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!
Somehow, I missed this when it first went up: The Forager Blog: Ron on Sci-Fi, Sean on Sci-Fi. This article is written by Jon Hastings, a player of Shock: and interesting guy. In it, he talks about my definition of science fiction (which, instead of writing in prose, I wrote as a game) and Ron Edwards’ take on it. Lemme quote Ron because he says some really nice things:
Anyway, to someone whose thinking inclines in the above direction, Joshua A. C. Newman is bucking for hero status. He is the only person with the guts to tackle this issue in RPG terms…Shock is a first, a de novo, an innovation. But more than merely an innovation, it’s not only what I wanted, but what I needed. In this day and age, I am not going to get science fiction consistently anywhere else. The person typing this post is Shock’s target audience.
… that is, Ron and I see this exactly the same way.
Now, I love SF short stories. Naturally, I have a great fondness for those read in my youth. Some authors really felt like they were talking to me. Bruce Sterling was one of them; he’d always thought about the same things I’d thought about and thought about them further. Ron, though, is ten years or so older than I (though you wouldn’t know it to look at him), so it comes as no surprise that he pegs optimal sci fi about ten years earlier than I do.
And that’s great. Because Shock: is for making your science fiction. It doesn’t reproduce science fiction. It’s a tool for making your own with your own aesthetics and your own moral connundra. It is not the product of scholarly study of science fiction; rather, it’s a technique I developed to make science fiction. I’m a designer, not a writer (a fact noted by so many), so I designed a science fiction system so I could tell the stories I wanted to tell.
This last point here came from a discussion I had with someone on RPGnet. In it, he asked me if I’d read his favorite couple of authors. I hadn’t. Later, he told someone else, when asked about Shock: that “the author doesn’t seem to know as much as he thinks he does.” Another person expressed concern that my sources listed were all “older” authors (Bruce Sterling is an old author! That makes me feel old!) That baffled me: one’s ability to build fiction is not based on how much other fiction one has read, it’s based on the number of stories told. I wrote Shock: so that those stories could have a structure — one that I recognize in the stories I like and one that I think works very, very well — and you can bring your aesthetic and moral machinery to the table and enjoy the process of creation.
Shock: is for your stories. Build what you want to build.
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!
Hey! Check it out! I’m in excellent company again!
At KublaCon out in California, they give awards for the best of several types of games. One of the categories is “RPG/LRPG: Best Game That Doesn’t Include Elves or Vampires” and I find Shock: just under Chad Underkoffler’s Zorcerer of Zo and Jason Morningstar’s The Shab-al-Hiri Roach. I can’t tell if I’m second runner up or if we’re tied, but I’m not contradicting that roach. Last time I did, it told me to do something frightfully shameful.
There’s nothing saying that there couldn’t be elves or vampires in Shock: of course. But I won’t tell if you won’t. And it looks like Jason’s pointed out the same thing.
In any event, I’m happy to be on the same page as these guys.
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.)
There’s a website called Eyes on Darfur . In it, you can see satellite photographs of villages that have literally been destroyed by fighting there.
Let’s think about that for a moment. The core defense of the Government of Sudan has been “Nuh-uh!” for years. They’ve kept away UN observers and peacekeepers on the grounds that nothing’s going on. But the satellites fly overhead every few minutes. They see the smoke, they see the fire, and they see anything 2 meters wide and bigger. Like, say a Land Cruiser with machine guns mounted in the back.
Now, let’s consider using Shock: for something like this. Let’s talk about using Satellite photos or Google Earth as a Shock. Or the Space Station. Or camera phones. This might be a really interesting way to play. It loses the level of abstraction that, say, “Furries” and “Interstellar travel” give you, but it might gain some meat from familiarity.
Anyone who wants to, come over. We’ll play like this and see how it goes.
From Judd, who got it from Warren Ellis, who got it from M John Harrison:
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.
Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.
I don’t think I’d say this quite so strongly — I think worldbuilding is a fun game to engage in and it will be the core of Xenon: (if it turns out to be fun to play), but I really agree with this about theme-addressing fiction. It’s the reason that you build as you go in Shock: starting with only the most basic parts. You make sure the world is the one that says what you want to say because you build it to suit whenever you want to say something.
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!
Last night, I got to tag along on an interview between Voice of the Revolution, the indie press weekly podcast by the venerable Paul Tevis and Brennan Taylor. Emily Care Boss of Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon fame talked a bit about her upcoming game Sign In Stranger, I talked a little bit about why Shock: and Under the Bed are the way it is, and we talked about what it’s like to live in the hotbed of indie game publishing in which we live. It was a fun little spot to do. Thanks, Paul and Brennan, for the interview!
I’ll let you know when it’s posted.
