Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

This is a sort-of follow-up to my earlier Vinge post.

I’m the sort of guy who wants to love Shock:, the role-playing game of social science fiction by Joshua A. C. Newman. It has a simple but potent engine for generating Big Ideas for science fiction — “situation” of a sort.  It should get me excited, and the ideas that can come out of the method often do, but the (admittedly) few times I’ve played it the experience has just come out feeling pretty flat.  (This is definitely a “for me!” thing, so let’s skip the impassioned defenses.  I’m 100% certain Shock: works great for many people who I’m not!)

Shock:’s idea generator is a simple grid, one that lays out social issues vertically (you might list, say, “racism”, “socialized medicine”, and “gun control”) and “shocks” horizontally.  Shocks in this case are shocks-to-the-fabric-of-society ala science fiction: time travel, alien visitation, medical immortality, that sort of thing.  Shocks are usually few (unless you’re planning on running a monstrously long game).

The juice happens when you look at how these two axises intersect, and work as a group to determine what circumstances arise from that intersection.  In one game I played, we had an issue “AIDS in Africa” and the shock “alien first contact”.  Some crazy-beautiful ideas came out of that: our aliens were living, sentient microbial colonies, shape-shifters as far as we were concerned at our level, able to take on a humanoid form or something monstrous.  Their landing happened over Africa — no big ships over the world’s major cities, here — so there was plenty of regional volatility primed to explode in the face of their arrival.  We also talked about them “precipitating” through the atmosphere, travelers on a one-way vessel sent to colonize our planet, the “sac” they were traveling through space in dissolving upon entry.  And questions arose as to whether or not it was an earlier colonization by their kind that gave birth to some of the planet’s worst diseases.  Some pretty meaty stuff to tear into, there; big ideas.

But the characters and, consequently, story that arose from that point didn’t do much of anything for me.  In Shock:, ideas get explored by creating a protagonist at those intersections, with the rest of the table doing the antagonist and supporting-cast work when that particular intersection has the focus.  So your cast can rotate around a lot (though it didn’t in the session I’m talking about: we focused on the one protagonist, the one intersection).  Which is probably one of my first points of disconnect: the thin connection between me as a player and any character I might play is a sign, overt or otherwise, that I shouldn’t invest much attention/affection/interest in him or her.  This mirrors a lot of sci fi out there that I’m already not interested in, where the Big Ideas are so much bigger than the characters that the characters end up being incidental.  When ideas trump characters, I’m yawning and setting the book down.

Likely in service to this idea that the cast of a Shock: game is big and likely to shift around as focus moves around the grid, characters in Shock: are not extensively detailed in terms of system.  Coming as I do from the Fate background & perspective, that’s deeply unsatisfying — I don’t have a lot on my sheet to invest in, nor to communicate to others.  So again I’m left with ideas trumping characters, and characters that feel as thin as the paper of the character sheet.

So let’s keep that in mind while reflecting on what I had to say about Vernor Vinge’s fiction.  He’s definitely a Big Ideas kind of guy, but his ideas don’t trump the characters.  Really, his ideas sneak in around the edges. He hits you with the interesting, investment-worthy characters in the foreground, but populates the background with those crazy-beautiful ideas that draw people to science fiction in the first place.

So this is the important lesson, and the critical place where I think Shock: missteps — characters first and foremost, ideas second.  Shock: has that the other way around. Which is not to say that the game should have players creating characters before the grid that makes the situation; it just needs to make the characters more important, more three-dimensional, instead of using them simply as the tools for exploring the ideas.  I don’t want to play (or read about) a tool, I want to play (or read about) a person.  My problem as a reader with those sorts of stories is that they can end up feeling awfully antiseptic, and they really require the ideas to be wall to wall stellar.  A good but not great idea and this treatment can fall apart fast.  A good but not great idea and a characters-first approach on the other hand can still rock.

In my next post, I’ll talk about Diaspora and how I feel it can (and already does) conquer this problem — and what it can learn from Shock:.

NaNo update: 39,055. I really, really want to take about a week off, or possibly never write again. These last few scenes have sucked like vacuum and contain such witty dialog as "I threaten you! With fierce threats!" because I can't figure out what the threats would, you know, actually be. Ugh.

Only a little more than 10,000 words to go, and seven days to do it.*slogs*

...which makes me thankful that our world is not like anything that happens in The Road.

-Andy

"Seabiscuit."
"Dirt Muffin."
"Desert Cookie."
"Swamp Cake?"
"Uh... Forest Pie."
"Oh! Beach Cobbler!"

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

I like peanutbutter, but dislike peanutbutter flavored things. For instance, I like Reese's Peanutbutter Cups because they have actual peanutbutter in them, but peanutbutter flavored cookies are pretty much my least-favorite flavor of cookie. The same is true of cheese: I like cheese a lot, but dislike anything cheese flavored.

With this realization, I have now reached a state of 100% self-knowledge. I now know everything there is to know about myself and my decades of introspection can now end.

( Howling from the wilderness )

Aimed at Shane, who I know has one. But all are welcome to share.

