PARANOIA

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!

Labels: glorious comrades, submarines, underplex

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.)

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

Labels: review, RPGnet

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.

Labels: gamemasters, GMs, newbies

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?

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.)

Labels: glorious comrades, mass games, north korea

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.