As people have figured out, I don't really sell PDFs of Shock: I'm a book designer. Part of the satisfaction of publishing is making books. But I can't deny the practicality of PDF. They're searchable, they can be stored on a computer or a flash drive and you can back them up.

Shock: has been out of print since February, though. I've been doing some minor tweaks and edits and, of course, these things always take longer than intended. So what's been happening is, people email me, say they want to know if I have any more copies around (I don't, at least not that you'd want), or ask if I'm selling PDFs on the sly. So I say, "Sure! Order the game, I'll send you a PDF and a copy of the book when it comes out!"

So, since the market has spoken (I have absolute faith in the Invisible Hand), I'm doing a pre-order sale. If you order Shock:1.2, you'll get a copy of the 1.1 PDF to hold you over and a PDF of 1.2 when it's done next week or so.

You can order the game over at The Un-Store!

(take a look around there and see what else you want, too!)

Posted By: Thunder_GodHey Joshua, what's the level of the changes?

Thanks, Seth!

The .1 increase is almost wholly clarifying editing. There's a subtle change in order of operations again (Shock before Issues, which people usually do by accident anyway), which makes world creation a little bit easier. If you own a copy of 1.0 or 1.1 and get along fine, don't upgrade unless you need a new copy, or are giving a gift, or really like seeing my work progress in awkward, lurching fits and starts.

If you are baffled by something in the 1.1 rules, email me so I know what's baffling. I'll explain it to you and probably work it into 1.2 if you get it to me before the end of the weekend.

Brian, the primary changes are orders of operation and some subtle things about Antags, including their getting one more Credit. They're all things that make the game better and a little bit smoother, but there's a reason they're only .1 increases.

Someday I'll do 2.0, but I lack the technologies required. I might be learning something from Xenon: about how to do what I want to do, but we'll see. In any event, it's improbable in the extreme that Shock:2.0 would come into existence before 2011 and the improbability decreases on an asymptotic curve from there, starting quite high.

Thanks for the orders, folks!

Sam, there is, I believe, a single set of sheets remaining. Shoot me ten bucks and it's yours. Until I figure out a way to produce them more cheaply, there aren't going to be any more of them. They cost more than the book to print.

Graham, shipping is the same everywhere in the world. It's too much of a pain in the ass to figure it out per destination. If you're in orbit, I'll have to charge you $30,000 per kilo to take it there on a privately funded Pegasus spacecraft.

Moreno, I should do that. Will I? I don't know!

Oops, I just realized I didn't answer Will's question!

Antagonists get 13 Credits. The Antag sheet on my site is wrong. The one in the back of the book is right, though. I honestly don't know how that happened. I'm doing some redesign on the player sheets anyway, so expect that to be corrected soon.

My experience is that the 13th credit makes a difference like one time in five. Almost never does an individual's story go for four scenes, but it gives you the option as Antag to punch really hard once, too.

Posted By: Joshua A.C. Newman

Heh.

Be grateful. At the Xenon: playest tonight, I decided to not require a dozen d8s.

d6s are easy. Everyone who's ever GMed GURPS has at least a dozen, and you can pillage them out of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scattergories, Cranium and every other crap MB boardgame in a pinch. You can get a block of them for a few dollars. Fortunately, what I wound up deciding on was a different reading of d6s that have a more interesting curve than d8s anyway.

d12s and d8s, though... they have neither the tradition of d6s nor the decimal qualities of d10s that make them present in every dice bag.

Not that those facts prevented me from using a dozen d8s in Under the Bed. d6s gave too many ties, d10s too few.

Um, but there's no reason for me to assume you do.

Also, cards are less intuitive to me. I'm learning ot get along with them, but they're a long way off from dice.

In Xenon: also you grab dice when you want to do something. You can't really "grab" six cards the way you can grab six dice. There's a haptic element to it.

Hold yer horses! I'm reformatting it for download. Geez. Blowin' my big secrets.

I've just gotten into town and will be setting up a PDF of the outline with that correction. I want it to be available for free from the site, anyway.

Posted By: Joshua A.C. NewmanHere's the Shock:1.2 play outline.This is included in the back of 1.2. I think there are some procedural differences from 1.1, but whatever.