Thanks to not one, but two awesome blogs, I now know of Planetocopia, the works of artist Chris Wayan. Many of them are future Earths, or alternates, where poles have shifted or some other catastrophe has taken place. Terraformed Mars and Venus are there, as well as a bunch of purely fictional ones.
It’s brilliant. It’s science fiction sculpture.
Over at his blog, a guy named Eric Raymond has posted an article about why Hard Science Fiction is inherently Libertarian and why Left-Wing political agendas in science fiction are irrelevant. From what I’ve seen, he’s really wrong.
First off, he discounts Bruce Sterling and, by implication, Kim Stanley Robinson, two tremendously influential SF writers. Both of them have decidedly complex but Left-sympathetic political leanings (at least insofar as I’ve derived from their writing — I don’t know either, though I’ve met and corresponded a bit with Chairman Bruce).
Secondly, he discounts the relevance of dystopian and apocalyptic science fiction which was the core subgenre in 70s SF cinema. Those movies had a decidedly Hippie perspective, from Planet of the Apes’ warnings about theocracy and unquestioned authority to Silent Running’s indictment of the failure of government to properly protect the environment. To be sure, there are Libertarian themes as well; they tend toward the anti-authoritarian from every direction, but Eric’s kind of ignoring that.
But the biggest evidence that I’ve seen is the extraordinary Lefty leanings of the Shock: games I’ve played. Social class is extremely common as an Issue and economic inequality almost always factors into the various other issues in some way; sometimes it’s proles selling advertising space in their own brains to feed their kids, or sometimes it’s the wealthy buying their way out of responsibility. It’s not that Shock: can’t be used to tell stories about Libertarianism and the Rugged Individual; it’s that the players I’ve played with — often strangers at conventions — tend to frown on its myths more than they frown on the myths of Socialism.
I wish Chairman Bruce would comment on it more than he has, though. Particularly by writing some SF that contradicts what he’s said. I have no doubt he can do it and do it well. I could do with some good Pinko, Cooperation-Makes-Us-Great SF.
Jeff Hobbs over at my sister publication L-Dopa has just written some piercing observations about publishing in the 21st century. Dig what he says because, whatever your moral stance, it’s true.
One of the nice things about Shock: is that it generates these artifacts from play; the Minutiæ, the Grid, and the *Tags. But those tell the stuff around the story, not the story itself. So I was very excited at Dreamation when Dan Ravipinto offered to record the game we were playing, Cannie Row (from a couple of posts back). He’s posted that recording (watch out! It’s 4 hours long!) along with the other games he played that weekend over at his new funspace, peccable.glyphpress.com. These are bound to be of greatest value to those of us who were actually in the games themselves, but if you want a full fleshout of how World Generation works in Shock: it’s a good way to get it. Dice hit the table at around 00:85 with a grouchy Orion dealing murderously with New Cannies. I haven’t finished listening to it yet, but we’re having a good time.
A couple of my fellow fiction game players have commented that I make characters who I get really into. I want to share my technique because it’s really satisfying to me. This is strictly for Narrativist play by the Forge definition; without rules to support this kind of play, I think you could really wind up making yourself unhappy.
First, some nondefinitive definitions:
So, let’s take a look at my character, “Jesus” (pronounced the English way, not the Spanish way) from last weekend’s game of carry, a game about war. The following is kind of explicit, so I’ll put it behind a cut so you won’t accidentally read it if you’re not up to hearing a story about soldiers losing their shit during the Viet Nam War. Continue reading “How to Make A Character You Care About: a case study.”
At Dreamation, I got to run two games of Shock: Social Science Fiction. In the first, the Shock was “Post-Scarcity”. It was a good game, but overbooked. I wound up sitting out and trying out an improvised “audience” role. It worked just fine. I wish there’d been four Protags instead of five with someone else playing the audience, but live and learn. In any event, it was enjoyable, but eclipsed by the second game on Saturday night, Canny Row.
But that was far from all. Here are the bands I got to play with:
Friday
Saturday
Preview of Shock: Canny Row
Issues:
Shock:
The players were, from my left:
I’ll have a full Actual Play up as soon as I can. That report will sell games. It was such a good time. We made a really good story about ethnic divisions on Europa and just how poorly people can get along. Plus, sex!
Dan recorded the whole thing. I look forward to listening soon! Dan, if you’re reading this, please contact me. You’ve got my card.At the end, we started speculating about a sequel. I think that’s how I’m going to consider “campaign” games from now on: distinct stories in series. We really wanted to check in a century later, around 24oo CE. If we’re together again, I’d really like to tell that story. Maybe we can arrange things that way?
The whole con was great for the indies. We were tremendously overbooked (I had twice the signups that I had space for. It’s a good thing people were sleepy by Saturday night and only three people showed for my three slots). Vinnie, one of the organizers of the con, said that we were the majority draw for RPGs this year as a group. He encouraged us strongly to spread the passion over to Dexcon, in July. We’ll have to see if we can do that.
Well, I’m off to Dreamation with Emily Care Boss, Vincent Baker, his son Seb, and Tom! I’m running Shock: at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon and again on Saturday night if you want to join in. We’ll see you there!
Edit: Hooray for me! It all works now!
