PARANOIA

Via TechCrunch and thirty zillion other panicked sites, this straightforward note on the official Google blog explaining why, for 55 minutes this morning, the search giant flagged every site on the Internet as dangerous. The reason: Someone typed an extra slash mark (/).

In Alpha Complex this kind of thing happens all the time. On an instant's notice, whole populated sectors fall out of all known records. The difference there is, no one can highlight the error or complain about it, except on the highly illegal Gray Subnets. So we should all feel much safer here/////// SIGNAL LOST

Gold, the RPG web series that does double damage, is an ambitious and well executed indie comedy series by David Nett and Andrew R. Deutsch. Gold concerns the American and British Goblins & Gold RPG teams as they prepare for the World Roleplaying Games Championships.

Elite athletes. Cunning strategists. Ruthless adversaries. It takes great endurance to survive in the cutthroat world of Professional Roleplaying Gamers. Can you take the hits?

Nett (a producer and nascent professional actor) writes, "I'm a longtime tabletop RPGer who got my first taste of 1st Edition AD&D in 1986. Gold is both a comic look at the American portrayal of sports in television and film, and a loving tribute to the wonderful world of traditional pen-and-paper style roleplaying games."

The series premiered this past November. The Gold website has so far posted a teaser, a trailer, and three episodes (Prologue, Episode 1, Episode 2). (Caution: Occasional strong language.) They post new episodes monthly, and they're on iTunes too. If you like what you see, be sure to donate to keep the series going. (Here's an Escapist magazine review of Gold, and a TubeFilter interview with David Nett.)

Check the interesting Gold blog (it's not every film production blog that has character stats), and follow the team on Twitter. Good luck to David, Andrew, and the entire Gold team!

Ever since I discovered the TVTropes.org wiki a week ago, I've pushed it on everyone who might plausibly be interested. Now I've found an excuse to push it on you: the TVTropes.org PARANOIA entry.

In itself, the entry won't tell you anything new about PARANOIA -- though it's better-written than the dull and diffuse PARANOIA Wikipedia entry. But start clicking the links and soon you'll be running madly through the vast and comprehensive thematic catalog of (as they define "tropes") "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations."

Nerdcore in the best sense, TVTropes covers not just television but also film, novels, computer games, and (obviously) tabletop RPGs, often with insight and humor. From PARANOIA, consider going to (for instance) Failure is the Only Option, and then through Genre Blindness, Hanlon's Razor, Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act, Contrived Stupidity Tropes...

Start from a familiar character -- say, Iron Man -- and before long you're loading up on useful terms like Crimefighting With Cash, Reed Richards is Useless, Cut Lex Luthor a Check, Black Best Friend, Race Tropes, and now you see why this thing has engulfed my thoughts.

Enough. I'm passing you the Idiot Ball. It's your problem now!

Allandaros, a VIOLET administrator on Paranoia-Live.net and loyal member of the Traitor Recycling Studio of PARANOIA designers, is running a Star Wars play-by-post game using the original 1986 West End Games rules. A few days ago, Allandaros posted for his players a sketch-map of the bridge of a luxury liner. Later he looked back at the sketch and said, "Waiiiit a minute..."

PARANOIA taking over a young designer's mind.

[A]s I stand here today, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you -- Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there.

It is the same thing that gave me hope from the day we began this campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago; a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together -- Democrats, Republicans, independents; Latino, Asian and Native American; black and white, gay and straight, disabled and not -- then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.

This is what I believed, but you made this belief real. You proved once more that people who love this country can change it.

Next month, mid-February, marks five years since we announced a new edition of PARANOIA. The time was again ripe for a game about a society crazed with anxiety and suspicion, whose leaders and their media functionaries sounded recurrent alarms real and imagined, and who preached to a listless populace nothing save a single message: Trust in us, or the enemy wins.

In these five years, while much of the commercial roleplaying business withered, PARANOIA has sold strong. These years have been good for PARANOIA. This year, 2009, the 25th anniversary of its debut, promises many more good things.

But today -- while wishing the best for PARANOIA -- today we start to hope, now and over time, for a bit less paranoia.

