As part of my perambulations around the globe, I've now pitched up in the Southern Hemisphere, Wellington, New Zealand to be exact.

Last Sunday saw my first visit to WARGS, the local games society that meets monthly in Wargames Supplies, down town Wellington. I'd brought along a bunch of games including Contenders, Covenant, Cold City, Dead of Night and Shock:, just to see what people fancied playing. There was a mood for SF and the chance (for some) to try Shock for the first time. Steve had played the game once before, while James and Paul had not had the chance to. James was, at first, not so sure about the style of game that was portrayed in our discussions, but was very willing to give it a go. Steve and Paul are both familiar with many of the small-press story games.

We each threw in an issue, ending up with terrorism (a current hot topic for debate here in New Zealand), group identity, the after-effects of colonialism (again, a topic that is the subject of wide ranging discussion in New Zealand society) and media manipulation. All of the issues were born out of stories that had recently appeared in the papers or were topics that were prominent in national discourse.

Leading on from these issues, there was a strong feeling that the story should take place on a far flung colony world. The topic of sub light generation ship star travel came up, so we decided to incorporate the two and have both as shocks. Our shocks were: alien contact and generation ship star travel.

Everyone seemed very happy and enthusiastic with the possibilities that these offered. Ownership was taken of the issues and shocks and the process of creating protagonists and antagonists was embarked upon. It quickly became apparent that we would be creating a story that existed in several different time periods: on the generation ship itself, immediately after the first landing and a generation or two after the landing. The way that these stories intertwined and eventually gave a full and satisfying explanation of the situation on the colony planet was one of the best aspects of the game.

The protagonists turned out as follows:

Mikael (me): The son, of the generation ship Captain, his story would take place approximately a decade prior to the ship reaching the destination planet. He was an authoritarian, somewhat genocidal maniac who wanted to eject thousands of people from the ship so that he could mould the colony in his own image (those ejected would be scientists, bureaucrats and so forth). His antagonist was his father, the Captain.

Sean Wiffen (Paul): A senior military officer who's story took place in the few days following the first landing and the initial contact with the alien inhabitants. Paul had picked an interesting goal for his protagonist, in that he wished to “lose his faith in group identity”. In other words, he would cease to identify with the military and the colonists. His antagonism came in the form of Marshal Antonov, representative of the military top brass.

Joseph (James): A renegade colonist, who's story took place a generation or two after the first landing. He had gone off to live with the alien inhabitants of the planet and had developed a romantic relationship with an alien female. He was struggling to regain his trust in humankind after the viciousness of the colonisation and was antagonised by Clex', a sibling of his alien lover and something of a Ghandi/Malcolm X figure to the aliens.

Tanya Lees (Steve): A junior xeno-ecologist, Tanya's story took place roughly contiguously with that of Joseph. She desperately wanted to prove to the mass of the colonists that something horrible had happened during the early years of the landing, but was confounded by the fact that all communications were controlled by a quasi-military outfit called The Transmission Division (who were her antagonists).

Finally, we threw down a few bits of minutiae about the setting, and ended up with:

Generation ships are huge, people are carried in stasis pods, there is a skeleton crew who are awake the entire time, militaristic society.

It takes 8 generations to get from Earth to the colony planet.

The aliens are a nomadic, hunter/gatherer society who travel round the planet in huge trains of wagons.

The planet has a belt of land that runs round the entire equator.

The planet had a very slow rotation, the aliens must keep to the sunny side.

The generation ship still hangs in orbit.

The re are huge cultural differences between those who live on the planet and those who still stay on the ship.

Once we got started, play flowed very well and everyone got to grips with playing the parts of their protagonists and antagonists. The intertwining of the four stories is something that was a real highlight for me, especially the way in which past and future events influenced what was going on in each of the threads. To jump forward to the end of the game, it was very satisfying that all of the events eventually offered and explanation of why the colony had turned out the way it had.

Key scenes for each of the protagonists were (and others should feel totally at liberty to disagree with this):

Mikael: His final scene, where he commits genocide by attempting to jettison hundreds of stasis pods from the ship. Initially, he failed, which really didn't satisfy me as I desperately wanted Mikael to be successful in his mad quest (whether he lived or dies was inconsequential), as I felt it would really underline the events of succeeding years on the colony world. So, Mikael sacrificed the life of his co-conspirator and lover, Ilya, forcing him into a particularly brutal death. In the end, Mikael died, but not before throwing dozens of huge knife switches and hearing the thudding clunks as thousands of souls were committed to the void.

Sean: Sean's first scene was interesting in that it showed that the military command were attempting to sideline him, or remove him from the picture entirely. So, we go to see, very early on, that Sean was not entirely in step with the rest of the military machine on the colony world. Luckily for him (or maybe not, given the eventual goings-on), he managed to palm the assignment off onto a subordinate, maintaining his position at the very centre of things, right in the middle of a situation which was developing into something horrible.

Joseph: Joseph was faced with the tail end of a colonist raid on a native settlement (it as obvious from Steve's description that the majority of natives viewed 'settled' members of their species with disdain). He was being forced by his antagonist to side with the humans and break links with his alien lover and the tribe which had accepted him. In the end, it went quite badly, as the tribe lost a huge amount of respect for Joseph, placing him in a difficult situation, torn between two societies at each others throats.

Tanya: In her final scene, we find Tanya several years removed from when we first met her. She is now part of a resistance that machinates against the colonial government and attempts to educate the populace about the killings that have been perpetrated in their name. In the end, she does manage to break through the efforts of the Transmission Division and broadcast to the people about' the incident', the horrific first contact with the aliens and the snowball effect of militaristic bull-headedness.

The entire situation on the colony world stemmed from Mikaels ejection of the majority of the scientists and bureaucrats. Without effective science, they never knew about the native inhabitants until after they had landed. The military were, effectively, in charge and therefore reacted with hostility to what they perceived as a 'threat' from the natives. Sean strove against this and both Joseph and Tanya attempted to reconcile matters and make the world a better place to live, for both the natives and the colonists. Mikael was quite obviously the bad guy of the story, who's maniacal actions had triggered a genocidal chain of events.

Another interesting little factet: We never actually named the colony world, it was always just 'the planet' or 'the colony'. Although, in my head, I was kind of referring to it as New Aotearoa. Hmmm, I wonder why we never named it? Was there an implicit assumption about what land the colony world was reflecting and therefore, we did not need to come up with a name? My recent reading of 'The New Zealand Wars' by James Belich placed the subtext and themes of this story in greater relief. I, personally, saw much of this story as relating clearly to the history of New Zealand itself. Or, perchance I read too much into it.

I'm hoping that Steve, Paul and James might offer their own opinions on the game and fill in some of the many blanks that I've left!

Cheers
Malc