Links
About PARANOIA
- "Why It's Fun to Get Shot Six Times" (Gamegrene.com)
- Actual Play: Mister Bubbles
- Actual Play: Mister Bubbles (another run)
- Actual Play: Trouble With Cockroaches
- Actual Play: Origins 2006
- Actual Play: Story Games for Everybody
- "Troubleshooter" (PARANOIA fanfic by ReverendSpencer)
"Sell me on PARANOIA"
- RPG.net forum 01/2006
- RPG.net forum 08/2006
- RPG.net forum 11/2007
- Paranoia-Live.net 09/2005
- Mongoose forum 09/2005
- Mongoose forum 11/2005
- Mongoose forum 03/2006
Fan sites
- Paranoia-Live.net
- Omega Complex
- FriendComputer.net
- Traitor Recycling Studio
- CPU Central
- ""Mutant Maker" character generator (screen)
- Another character generator (.PDF)
- Mission blender
- "Mr. Bubbles" briefing
- Standard equipment list
- "New player" tournament handout
Reviews of the Mongoose Publishing PARANOIA rulebook:
Reviews of Mongoose PARANOIA supplements:
- Traitor's Manual:
Evan Waters, Cedric Chin, JamPaladin, Neil Lennon - Crash Priority:
Evan Waters, Cedric Chin, JamPaladin - The Mutant Experience:
Matthew - PARANOIA Flashbacks:
Neil Lennon, Matthew - STUFF:
Matthew - WMD:
Seafloorian - Extreme PARANOIA:
David Graffam - Service, Service!:
Matthew, Neil Lennon, Seafloorian - Criminal Histories:
Matthew - The Underplex:
Neil Lennon - Gamemaster Screen:
Neil Lennon - The Little RED Book:
Neil Lennon
Archives
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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Pay No Attention To The Games Master Behind The Laptop
I've been fiddling around with text-to-speech programs of late. There's the Open Source SayzMe for Windows, for example. I know people have used computers to play The Computer in the past - how did that work out? Is the added value of having an electronic voice worth the hassle of typing at the gaming table?
Paranoia in the Real World: Project Acoustic Kitty
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/04/wcia04.xml
In one experiment during the Cold War a cat, dubbed Acoustic Kitty, was wired up for use as an eavesdropping platform. It was hoped that the animal - which was surgically altered to accommodate transmitting and control devices - could listen to secret conversations from window sills, park benches or dustbins.
Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer, told The Telegraph that Project Acoustic Kitty was a gruesome creation. He said: "They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that."
Mr Marchetti said that the first live trial was an expensive disaster. The technology is thought to have cost more than £10 million. He said: "They took it out to a park and put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead."
R&D Researcher: We don't have a cat.
Other R&D Researcher: We've got lots of Troubleshooters. Use one of them.
R&D Researcher: What about the antenna?
Other R&D Researcher: Stick in the tail, of course.
R&D Researcher: Troubleshooters don't have tails.
Other R&D Researcher: Tail, spine, potato, potato.
In one experiment during the Cold War a cat, dubbed Acoustic Kitty, was wired up for use as an eavesdropping platform. It was hoped that the animal - which was surgically altered to accommodate transmitting and control devices - could listen to secret conversations from window sills, park benches or dustbins.
Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer, told The Telegraph that Project Acoustic Kitty was a gruesome creation. He said: "They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that."
Mr Marchetti said that the first live trial was an expensive disaster. The technology is thought to have cost more than £10 million. He said: "They took it out to a park and put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead."
R&D Researcher: We don't have a cat.
Other R&D Researcher: We've got lots of Troubleshooters. Use one of them.
R&D Researcher: What about the antenna?
Other R&D Researcher: Stick in the tail, of course.
R&D Researcher: Troubleshooters don't have tails.
Other R&D Researcher: Tail, spine, potato, potato.
Fastest Character Deaths
Allen writes:
Amusing RPG.net forum thread called "Fastest character death?" The surprising and remarkable feature of this thread is that PARANOIA is mentioned only a few times. By far the greatest number of speedy character deaths happened during character generation in Classic Traveller, and the second-most-frequent game mentioned is old red-box D&D as played by 12-years-olds. But many other systems get their shot at infamy as well, including, if you can believe it, Elfquest.
PARANOIA may not be winning the "fastest deaths", but I suspect the game's showing in the "most deaths of a single character" would be a lot better. (Although we'd still lose to D&D...)
Amusing RPG.net forum thread called "Fastest character death?" The surprising and remarkable feature of this thread is that PARANOIA is mentioned only a few times. By far the greatest number of speedy character deaths happened during character generation in Classic Traveller, and the second-most-frequent game mentioned is old red-box D&D as played by 12-years-olds. But many other systems get their shot at infamy as well, including, if you can believe it, Elfquest.
PARANOIA may not be winning the "fastest deaths", but I suspect the game's showing in the "most deaths of a single character" would be a lot better. (Although we'd still lose to D&D...)
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Underplex UK
Allen points to an excellent collection of underground photos from subbrit.org, all wonderful fodder for games set in the Underplex (or, after this, my nightmares about wandering through underground catacombs...)
