PARANOIA

The Battlespork

2008-05-04T01:27:00.001-04:00

Gareth Hanrahan's PARANOIA mission "Spin Control," collected in Alpha Complex Nights, begins with a highly important Troubleshooter assignment to maintain and/or destroy spork supplies in an INFRARED cafeteria. The mission naturally progresses from there to -- yes, you're way ahead of me -- to a public-relations campaign for brain-eating zombies. But the idea that pertains here is the spork.

Now, spork fans, witness the revolutionary Battlespork -- spoon, fork, toothbrush, and self-cleaning razor all in one! First proposed in 1992, trapped in bureaucratic limbo to this day, the Battlespork Spork-Toothbrush-Shaver would help defend our overburdened troops from the omnipresent menace of oral bacteria.

(Via the Steve Jackson Games Daily Illuminator.)

Alphaslang article in Signs & Portents

2008-05-01T18:41:00.001-04:00

Signs & Portents issue #56 (.PDF link), the latest issue of the Mongoose Publishing in-house magazine, is available for free download. This issue includes "Keep Your Dictionary Handy," a long, fun article by Zild (of Paranoia-Live.net) about slang terms used in Alpha Complex. Zild compiled the common slang seen in published PARANOIA books (vatslime, goosack), drew more from the active "Alphaslang" topic on the P-L.net forums (bootsmoke -- a dead citizen, plus seven other usages; still dripping -- recently decanted), and added many all his own, including a section of Commie Rhyming Slang, brand names, and a disquietingly long list of euphemisms for dying:

has gone to that big briefing office above the dome.

is shooting trouble with UVs.

donated his body to R&D.

joined the scrubot's list of things to do.

is on tomorrow's menu.

et cetera....

Zild remarks in the Alphaslang topic, "Further contributions are very much welcome, as I already have my eyes set on a sequel!" Commendation point to citizen Zild -- and a treason point for not alphabetizing the list.

Alpha Complex made real

2008-04-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

Alpha Complex comes to life in Japanese photographer Joe Nishizawa's incredible photos of underground Tokyo.

(Via Chris Nakashima-Brown at No Fear of the Future.)

PARANOIA in the real world: Your 23% smile is insufficient, citizen

2008-04-10T17:49:00.002-04:00

Loyal citizen Elle-R-KNO of Paranoia-Live.net forwards this Wired blog report of breakthroughs in Japanese smile-measuring technology:

The breadth of a smile can be measured by new technology from Japanese electronics and health care company Omron Corp. [...]

In a demonstration, a camcorder took videos of journalists covering the announcement. Percentage numbers indicating how much each person was smiling popped up in bold blue letters next to their faces on a monitor, flashing higher or lower as their expressions changed. The numbers ranged as high as 89 percent for a person who was grinning, while a somber face registered 0 percent.

Sony Corp. already has a similar Smile Shutter function for its digital cameras which automatically clicks the shutter when people in the image break into a smile.

But Kawamoto said Omron hopes to used its technology in the medical field, to assess the emotional state of patients, or pack it in mobile phones. Okao Catch can also be useful for people who want to perfect their smiles, or for robot communication to make it easier for machines to decipher human reactions, according to Omron.

Doubtless this tech will soon adorn an airport security line near you....

The real world now 40% paranoid?

2008-04-06T23:20:00.000-04:00

The King's College London Institute of Psychiatry posted a story on April Fool's Day that seems not to be a joke: "Virtual reality tube ride reveals extent of public paranoia."

Researchers stuck 200 test subjects on a four-minute virtual-reality simulation of a subway train ride. "The carriage contained neutral computer people (avatars) that breathed, looked around, and sometimes met the gaze of the participants." And lo and behold, the test subjects were spooked!

The research, led by psychologist Dr Daniel Freeman, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, demonstrates that suspicious or paranoid thoughts are much more common in the general population than was previously thought and that they are almost as common as anxiety and depression. [...]

