider that last one. Consider an unusual thing on a bookshelf: something small (Burning Wheel) or something large (Nobilis). I literally bought Nobilis because it stuck out of the shelf and I kept seeing it. I bought Burning Wheel because it was physically small and quietly beautiful, an oasis in a sea of cleavage and comically giant swords. Its smallness and quietness winked alluringly to me from the bookshelf.
I’ve used some deliberate tools like that on some other books I’ve done. The spine of Shock: is like a laser: a thin little bright line between books. The Mountain Witch is thicker and black, but with this little splash of red. Both are shorter than their counterparts, making them shine even when placed spine-out. When facing cover-out, they both use a variety of tools to get and hold the attention of the proper audience. But they’re both unusual sizes, too. That means that they get more space around them.
The homogeneity of the RPG market is precisely to the advantage of the indie marketer. We’re looking to fill a niche they can’t. We’re making things that are inherently for markets that they haven’t tapped because they don’t want them. Where the business model of Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf is to make their products intercompatible within their own products, our model is to show our distinctiveness between products.
Don’t let anyone tell you any different. When you’re told that you’re missing the market because your book isn’t enough like another one, you’re being offered a ticket to a Journey concert when you can instead be on stage at a local club with a sticky floor, coming away with cash in your pocket and the respect of your peers.
As promised, here‘s the interview between Paul Tevis and Brennn Taylor of Voice of the Revolution interviewing Emily Care Boss and me about our games and our community here in Western Mass. The interview was fun. Listen it up!
All shipments are once again made. If you don’t have your games in the next week, give me a holler! And I promise I’ll post something interesting soon. It’s been busy out.
The last of my latest batch of Shock: orders has been sent out. If you’ve ordered the game but haven’t received it, hold on until Friday if you’re in the US or next Friday if you’re elsewhere in the world.
Thanks for the orders. Enjoy the game!
Hey, remember back in the Times of Sun when the Gamestas interviewed me? Well, their computers were destroyed in the Eighth Great Invasion, but in the Thousand Years Rebuilding, the archives were uncovered and the archivist Mel Um Tuwwu has put his findings up on the Gamestas site. Listen and enjoy! I don’t sound nearly as much like an asshole as I thought at the time!
