PARANOIA

INTSEC Community Mission - Collateral Damage

2009-06-30T16:51:00.002-04:00

Troopers get much, much bigger guns than Troubleshooters, so we need a much, much bigger Collateral Damage table for those unfortunate occasions when a player rolls really badly with a tacnuke shell. Think of it as a Rolemaster fumble table for cone rifles. Suggestions for horrible collateral damage in the comments, please.

Rob MacD's alternate PARANOIAs

2009-06-29T14:56:00.001-04:00

Loyal citizen Rob MacDougall, who participated bravely in The Toothpaste Disaster PARANOIA Lexicon game in 2004, has posted three inventive PARANOIA variant settings on the gaming blog Claw Claw Peck.

First up is "Slave Complex of the Under There":

Black Tunnels descend from the surface world to the Crimson Caves of Blood. Below lie the Ochre Delves, the Azure Sepulchre, and the Temples of Elemental Indigo. The descending levels of the Under There represent a kind of, let’s say, “security clearance” for the pecking order of the dungeon. Under constant surveillance by unblinking beholders, ogres bully hobgoblins who bully goblins who bully bootlicking kobolds, who get stuck cleaning elf-gunk out of the death traps. It’s like high school with gelatinous cubes.

Then a steampunk PARANOIA, "Alpha | State," that will ring true to fans of the indie RPG a|state:

One hundred years after Babbage, one hundred years after Lord Byron’s coup, the Alphan Empire is a steam-driven superpower stretching from Barbados to Bangalore. At its heart squats perfidious Alpha, the not so Green and Pleasant Isle, and at Alpha’s heart sprawls the Empress, the city-sized analytical engine that rules and mothers the Empire. And oh, does it need mothering. For the paranoid Empress imagines a thousand perils to her binary virtue. Bomb-throwing Luddites! Bearded onanists! Filthy communards! And behind them all, the agents of another analytical AI: the Empress’ libertine continental nemesis, the Turk.

And finally "Alphaville," which, if you haven't already clicked through based on the two summaries above, just read it.

Man, it makes me yearn to return to Brave New Complex, the huge campaign supplement of variant Alpha Complex settings the Traitor Recycling Studio put together a few years ago. Nothing came of that -- no market -- but perhaps somehow, in some alternate timeline, that book actually got published.

Archive links fixed

2009-06-29T02:41:00.003-04:00

Just as certain R&D biolabs fall empty for decades at a time (when a particularly enterprising mutant creation gets loose), so this blog's archives have been partly broken for about 18 months. The archive links in the sidebar, the bottom right, were correct for posts dated 2007 and earlier. But owing to some boring bug in Blogger's archive auto-generation script, posts from 2008 and later had broken links. The only way to access those months was to insert an additional "p" in front of the "public_html" part of the URL -- to wit, "ppublic" -- and I never mentioned the workaround here because it was so stupid. Now -- still with me? -- I've pulled the auto-archive script and manually inserted good links to all the archived months back to late 2005. I'll have to add another line at the end of each month, so be a good citizen and remind me, hmmm?

Speaking of tasks I've let fester for years, I do hope to finally finally finally get to the .PDF of material cut from WMD, and sooner rather than later. The text of WMD (the 2006 collection of Straight-style PARANOIA missions) is included on the 25th Anniversary CD-ROM in the Black Missions limited edition due later this year, so a new cohort of Gamemasters will join the many wondering what happened to the free .PDF download I referenced repeatedly in the text. Okay, okay. Give a guy a few years of slack, okay? I was busy all that time, wondering how to fix the archive links.

PARANOIA on TV Tropes

2009-06-22T23:14:00.002-04:00

I've blogged here before about TVTropes.org, but I hadn't realized there's a TV Tropes PARANOIA page.

As before, fair warning: If you're into the taxonomy of genre elements, TVTropes will consume hours and hours.

Skulduggery

2009-06-20T19:09:00.002-04:00

Soon, perhaps, PARANOIA will gain distinguished company in the realm of RPGs that turn players against one another.

Pelgrane Press recently allowed its license for The Dying Earth RPG to lapse. (I did the layout for the Dying Earth rulebook and the first supplement, Cugel's Compendium.) Though the license to Jack Vance's wonderful fantasy novels currently lingers in abeyance, the fine rules system by Robin D. Laws lends itself well to characteristically Vancian interactions in other settings. Pelgrane publisher Simon Rogers is collecting opinions on new settings using the Dying Earth rules, such as this new proposal, Skulduggery, a game of "verbal fireworks and sudden reversals":

Skulduggery, Pelgrane Press’ hilarious new roleplaying game of doing unto others because they’re sure as heck planning to do unto you. [...] quick, uproarious games of treachery and oneupmanship in any setting. Fine-tuned for one-shot and impromptu sessions, it can be adjusted for longer-running series as players demand.
The tongue is sharper than the sword. Skulduggery makes verbal persuasion as suspenseful and decisive as physical combat.

