PARANOIA

From an RPG.net forum thread titled "PARANOIA in other games," this charming invention by a poster called "beachfox":

Good morning, Kobold Warrior Verm-1-N! Friend Sorcerer has a very important mission for you! As you know, Friend Sorcerer can see all aspects of Alpha Dungeon through his alchemical science and scrying technologies, allowing him to oversee all aspects of your life to ensure that Alpha Dungeon remains the bestest, most wonderful place for a kobold to live.

However, those filthy Guildsy Magic Heroes continue to try and bring us down. Why, it's said that there are secret Guilds operating right here in Alpha Dungeon. Guilds like the Thievings Guild, the Barbariansmash Guild, or even the dreaded Paladinkillthemall Guild. Even your own kobold brothers and sisters might be in them. You're not a Guildy, are you Kobold Warrior Verm-1-N?

You aren't a Magic User either, are you? Unlike Friend Sorcerer’s enlightened Alchemical Sciences, Heroes use filthy evil magic, and it's been rumored that they've even taught some of your fellow brother and sister kobolds magical tricks that they can use to bring down Alpha Dungeon from the inside. You don't know any magic, do you? Urinate in this silver chalice after giving your answer for verification. [...]

If you die during the course of your mission, one of your broodmates will be brought in to replace you. You keeping those Alchemical Science Thought Transfer Helmets on nice and snug? Good boy. Girl. Whatever you are.

But your mission awaits! Go forth and do my bidding. What? Of course Friend Sorcerer has told you what your mission is! Friend Sorcerer never forgets! Don't fail us, Kobold Warrior Verm-1-N! The sanctity of Alpha Dungeon depends on you! And remember: If you don't complete this mission before dawn tomorrow, Friend Sorcerer will have you killed.

I would dearly, dearly love to see some creative PARANOIA fan round up a party of naive D&Ders, play out this lovely idea, and report back, either here or on the RPG.net "Roleplaying Open" forum.

Congratulations to Dan Curtis Johnson of the Traitor Recycling Studio and his wife, Carmel, on the arrival of their newly issued daughter, Liana. PARANOIA fans will recall Dan as the designer of the rulebook's "Mister Bubbles" introductory mission, "Stealth Train" in Crash Priority, "Hunger" in WMD (my nomination for the best PARANOIA mission yet), several sections of the Extreme PARANOIA rules supplement, and "The Lightbulb Mission" in the brand-new Service, Service! supplement.

Dan has also agreed to design a full-length PARANOIA mission that will appear late on next year's schedule. Now that he and Carmel have gotten the whole childbirth thing out of the way, a lot of his time should be freed up for more writing, as is typical among parents of newborns.

According to a fluff "news" service of dubious qualifications and lousy copyediting, PRWeb, a Canadian former Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister said a couple of months ago that the government kept secrets from him about its contact with extraterrestrials, and now we're in danger of intergalactic war.

Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien "ET" Civilizations

OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 -- A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with "ETs." By "ETs," Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth.

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalleled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning." He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Hellyer’s speech ended with a standing ovation. He said, "The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today."[...]

The Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, presented by the organizations to a Senate Committee panel hearing in Winnipeg, Canada, on March 10, 2005, proposes that the Government of Canada undertake a Decade of Contact.

The proposed Decade of Contact is "a 10-year process of formal, funded public education, scientific research, educational curricula development and implementation, strategic planning, community activity, and public outreach concerning our terrestrial society’s full cultural, political, social, legal, and governmental communication and public interest diplomacy with advanced, ethical Off-Planet cultures now visiting Earth." [...]

In early November 2005, the Canadian Senate wrote ICIS [Institute for Cooperation in Space, Vancouver], indicating the Senate Committee could not hold hearings on ETs in 2005, because of their already crowded schedule.

"That does not deter us," one spokesperson for the Non-governmental organizations said. [...] "Time is on the side of open disclosure that there are ethical extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth," the spokesperson stated. "Our Canadian government needs to openly address these important issues of the possible deployment of weapons in outer [space] war plans against ethical ET societies."

Did the 82-year-old former politician truly make the statements attributed to him? Maybe so -- but as the PARANOIA rulebook constantly points out, what is truth, anyway? Comparison to aging High Programmers in Alpha Complex is left as an exercise to the reader; show your results in the comments.

