Paranoia XP

R. Eric Reuss, aka "Eric the Darker," a frequent poster in this blog's comments and an investigative panelist in the Toothpaste Disaster, has contracted with Mongoose Publishing to write the 64-page PARANOIA supplement The Mutant Experience, due for publication a few months after the August debut of the PARANOIA XP rulebook.

As is rapidly becoming customary, Eric has opened himself up to the public scrutiny of Paranoia-Live.net for comments, suggestions, and possibly even accusations of treason. If there's something you've always believed, wanted to know, or wished to have told to the world about mutants, mutations, and other mutant-y subjects, feel free to vent.

I have just turned in to Mongoose Publishing (wow, I've turned into a publisher! -- no, wait --) the completed 24-page bonus booklet to be inserted into the four-panel PARANOIA Gamemaster Screen. Every GM Screen nowadays has to have one of these bonus booklets or other added doodads, because it's hard to sell a GM Screen alone. ("It has charts from the rulebook! It stands up! Guaranteed opaque at visible wavelengths!")

The booklet is, to my biased eye, quite dandy. In addition to new versions of six classic forms (Mission Report Form, Experimental Equipment Testing Report Form, Termination Voucher, etc.), the PARANOIA GM Screen booklet includes an ingenious mission blender designed by Famous Game Designer Aaron Allston and filled in by a dozen talented paranoids on Paranoia-Live.net.

The mission blender is a set of 72 charts -- yes, seventy-two -- that let you generate all the elements of a PARANOIA mission randomly, by rolling a 20-sided die repeatedly until your wrist falls off. It follows the mission scheme familiar to longtime players: the mission alert, briefing, outfitting, secret society missions, service services (the new edition's expansion of the traditional trip to R&D), the mission proper, the debriefing, and the final fates of the lucky Troubleshooters. Plus NPCs, locations, equipment, a hilarious equipment malfunction table... Really, it's a delight. You can get a sense of the great labor we all put into the mission blender in this Paranoia-Live.net thread. Congratulations to all involved.

The PARANOIA Gamemaster Screen, with four panels and 24-page booklet, goes for $14.95 and will arrive this August at the same time as the PARANOIA XP rulebook.

Okay... So we discussed this here a little previously, and on Paranoia Live a little as well (here and here). But Now Is the Day of Reckoning.

Short form: Holloway's cover illo came in, and we hated it. No one, or rather, everyone is to blame; the Mongoose boys came up with a cover idea, Eric and I didn't pay much attention and said basically "yeah, yeah," Jim did a version and... well, nobody likes it much.

Jim is willing to give it another shot (and good for him), but we need to give him clear instructions this time round, within the next couple of days. I thought it worth soliciting ideas.

Here's what we need:

1. IT MUST NOT BE TOO BUSY. Many of the cover ideas posted here previously are. This isn't the Sistine Chapel, it's an 8 1/2" x 11" image (much of it taken up by design elements around the actual illo) that will be viewed across a dimly lit hobby store, surrounded by a bunch of World of Darkness stuff or something. Eleventysix monitors displaying scenes from Alpha Complex life and umpty-twelve Troubleshooters, bots, and aliens struggling frantically in between is just not going to work (even if this is a fair description of a typical Paranoia mission). The 2nd edition cover remains among the best so far, and it's pretty busy--but your eye is drawn to the single Troubleshooter walking down the brightly lit yellow hall. This works--something simple at stage center, roccoco elements around--but even here, I'd like something starker.

2. IT'S GOTTA BE FUNNY. Natch. Which is why I'm opposed to the "big eye in the monitor" image from the first Paranoia Live link above--it IS striking, and it is ominous--but not humorous. Humor might be carried by text--but still...

3. IT'S GOTTA BE DISQUIETING... In that particularly Paranoid "you are about to be hosed big-time" sort of way.

I thought of that b&w illustration of a Troubleshooter wearing electrodes in a chair, wearing a desperate grin, in front of a huge monitor saying "LIE"--but it's too... obvious. And perhaps not paranoid enough. Great as an interior, maybe not a cover concept.