Dr Freeman and colleagues found that the participants interpreted the same computer characters very differently. The most common reaction was to find the virtual reality characters friendly or neutral, but almost 40% of the participants experienced at least one paranoid thought. The participants were extensively assessed before entering the train ride, and it was found that those who were anxious, worried, focused on the worst-case scenarios and had low self-esteem were the most likely to have paranoid thoughts. [...]

"In the past, only those with a severe mental illness were thought to experience paranoid thoughts, but now we know that this is simply not the case," says Dr Freeman. "About one-third of the general population regularly experience persecutory thoughts. This shouldn’t be surprising. At the heart of all social interactions is a vital judgment whether to trust or mistrust, but it is a judgment that is error-prone. We are more likely to make paranoid errors if we are anxious, ruminate and have had bad experiences from others in the past." [...]

People who feared terrorism on the Underground tended to report more paranoid thoughts in the virtual train, possibly reflecting the after-effects of the London bombings on 7 July 2005. However, the researchers also found that people who regularly used the Underground experienced less paranoid thoughts in the virtual train.

Wow, science is really marching on at King's. Comments on the Slashdot topic "VR Study Says 40% of Us Are Paranoid" highlight the junk-science angle, especially this one from LighterShadeOfBlack:

A VR reproduction of the London underground? A place where you're crowded by people, a place which in all honesty does have a reputation for being a haven for pickpockets (whether that's deserved or not, I don't know), and oh yes, one other thing -- the site of the last major (successful) terrorist attack on Britain. [...] Being somewhat cautious in that particular situation is a world away from the headlines implicating that 40% of us are clinically paranoid all the time.

Reasons to be Cheerful

2008-04-02T07:50:00.002-04:00

The new issue 55 of Mongoose Publishing's free online magazine Signs & Portents includes a short, pithy PARANOIA article by Gareth (The Traitor's Manual) Hanrahan. "Reasons to be Cheerful" has nothing to do with the Greg Egan short story of that name. Rather, the article lists an array of secret motives Troubleshooter characters harbor (escape, drugs, gaining mutations, "free thinking"), along with conditions that satisfy those motives. By achieving these hidden goals, players earn Perversity points, which may provide some consolation as your free-thinking character is hauled off for a deep brainscrub.

Gareth is all over this issue. He also contributed a one-page overview and a short scenario for the forthcoming Mongoose edition of Traveller, that languorous and idyllic project that has distracted him from writing the forthcoming PARANOIA bot book. Enough shilly-shallying, Gareth, get to work!

ParanoiaFiles.com

2008-04-01T01:04:00.003-04:00

I hate posting on April Fool's Day, AKA "Internet Jackass Day," because anything I say is automatically discounted. But this happened to be the day loyal citizen Saul Resnikoff at Paranoia-Live.net forwarded to me a kind invitation from one Lisa Axelrod to look at ParanoiaFiles.com.

This site takes "paranoia in the real world" literally -- it's a collection of reports on technology from the viewpoint of, not PARANOIA RPG players, but literal sufferers of paranoid personality disorder. The surprise here is the humorous tone, similar to the "Illuminated Site of the Week" on Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator blog.

Poke around ParanoiaFiles to find plenty of items suitable for R&D field testing, such as dental implants and encoded tire treads.

Asteroid Stackpole

2008-03-27T11:29:00.002-04:00

Asteroid 165612 (2001 FP86) has been named "Stackpole" in honor of novelist and game designer Michael A. Stackpole. Congratulations, Mike!

You may know Mike for his many Star Wars and Battletech tie-in novels, his own DragonCrown War fantasy series and other original books, or his many roleplaying games and supplements for FASA, Mayfair, and Flying Buffalo, among others. But the asteroid christening, according to 165612's co-discoverer Jeff Medkeff, honors Mike for his decades of worthy work in the skeptic community. Mike is Executive Director of the Arizona Skeptics; he has firmly fought the armies of ignorance, especially during the 1980s outbreak of anti-RPG hysteria. He is a calm, constant voice of rationality.