There’s always another comeback. Don’t like the results when you roll a die? Skulduggery’s reversals-based resolution system lets you roll again -- if you can afford to pay the price. . .

Characters in minutes. The GM hands out stacks of cards. The players trade for a few minutes. Presto: instant characters, ready to play!

Wit wins out. Strategic deployment of dialogue snippets recharges your supply of the points you need to succeed.

Think you’ve got it all under control? Just when they think they’re ahead, characters must face their own worst enemies—the all-consuming temptations driving them to distraction and doom.

From the moment The Dying Earth RPG appeared, gamers have connected it to PARANOIA. (See, for instance, this 2003 RPG.net forum thread on player-vs-player conflict.) Now, depending on the feedback Simon collects from his readers, the connection may become easier than ever. Drop by the Skulduggery post and comment.

Unconcealed secret buildings

2009-06-19T14:21:00.002-04:00

Granted, they're all aboveground, but even so, the forbidding monolithic architecture of these 15 not-so-secret secret-service buildings on oObject should evoke a sense of Alpha Complex.

Modern (?) Russian power plant

2009-06-17T22:38:00.003-04:00

Comrades! All Power Serwices personnel now to be viewink photos from glorious Chernobyl-era Russian nuclear power plant near Smolensk.

Because this powerplant was completed after the Chernobyl, they paid a special attention to secure it from alike accidents. There is even a saying that “The sci-fi writers are on the second place by richness of imagination, the first place is occupied by the nuclear plant security engineers,” meaning that they need to make it safe just for some unimaginable events that not very likely to happen, but still the security system should be ready for them.

The outside structure that secures reactors themselves can stand the blast that exceeds ten times the power of atomic bomb blast, just imagine.

Ha! Glorious comrades, now to be imaginink many unimaginable ewents werry werry likely to happen in similar power plant in capitalist pig-dog (ptui!) Alpha Complex!

PARANOIA INTSEC - Community Mission 2

2009-06-12T07:52:00.002-04:00

The old Hil Sector BLUES supplement gave a list of alert codes for IntSec troopers. Some classic examples:

Code 56 Stray petbot causing disturbance. Catch and return to rightful owner.

Code 59 This code reserved for future use.

Code 61 Berserk bot. Approach with caution.

Code 69 This code left intentionally blank.

Code 70 Reactor meltdown. Seal off sector to ensure radiation containment.

We need more codes! Codes that summarise a complex, dangerous situation in a single number, leaving absolutely no room for confusion.

No room at all.
Not a bit.
Never ever.
When a Trooper squad gets a Code alert, they should under no circumstances be confused, misinformed and/or terrified. Failure to respond promptly to a code is Treason.

Black Missions CD Contents

2009-06-12T06:29:00.002-04:00

The contents of the CD-rom that will accompany the limited edition Black Missions book is revealed here.

War on INSERT NOUN

2009-06-09T11:41:00.003-04:00

My spies inform me that the pdf version of War on INSERT NOUN is available from DriveThruRPG, which implies the print version should also be on the shelves of your Friendly Local Game Store. This 32-page mission, complete with pregenerated Troubleshooters, describes the tumultuous aftermath of the Incident, the rise and fall of the Department of Complex Operational Defence, and the deadly threat of... well, something as yet undetermined!

12 fascinating tunnel networks

2009-06-08T14:35:00.002-04:00

Any blog post titled "12 of the world's most fascinating tunnel networks" threatens to put the reader to sleep in the first paragraph, but this feature from the unusual tech-design blog OObject rewards examination. See, for instance, the 5000-year-old gold treasure tunnels under Los Angeles created by a prehistoric cult of lizard people.

(PARANOIA fans will also enjoy the OObject feature "Futuristic megastructures," including Buckminster Fuller's Manhattan Dome.)

The Perils of Stand-Alone Rulebooks

2009-06-06T10:59:00.002-04:00

Ah, the joys of the stand-alone rulebook. The INTSEC book is designed to stand on its own, without reference to the Troubleshooter book. However, no-one wants to see large chunks of text replicated across the two rulebooks, so I'm busily condensing and rewriting the rules down. The chapter on Mutations, for example, takes up 20 pages of the Troubleshooter book, but less than 8 pages of INTSEC.

It's almost like writing rules in Orwell's Newspeak. 'Pyrokinesis doubleplusgood margin incinerate CommieMutantTraitor, plusgood on fire, ungood selfnosefire, doubleplusungood spontaneous combustion.'