Eric thought of that b&w of a Troubleshooter holding a laser to a scarecrow wearing a Troubleshooter's coverall, while from behind, the "target" stands in the center of a doorway, wearing underwear, about to blow away his putative assassin--also a good image--but too slapstick.

While you're thinking about this, think also about Holloway's strengths: He is =extremely= good about getting emotion onto people's faces. With just a few lines, he gives you a good sense of what the character is feeling--not a common talent, btw. Contrariwise, perspective is sometimes a little goofy.

And one other point to consider: Holloway's cover art (1st, but not 2nd edition; most of the adventures up through HIL Sector Blues) is essentially 80s comic art, color over ink drawings. His more recent (non-Paranoia) work is rather more painterly--airbrush and acrylic, without the sharp, visible black edges to figures. At the risk of being accused of heresy, I'm going to ask him to adopt something closer to his current style--adapting it to Paranoia--rather than imitating his older, comicky style of 20 years ago. For this reason: although I look at his b&w work, and it does not look at all dated to me, the cover we rejected (and his earlier color Paranoia work) now looks tres 80s.

And the whole point of Paranoia XP is not a nostalgia trip--but to say "this is not only still relevant, but more relevant than ever", given 21st paranoia over terrorism, genetically modified foods, malware, and god knows what. It should look modern--and if we can get cellphones and WMD into it, that's all to the good.

The brainstorming is open. What do you say?

My post a few weeks back about Internal Security GREEN goons brought interesting comments that got me mulling over a PARANOIA "Staff Assignments" supplement -- series of magazine articles -- thing.

In that comment thread Coyote-R-PXP commented, "I used to run a division of CPU known as the 'Yellowpants,' highly officious middle-managers who thought the world of themselves, continually underestimated those under them in security clearance, and blindly overemphasized the importance, wit and merit of those of higher rank. [...] They were all yellow, all incompetent, yet all wielded enough sporadic political power and backstabbing skills to screw you up big time if you weren't sufficiently bootlicky in their presence. Man did players hate them."

Erin Mills generalized this brilliant notion into the "staff assignments" idea -- particular domains of authority of a specific clearance and (possibly) service group. Troubleshooter teams have Mandatory Bonus Duties (loyalty officer, hygiene officer, equipment guy); staff assignments function sort of as MBDs for the general Alpha Complex populace.

I think these assignments would add a lot of color to the setting, and they offer the opportunity to broaden the potential range of play. You wouldn't have to play a Troubleshooter all the time; you could play a GREEN goon or a Yellowpants or... well, let's hear what you could play.

What’s that, citizen? You’re the top of the bottom ranks, trapped in middle-management purgatory? You’re looking for a bridge over the yawning social gulf to GREEN? Friend, try blackmail.

First get the latest Computer Phreak password from your secret society contact -- but move fast, because the passwords change hourly. On any public terminal, use the password to access a hidden account on any of a dozen Gray Subnets, covert mini-networks within The Computer. Here ambitious fast-track citizens like yourself share incriminating video of prominent citizens, illicitly scanned documents and all kinds of stuff you’re not cleared to know. It’s all free; for the anonymous posters, service is its own reward -- well, service and the chance to fink on the supervisor they detest.

What? The password you used was too old? Oh dear. That must be why that Internal Security officer is heading your way.

Incidentally, what seamy evidence did you uncover in your latest Subnet scan? Post it in the comments, and the IntSec officer might let you go. No, really. Well, maybe.

One of the new mutant powers I introduced in the playtest PARANOIA rules was Paralysis, which worked in play pretty much like a weakened Mental Blast. A player on Paranoia-Live.net pointed out this design mediocrity late in the development process, so I had to generate a new mutant power a couple of days before my deadline. I hate doing that. But hey, I'm graceful under pressure, I'm a clutch hitter, in a crisis I can really buckle down and -- well, anyway. Here's what I put in place of Paralysis. Let me know instantly how this one is egregiously flawed, and it's barely possible I can still fix it.