NASA has the orbital details of Asteroid Stackpole. Medkeff covers much of the blogosphere's reaction to the recently announced asteroid names, of which Stackpole is only one. Another asteroid was named for Phil Plait, who runs the excellent Bad Astronomy blog.

I thought Mike Stackpole wasn't the first game designer to get an asteroid -- could have sworn the late Gary Gygax had one already -- but I can't find anything about Gygax in the asteroid belt, nor Dave Arneson, nor any others among the usual suspects. So maybe Mike is once again leading the way for the rest of us.

Am I envious? Duh. But you know, by now I've envied Mike for so many years I'm well into Envy Fatigue. You know -- "Yeah okay, Mike, an asteroid, that's great -- a new species of orchid, you say? That's nice -- what? Your face on the thousand-dollar bill? Your own Constitutional amendment? Yeah, congrats, whatever...."

The Lives of Others

2008-03-24T00:05:00.000-04:00

Though I always search for inspirational reference material for PARANOIA, I never expected to get a good lead from my mom. But she recently saw and loved the German film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (about as Germanic a name as I can imagine). The Lives of Others scored a remarkable 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Having read the IMDB synopsis, now I'm all afire to see it. Thanks, Mom!

Set in (appropriately) 1984, The Lives of Others follows Gerd Weisler, a skilled and zealous captain in East Germany's feared secret police, the Stasi. Weisler begins spying on a playwright named Dreyman. Film critic Roger Ebert's perceptive review in the Chicago Sun-Times tells more:

Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) first saw Dreyman at the opening of one of his plays, where he was informed by a colleague that Dreyman was a valuable man: 'One of our only writers who is read in the West and is loyal to our government.' How can that be? Wiesler wonders. Dreyman is good-looking, successful, with a beautiful lover; he must be getting away with something. Driven by suspicion, or perhaps by envy or simple curiosity, Wiesler has Dreyman's flat wired and begins an official eavesdropping inquiry.

He doesn't find a shred of evidence that Dreyman is disloyal. Not even in whispers. Not even in guarded allusions. Not even during pillow talk. The man obviously believes in the East German version of socialism, and the implication is that not even the Stasi can believe that. They are looking for dissent and subversion because, in a way, they think a man like Dreyman should be guilty of them. Perhaps they do not believe in East Germany themselves, but have simply chosen to play for the winning team. [...]

Driven by the specter of aggression from without, [East Germany] countered it with aggression from within, as sort of an anti-toxin. Fearing that its citizens were disloyal, it inspired them to be. True, its enemies were real. But the West never dropped the bomb, and East Germany and the other Soviet republics imploded after essentially bombing themselves.

Creepy real-world parallel: The late actor who played Gerd Weisler, Ulrich Muhe, was himself under Stasi surveillance during the Cold War, and later alleged his wife at that time, the actress Jenny Grollmann, was herself a registered Stasi informant. (Grollmann denied it.)

Singapore's Happiest Citizen contest

2008-03-23T00:04:00.003-04:00

Attention, citizens of Alpha Compl-- I mean, Singapore! Does your recorded Happiness Quotient meet the following qualification levels?

Singapore citizens above 18 years of age

Happy smiling disposition – others feel good to be around them

Ability to be happy no matter what life presents them

Has a strong sense of community and belonging – family and friends

Stays consistently happy – not up one moment and down the next

Contributes to society by bringing happiness to others

If you, Singaporean citizen, are in fact deliriously happy at all times (or at least all times monitored by Internal Security cameras), Global Leadership Academy, a consulting firm in Singapore, wants someone to nominate you for its search to find the authoritarian city-state's Happiest Person 2008.

GLA founder Philip Merry told Channel NewsAsia he was inspired to start the contest after a study found that citizens of Singapore and South Korea, two of Asia's most prosperous economies, rated their countries among the most stressful places to live. "Singaporeans fret about financial security and retirement," Merry said. "Many Singaporeans are concerned they do not have enough money to grow old gracefully, and that seems to make them unhappy."

