PARANOIA

The first PARANOIA XP supplement from Mongoose Publishing, The Traitor's Manual, is going (or possibly has already gone -- nobody tells me anything!) to press. (Ignore the placeholder artwork; Jim Holloway has produced a terrific cover.)

Gareth Hanrahan's 96-page treatise surveys all the rulebook's secret societies. Many societies inspired Gar to flights of brilliance, especially the First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer. A couple of choice sections:

Have YOU Been Saved From Treason?

"Friend Citizen! Have you accepted the Good News v3.11 into your heart? Faith in Our Saviour, The Computer brings those who believe to their Eternal Reward. After they have died in His service the requisite number of times, they shall be transported to the glorious shining realm of the ULTRAVIOLET, where there shall be Fun in abundance. And He notified them in a memo, 'in YWH Sector there are many zones, and I go to prepare a place for you. Please have your ME cards ready for inspection'. – CFD, 28:1.

"But WOE unto those who do not accept the Good News, or worse, who download it but fail to register it, thus depriving hardworking evangelists of their deserved credits. And the Filesharers shall be found by the Managers of Digital Righteousness and be smoten by them – RIIA 42:13.

"And WOE unto the Communists, who shall be terminated by the holy lasers of freedom. Believe ye in that which has been approved, and abjure that which has been banned, even if that which was once banned is now approved or that which was approved be banned. – Ethics, 12:10.

"And WOE unto the Terrorists, who shall be terminated in Digital Justice; also their allies the Communists, for there are clear links between Terrorism and Communism which can be seen by the Faithful yet are invisible to the Traitorous. And he said unto them, 'Blessed are the charred corpses who got blown up in My name; theirs is the Priority Queue at the Clone Bank.' - Protocols 4:44."

Sub-factions

"Church schisms happen about once a month, usually as a result of personal grudges covered with a thin disguise of theological differences. Deacon Frost-B borrows Bishop Peter-I's vidtape of Teela-O's BLUE-clearance special and accidentally records over it. A week later, Frost's branch of the church is deemed anathema for their sinful and abhorrent practice of, er, not thanking The Computer whenever an automatic door opens! This is a clear sign that they are corrupted servants of the Anti-Computer and must be stopped!

"That said, the major branches like the True First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer or the United First Church of CC-P are almost identical in terms of teachings; the schism arose over the doctrine of Transistorization, which argued that cybernetic implants actually brought the user closer to the Divine. ULTRAVIOLET High Programmers originally instigated the schism, thinking a bit of healthy competition would make both churches more efficient. The only notable effect was the doubling of church bingo nights.

"The more militant, fervent and heavily armed members usually join the Lasers of the Faithful or their even more militant, fervent, heavily armed and dangerously apocalyptic offspring the Church of the Impending Reboot, who believe that a Commie invasion and attendant End of the Complex is imminent.

"More bizarre splinter sects include the Free Enterprise-influenced Programologists, who convince their members that their MemoMax patterns are corrupted with the engrams of Space Communists, and only by paying money for sessions with spiritual cleaning bots can they become cleansed and ready for Divine Upload. Almost every other secret society has, at one point or another, tried to ride on the FCCC-P’s blessed coattails and steal a bit of their legitimacy by forming a society-oriented splinter group. Most of these have long since vanished, but Troubleshooters can occasionally run into the Mystic-influenced Digital Unification and Packing Material Smoking Church, Corpore Metal’s Shining Upload Path Church, the Romantics’ Revised Latinate Church or even PURGE’s Satanic Church of the Anti- Computer.

"These splinter sects caused the Lasers of the Faithful and the other major churches to sponsor the Combined Order of Inquisition and Liquidation (COIL), a secret sect of IntSec- trained believers, R&D designers with a knack for intricate torture devices and trigger-happy loons. COIL members infi ltrate splinter churches and other groups, looking for heretics and servants of the Anti-Computer. As FCCC-P teachings change on a fairly regular basis, COIL members are kept very busy. (If a particular COIL group doesn’t get the latest update to the Electric Bible, then it can happily execute members of its own sect who are conforming to the new teachings.)"

Why yes, I believe Gar was in fact raised Catholic. How did you know?

This week I'm finishing up layout and editing of the PARANOIA XP mission collection Crash Priority. But I need help with a title.

Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick (mastermind of Paranoia-Live.net) has contributed a great Classic mission, wherein a supposed computer virus (actually a plot element not available at your clearance) scrambles the usual order of steps in the Troubleshooters' assignment. So they start with a debriefing (for a mission they haven't yet received), then go to outfitting, then get the mission alert, then outfitting again, then another debriefing, then a service service, a third outfitting, then it's time for bed (in the middle of the day)... Somewhere in there the PCs actually resolve the problem or die trying. The escapade winds up with a simultaneous briefing and debriefing, with IntSec GREEN goons shuttling the Troubleshooters between them.

It's funny stuff! But I'm unhappy with Andy's title: "Hello Yesterday, Goodbye Tomorrow." That title doesn't quite get at his excellent central gimmick, and it sounds a bit high-flown for a quintessentially Classic humor piece. I suggested "Viral Resequence," but Andy didn't like it. He counter-suggested something with "Bug" in the title, but that's as far as we've gotten. Ideas?

Aaron Stone's RPG.net review of PARANOIA XP generally likes the book's substance but dings us for the bad index (yeah, I know, I was on deadline...) and bad organization (ouch!).

