PARANOIA

Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, contributor to the forthcoming STUFF equipment book for PARANOIA XP, writes in his capacity as supremo of Paranoia-Live.net: "Citizens, High Programmer Takyn-U-RUN has once again saved Alpha Complex from Communist taint! Having spotted that CPU Central had come under attack by Commie spambots, he quickly moved in, rewired the place, upgraded security and shot a random selection of CPU workers who were clearly failing in their duty.

"The happy outcome of all this activity is that our online forms are now back... online! [...] We confidently predict this new technology will lead to a 23.555% rise in happiness across the board."

Those unfamiliar with the long-dormant CPU Central may not know of its long service to GMs of online PARANOIA games. Gamemasters can have their players fill out the forms online, then retrieve the results for later review and summary terminations. There's a good selection online. Obviously most GMs get best milage from the Equipment/Weapon/Vehicle Request Form,
Termination Voucher, and Mission Report Form. Certain games are no doubt signally enhanced by the Troubleshooting Seminar Feedback Form and conceivably even the Jacuzzi Installation Voucher. We can look forward to eventual implementation of many forms currently on order, such as the Chapstick Cap Replacement Form (1 of 7), Tella-O-MLY Fan Letter Request Form (Version 2B), and Artillery/ Air Strike Request Form /zero-six-niner.

Check it all out at CPU Central. Truly the PARANOIA world grows better each day, approximately.

An idea has seized me, or perhaps 'blighted' is the word: A full-length PARANOIA mission for a group of six player characters who are all Junior Citizens (children) in Alpha Complex. It would take place in four or five episodes spaced years apart, so characters are about eight years old in the first sequence, then 10 or 11 in the second, 13 in the third, and in the last couple they'd be 14 years old -- almost ready to go out into Alpha Complex as newly-minted INFRARED citizens.

This might play out like a combination of Tiny Toons and the Hitler Youth, but it might be interesting to develop it in the manner of an old British public-school novel a la Tom Brown's Schooldays -- or its modern analogue, the Harry Potter books. Instead of service groups, the kids belong to rival creches; instead of rugby or football or Quidditch matches, they have FunBall tourneys and the occasional live-fire exercise.

My problem right now -- aside from the general problem of conceiving these half-stupid ideas when I should be finishing the STUFF equipment book -- is that Junior Citizens logically have no good equivalent of PARANOIA's secret society membership. I could envision Psion recruiting young mutants, and of course the Illuminati are everywhere, but the kids' general situation doesn't foster individual conflicting agendas. Or am I missing something?

Does this idea do anything for anyone else? If not, I'll just take my medication and shut up.

An RPG.net thread that should entertain both Star Wars and PARANOIA fans suggests running a game where the players are Imperial stormtroopers hunting Rebels. As you read on in the thread, you'll discover this idea has apparently been done many times. How do I never hear about these things?

Morbus Iff, doyen of Gamegrene.com, is about to get a nice plug for his site in an upcoming issue of DRAGON Magazine. As he says in a Paranoia-Live.net post, "I'd like to have an article up sometime in February such that the incoming readers of Dragon Magazine will learn the greatness of the new PARANOIA XP, and cause more demand for the already lacking supply. I had plans on writing an article myself, but as my time has grown shorter and shorter, I'm not going to be able to, which is rather upsetting as I do so want something about PARANOIA XP for these Dragonettes." So he's looking for help -- possibly your help.

Morbus needs 800 to 2000 words, a non-fluff overview introducing the game to new players. If you're interested, check out the Paranoia-Live.net thread. More power to you, and congrats to Morbus for (we hope) his site's imminent Dragondotting!

Cool! Alan De Smet, Madison (WI) computer programmer and co-founder of Sancho Games, has put together a Web-based PARANOIA mission generator using the "mission blender" included in the PARANOIA Gamemaster Screen insert booklet. "While I plan on continuing polishing it, I think it's good enough to announce," says Alan.