Global Leadership is accepting nominations of Singapore citizens through the end of March for an award to be announced at its New Science of Happiness and Well-Being Conference on April 4th. Anyone can nominate a Singapore citizen by e-mailing -- not making this up -- happiest@simply-happy.com .

(Via Metroblogging Singapore.)

PARANOIA in the real world: In-flight shock bracelets

2008-03-21T01:06:00.002-04:00

Boing Boing has the story:

Lamperd, a "firearm training system" company, has patented a bracelet that delivers debilitating shocks when remotely triggered. Their killer app for this is aviation safety: They're proposing that the TSA could force everyone who flies to wear one of these, and then flight-attendants could zap us into a stupor if we turn out to be Al Qaeda.

Check the comments on the Boing Boing thread: "Don't tase me ma'am!" -- "Why not just skip this step and go straight to the Battle Royale-style head-exploding collars?" -- and my favorite: "Stewardess! 500 Quatloos on the tall, sullen-looking one. A fine specimen!"

New Drug Generator

2008-03-20T11:32:00.002-04:00

"Would you like more drugs, citizen?" -- "Yes, Friend Computer!"

In Alpha Complex, life -- if you can call it that -- slides along a rut heavily moistened by medication. The PARANOIA rulebook includes a drug name generation table, but Gamemaster, if you want to show your Troubleshooters the whole label (including indication and side effects), head to Generatorland's New Drug Generator and keep clicking the pill until you feel all mellow inside.

Kriloxx

(for Pankerwhipoid Palsy)

Potential side effects: exaggeration, ankle swelling, and weight gain.

(Via The Generator Blog, one of my favorite places to blow an hour or two.)

Top Gear Ground Force Sport Relief

2008-03-17T12:50:00.003-04:00

Sorry for my American non-driving non-gardening ignorance, but I am unfamiliar with the incredibly popular and long-running BBC automotive series Top Gear, the once-popular and long-running BBC gardening series Ground Force, and the long-established biennial BBC Sport/Comic Relief charity telecast Sport Relief. That said, when the Top Gear hosts staged their version of Ground Force for Sport Relief, I instantly recognized a perfect realization of a typical PARANOIA Troubleshooter mission. Trust me, just watch, and as soon as team leader Jeremy Clarkson demonstrates efficient gardening techniques with a shotgun, you'll say, "Okay, I get it."

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Thanks to Citizen Max on Paranoia-Live.net for the tip.)

Donate to Paranoia-Live.net!

2008-03-15T21:47:00.004-04:00

Goodness, already another year has passed, and again upon us is the Time of Paranoia-Live.net Server Support Donations. As vagrant PLN Sector High Programmer Fargmania writes in the forum post "What would you give for Friend Computer?":

Would you give your life? Your internal organs? Your Yum-Yum Xtra Crunchy Funbar (with super-fortified protein chips)? Well of course you would! But Friend Computer does not need these things - does not *want* these things... right now, anyways. What Friend Computer wants today, is for you to donate a few credits to your most revered and superb ULTRAVIOLET citizen, High Programmer Jazzer. [...]

The mighty High Programmer Jazzer is responsible (with the help of Friend Computer) for the creation of Sector PLN, and the yearly task of paying for the upkeep server costs fall to his mighty and impressively loyal shoulders. [...] Even though he is in the midst of Communist regimes in an enemy complex fighting for his very life against the hordes of mutants that would threaten the safety of every member of Alpha Complex... he still cares!

That's why you need to give him whatever you can. For loyalty! For The Computer! For Mandatory Happiness! And heck... for yourself!

Fargmania offers a link to Friend Computer's Donation Fund on PayPal. Give early and often.

Wheel of Tics update

2008-03-10T00:46:00.003-04:00

Citizen Max has updated his commendable Wheel of Tics, bringing the total to no less than 531 tics (many drawn with permission from the PARANOIA character-creation rules supplement Criminal Histories).

