Shock: Social Science Fiction
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 Cover | |
| Designers | Joshua A.C. Newman |
|---|---|
| Publishers | the glyphpress |
| Publication | 2006 |
| Genres | Science fiction |
| Systems | Custom |
Shock: Social Science Fiction is a pen-and-paper indie RPG about the effects of the shock of cultural change on the individuals who make up that culture. The title is a reference to Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, the concept that rapid culture changes leave the members of the culture increasingly challenged by adaptation. The game is designed to be used by players to make "what if" science fiction, rather than science-flavored fantasy adventure. It was first published in 2006 and has since been through two point version updates.[1][2]
- 1st Edition (Version 1.0) was published in 2006.[1]
- 2nd Edition (Version 1.1) was published in 2007, fixing some typos in the text and adding some clarifications to improve playability.[1]
- 3rd Edition (Version 1.2) was published in 2009 again fixing some typos and adding an outline of the process of setup and play.
- 4th Edition (Version 1.3) was published in 2010 as the Italian translation by Janus Editions, modifying some of the mechanical metaphors for clarification, though none of the mechanics themselves.[3]
Linguistic Peculiarities
The game text makes use of the gender neutral pronoun zie/hir to allow the player to experience some of the same culture shock that the characters in the game will live through.[1][2] When the rules refer generically to a Protagonist or Antagonist the text uses *Tagonist as a generic alternative (borrowing the unix-style wildcard character *).