Thursday, Jan. 20
Players: Marc, Jason, Jamie

Two second-timers at Shock and one new Shock player: a recipe for disaster? Hardly! We managed to pull things together just fine (thanks to a bit of coaching from Ben and Josh). We built a weird world and ran with it. What was the world? So glad you asked.

With Government Spying, Class Disparity, and Superviruses as our Issues, we built a place where the government controls a form of quasi-beneficial nanovirus. This virus has good effects on those who carry it: it grants them citizenship, it reduces the speed of aging, it makes them immune to other diseases, and it generally bestows better health and fitness. But there is a price: the government can detect the movements of a person infected with the virus, anytime and anywhere. Only the rich are allowed to be infected: about 25% of the population (mostly slaves) are "redbloods", who are not carrying the disease and thus have no rights. Wealthy people start off with a level one virus, which turns their blood green. From there, monetary gains and ascension through social circles allow determined citizens to upgrade to other, higher colors, such as violet, blue, silver, and the top tier, gold. It was this world, contaminated by a "virus of privilege", that held our three characters and their foes.

Erix, played by Marc, was essentially a scientist crime lord. As a redblood he technically had no rights, but as an underground businessman he was very successful. His trade? Blood transfusions for those who wished to "get off the grid" for a while. Erix's goal was to develop his own version of the virus, one that would allow him to track those infected by it and remotely give them orders/kill them. He was antagonized by Naso (Jamie), a rival crime lord and ruler of the city's underbelly.
Pollux, played by Jamie, was a kind-hearted nanobiologist who got wrapped up in a bad situation. He worked at the Saturn Clinic, where he provided free health care to redbloods. His dream was to engineer a form of the virus that did not contain the government "claws", but still granted its beneficial effects. He was antagonized by Conus (Jason), a high blood-level "Inquisitor" from the local government office.
Felix, played by Jason, was a teenage street urchin who desired nothing more than to travel and live amongst the redbloods in the underbelly. Her wish was to see the world outside the government colony--a world believed to be uninhabitable--but she was held back by her unusual circumstances: she was under the guardianship of her antagonist and gold-blooded aunt Thalia (Marc).

Adventures ensued, some humorous, others tragic. In the end, everyone ended up dead, either through misfortune or foolish error. I'll leave it to my fellow players to pull out further details, but one of my favorite moments was when Felix, after receiving a transfusion from Erix, arrived at the border with her red-cloaked-as-silver blood. She was refused passage. In a moment of panic, she assaulted a security guard, and was knocked out. The camera faded as she bled, first silver, then... black, not red. The color one's blood turns when they've been infected with Erix's virus. A horrific twist!

Good game guys! Thanks for bearing with me as I attempted to facilitate a game I'd only played once before.

On a slightly different note, Jamie suggested a Hack that we put in place for this game: each protagonist had to have at least one Link in common with another protagonist. This led to some cool situations (Pollux and Felix both performed crimes for Erix), but also led to difficult situations (what to do when all three are in the scene at once?). Anyone have thoughts on this Hack, or how to handle it when two protagonists are in the scene in Shock?

Had a frickin' awesome time at my first Meetup! Shock, for me, has a fantastic old-school sci-fi feel - very Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes-y.

While Marc's brainstorm about making the virus different colors for different social levels was a stroke of genius, I gotta say, Chelsea telling poor Pollux that he "smells like a redblood" and returning his ring just before ratting him out to the cops was my favorite part of the night. Thanks, Marc and Jaime, and thanks again to Marc for having the guts to facilitate a game he'd only played once! +1 to you.

Also, Conus was totally young Roddy McDowall in a white wig.

- Jason

Marc and Jason are both good actors y'all. Switching accents on a dime and business. I was impressed and a bit intimidated.

There was recently a thread on story games about Shock where someone criticized it and I and others rabidly jumped to its defense - that's the thread where Joshua said, Yeah, do that shared link thing.

It's definitely my favorite GM-less game now. One thing I'm eager to try is contemporary fiction via Shock. Like, the Shock could be WWII, or the internet, or cell-phones, or television - but that's not really important, what really matters is I love the issues and conflict resolution and think it would apply just as well to a story about a soldier returning home from 'Nam or a high-school burnout who's trying to get his act together or a housewife who wants to leave her abusive husband or really anything.

One thing I think we were doing I'm not sure how to fix - because we only get one conflict a scene, it felt like we wanted each conflict to be Really Awesome, so we may have been free-playing longer than we should have to get to that Awesome Conflict. Any ideas?

Thanks for the props, Jaime - I liked that you jumped into the first scene without prompting and played Thalia's slaves while Felix was getting her (unwanted) bath. Accents are cool but that's where the good stuff comes from.

It seems like Shock (and most likely all storytelling games) gets more unwieldy the larger or the smaller the group. Too large, and there's a disparity of time per player/too much talking (this has been my experience with Fiasco); too small, and things can get awkward as we run out of players to populate a scene (only three of us at the table meant more hats to wear, and it was necessary, for the scenes' sake, for each player to participate fully in each scene). The sweet spot (again, in my experience) seems to be around four to six players. Having said that, I actually liked having a three-person group, although it did mean there was zero downtime and we had to be 100% engaged, which meant you didn't have much time to plan and react to where others took the storyline. I was pretty wrung out by the time we were done! But I thought it made for a particularly lively and productive game.

As far as the Really Awesome complication, that's a problem I always find in story games. I can't think of what we could do mechanics-wise to fix it, other than set a time limit for exposition; sometimes that works, but most of the time it gets ignored or it becomes an obstacle to enjoying play. I try to remind myself while I'm playing/"writing" a scene that every conflict need not end in explosions/death/major upheaval, which is why I liked the highly personal/quiet-like conflict of Pollux vs. his status-conscious fiance. Chaos vs. Law!