You'll recall the PARANOIA rulebook explicitly defines tics (the entertaining little mannerisms and peccadilloes that let your victims pick you out of an IntSec lineup) as immediately evident, noticeable after (at most) a few minutes of casual acquaintance. On this basis the ever-correct Gamemaster might well disallow some of the Wheel's tics, however amusing they are -- for example, "Follows any death with the words 'Well, that shut him [or her] up!'" or "Stares at laser fire, 'cause it's so pretty."

I chastized Max for these, until he informed me he took them straight from Criminal Histories. Oops.

PARANOIA in -- The Wall Street Journal?

2008-03-07T12:51:00.004-05:00

There is no greater proof of adventure gaming's pervasion of society than the presence on The Wall Street Journal editorial board of a former D&D player. In "Mind Games: Dungeons & Dragons Immersed Players in Another World," a tribute to the late E. Gary Gygax in the March 7, 2008 Journal (page W13), Brian Carney reminisces fondly of his youthful RPG sessions. In passing, Carney mentions the existence of other non-D&D games:

As D&D grew, it spawned a succession of imitators: Gamma World, a role-playing game set in the future; a Cold-War spy game called Top Secret; even an amusing, Kafkaesque parody-game called Paranoia, in which the rules were a secret and all the other players really were out to get you.

There is also no greater proof of the tabletop RPG hobby's decline, its hopeless identification with a graying generation, than Carney's cantankerous old-guy railing against World of Warcraft: "At the risk of sounding like a geek and a curmudgeon at once, in my day we did it the old-fashioned way [...] exploring a world that existed only in our imaginations." Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!

(The online version of "Mind Games" is behind the Journal's detestable paywall.)

[Update March 9: Gloryosky, the Journal has a second reformed gamer, and he's not behind the paywall! "Quest for the Teenage DM," an installment of Jason Fry's column "Real Time," is perhaps overlong, but includes a sidebar with several links to similar reminiscences -- notably Paul LaFarge's standout Believer magazine profile of Gary Gygax, "Destroy All Monsters" from September 2006.]

Gary Gygax (1938-2008)

2008-03-04T13:00:00.002-05:00

Farewell to one of the forefathers of the entire RPG hobby, definitely including PARANOIA: Gary Gygax passed away peacefully in his sleep Monday night at age 69, after a long period of ill health and several strokes.

(Announced on the Troll Lord Games forum. Gary is being remembered, fondly though often with mordant humor, on FARK.)

Tailrace hydroelectric Underplex

2008-03-03T15:33:00.003-05:00

The Toronto Power Company's Tailrace hydroelectric station at Niagara Falls, a century old and abandoned for 30 years, is super-cool inspiration for a pleasant little Power Services mission to the Underplex.

Yet another abandoned Soviet submarine base

2008-02-29T22:23:00.003-05:00

Comrades! Already beink sick to death of multiple links to photos of old abandoned Soviet fortresses, missile installations, and nuclear wessels? Vell, toughski! Now to be lookink at still one more big abandoned Soviet Ukrainian submarine base, now museum. Alvays to be usink these kind of photos in good Communist adwentures in Underplex. Is good!

PARANOIA in the real world: HomelandSecurity08.org

2008-02-29T09:09:00.002-05:00

HomelandSecurity08.org is a real website for a real Baptist megachurch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But no one would blame you if you took it for a parody. (Via Reddit.)

Another RPG.net PARANOIA review

2008-02-22T11:00:00.003-05:00

Lengthy new RPG.net review by Dan Davenport of PARANOIA (Style: 4, Substance: 5).