Friday, May 18, 2007
Posted, as they say, without comment.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
...and now they hate me
There's an interesting PARANOIA thread over on rpg.net. The initial poster, Haecceity (a lovely word, by the way, meaning the essential thisness of a thing)said:
At the end of it, the debriefing officer told the troubleshooters that they would recieve a 500 credit plasticred bonus for their mission. Moments after he leaves, Intsec goons escort in some poor damn bastard. Pushing a cart. With sacks of Plasticreds. Five hundred thousand, in one credit increments, for each Troubleshooter.
After the fuss died down, I asked the players what they were doing. Their answer? Reporting this to the computer and going about their daily business as if nothing had happened.
Well. That had me flummoxed. I was not expecting that.
The rest of the thread is 50% discussion of what the players want, player/GM commmunication, social contracts and so forth, and 50% PARANOIA discussion, and there are some great lines in that second 50%.
Gentrification: "If you present a hook where the smartest, safest, and easiest thing to do is ignore it, then you're going to get exactly what you'd expect. Especially in Paranoia. You really should have come up with a reason why the troubleshooters would've been more screwed by not taking the credits."
Agent Oracle: "How I would have handled it:
PLAYERS: "Friend Computer, there has been an error in transaction."
COMPUTER: "please stay on the comm line, a troubleshooter will be with you momentarily"
And then have their communicators go off. it's Alpha sector, telling them that there is a problem, exactly where they are standing, and to rectify it."
Reverend Keith: "After they walked away, why not have Friend Computer tell them that a Commie Mutant Traitor had sabotaged accounting records, and the troubleshooters were accidentally assigned 500,000cr rather than 500cr. The computer then informs them that each of them has twenty four hours to return the 499,500 credits. When the PCs head back to the briefing room, the bags are gone and the clock is ticking..."
ShannonA: "You'd practically have to be a communist just to leave money behind like that.
Perhaps the next batch of clones would have been more responsive."
What would you do if your planned (ha!) mission involved the Troubleshooters being given 500,000 credits, and they ignore the hook?
At the end of it, the debriefing officer told the troubleshooters that they would recieve a 500 credit plasticred bonus for their mission. Moments after he leaves, Intsec goons escort in some poor damn bastard. Pushing a cart. With sacks of Plasticreds. Five hundred thousand, in one credit increments, for each Troubleshooter.
After the fuss died down, I asked the players what they were doing. Their answer? Reporting this to the computer and going about their daily business as if nothing had happened.
Well. That had me flummoxed. I was not expecting that.
The rest of the thread is 50% discussion of what the players want, player/GM commmunication, social contracts and so forth, and 50% PARANOIA discussion, and there are some great lines in that second 50%.
Gentrification: "If you present a hook where the smartest, safest, and easiest thing to do is ignore it, then you're going to get exactly what you'd expect. Especially in Paranoia. You really should have come up with a reason why the troubleshooters would've been more screwed by not taking the credits."
Agent Oracle: "How I would have handled it:
PLAYERS: "Friend Computer, there has been an error in transaction."
COMPUTER: "please stay on the comm line, a troubleshooter will be with you momentarily"
And then have their communicators go off. it's Alpha sector, telling them that there is a problem, exactly where they are standing, and to rectify it."
Reverend Keith: "After they walked away, why not have Friend Computer tell them that a Commie Mutant Traitor had sabotaged accounting records, and the troubleshooters were accidentally assigned 500,000cr rather than 500cr. The computer then informs them that each of them has twenty four hours to return the 499,500 credits. When the PCs head back to the briefing room, the bags are gone and the clock is ticking..."
ShannonA: "You'd practically have to be a communist just to leave money behind like that.
Perhaps the next batch of clones would have been more responsive."
What would you do if your planned (ha!) mission involved the Troubleshooters being given 500,000 credits, and they ignore the hook?
Saturday, May 05, 2007
What Colour Are Your Bits?
Topical, amusing and PARANOIA-themed, this article about cryptography, rights and the DMCA is worth reading. Thanks to Ben Englesberg for the link.
Ken Rolston-2?
Allen Varney points out that Ken Rolston has unretired. He was the original West End Games PARANOIA czar back in the 1980s, went on to design Morrowind and Oblivion for Bethesda Softworks, then retired. Except now he's back, at Big Huge Games, as lead designer on an unannounced new RPG. As proof everything old is new again, Ken is working with Doug Kaufman, who briefly took over as Ken's successor editing West End's PARANOIA's line. "My role model is Tolkien," Ken says of his work on the new game. "Create a rich setting with profound themes, then create a varied cast of characters and an epic saga to guide the pilgrim through that setting. It's a simple scheme... but very hard to execute For the Ages."
More details at http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16028
More details at http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16028
PARANOIA in the Real World: IntSec Makes Glorious Forward Progess
Paul Baldowski keeps us up to speed on surveillance fun.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Loyalty Day
Several people have pointed out the recent Proclamation of Loyalty Day and its slightly sinister overtones. Of course, wikipedia points out that Loyalty Day dates back to 1921.
In PARANOIA, Computer Loyalty And General Joyful Obediance Day dates back to Year 1 of Alpha Complex according to the official archives, but those archives get edited regularly to conform to the presently defined truth...
In PARANOIA, Computer Loyalty And General Joyful Obediance Day dates back to Year 1 of Alpha Complex according to the official archives, but those archives get edited regularly to conform to the presently defined truth...
Copyright © 2004-7 by Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg. All your rights are belong to us. No bloody
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