Soviet matchbox labels

2009-06-05T23:26:00.002-04:00

Comrades! Somevere is beink somebody who somehow for some reason is needink to see over 1,000 labels for Soviet-era Russian and Eastern European matchboxes! Is you? Da, good!

Mongoose forum posts of note

2009-06-04T16:14:00.001-04:00

This week Mongoose Publishing posted an announcement that the current range of PARANOIA products will be retired at the end of this month, in advance of this summer's 25th Anniversary line, starting with the PARANOIA: Troubleshooters rulebook and the Black Missions limited edition.

On the Mongoose forum, this announcement prompted a question about compatibility between the forthcoming PARANOIA Anniversary rulebooks and the existing support line. Mongoose staff writer Gareth Hanrahan, designer of the 25th Anniversary rulebooks, replied:

The new rules are 95+% compatible with the previous edition. I can only surmise that most of the older supplements are sold out, and the remaining stock is fast dwindling. I'll attempt to bring Those Who Know into this thread.

Speaking of the Mongoose forum: Saturday, June 20th is Free RPG Day, where participating game stores worldwide distribute free roleplaying material. This year Mongoose has prepared a special 32-page PARANOIA booklet including quick-start rules and a brief introductory mission. On the Mongoose forum, an enterprising citizen who got this booklet in advance of the day itself (treason point!) asked about a loyalty test accidentally omitted from the Free RPG Day booklet (treason point for, uh, somebody else to be named later!). In response, Gareth posted the text of the entertaining form right in the topic. Commendation point, Gareth!

PARANOIA INTSEC - Community Mission #1

2009-06-03T07:41:00.003-04:00

Development work on the new INTSEC rulebook has commenced, and so this Famous Game Designer turns immediately to the loyal Paranoia community for support and assistance.

Instead of playing lowly Troubleshooters, INTSEC characters are heroic BLUE-clearance troopers. Now, no-one gets to BLUE without having a few skeletons in the closet. (Not to mention skeletons crammed into the waste disposal unit, or skeletons hastily buried in the food vats.) Therefore, every Trooper has a number of Treacherous Deeds in his past. These deeds may come back to haunt him, or he may be able to use his influence to have the evidence of these deeds erased during play.

We need suggestions for Treacherous Deeds! What have your Troubleshooters gotten away with in the past? What skeletons are in your characters' closets?

Black Missions DVD - hints & foreshadowings

2009-05-29T11:39:00.003-04:00

Mongoose Publishing CEO Matthew Sprange's latest blog entry mentions the forthcoming 25th Anniversary "Black Missions" edition of PARANOIA:

Charlotte [Law, staff editor] has been slaving away at the new PARANOIA rulebook (for Troubleshooters), as well as the Limited Edition version, entitled Black Missions. This comes with a free disc that has oodles of PARANOIA material on it, from complete supplements, to forms, to sound files of The Computer speaking (all recorded at Rebellion's own studio), to video interviews with some PARANOIA luminaries - and lots more!

I have asked my secret society leaders to obtain a list of the DVD's contents soon so I can post it here.

Straight-style PARANOIA can work

2009-05-28T02:03:00.001-04:00

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!

Nineteen Eighty-Four killed George Orwell

2009-05-27T01:46:00.001-04:00

On the Guardian (UK) website, "Observer" columnist Robert McCrum posts the saddening account of the stressful composition of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the attendant health problems that killed Orwell, age 46, soon after the book's 1949 publication.

Barnhill [a house on the Scottish island of Jura], overlooking the sea at the top of a potholed track, was not large, with four small bedrooms above a spacious kitchen. Life was simple, even primitive. There was no electricity. Orwell used Calor gas to cook and to heat water. Storm lanterns burned paraffin. In the evenings he also burned peat. He was still chain-smoking black shag tobacco in roll-up cigarettes: the fug in the house was cosy but not healthy. A battery radio was the only connection with the outside world. [...]

The typing of the fair copy of "The Last Man in Europe" [the original title of Nineteen Eighty-Four] became another dimension of Orwell's battle with his book. The more he revised his "unbelievably bad" manuscript, the more it became a document only he could read and interpret. [...] "I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolutely dissatisfied... I think it is a good idea but the execution would have been better if I had not written it under the influence of TB [tuberculosis]." [...]

By mid-November, too weak to walk, he retired to bed to tackle "the grisly job" of typing the book on his "decrepit typewriter" by himself. Sustained by endless roll-ups, pots of coffee, strong tea and the warmth of his paraffin heater, with gales buffeting Barnhill, night and day, he struggled on. [...]

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949 (five days later in the US) and was almost universally recognised as a masterpiece, even by Winston Churchill, who told his doctor that he had read it twice. Orwell's health continued to decline. In October 1949, in his room at University College hospital, he married Sonia Brownell, with David Astor as best man. It was a fleeting moment of happiness; he lingered into the new year of 1950. In the small hours of 21 January he suffered a massive haemorrhage in hospital and died alone.

