PARANOIA

Because this past Year 214 saw certain traitorous factions undermine loyal citizens' ceaseless efforts to ensure Pervasive Maximal Satisfaction Quotients across Alpha Complex, The Computer has decided to correct the historical record by repeating Year 214 in its entirety, commencing tomorrow. Give thanks to our wise friend The Computer!

Note: The following opinions are strictly from me (Allen Varney), totally unofficial and uninformed, and in no way reflect the views of PARANOIA's owners or publisher.

After a decent start with Criminal Histories and The Underplex, in mid-2006 PARANOIA nearly stalled. In the rest of the year, we saw only a 32-page mission collection, Sector Zero, and a reprint of the rulebook's player section, The Little RED Book. Year's end was to have brought new 32-page Classic missions by Gareth (The Traitor's Manual) Hanrahan: The Sweep of Unhistory, Spin Control, and one that I believe remains unannounced. But though the energetic Gareth has already completed all three, Mongoose Publishing has delayed them until next spring, after the March publication of the 96-page hardcover reprint collection PARANOIA Flashbacks 2.

This setback reflects the degringolade of the entire commercial roleplaying business. True, small-press indie RPG sales are growing, through direct-sales websites such as Indie Press Revolution and Key 20 Direct, among others. And Mongoose CEO Matthew Sprange, in his annual "State of the Mongoose" post on the company forums, remains customarily bullish about both his company and the industry:

"What was once [North America's] 80% share in our business has shrunk to something like 55-60%. However, not all is doom and gloom, as this has been matched (even exceeded) by a growing tide in Europe and the UK, where we have seen both RPGs and miniatures games experience a sharp rise, to the point where even relatively small UK distributors have leapfrogged most of those in America. The second largest distributor (in terms of Mongoose sales) is in the UK, and is nipping at the heels of the Number One in America. My first prediction for 2007 is the Rise of Europe."

The great success of Mongoose's new edition of RuneQuest, and the continued strength of its many other licenses, bode well for PARANOIA's publisher; Mongoose is even buying its own printing press. But in the industry as a whole, the traditional three-tier system of publisher-distributor-retailer has been broken for many years, and (again, purely in my own opinion, the Rise of Europe notwithstanding) it shows not the least sign of recovery.

As I see it, in the forums at RPG.net and elsewhere, the RPG fan base is graying and shrinking. Young people self-evidently aren't attracted to roleplaying today in the numbers they once were. Many longtime fans correctly assert massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft can't yet, and may never, match the experience of a good tabletop roleplaying session -- but these people overlook many other, non-MMORPG venues for net socializing and roleplaying, such as MySpace, fan fiction, and forum and blog games. Together, the whole spectrum of Internet activity, of which MMORPGs are only a part, seems to scratch the new generation's roleplaying itch. Meanwhile, the existing fan base remains passionately resistant to necessary price increases.

In a few years, I believe the "industry" will consist of Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf, Mongoose, a half-dozen struggling diehards like Palladium and Steve Jackson Games, and a numberless horde of indies. I (unofficially) perceive PARANOIA's position in that future landscape as secure -- by some definition of "secure" -- but unexciting. Though Mongoose staffers have always been enthusiastic about PARANOIA as fans, I (an outsider, not privy to their internal plans) don't expect the company to support it over properties with greater immediate potential. And PARANOIA's owners are hectically busy with their own careers. In the absence of champions, support for the game in 2007 will probably keep subsiding from the very active level of 2004-05. As I understand it (though I speak under correction), after Flashbacks 2, Mongoose will thereafter focus solely on 32-page Classic-style missions.

It's hardly a calamity. From a design standpoint, with the publication of Criminal Histories, the game is basically -- I shouldn't say "complete" -- but, perhaps, "sufficient." I think we could still use a bot book and an Outdoors supplement, and I dearly wanted to do a book of new play styles to expand on the current Classic, Straight, and Zap. I also wanted Brave New Complex, a collection of alternate Alpha Complex settings. As of now, it seems none of these will happen. But with the existing dozen-plus supplements, any Gamemaster can keep Alpha Complex running with its customary efficiency for years.

I'm no longer packaging the support line. I wrote the introduction to Sector Zero, but otherwise had relatively little to do with it; I haven't even seen The Little RED Book. The last book I edited and laid out is Flashbacks 2, due in March. Thereafter, Mongoose will bring PARANOIA in-house. At first there will probably be little change; Gareth's delightful missions are in tune with existing books. I expect Mongoose will eventually reinstate the punning character names I heavy-handedly banished. That said, because PARANOIA's owners still approve each book, we probably won't see the parodic excesses of the late West End Games line, which decimated sales and poisoned the market.

When Flashbacks 2 appears, or perhaps even beforehand, I shall grudgingly do the decorous thing and withdraw from this blog. I'll remain active on Paranoia-Live.net in some low-clearance unofficial capacity, and like any good citizen, I shall patiently aspire to serve The Computer again someday. It took me 20 years to get Send in the Clones published the way I wrote it....

Inspired by National Novel Writing Month (which in 2006, its eighth year, inspired hordes of hopeful novelists to collectively produce 982,564,701 words), gamer Jeff Rients is inaugurating Worldwide Adventure Writing Month this coming June.