Labels: inauguration

Trinity War is a new Lexicon game by WJ MacGuffin, proprietor of the FriendComputer.net fansite and designer of the fine PARANOIA character creation rules supplement Criminal Histories). Trinity War is set in the universe of WJ's upcoming indie RPG H3: Heaven, Hell, and Hegemony. Players take roles as scholars writing a book about a future war among angels, devils, and humans. The book is supposedly an objective, scholarly review of the causes, effects, and outcomes of the Trinity War. However, each scholar secretly serves one of the three sides (Heaven, Hell, or Hegemony) and will try to spin the book so his side looks right and the others wrong.

At the beginning of the game, each side has a score of 3, representing how positively the public will view each side once the book is published. Each week, players vote on their favorite entry that week, and the top three players get to alter the scores: 3rd place subtracts 1 from any side; 2nd place adds 1 to any side; and 1st place subtracts 1 and adds 1 to the scores. What counts as the "best" entry? That's up to the players. WJ writes, "It will be interesting to see if players form alliances and vote against entries just because they think it belongs to the winning side. 'Think' is the operative word, as players do not know who are their allies or enemies -- yet."

Little do the players know (well, until now) WJ has some tricks in store for them as the game progresses. He says, "This will be the most dangerous book ever written."

WJ invites everyone to read Trinity War and to comment in the game's forums. (No account is required to post, though this may change if spammers and bots get out of control.)

Labels: h3, lexicon

The most precious of PARANOIA treasures, and the most valuable selling tool for those who support the game, is the rarely seen recounting of someone's actual physical roleplaying session. Loyal citizen and new Gamemaster Teucer has now posted "PARANOIA: [mission title containing pun about Outside redacted for security reasons]" on the RPG.net Actual Play forum.

Teucer sent his Troubleshooters Outdoors "to shoot some trouble that had been encountered by the crew of the popular HPD&MC vidshow Inhuman Treason, a documentary series about the horrors of Outside from which Friend Computer so wisely protects us." The account starts coherently but then dissolves into fragmentary recollection of various highlights, which is probably the best way to reminisce about a PARANOIA mission.

Commendation point to Teucer, and to all loyal citizens who generously write up and post their mission summaries.

Labels: actualplay

Boing Boing has just plugged a new book, Paranoia: A 21st-Century Fear by Daniel and Jason Freeman. (Excerpt.) I don't know anything about the book myself, but at least now you don't have to send me the link.

If you liked the PARANOIA supplement The Underplex, check today's entry by Underplex author Paul Baldowski on his Omega Complex blog. Paul, a resident of Manchester, UK, talks about a new showing (in Manchester's Urbis exhibition center) of photos by Andrew Brooks. The show is Reality hacks: Hidden Manchester.

There are images from the Underplex here - ancient service tunnels, long abandoned conveniences, and fast-flowing detritus-filled waterways. Doorways, stairs and arched portals punctuate walls at different levels, some half buried or never intended for human access. Filthy sheets of glass might occasionally provide a murky sheen of daylight, but never much more than that. Even tunnels and service routes closer to civilisation provide a view of a world bereft of day-to-day human activity, routes frequented only by occasional service vehicles, maintenance crews and trespassers. This one even looks like an Alpha Complex service tunnel, with pipework coloured by Security Clearance.

Labels: paulbaldowski, underplex

Beset by mob protests, political paralysis, a week-long takeover of the Bangkok airport that devastated the tourism industry, and a likely episode of political tumult in 2009, the government of Thailand is trying to re-establish its lost reputation as "The Land of Smiles" by making highway patrolmen wear smiley masks.

It is the latest version of the famous Thai smile - motorcycle policemen with a bright red goofy grin painted onto their white anti-pollution masks.

For the first week of the year - and longer if people seem to be smiling back - highway policemen in Thailand will wear the masks "to lift the mood of motorists," according to police officials.

"For our highway policemen, we have the policy that the police must be friendly and smiling all the time, but the problem is, when we're tired, it's hard to keep smiling," said Colonel Somyos Promnim, the Highway Police commander. [...]

The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help "reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police," said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.

To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.

Just look at that photo in the article. Don't you feel better already? No? For shame, citizen. Sounds like your medication is overdue.

(Thanks to loyal citizen Jaagup Irve.)

Labels: highways, thailand

RPG.net review (by Neil Lennon) of Criminal Histories, the RED-Clearance character creation rules supplement for PARANOIA. (Style: 4; Substance: 4.)