[Dreamation 2008] Shock: Overflow - The Clone Civil Wars
Judd:
Dave,
No other thoughts, having digested a bit?
Shit, don't mind if I do.
There was something really cool about being in a room full of people who were sharing in a similar experience, all playing the same game but coming to different conclusions from different angles and finding their fun in different nooks and crannies. I really liked that.
There was something interesting about gaming with Jay, like dancing with an old dance partner. I had to reign us in and make sure we didn't just go off the deep end for 40 minutes and free role-playing until everyone else's eyes started to bleed. We kept our scenes short and punchy and it was amazing how we always ended our scenes on a brutal cliff-hanger and a spiffy moment where everything turns around and changes.
I liked my characters, both my antag and a protag in a way that I haven't liked a PC in a long, long time. Officer Chaim Suzuki, United Planets Sanctioned Conflict Referee and D.I.C.-09, Departmental Investigative Clone were just riveting to me and I was bouncing up and down to play them. Luckily, I was also eager to see our heart-breaking, ukulele playing child soldier (minutiae: Fast-Gro Clones: Grown Fast/ Die Fast) and our wood-hauling slave (minutiae: burning wood is a luxury that only the rich can afford!) do their thing and play audience.
That d4 for the audience is key; it changes the wait for your own scene into a wait for the scene where you aren't a protag or antag so you can have some input and decide their fate. There were a few instances where the audience got to push the scene into an escalation and those moments are hot-hot-hot.
I'd love to hear about other clone civil uprisings that were going on.
lumpley:
We had only sad personal stories, but a happy world story. Our game ended with the dawn of a workers' paradise, clones and non-clones together. But it got that way by martyring the people who made it.
My protagonist, god damn it. Just god damn it. He wasn't a martyr. He was a surgeon who killed clones to implant their organs into their sick or injured ...um... what's a clone's parent called? Anyway, I was driving him toward a change of heart so hard, but when it came down to it, nope.
His kid was hit by a truck. He didn't perform the surgery, of course, but he observed it. "My intent is, when they stop my kid's heart, I can deal with it. People die; clones shouldn't die so that we don't." And I lost, and he accepted the promotion at the damn hospital, and he was an enemy of clones' rights from then on.
Man that guy was fun to play. One of our praxes was talking/violence, and he was all violence. I got to say things like "Mr Wu, when I became a doctor I swore a solemn oath to never, ever, ever, ever punch a patient in the face in a hospital bed. Stand up please."
How much he loved his kid was the only thing that could've changed his mind about clone rights, and it did.
-Vincent
Dave Cleaver:
Quote from: Paka on January 29, 2008, 09:00:57 AM
That d4 for the audience is key; it changes the wait for your own scene into a wait for the scene where you aren't a protag or antag so you can have some input and decide their fate. There were a few instances where the audience got to push the scene into an escalation and those moments are hot-hot-hot.
That is definitely one of my favorite parts of Shock:
Upon further reflection, this game was very different for me. My character was such the gentle giant, that he didn't actually get to say much when his master was around. I felt like I acted out the character more than I normally do.
Also, I loved the way all of our stories revolved tightly around the start of the revolution. We had the revolution's martyr, the first freed clone slave, the war ref who destroyed the only weapon that could stop the clones, and the creator of the eventual clone leader. That was some cool stuff. The fact that it didn't all sink in right away is a sign of a good game.
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