Continuing the "PARANOIA food" theme of recent posts, Karl Low of the Traitor Recycling Studio points out this story from the Canadian news magazine Macleans (warning: popups!):

While the test-tube pork chop is perhaps 15 years in the future, in vitro-processed meat for chicken nuggets, hot dogs, sausages or hamburgers is well within reach, says Jason Matheny, an agricultural policy scientist at the University of Maryland. "Most people don't care enough about where their meat comes from or how it's ultimately produced," he says. "What they want is something that is healthy, tastes good and is relatively cheap."

Matheny envisions meat factories housing 10,000-litre tanks with built-in stirrers. Muscle cells would likely have to be sprayed onto plastic sheets (they require something to latch onto, otherwise they will not multiply), which would then be lowered into so-called bioreactors filled with, perhaps, a mushroom- or soybean-based nutrient broth. There, the cells would feed, divide in two, and repeat the process until harvested.

Some of the most advanced work in this area is being conducted in the Netherlands by Henk Haagsman, professor of meat science at Utrecht University. [...] Haagsman wants to prove, within four years, that it is indeed possible to grow industrial quantities of porcine cells destined for our grocery shelves. Work started last April, with more than $6 million in funding provided by, among others, Holland's department of economic affairs and Dutch sausage maker Stegeman, a division of Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp. Any consumer reluctance, says Haagsman, can be overcome by a frank public airing of the issue's pros and cons. "There was a lot of opposition to genetically modified plant foods," he says. "Now, people just eat them."

Comrades! Vitness, as rrrecommended by Boing Boing, excellent Czech photo gallery of now-defunct Old Rrreckoning Czech people's consumer products in glorrrious Soviet era! After Alpha Complex Rrrevolution is to be overthrowink capitalist pig-dog Computer (ptui!), soon vill all peoples be enjoyink such delights equally, da!

From NewScientist.com, "The food you eat may change your genes for life" by Alison Motluk:

It sounds like science fiction: simply swallowing a pill, or eating a specific food supplement, could permanently change your behaviour for the better, or reverse diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's or cancer.

Yet such treatments are looking increasingly plausible. In the latest development, normal rats have been made to behave differently just by injecting them with a specific amino acid. The change to their behaviour was permanent. The amino acid altered the way the rat's genes were expressed, raising the idea that drugs or dietary supplements might permanently halt the genetic effects that predispose people to mental or physical illness.

It is not yet clear whether such interventions could work in humans. But there is good reason to believe they could, as evidence mounts that a range of simple nutrients might have such effects. [...]

Though the experiment impaired well-adjusted animals, the opposite should be possible, and Szyf has already shown that a chemical called TSA that is designed to strip away methyl groups can turn a badly raised rat into a more normal one. [...T]echniques such as "RNA-directed DNA methylation", so far tested only in plants but theoretically possible in mammals, may allow us to target such methylation much more precisely.

Wargame designer Brian Train posted on his blog a list of titles (originally from Harper's Magazine, February 2005) allegedly used by "prominent leaders from 160 nations across the world" to refer to North Korean supremo Kim Jong-Il:

Supreme Commander at the Forefront of the Struggle Against Imperialism and the United States

Greatest Saint Who Rules with Extensive Magnanimity

Lode Star of the Twenty-First Century

Best Leader Who Realized Human Wisdom

Leader with Extraordinary Personality

Perfect Picture of Wisdom and Boldness

Eternal Bosom of Hot Love

Master of Literature, Arts, and Architecture

World’s Best Ideal Leader with Versatile Talents

Humankind’s Greatest Musical Genius

Master of the Computer Who Surprised the World

Man with Encyclopedic Knowledge

Guardian Deity of the Planet

Heaven-Sent Hero

Power Incarnate with Endless Creativity

Greatest Man Who Ever Lived

Present-day God

World’s Greatest Writer

This list makes me wonder whether we'd see similar personality-cult honorifics in Alpha Complex. Presumably The Computer would see little purpose in such titles, inasmuch as all loyal citizens are (of course!) casual friends with all other loyal citizens. But status-seeking megalomanic High Programmers (is that redundant?) might persuade The Computer that such titles encourage citizens to ever more diligent service, a la the Hero of Our Complex (HOOC) program. (Though I'm guessing "Master of The Computer Who Surprised the World" wouldn't be on their list.)