In Praise of Jim Holloway; Sundry updates

2009-05-24T05:47:00.002-04:00

There's a nice entry over at the always-fascinating Grognardia old-school gaming blog entitled In Praise of Jim Holloway", long-time and much-loved PARANOIA artist.

* * *

In other PARANOIA news, the 25th Anniversary celebratory edition is coming together nicely. The text is all done, the accompanying DVDrom is being assembled, and Will the Layout Guy is working away on an updated look for the game.

We're also about to get seriously rolling on the first of the two new rulebooks, the INTSEC book covering BLUE agents. If you've any questions or there's anything you'd really like to see in such a book, now's the best time to comment.

Saudi subcutaneous death capsule

2009-05-22T13:04:00.002-04:00

Internal Security police tracking known felons, potential felons, and nonfelons-just-waiting-to-fell will be interested in a Saudi Arabian inventor's implanted "killer tracking chip" that tracks "undesirables" via GPS. The Model B version can also remotely terminate them with a cyanide capsule.

Though every loyal citizen understands the authorities would never abuse such power, nonetheless the German patent office has refused a patent for this ingenious R&D scientist. Spoilsports.

Could have sworn I'd blogged this earlier this week, but it seems I just tweeted it on my Twitter feed, which has consumed much of my waking attention.

(Via io9 and loyal citizen David Boyle. David also links to the PediSedate medical headset that sedates children while they play videogames, but you've seen that one by now, right?)

OFFF 2009 sponsor titles - R&D in action

2009-05-19T14:31:00.003-04:00

Barcelona's OFFF digial arts festival and design conference has been staged annually since 2001. To honor the corporate sponsors of the 2009 festival, held a couple of weeks ago, the Dutch creative studio Onesize created a marvelous OFFF 2009 sponsor title video, which the festival organizers accurately summarized:

An extremely inspired eight-minute piece where art and branding converge in the most wise way possible. The work mixes video and 3D under a retro aesthetic where everything fits just perfectly.

The PARANOIA player quickly perceives in this video the essential R&D practicum: Try crazy stuff and see what happens.

(Via William Gibson and Errolson Hugh on Twitter.)

Shockball

2009-05-18T12:42:00.003-04:00

Loyal citizen David Boyle alerts us to the Shockball, a non-tauntable electrosphere undoubtedly popular in Junior Citizen creches:

Shockball is basically catch for the brave and the hard. This red metal-studded ball contains a hidden wickedness -- that is rather given away by the name. Turn it on and then start throwing it to one another, and at some random point in the all-too-near future, the person catching it will get zapped. You never know when it's going to 'go live,' so it turns Catch on its head - instead of worrying whether or not you can catch the ball, now you'll worry about what will happen if you catch the ball. This rubber-coated landmine has been the cause of lots of shrieks in the office -- though oddly, they seem to come before the person's even caught the thing. There's nothing like a bit of anticipatory fear to spice up a game!

Needs two AAA batteries (not included). Price 15 British pounds. Not for sale in USA (boo!).

Gareth undertakes UV-Clearance engagement

2009-05-11T22:10:00.003-04:00

The Computer extends a CPU-approved Official Commendation to High Programmer Gareth (Mytholder) Hanrahan, designer of the forthcoming 25th Anniversary rulebook PARANOIA: Troubleshooter and many fine PARANOIA supplements. Edel Ryder, Gareth's lady love and collaborator on the Fish for Fish webcomic, announced on her Twitter feed a development likely to improve Overall Average Happiness nearly as much, in certain respects still to be defined, as a new PARANOIA book:

Committing publicly to life-long love. @mytholder and I are engaged.

Congratulations, Edel and Gareth!

Cold War anti-Communism comic

2009-05-11T10:59:00.002-04:00

You can be sure this 1961 issue of Treasure Chest, with its alarming book-length treatise on "Communism: Threat to Liberty," is still well-thumbed in Internal Security's Department of Unspecified Threat Assessment.

PARANOIA in the real world: Communications down

2009-05-08T18:19:00.002-04:00

Novelist and comic-book writer Peter David has his own equivalent of "PARANOIA in the real world" called "Captain Irony and the Irony Watch." His Captain Irony entry for May 7, 2009:

In Washington State, one of the departments at the University of Washington–in order to save money–has had all its phones removed. You can now only reach the professors through e-mail (or by stopping by.) You can no longer call them.

Which department? Glad you asked.

The communications department.

Loyal citizen Saul Resnikoff tracked down the University of Washington campus newspaper's April 7 story, "Cutting the lines of communication: Department saves money by disconnecting phone lines."