Shuo, Anders and I played a Shock game with strong themes of unilateralism, personal freedom and civil liberties. Our issues were: the manifestation of dreams, resource distribution and complusion. Our shock was that, in a near-future America, people start inadvertently using dreams to alter the consensus reality. This situation was explored through:

William Mather (Anders), a politico who sought to pass anti-dreaming legislation in order to prevent unauthorized tampering with the consensus reality. As it turned out, however, he was a more powerful dreamer than he ever imagined, and rather than stopping reality-hacking, he became a master of it. Undaunted by the warnings from a dreaming master, he became drunk with his new-found power and began a dark campaign of conquest.

Gideon (Shuo), a misguided youth who wants nothing more than to be united with his comatose sister. His ultimate goal was to create Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, and bring his sister into it. While he was able to create a real-life Wonderland, and bring his sister (or maybe a facsimile of her?) into reality, his powers weren't strong enough to accomplish the only thing his sister really wanted: to see her dead parents again.

Royce (Jerome) was a ex-con turned tech installer, with an alarming affliction. Ever since he got sprung from prison, he's had chunks of missing time, and suspects he's a pawn in a nefarious plot. And so he was. Royce eventually figured out that, while in prison, a series of hypnotic triggers were planted in his subconscious, and were being used to cue his lapses. Eventually he discovered the source of the programming and was able to free himself from his enthrallment.

This game shared a lot of element with classics like X-Men, Dark City and Bourne. We had a little trouble consolidating the story world (which, I suppose, was kinda the point). I suppose that will always be a problem when every character has the ability to alter reality as they see fit. In retrospect, we might have been better served to create two factions, and had all the protags on one side and the antags on the other. Then we could have consolidated a little more.

All in all I found this to be a fun (and surprisingly touching) story based on some of the classic narrative/comic tropes we all know and love.