This idea would give the setting a rather Chinese Communist feel, as opposed to the more Soviet-era flavor it has traditionally, uh, enjoyed. But Dan Curtis Johnson's tremendous mission "Hunger," in WMD, shows what kind of mileage we can get from judicious Chinese inspiration.

So what kind of titles do you think a glory-hogging ULTRAVIOLET might grab?

Having grown up in the central US state of Kansas, I would ordinarily be gratified, and quite surprised, to see the words "Kansas" and "intelligent" appear in the same news story. Tonight I saw them together for the first time, but even now it's a trick: The Kansas State Board of Education has adopted new science-curricula standards for the state's 445,000 public-school students that openly question Darwinian evolution, thereby becoming the first patsies of the well-funded "intelligent design" creationist zealots. From the MSNBC story:

The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

If you don't see what this has to do with PARANOIA, you haven't even started to think about it.

Ordinarily I steer clear of overt politics in this blog, but I doubt there's much danger in this case. I daresay intelligent-design nitwits would find a roleplaying game rulebook tough sledding.

EDIT: I should clarify that I'm expressing my own opinion, not that of PARANOIA's owners or publisher. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure this is their opinion as well, but they wouldn't express it so insultingly.

Via Slashdot and The Register, this Ananova story about a German firm that four years ago, in true Alpha Complex fashion, made happiness mandatory:

Employees at IT company Nutzwerk Ltd, in Leipzig, have to agree to be in a good mood as part of their employment contract.

Manager Thomas Kuwatsch said those who get up on the wrong side of the bed should stay at home and work out their grumpiness rather than come into work. But he warned those taking too much time off for bad moods would face the sack.

"We made the ban on moaning and grumpiness at work official after one female employee refused to subscribe to the company's philosophy of always smiling," he said. "She used to moan so much that other employees complained about her complaining. Once it was part of the contract, however, our employees really started to think positively.

"Mood is an important factor in productivity, and everyone here works hard and is happy."

Nutzwerkers may have to smile through the tears if the company's dubious efforts to legalize software patents in Europe continue to draw geek ire worldwide.

From a blog titled Damn Interesting:

America’s gaggle of “Minuteman” long-range nuclear missiles went on line for the first time during the Cuban missile crisis in 1960. But the world was supposedly protected from Mutual Assured Destruction by the “Permissive Action Links” (PALs) which required an 8-digit combination in order to launch. Robert McNamara, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, personally oversaw the installation of these special locks to prevent any unauthorized nuclear missile launches. He considered the safeguards to be essential for strict central control and for preventing nuclear disaster.

But what Secretary McNamara didn’t know is that from the very beginning, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha had decided that these locks might interfere with any wartime launch orders; so in order to circumvent this safeguard, they pre-set the launch code on all Minuteman silos to the same eight digits: 00000000.

For seventeen years, during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War, the code remained all zeros, and was even printed in each silo’s launch checklist for all to see. The codes remained this way up until 1977, when the service was pressed into activating the McNamara locks with real launch codes in place. Before that time, the lack of safeguards would have made it relatively easy for a small group of rogue silo officers or visitors to implement an unauthorized nuclear missile launch.

Evan Waters, who wrote the most insightful PARANOIA rulebook review to date, now posts a characteristically perceptive review of the Crash Priority mission collection on RPG.net. Thanks, Evan!

I haven't been posting here of late because I'm busy with some non-PARANOIA projects (I know, I know... sorry), and because I'm trying to make headway in laying out the January 2006 supplement, the expanded Troubleshooter character creation system called Criminal Histories. (Groan. Why did I think a book with 75 tables was a good idea...?)

Because various Commie mutant comment spammers have been polluting the pristine posts on the Paranoia blog, we have now upgraded from the antiquated SnorComments system to the new and more perfect Blogger comments. The migration process required multiple man-hours of diligent High Programmer labor; older archives were moved to a new folder, so that the old comments system could be preserved for them (since Blogger has no facility for importing comments from other schemes), the template was changed to reflect this, and then all pre-November posts were deleted from Blogger's system (since otherwise it would create new archives that would not list the older comments). The lengthy duration of the task was necessitated by the fact that Blogger only allows you to delete posts one at a time, and there have been 200+ since this Paranoia blog began. Older archived posts will continue to use the old system; all posts henceforth will use the new one.

