Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Straight-style PARANOIA can work 

Loyal citizen Duane O'Brien, on his blog Chaotic Neutral, describes his success in running PARANOIA at Kublacon using, for the first time, the Straight play style. (Straight, you'll recall, is the darkly satiric style modeled on films like Brazil and THX-1138 and books like Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.)
My experience running PARANOIA told me that people expect Zap-style games, with heavy clone deaths. [...] A typical scenario averaged 32 player deaths. [...]

Before the session started, I made it clear that this was going to be a different kind of PARANOIA game [...] In this Alpha Complex, you don’t kill people. You never have. Violence is something visited upon other citizens by IntSec goons in riot gear. Sometimes things get blown up, but those were treasonous acts done by terrorists. You’re an accountant, who for some unknown reason got assigned the task of escorting this famous guy someplace. [...]

The game had a suitable level of tension, as the players really were intent on keeping their clone alive, and as they immersed themselves in the plot points and seriousness of the setup. Player Deaths: 1 [...]

When queried for feedback, [the players] all indicated they’d had a great time, and that it was a very different kind of PARANOIA. As a GM and game designer, the experience taught me many things, but most of all it taught me that Straight PARANOIA Can Work. I intend to try it again, with one caveat: Next time, the game description will be more explicit about the fact that the game is Straight. I may even list it as a straight horror game, depending on the scenario I put together.
Commendation point, Duane!
Posted by: Allen Varney / 2:03 AM

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