Stars Are Always Greener (July 17)
Shock
players: Josh, Saa, Jayson, Ben

We had a marathon six hour session of Shock. The other game was wrapping up and heading out and we were just getting into the thick of the plot, because that's how we roll.

We started with the issues Imperialism, Overpopulation, Economics impacting Health, and Survival, and then brainstormed the Shock of enigmatic aliens becoming the effective overseers of Earth. Some people, but only some, were allowed to leave Earth and go to greener pastures off in space. People were carefully selected based on good genes, leading to some characters endorsing creepy eugenics programs to satisfy the alien criteria, and naturally the Have's seemed to be more likely to be selected than the Have Not's.

I really liked the aliens being a central but never understood mystery, keeping the focus on humanity and their reaction to the Shock. The revelation late in the game that the selection criteria was a purely human invention, not something the actually benign aliens imposed at all, spun things up nicely. We started off thinking of the aliens as the imperialists, but as the story unfolded it became pretty clear it was good old humans oppressing each other, as usual.

All in all, some hardcore story gaming, particularly given that half the players were still pretty new to it. Thanks to everybody for really jumping in with both feet!

I felt like we got off to a very slow start, but that during the second round a lot of that inertia we built payed off and we had some really great conclusions.

I totally agree Josh. That's part of my reasoning for playing the same game system more than once -- at the start you're getting used to the rules and how the game plays. Just think how different the style of play is in Shock compared to Danger Patrol: apples and oranges.