Looking for Good Stories, Horror Stories, etc. Aiming at getting one in the next few months. Aiming for the Linux base (for Speed/Usability and Price, not for the Pretentiousness) with the smaller Solid State HD (cause IMO SS drive == EEE. IDE == "A very very very small laptop").

Tell me the screen size you have, and if it's too small, just right, etc.

Thanks!
-Andy

calicokat quoted some excerpts of the comments from the network forums for Supernatural, and I have to say, I've never shouted Bingo! so fast in my life.

( I don't think anything here is a spoiler, but it's not my show )

Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

I started reading Cheri Priest’s Boneshaker recently.  About 8 or so chapters in, I had to admit it has a well detailed steampunk world, nicely grimy, and focused on an interesting tale of parents and children. But I just wasn’t gripped by it, so for the moment it’s been put aside on my “promising, but I’ll work on it later” pile.  Good stuff, well done, yes, but not grabby.

I’ve been tweeting back and forth with Brad Murray about many things (the Fate game Diaspora that he and three other gents worked on being a big part of it), one of which is our mutual admiration of Vernor Vinge’s novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness In The Sky.  I am not a hard sci fi sort of guy when it comes down to it, but Vinge’s novels really grabbed me. Yes, there’s bits of science and intriguing speculation flying fast and furious at your face, but he also has a master’s touch in pacing and character.

It’s been a while since I read those books, but their fingerprints were all over Diaspora.  So Brad pointed me toward Vinge’s earlier work, Marooned in Realtime.  I saw that The Peace War was essentially a prequel story to Marooned, so I picked up both and got to reading War.

Vinge owned me all over again.  I’m prone to the occasional mild bout of insomnia, but that wasn’t the case while I was reading The Peace War.  I came to bed dog tired and ready to sleep.  Then I’d pick up the damn book, and I’d be up past three A.M.  While not all of Vinge’s work grabs me this hard (I’ve never managed to get into Rainbows End, but I might give it another try later), those failures to grab are the exception.

The Peace War was written before the end of the Cold War, so it has some “future history” anachronisms in it based around that, and they just do not matter.  It’s a solid thriller with a future Earth that’s been irrevocably changed by a bit of technological blackmail and the regrets of the guy who made the technology possible.  I’d summarize more, but Vinge’s ideas are the sort that are difficult to describe without spoiling some of the essentials.  Highly recommended.

I’m starting into Marooned now, and I’m at that crucial 8 chapter mark. No chance of this going on the Later Pile, though — I’ve been staying up past three again.  The grab is in the characters, at the end of the day: I care about the characters first, and get lulled into the exploration of the hard(ish) sci fi ideas afterwards.  Which is really the way it should be: give me a great story about interesting people first, and explore ideas second.

Which has me thinking about Shock: and Diaspora both, and how my preferences relate to ‘em, but that’s a post for another time.

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Tonight is the end of my first week in the new studio. This has been a weird week. Sharing work space with a half dozen other people is something I'm just not used to, and it's taking a lot of effort to get over feeling very, very uncomfortable while I work. Over the last few years I've gotten used to working in isolation. No, that's a lie. The truth is I've always worked in isolation, even when I was a kid. I do my bestt work and I'm at my most productive when I'm completely alone. That's why I work at night. Anyway, being in the same room with 2-6 other people is difficult. I keep wanting to move my workspace to somewhere less exposed.

I sound like a crazy person, right?

I'm getting a lot done. This November has probably been the busiest month I've had this year. In addition to the usual freelance and commission stuff, I'm working my ass off to finish up my commitment to Bliss Stage, Right now I have the line art for about 18 illustrations done, and I'm going to be spending this coming week turning those into finished pieces. I'll probably do one or two more illustrations for the game, including a cover proposal. Then I'll be done. Finally. After 3 years.

Fuck.

So on top of this, Barry has asked me to color Hereville. He's running up against his deadline and has decided that it will be faster to have someone else color the 140+ page book then do it himself. I almost said no. I'm already so busy that I barely have time for anything but work. I haven't done any work on my personal projects for... I have no idea how long. At least a month.

Anyway, I agreed to do it. Mostly because I know that when I have a lot of work to do, I get a lot more done. I'll rise to the challenge. So far it's working out. I colored 18 pages of Hereville this week, finished my freelance project, did two commissions (both WoW characters), instructed two classes and had plenty of time to work on Bliss Stage.

The flip side of that is that I blew off the Gun Mage playtest, skipped dinner with some friends, gave up on the book I'm reading, let the batteries in my DS run dry and haven't returned any IMs all week.

Oh well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4_Z84-rRE

That is all.

After the way today has gone I have some new policies on life.

1. You have a problem? I don't want to hear about it and I don't really care.

2. If you still feel the need to tell me something then it will be public knowledge and I will posting it up both here and on my facebook page. Hell maybe even posting it up permanently on my site as well.

3. Want my advice? My advice is ask someone else for advice. Nobody ever listens to me so why the fuck would I continue telling people stuff.

4. My primary concerns are me and my kids. So that means that you are not a primary concern of mine.

5. Don't ask about my problems.

( Howling from the wilderness )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )