Shock: Social Science Fiction

Overall score:

This is a game I just bought from Indie Press Revolution and read in about an hour. I had version 1.0 (and received 1.1 for free about a month after I ordered it as part of a deal with IPR). Shock: Social Science Fiction v1.1 is not your typical science fiction role-playing game. For starters, in Shock the setting is more than just a pretty backdrop--the Shock is the setting.

Take Fahrenheit 451 for example: in it Guy Montag is a fireman, except in the world of Bradbury's nightmares Firemen burn books. That's kind of a hallmark of Social Science fiction. An issue usually takes center stage and becomes more central to the setting than the actual setting. Sure 451 is set in America, but the America bit is wrapped up in the Shock, and is what makes it so shocking.

The game is designed around 3-5 players and can be used to play any type of Science Fiction story that has as much emphasis on setting as it does character. A group could play Dune one week, The Martian Chronicles the next, and Babylon 5 the third without screwing around with the rules too much. It does this by being pretty rules light, and by creating a collaborative storytelling atmosphere.

There is no Game Master, only people who want to play the *Tagonists and the Audience, though those roles could switch from scene to scene. A *Tagonist is shorthand for either Antagonists or Protagonist and these are characters or entities that directly matter to the story. Of course you only call them *Tagonists in Shock if you mean both of them together, separately you drop the "ist" (i.e. Protag). The *Tagonists and the Audience use dice to affect the outcome of a conflict, comparing the number to the fulcrum of *tagonists Praxis Scale (or two valid but opposed choices to confront conflict).

It sounds complicated, but it really isn't. Take the idea of getting something: you have the choices of either buying it, or stealing it, so you draw a line on a sheet of paper and write buying on top, and stealing on the bottom. Now write a number between 3 and 8 to the right of the line between the two ideas--that's your fulcrum. Let's say your Fulcrum is a 3, that means that to buy something you have to roll over a 3 and to steal it, you have to roll under a 3. Simple, right? You can weight your fulcrum so you almost always win at one side or the other, but since other players can affect your roll you won't always win.

Protags have an additional ability that affects their praxis, called a feature, which can be a character trait, tools possessions, secondary characters, or so on. Features tell you how many dice you can roll as a protag, which always starts at 3. Oddly enough losing conflict can net you more features, which is cool because you can do a lot of losing in the beginning and build up a lot of dice for the end of the conflict. Antags don't have features, just a set pool of 13 dice they can draw from to affect the story. This pool is called credits and an Antag can't get more of them in the course of a story. When an Antag runs out, the story is over.

There are 2 types of dice used in the game: d10's and d4's. D10's help you accomplish your task, while d4's are applied to your opponent to stop them from accomplishing theirs. You chose which dice you want to roll, but you have to roll at least 1 d10. It's possible for both *Tagonists to win or lose in a conflict.

In the middle keeping things interesting is the audience who gets a single d4 to affect the conflict, by introducing some sort of minutia to the story and choosing who to support in a conflict. Only one audience member can contribute to a conflict at a time, but all members roll dice. The highest roller gets to choose who to support. In the case of a tie, the players dice off to see who gets to use the roll.

The Protag also has a neat trick they can play--if they lose a conflict they can using a third stat called a link. Links are relationships or ideals that can be burned to get a re-roll. If you lose again you lose that relationship or ideal and it is replaced by a new one. Say you have a strong faith in god and you lose that conflict then burn your link to god and then lose again you lose your faith. You can replace it with something like "god doesn't care about me" or "I don't deserve his love".

The rulebook is safety orange, 94 pages long and pure awesome.

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by Maddrjeffe on September 05th, 2007