Citizens will note that posting comments now requires you to input text displayed in one of those goofy Capcha graphics; yes, this is a pain (and impossible if you are blind and having the blog auto-read to you), but we all must make sacrifices to remain diligent in the face of treason. Give thanks for the Computer's bounteous regard for your well-being and safety.

Eric Zawadzki of Poet RPG has at last concluded his epic PARANOIA dramatization, "When Members of the Bush Administration Play PARANOIA." Eric's remarkable exercise has progressed through 37 mostly-semi-weekly episodes while avoiding political flamebait rigorously (well, mostly-semi-rigorously). It's delightful reading whatever your politics. Start with the February pre-briefing and follow it through to the final, characteristically demented debriefing.

The Computer: "SAMUEL-R-BMN-4, PLEASE STEP FORWARD AND HAVE A SEAT."

Samuel: I do as I'm told.

The Computer: "YOUR BEHAVIOR DURING THIS MISSION TROUBLES ME. [...] YOU ATTEMPTED TO ENTER A YELLOW CLEARANCE AREA. YOU ACCEPTED A BRIBE NOT TO INSPECT EQUIPMENT. YOU ENDANGERED VALUABLE EQUIPMENT BY RUNNING WITH MORE THAN THE MAXIMUM SAFE LOAD OF LASERS (4). YOU SABOTAGED A HYGIENE CLOSET. YOU ALLOWED SOME OF THE ASSIGNED BOTS TO BE SABOTAGED, RESULTING IN THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL THE BOTS ON THE MISSION. YOU WERE SEEN IN A SECURITY CLEARANCE VIOLET AREA. YOU ARE SUSPECTED OF POSSESSION OF A METABOLIC MUTATION. YOU DISCLOSED CLASSIFIED SECURITY CLEARANCE BLUE INFORMATION TO GEORGE-R WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF, SAMUEL-R?"

Samuel: I smile for the camera and probably for the laser turret. "I'm so very happy, Friend Computer!"

The Computer: "YOUR HAPPINESS HAS BEEN NOTED, CITIZEN SAMUEL-R. YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED 10 CREDITS. FOR YOUR TREASON, YOU HAVE BEEN LEVIED 100,000 CREDITS IN FINES AND REPLACEMENT COSTS."

George (out of character): Ouch. Erasure.

Samuel (ooc): Been nice playing with you guys...

The Computer: "HOWEVER, POWER SERVICES INFORMS ME THAT YOU HAVE DISCOVERED 10.01 NEW METHODS OF CONSERVING ENERGY IN ALPHA COMPLEX DURING YOUR MISSION. THEY WILL IMPLEMENT THESE CHANGES THROUGHOUT THE SECTOR. FOR THIS SERVICE YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED 101,000 CREDITS AND YOUR OWN PERSONAL PETBOT. TREAT IT WELL."

Samuel: I force the smile to continue. "Thank you, Friend Computer."

The Computer: "IT IS SIMPLY YOUR DUE, LOYAL CITIZEN, AS IS THE EXPERIMENTAL DRUG COCKTAIL YOU WILL BE TAKING FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. IT HAS BEEN FORMULATED TO CURB YOUR DESTRUCTIVE IMPULSES. I UNDERSTAND THE SIDE-EFFECTS ARE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LIMITS. STEP BACK, SAMUEL-R. JOHN-R-SNO-2, PLEASE STEP FORWARD AND HAVE A SEAT."

This fine work prompted me to invite Eric into the Traitor Recycling Studio, the gaggle of writers that sustains the PARANOIA line. His first published mission will appear in the forthcoming supplement Service, Service! This 128-page supplement profiles all eight sprawling service groups in Alpha Complex, with typical duties, interesting nonplayer character "monsters," and new mandates rules that make a character's service group more important.

Eric's mission, "Rockumentary," appears in the section for Housing Preservation and Development & Mind Control. HPD wants the Troubleshooters to escort celebrated musician Rand-Y-ROK, of Rand-Y & The ROKbots, on a nostalgic filmed tour of his old home sector. Turns out Rand-Y hates his old home, and is widely hated there as well. For the calamities that ensue, you'll just have to buy the supplement. Or borrow it, or pirate it on scumsucking Communist filesharing networks. Whatever.

Eric talks about what's next on the Traitor blog.