PARANOIA

Last week, along with the rest of the internet, I downloaded the Bioshock demo, and I said to myself, "y'know, from the look of the demo, this might be a good inspiration for PARANOIA".

Having bought the full game and played it for a few hours, I'm certainly very paranoid. Splicers could be anywhere, just out of sight. Must conserve precious health. Must set things on fire.

The game's full of deranged mutants, lots of cheery 50s propaganda, a dystopian complex, bizarre missions being handed to you by an briefing officer who's probably insane. It's wonderful PARANOIA-fodder, and I suspect in a few months I'll be summarising Alpha Complex to new players at a con by saying 'it's sort of like Rapture only before everything goes wrong..."

Newsweek's Patti Davis tells how America's highly trained airport screeners are moving into a new theatre of the War on Metal, Laptops, Shoes, and Liquids: analyzing passengers' facial "micro-expressions" for fear and disgust.

Specially trained security personnel will be watching passengers for “micro-expressions” that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands, have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: "Behavior Detection Officers." [...] In the study of “micro-expressions”—yes, it is actually a field of study and there are some who are arrogant enough to call it a science—it has been decided that when people wish to conceal emotions, the truth of their feelings is revealed in facial flashes. These experts have determined that fear and disgust are the key things to look for because they can hint of deception.

Let’s see, fear and disgust in an airport? I’m frightened and disgusted weeks before I have to show up at an airport. In fact, I’ve pretty much sworn off the whole idea of going anywhere by airplane....

Apparently, these Behavior Detection Officers work in pairs. One scenario is that an officer might move in to “help” a passenger retrieve their belongings after they’ve been screened. And then the officer will ask where the passenger is headed. If the passenger’s reaction sets off alarm bells in the officer’s well-trained mind, another officer will move in and detain them. Let’s be really clear here. If a stranger moved in on me like that, I’d tell that person to go to hell, throw in a few other expletives for good measure, and probably give them the finger as I stomped off. Of course, I wouldn’t be stomping very far.

Remember, citizens: Smile!

On the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, citizen Gerzel has posted a lovely mission hook suitable for bilingual PARANOIA players:

It starts with some VIOLET or INDIGO citizen, probably a Romantic or Sierra Cluber, deciding to better himself by learning a foreign language, French.
Since immersion is the best possible way to learn a new language, the citizen decides to change his setting for what language the Computer will speak to him in to be French.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to this citizen, he accidentally changes the sector-wide language setting to French, and suddenly, all over the sector, citizens are insubordinate and non-compliant with The Computer's commands.

Massive rounds of executions follow, and soon Armed Forces deployments from other sectors to this one, as FC concludes that the sector is being overrun by Communists, and that citizens are being subverted through some unknown means. All high-clearance citizens are evacuated first, including the one who started it all.

To replace the dead clones, new clones are detanked automatically in rapid sequence. Of course their final language programming is done according to the system specification of French, so the onrushing troops find a bunch of citizens who are speaking in a language they don't understand and who are obviously Communists for it.

The Troubleshooters arrive; they can't understand The Computer; they get terminated; their clones arrive, and they're all speaking French yet don't even realize it. From there it should get -- what's the word? -- meurtrier, maybe? Raseur? Help out a sadly monolingual American....

I'm back from the Mongoose Hall 07 Open Day. PARANOIA related news from the trip:

• Flashbacks II is printed and should be available.
  
• Upcoming products include a Bots book, and a scenario compliation (incorporating Sweep of Unhistory, My First Treason and Spin Control) entitled Alpha Complex Nights. All three scenarios were conceived by various members of the TRS, and developed by me.
  
• Weirdly, there are a few copies of an Unproduct floating around. Mongoose apparently produced a few copies of a double-sided adventure booklet of Sweep of Unhistory and My First Treason. I was told that booklet had been recalled, but I came across at least one copy in the Gamekeeper store in Oxford. It appears that it never reached US distribution.
  

I also ran a demo game of PARANOIA. I dragged my Disaster Management convention scenario out of the bowels of my hard drive. In that game, the players are BLUE-clearance managers of a sector's emergency response command, and have to deal with six escalating disasters. The three players did admirably well, drugging the High Programmer, accidentally loosing a deranged Bot cult on Alpha Complex (my brain-chips are meeeeeelting! But I must draw the seeeeeeembols!) and eventually blaming absolutely everything on FMB Sector. I'll write that adventure up for Signs & Portents soonish, I swear.

(The non-PARANOIA news from the Open Day was that Mongoose are going to launch a new version of Traveller, which your humbler blogger will be writing. This continues Mongoose's practice of reworking classic games, such as PARANOIA and RuneQuest.)

Via Shanghaist: Jane Macartney of The Times (London) reports that the Chinese government, in an effort to limit the influence in Tibet of the Dalai Lama, has banned reincarnation without government permission.

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

The 14-part regulation issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs is aimed at limiting the influence of Tibet’s exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, and at preventing the re-incarnation of the 72-year-old monk without approval from Beijing.

It is the latest in a series of measures by the Communist authorities to tighten their grip over Tibet. Reincarnate lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and oversee the training of monks, giving them enormous influence over religious life in the Himalayan region. Anyone outside China is banned from taking part in the process of seeking and recognising a living Buddha, effectively excluding the Dalai Lama, who traditionally can play an important role in giving recognition to candidate reincarnates.

For the first time China has given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible death knell to a mystical system that dates back at least as far as the 12th century.

In 1995, the Dalai Lama identified a young Tibetan boy as the 11th reincarnation of another high official, the Panchen Lama. The Chinese government promptly disappeared the boy, appointed a replacement, and promulgated several sets of restrictions on locating "soul boys."

China Daily reports that all requests to reincarnate must first be submitted to the religious affairs department of the provincial-level government, then the provincial-level government, then the State Administration for Religious Affairs, and finally the State Council.

In the comments appended to the Times story, Max Reeder asks, "What happens if you reincarnate while you're waiting in a long, slow-moving line at the Post Office?"

This Wired article about a German security researcher who has devised a way to crash e-passport readers with an e-passport conjures up wonderful images of Computer Phreak hackers crashing Computer security with a hacked ME card - and one of the Troubleshooters being assigned that ME card. Hilarity ensues.

In other news, the Mongoose Open Day is on this Saturday. I'll be there, running PARANOIA and Babylon 5. Also on the agenda - finding out what the hell happened to certain books that are currently Unproducts, and when exactly they'll be declassified for public purchase.