Puppeteer

The mutant can take remote control of a single part of a living target’s body, such as an arm, leg or trigger finger. The body part moves in all respects as if it were the mutant’s own. While controlling the selected part of the target, the mutant can still move and act normally. The power doesn’t work on bots. Range is line of sight.

The player names exactly one body part of the selected target -- not (for instance) ‘his eyes,’ but one specific eye. Make a Power roll. Success grants the mutant control of that part of the target’s body and its component sub-parts. For instance, if the mutant controls the target’s arm, he also has fine control of that arm’s fingers. Controlling the target’s head means the target wears any expression and says anything the mutant wants.

The larger the part to be controlled, the greater the margin of success needed ["margin" means the difference between the success number needed and the number actually rolled on the die]: margin 0-4 -- a finger or eyelid; margin 5-9 -- hand or foot; margin 10-14 -- arm or leg; margin 15+ -- head (lots of muscles to track).

Control requires the mutant to expend at least 1 Power point per round. The control lasts as long as the mutant keeps spending Power points.

Failure means the mutant himself spends a round or two as the puppet of that generous and charitable individual, the Gamemaster.

Stalwart fan Karl Low points out the brilliant and relevant hoax site Empire North, a "young ambitious Danish company" developing nonlethal weaponry: "brand new kinds of identification tools and anti-riot-equipment, tailored for the modern urban battlefield, combining outstanding Danish design and know-how." PARANOIA Gamemasters looking for new equipment should stop by.

See, for instance, the ID SNIPER rifle, which implants "a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being, using a high powered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. [...] As the urban battlefield grows more complex and intense, new ways of managing and controlling crowds are needed. The attention of the media changes the rules of the game. Sometimes it is difficult to engage the enemy in the streets without causing damage to the all important image of the state. Instead EMPIRE NORTH suggests to mark and identify a suspicious subject on a safe distance, enabeling the national law enforcement agency to keep track on the target through a satellite in the weeks to come."

As for JUJU, the Junior Citizen eye -- I only wish I'd thought of it for the PARANOIA rulebook due this August. Gamemaster, check these instructions and consider handing them to your players. Then watch your Troubleshooters dive for cover the moment they see a kid in the corridor.

Please post other appropriately paranoid sites in the comments.

Matthew Sprange, omnipotent master of Mongoose Publishing (the publisher of the new PARANOIA edition this August), asks me to spread the word: Mongoose seeks articles about PARANOIA for its monthly magazine, Signs & Portents.

Because Signs & Portents covers all of Mongoose's many publishing lines, you face an unusual challenge: writing for both the experienced PARANOIA player, looking for new material to add to his game, and also for the unsuspecting novice who bought that issue for its big cover article telling how to combine D20 and OGL fantasy, Babylon 5, Conan, Lone Wolf, Judge Dredd, and Macho Women With Guns in one game without making your players want to blow your brains out.

If you're interested, contact Signs & Portents editor Ian Barstow at ibarstow (at) mongoosepublishing (dot) com. Matthew Sprange remarks, "He does not pay a great deal, but this is where we primarily look for future writers."

I'll be posting more gleanings and leavings from the now-complete PARANOIA rulebook in the weeks leading up to its August publication. Meanwhile, Mongoose Publishing, far from idle, has assigned staff writer Gareth Hanrahan to write the Traitor's Manual -- a 96-page secret society book. I don't know when it's scheduled, but I presume it'll appear before Christmas.

Gar has ventured into the roiling frenzy of Paranoia-Live.net and in this forum thread is following the community's discussion of what should go into that book. If you're interested in shaping the direction of the first major PARANOIA supplement, by all means join in.

I have made available to Mongoose Publishing the completed and laid-out text of PARANOIA XP, minus a one-page index I'll do later this week. All appears on track for the game to appear this August.

I must now sleep.