Handy links for new PARANOIA GMs

2008-02-20T21:40:00.003-05:00

In recent months several Paranoia-Live.net High Programmers have departed for other duty assignments, and consequently the site's PARANOIA fan forums have grown somewhat quiet. Yet they still reward the frequent visitor. In the Gamemaster-only "GM Meeting Room" forum, a citizen known only as "No. 5127" assembled a handy collection of links for the new PARANOIA Gamemaster, and now High Programmer Saul Resnikoff has kindly moved this list to a more public forum for general utility and admiration. The list points to many useful forum discussions about how to run the game, which missions to try, mutations, evisceration, etc.

Of course, some of these links do point to, ummm, the Gamemaster-only GM Meeting Room. Still a few kinks to work out there.

Stalin's Story

2008-02-19T12:36:00.003-05:00

Greg Costikyan, co-designer of the first two editions of PARANOIA, now runs Manifesto Games. On the company's Play This Thing blog, Greg tells of a free indie RPG (designed by Victor Gijsbers) that sounds strangely familiar:

It is 1928, the kulaks are starving by the millions, and the collectivization of agriculture is proving to be a disaster. Careworn by his awesome responsibilities, our beloved leader, Comrade Stalin, wishes to have a pleasant evening with the other valiant leaders of the CCCP, and be told a folk tale similar to those he was told in his youth. Naturally, Comrade Stalin being who he is, at least one of the rest of us will be executed before the evening is out. And try to stay off the subject of agriculture.

Stalin's Story [.PDF link] is a short indie RPG, of the tabletop/live action variety, that is played out on two levels: On the first level, half the players are actors, acting out the story, and the other half are courtiers, trying to curry favor with the Soviet leader, trying to sabotage the play that the actors are performing (lest they curry favor with Stalin and perhaps be appointed to some position of power that might otherwise go to you) -- and, of course, trying to avoid being shot. On the second level is the folk tale itself. The "story" is invariant -- the dragon will be slain -- but the outcome for the players on the top level may vary greatly from one session of play to the next.

After you breeze through the lighthearted Stalin's Story (.PDF), why not top off the evening with a pleasant session of Dan Curtis Johnson's Straight PARANOIA mission "Hunger," from WMD?

2007 Pyongyang Mass Games

2008-02-03T16:43:00.000-05:00

Comrades! Now to be enjoyink colorful Flickr photos by comrade "gazjoe" of this year's glorious Mass Games at May Day Stadium in vorkers' paradise, North Korea. (Also to be readink Wikipedia article on mass games and followink excellent external links on that page.)

Cremation -- it just makes sense

2008-02-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Beth Fischi, contributor to the PARANOIA rulebook and the Crash Priority mission collection, received cheery, unstoppably upbeat junk mail about her eventual death.

Atop the happy goldenrod floral-print note, the enthused come-on: "WIN A PRE-PAID CREMATION! Complete all of the reply slip information and you will be eligible for a drawing each month."

In the body text (so to speak), the Neptune Society of Austin, Texas -- "America's Cremation Specialists" -- spreads the good news: "As they plan their final wishes and needs, almost 30% of Americans have selected cremation as their preference! The numbers are increasing every year!"

Cremation just makes sense because:
It allows families to conduct simple personal services at their own convenience

It is much less expensive

It has less impact on the environment

Simple, Economical and Dignified... That's our motto!

The letter outlines several exciting advantages to making your arrangements now: locking in today's price, protection against "upselling" by aggressive funeral directors at a vulnerable time, and Medicaid help. "If you are not interested in spending your family's inheritance on embalming, caskets, vaults, markers, fancy funeral homes or cemetery property, then we have the answer!"

For all their bubbly cheerleading, even the chipper Neptunes do include a subdued small-print postscript: "Please accept our apologies if this letter has reached you at a time of serious illness or death in your family."

On Crash Priority, Beth collaborated with me on the Straight-style mission "Traitor Backup," where the Troubleshooters are assigned to serve drinks and snacks to traitors awaiting final justice at an Internal Security termination center. A few readers thought the humor there was excessively black, yet now I think we missed a bet. I'd best leave it at that; doubtless the ever-ingenious Gamemaster can carry the idea forward.