The challenge is less demanding than NaNoWriMo: You need only write a 32-page adventure for any RPG you like; call it 20-25,000 words, versus NaNoWriMo's target 50,000. Further, NaNoWriMo requires you to hold yourself in until November 1, then write like crazy until November 30, whereas WoAdWriMo is perfectly happy to let you start right now -- and really, were you doing anything else this holiday season?

If you wish, you can post your completed adventure on the Treasure Tables game blog.

If you've always had a PARANOIA mission idea you wanted to share with the world, this is your chance to demonstrate loyal citizenship!

New Year's Eve in my home town of Austin, Texas is "First Night," a day-long party across all of downtown. This year, performance artist Luke Savisky -- who likes to project large images using his collection of exotic film and video projectors -- offers an exhibition he calls "The 'I' of TX." (For readers outside North America: "TX" is the postal code for Texas, and so the name puns on the title of the state song, "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.")

In a video kiosk at one First Night site, Savisky plans to shoot extreme video close-ups of the eyeballs of First Night partygoers, then project the images at enormous magnification on the spherical water tower on Second Street. Here's an "'I' of TX" photo taken during a dry run earlier this month. The cover of this week's Austin Chronicle, the local culture-arts weekly, shows (what I believe is) a mock-up of the likely experience. Brrrr.

Even as the first tiny drops of drool begin to collect at the corners of our mouth for the March 2007 publication of PARANOIA Flashbacks 2 -- ick, sorry for that image -- loyal citizen Neil Lennon has written a review of PARANOIA Flashbacks, the original, on RPG.net (Style: 4, Substance: 5).

On another subject, it appears Blogger has temporarily broken the archives search. If there's been another explosion in the local Central Processing Unit CompNode, I'm sure Alpha Complex Newscaster "Friendly" Frank-U will tell us all about it as soon as our security clearances are sufficient.

Happy holidays to all right-thinking citizens! (Non-right-thinking citizens, please report to Internal Security's Bright Vision Re-Education Center for immediate instillation of correct holiday spirit via neural induction.)

As a suitably festive gift, Mongoose Publishing has posted the cover of the forthcoming 96-page hardcover reprint mission collection PARANOIA Flashbacks 2. Here the One True PARANOIA Artist, the incomparable Jim Holloway, has re-imagined his original cover for the 1986 West End Games first edition of Ken Rolston's classic D&D parody, Orcbusters. Flashbacks 2 reprints Orcbusters, along with Erick Wujcik's 1986 Clones in Space and Edward S. Bolme's 1989 The People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure, all lightly updated to the new edition's rules and newly illustrated by Jim.

Flashbacks 2 appears this March. A few worthy little bits from Acute PARANOIA, The DOA Sector Travelog, and other oddments remain unreprinted, but Flashbacks 2 restores to print the last of the great original West End missions. Along with the original Flashbacks volume, this has been my worthiest and most welcome task in packaging the new PARANOIA line.

Courtesy of Greg Ingber of the Traitor Recycling Studio, this post written by (really!) Sheila O'Malley (a name for PARANOIA fans to conjure with) about a topic rather unhygienic in nature but expertly realized: a giant high-tech public bathroom -- or should I say "bathroom complex"? -- in New York City's Times Square. Greg comments, "Some of this I would actually consider TOO over the top for a PARANOIA session."

There's a small blue-carpeted corridor (and everything is very controlled - there are barriers to keep the crowds in line) and then you emerge into a space that defies description. It is part playroom, part disco club, part bed and breakfast, part TV studio at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and part FREAKFEST. [...] Everywhere you look is blue carpet. And also Charmin signs. Big plushy white couches line the walls. There is a fake fireplace (I am not kidding). There are also TV screens everywhere, and huge video monitors and ... I honestly wondered if I dreamed this part of it ... but I did not. Playing over and over and over again is a video - with happy smiling dancers, a multicultural mecca of talent, against a blinding white screen - and music blares from speakers - as the "dancers" do their thing, lip synching to a song about toilet paper. I'm not kidding. At one point, all of the dancers line up like the family Von Trapp in "So Long Farewell" ... and they sing, full on, face front, "We're singing in two-ply harmony!"

Watching that (or, rather, being unwillingly subjected to that) I suddenly despised the entire human race.

There are photos, too. Wish I'd known about this when I was updating, for the forthcoming PARANOIA reprint mission collection Flashbacks 2, Edward S. Bolme's The People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure. Longtime fans well remember that mission's extended opening battle in a Communist bathroom.

The gaming news site OgreCave.com, ordinarily cordial (or at least benignly silent) toward PARANOIA, posted an annoying observation in its latest 2006 gift guide installment, "Twelve Games Under the Tree." Commenting favorably on the new edition of RuneQuest released this summer by PARANOIA's publisher, Mongoose Publishing, the OgreCave staffers decided to lob a gratuitous and clueless shot:

"Better known for shovelling out numerous d20 System supplements, as of last year Mongoose Publishing was the last publisher you would pick to bring out a new version of a 30-year-old RPG classic and not make it d20."

Citizens of OgreCave, you have treasonously included no response link on your site and have turned off comments on that post. So I use this public venue to instruct you to report to Internal Security's Bright Vision Re-Education Center for attitude alignment. Don't worry, the electrodes are for your benefit!