Mongoose Publishing, publisher of the new PARANOIA XP, excels at supporting its many products by making free downloads available on its Web site. These downloads, in Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format, require the free Adobe Reader software.

Mongoose has just posted two new .PDFs of interest to PARANOIA Gamemasters who want to run the rulebook's introductory mission, "Mister Bubbles" by Dan Curtis Johnson. Follow these links to get the mission handouts and the pregenerated Troubleshooter player characters.

Gareth Hanrahan's 96-page secret society book, The Traitor's Manual, will go to press soon for publication in October. My wife, Beth Fischi, and I are putting together the 64-page mission book Crash Priority and should have it done by the end of this month for publication in late October or early November. Both these books look great, especially because Ultimate PARANOIA Artist Jim Holloway has excelled himself in illustrating them. New writer R. Eric Reuss is nearly done with the manuscript of The Mutant Experience, a 64-page rules supplement (due in January) stuffed full of new mutant powers. For the moment, things are looking good.

ENWorld is one of the Web's leading sites for d20 game reviews and fan discussion. The reviewers occasionally venture into non-d20 territory; witness this new review of PARANOIA XP by "Keeper of Secrets" -- score 5 out of 5, Superb.

Today I am making the final fixes on Gareth Hanrahan's The Traitor's Manual, the first PARANOIA XP supplement from Mongoose Publishing. (By the way, I forget whether I mentioned that Mongoose has opened a PARANOIA forum.)

The Traitor's Manual covers all the major secret societies in Alpha Complex. But the fascinating bit is the book's many entertaining asides, which sometimes relate only marginally to the main text. For instance, in his discussion of Communist propaganda pamphlets, Gar throws in this footnote about paper:

"Between secret society pamphlets, endless binders filled with incredibly detailed yet evasive manuals and approved usage guides, advertisements and the daily flood of forms (soon to be increased by 12% by the Paperless Complex Initiative Information Gathering Phase), Alpha Complex uses an immense amount of paper every month. Where does it all come from?

"Bots harvest whatever forests and greenery they can find Outdoors. The organic matter is pulped and turned into paper in vast processing vats (conveniently, the same vat design and pipe network is used by food production). Fresh paper only supplies a fraction of the demand; plastic filmsheets are also widely used (it’s just like paper, only 95% more flammable and carcinogenic!). The bulk of the printed matter, though, is printed on recycled materials. Most forms have to be kept for the purposes of records, so citizens are employed with scissors to cut around the text on the form and retrieve the blank bits of the paper. Other printed material is just thrown right back into the recyclers.

"On rare occasions, text from an old document can survive the pulping and recycling process and show up on a fresh sheet of paper. As all paper, regardless of clearance, is recycled in the same machines, this can result in high-clearance information showing up on, say, the napkins in the ORANGE cafeteria. This problem is exacerbated by the Communist policy of using super-dense graviton-charged ink on its pamphlets, which ensures the text survives recycling."

The Traitor's Manual (96 pages, $19.95) may hit store shelves before the end of September, though at this point maybe early October is a safer bet.

Michael Miller (Parody-U-MAN on Paranoia-Live.net) has a whole "ESG Labs" page full of useful graphics he created for PARANOIA GMs. Now he's posted his own version of the PARANOIA XP character sheet. Commendation point, Michael!

Also a treason point for one-upping us!

Also another commendation point for making all your graphics freely downloadable!

Wait, we need to go check your current score....

I'm chagrined to report that I messed up the design credit that appears at the bottom of the PARANOIA XP character sheet (page 254 in the rulebook, for those following along at home). Michael Purgar, aka "Laughing Penguin" on Paranoia-Live.net, did an excellent job designing the sheet. Unfortunately I mixed up the e-mail he sent that disclosed his real name; I mistakenly credited the sheet to Tom Pierce. My sincere apologies to both of them.

Many fine fans, on this blog and on Paranoia-Live.net, helped make PARANOIA XP far better than I could have alone, and far faster. I tried hard to collect the names and issue proper credit, but -- note that I'm not in any way attempting to excuse my error -- but I gotta say, some contributors, I practically had to pry their names out of them with a crowbar. One Mongoose playtester saw a draft of the credits page and wrote to me, anonymously, complaining that I left him off. I apologized and asked his name so I could give him proper credit. He wouldn't tell me! It took two tries to get him to divulge his name. Sheesh, talk about paranoia...

Still, I'm sorry about my mistake in the worthy Mike Purgar's credit, and I hope Mongoose can correct it in the next printing.

Perhaps some spammer has added Greg Costikyan to his personal hit list. A month ago a spammer hijacked Greg's e-mail account to send floods of spam, which then prompted Greg's ISP to shut down this blog and Greg's personal blog. Greg had to switch ISPs and e-mail accounts.

Now both these blogs are getting pernicious spam in the comment threads. Is nowhere safe from these vipers? I have asked Greg to investigate solutions, and would certainly welcome (non-spamming) recommendations in the comments to this post.

The newly released PARANOIA XP edition from Mongoose Publishing has met with good response, even in such far-flung venues as this Hero Games thread. But then again, this distressing account on Paranoia-Live.net gave me pause. This experienced Gamemaster, who is running PARANOIA for the first time, has found it impossible to induce his players to backstab each other. They're all working (shudder) together. The thread includes valuable suggestions from other GMs on how to sow dissension.

Evidently these disgustingly cooperative players are still having fun, which after all (I remind myself) is the whole point. But I see a need here for proper education of the gaming public in correct PARANOIA standards and practices. Do you agree? If so, how should this happen?