PARANOIA

Horrible news from Palladium's Kevin Siembieda: Erick Wujcik, 56, creator of Amber Diceless Roleplaying and several excellent Palladium RPGs, is dying of pancreatic cancer. PARANOIA fans know Erick as the designer of Clones in Space (West End Games, 1986, recently reprinted in PARANOIA Flashbacks 2) and several sections of Acute PARANOIA (West End, 1985). Erick's "Drugs" and "Aptitude Tests" sections from the latter book appear in the current edition of the PARANOIA rulebook. (The gallery of Erick Wujcik's work currently lacks his PARANOIA credits.)

Post messages for Erick at ErickWujcik.com or RPG.net. Donations to the American Cancer Society.

Erick is a tremendously talented designer whose Amber Diceless hugely influenced today's indie RPG designers. Though long out of print, Amber retains a tight-knit and vigorous community to this day. His PARANOIA work shows the same exuberant creativity of his bestselling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles licensed RPG.

Erick is also an international traveller, and he has posted his photos from Hong Kong and Shanghai at his own site, 47rpg.com. For several years Erick led the design team at the Shanghai office of Ubisoft, the computer gaming giant, and he taught game design at Hong Kong Polytechnic. Most important, Erick is a generous friend. Early this year, when I was planning a temporary relocation to Southeast Asia, Erick unexpectedly called me long-distance from China ( ! ) to offer me informed and very welcome advice. I shall always prize that conversation, that kind gesture, as I prize Erick's many fine contributions to the art of roleplaying game design. If you're among the many who have enjoyed his games, I encourage you to visit ErickWujcik.com and post your thanks.

Update Dec. 27: Erick has started a characteristically entertaining blog at 47rpg.com/blog.

For loyal citizens who own the fine PARANOIA service group supplement Service, Service!, Omega Complex now features an electronic, fully-interactive, thoroughly-tested, not-frustrating-at-all, sliding version of the Power Puzzle from the end of the mission "Both Sides Now," presented by mission designer (and Omega Complex proprietor) Paul Baldowski.

Labels: puzzle, serviceservice

The urban exploration site Abandoned But Not Forgotten has a photo shoot, mostly humdrum but sometimes inexplicably eerie, of a long-abandoned Sun Microsystems office building in California. Perfect for your next PARANOIA Troubleshooter mission into The Underplex.

(Yes, it's the second BoingBoing link in two days.)

Labels: underplex

A modern energy-saving CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) light bulb contains about 5mg of toxic mercury vapor and mercury-containing phosphor powder. Used CFL bulbs must be recycled rather than simply thrown out -- but no, a broken CFL bulb doesn't require a $2,000 cleanup by a professional HazMat crew.

Still, a broken bulb does require careful handling, and the United Kingdom government has risen to this important public policy challenge with a ten-point plan for dealing with broken light bulbs in Parliament.

"The instructions are that the cleaning operative, using protective gloves and wearing a mask, should collect the main fragments of the light bulb and carefully place them in a sturdy box," Mr Harvey wrote.

"All splinters should then be collected using stiff card or paper. The area should then be cleaned using a damp cloth. The splinters and the cloth should then be placed in the box. Once the area is clear and clean, the box should be sealed and labelled with details of the item. The box should then be taken to the waste removal area in the loading bay and passed to the waste disposal contractor in an appropriate manner."

Mr Harvey said the guidelines were necessary and defended his decision to spend time issuing them. He said: "There had been an incident where a light bulb had been broken and placed in a waste paper bin. Someone had picked it out and cut their finger."

BoingBoing reproduces the government agency's ten-step poster, nicely presented in the established Oh-No-We're-All-Doomed graphic style.

In my new favorite forum topic on Paranoia-Live.net, Useful PARANOIA images, loyal citizen Max has posted links to a wide array of wonderful Alpha Complex images: food vats, pistols, R&D's latest blaster helmet (what could go wrong?), petbots, doors, and lots more.

We prefer to avoid consistency in portraying these things -- every PARANOIA player should always inhabit his own mental image of the setting -- but Max's images, and the others in this fine forum topic, can speed the Gamemaster's chore of routine narrative description.

Labels: images

On the Mongoose PARANOIA forum, Paul Baldowski (author of The Underplex and proprietor of Omega Complex) writes:

"BBC Communities include the Earth edition of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, conceived by Douglas Adams as an encyclopedia by the people for the people -- similar to the objective of Wikipedia. Until today, the entry on PARANOIA (published in mid-2000) covered an outdated, and likely traitorous, view of The Computer, Alpha Complex, and the life of the intrepid Troubleshooter. I have corrected this disparity in information between reality and propaganda -- which includes a front-page feature today highlighting the update. Do feel free to pop by and have a look at the refreshed entry."

Labels: hhg, hitchhikersguide

Loyal citizen Ed Murphy alerts us to the start of a PARANOIA-themed game of Nomic, the rules-changing game. The Paranomic-XP game is running on either Google Groups or Usenet, insofar as those are different nowadays. The current Paranomic-XP rules are as essential yet ever-fluid as any CPU Expedited Process Management manual.

Max, loyal citizen on the leading PARANOIA fan site Paranoia-Live.net, has posted Version 2 of his Flash-based "Mutant Maker" PARANOIA character generator. This version includes brief descriptions of all the mutant powers, including those offered in Eric Reuss's fine rules supplement The Mutant Experience. Gotta love the Computer eye that follows your mouse pointer....

P-L.net citizens are currently discussing this and other character generators in the forum topic "The Drunk & Lazy GM PARANOIA Character Generator." (We recommend, not as a matter of policy but as mere good sense, that Gamemasters avoid excessive inebriation while running PARANOIA. The danger is that you may pass out, thereby inviting your players to perform unusual cosmetic adjustments on your person that would undermine your absolute authority.)

Labels: drunk, lazy, mutant maker

There's a brief article by yr humble blogger on the topic of Debriefings in the latest Signs & Portents.