Players: Drew, Raul, Megan

Shock: Dominate world race is aquatic

Issues explored: Hunger imbalance, Anti Science/Tech, Class Inequality

Praxis: Instinct vs Reason / Tradition vs Reform

World background: Our world was dominated by an aquatic race with deep religious roots. Priests are the most respected members of society, and they help ensure the heretical practices of science and technology are all but wiped out. The lack of any sort of mechanical parts make farming inefficient, as farm space is scarce and doesn't produce much. Still, some farming tycoons are able to hold a reasonably high place in society. Meanwhile, heathens and other undesirables are forcibly kept from the cities as to not trouble the good members of society. But even the heathens and undesirables are better off than the land dwellers - people who for some reason choose to reside on the few barren patches of earth that remain on the planet.

Our first story finds us with a young rebellious land dweller called Stephen. Stephen has a contentious relationship with a guard called Other, a governor enforcer stuck with the job of making sure the land dwellers stay away and don't interact with anyone else. Stephen is able to steal a copy of Other's notebook, and with it instructions for growing farms, but while he is a reasonably clever boy, his inherent ignorance of concepts of things like "seeds" and "watering" slow him down and Other is able to sabotage Stephen's efforts to grow a farm on land, due in part to bribing Stephen's friend Adam.

Next we encountered Edric Telford - a moderately successful Agrarian from a long line of Telfords seeing to break out of their chain of being middleman shippers and actually control the farms. He is met at every turn by the Doogan family, longtime rivals of the Telfords although the relationship is always very one-sided with the richer, powerful and more successful Doogan's generally looking down upon the Telfords. Edric puts plans in motion to destroy the Doogan family, starting rumors that they use *machines* in the farming and then planting evidence to back the rumors up. While those plans ultimately succeed, Edric isn't able to capitalize on the power vacuum destroying the Doogans created, and winds up just letting a third family fill the void.

Finally, we encountered Kairo Tuun. Son of a high ranking priest, Kairo often felt disconnected from his family -- his mother died while giving birth to him and his father remarried shortly there after. His half sister, Kaito, was a religious prodigy and generally wound up winning their father's favor despite Kairo being the elder. Kairo's adventured revolved around a mysterious tablet passed down to him by his grandfather on his mother's side. Fascinated by the draw of "technology" and a rebellious attitude towards his father, Kairo attempted to activate this tablet. His journey took him to a mystical cavern with a working machine in it where he barely escaped with his life, but he was ultimately unable to discover the tablet's secrets.

This was a pretty interesting game. Two of our stories (Kairo's and Stephen's) didn't get a full three scenes as people had to leave but I think all three scenes still got plenty of plot exposition. This was my first time playing Shock, and I enjoyed both the world we created and how we actually got to tell three separate stories in that world. It certainly feels like we just scratched the surface on the stories that could be told within this world.