The mission blender, designed by Aaron Allston and a host of loyal citizens at Paranoia-Live.net, is a collection of 72 tables offering characters, locations, and items to fill every aspect of a typical Troubleshooter mission. Rather than roll a d20 until we get carpal tunnel, let's fire up Alan's online blender and see what we get:

• Dominant type of fear to install in the PCs: Alpha Complex is just a simulation; nothing is physically real.


• General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: A particular drug suddenly has inexplicably altered effects.


• Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A senior Food Vat Control supervisor in INDIGO (Tension 16) empty FunBall arena (or other large room), whose division is overproducing, underproducing or doing something strange to the food. (The identity of the Someone need not be obvious at the mission's outset, and in fact things may play out more appropriately if the Someone is not discovered until late in the proceedings.)


• General apparent threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: A minor malfunction in RED (Tension 6) crowded enviro conditioning duct may grow into a major problem. The PCs must fix the malfunction and deal with the problems already created. The threat is real.

Hmm. Okay, I could see how to massage most of those elements together into a mission premise. Now to the details. Let's choose, oh, one service service for HPD&MC, and three secret society missions (Frankenstein Destroyers, Pro Tech, PURGE). We get this:

• Mission Alert: Text message on PDC. Recognition password (to be given to briefing officer) is wrong. The information is replaced by extortion threat from anonymous hacker: "Send 100cr to this Gray Subnet account and I'll send you the data."
  
• Briefing: Briefing is in crowded living quarters (IR: barracks; R-Y: dormitory; G-B: apartment; I-U: mansion). 1 suspicious, twitchy briefing officer(s) in highly defended position (e.g., seated atop a massive gun emplacement) at rear of ORANGE (Tension 8) private slime farm.
  
• This Mission: An abandoned GREEN (Tension 12) crowded Production, Logistics & Commissary waiting room has been infested by Commies. Demolish it, preferably with the Commies inside.
  
• HPD & Mind Control Service Service: Escort ORANGE data researcher (information source, paranoid with gauss gun (W3K energy) and reflec armor (El; colored as appropriate, or RED)) to his new quarters in ORANGE (Tension 7) underground lake. Make sure he stays there this time.
  
• Frankenstein Destroyer Mission: Briefing: Instructions printed on back of the PC's toiletry ration. Mission: Destroy all A small metallic can that bleeps constantly. The Computer claims it's extremely important.s owned by VIOLET Tech Services Vehicular Advisor in RED (Tension 5) empty Armed Forces armory.
  
• Pro Tech Mission: Briefing: Delivered by note, but there are multiple copies, each with a slight difference in intent. Mission: Sabotage toothbrush at IR marketeer living quarters.
  
• PURGE Mission: Briefing: A flickering light fixture presents message in binary code. Mission: Replace your team's happiness pills with these, which will spur them to destructive rampages.
  
• Outfitting: PLC: Office; looks very busy, but nothing ever gets done. Careful inspection shows all workers are passing the same papers back and forth quickly.
  
• Debriefing: Debriefing conducted solely by R&D scientists. They ask many questions about equipment, giving the impression the only reason for the mission was to test equipment. After the scientists leave, The Computer covers the treason accusations.

Hum. Well, a bobble in the syntax of the Frankenstein mission, but at least the whole text offers a harried GM some inspiration. And if we don't like it, hey, we just push the button again to get another bunch of ideas. Commendation points to Alan De Smet for his fine work!

(You'll find all this makes a lot more sense if you get the actual hardcopy mission blender. Plus, the booklet has a big four-panel GM screen wrapped around it, guaranteed non-toxic and opaque at visible wavelengths.)

The January 19th "Out of the Box" review column on Gaming Report, by Secret Master of Gaming and champion reviewer Kenneth Hite, lists his coveted Outie Awards for 2004. I usually find such personal best-of lists less asinine and more interesting than committee jobs like the perennially corrupt and nonsensical Origins Awards. (NOTE: I speak only for myself, not for PARANOIA's owners or publisher.) The Outies, and others like them, remind us the only meaningful "awards" in this business (aside from commercial gain) come in the form of individual expressions of respect by one's peers.

In Ken's Outie category "Most Improved Retread of 2004," one might have hoped PARANOIA XP had a fighting chance. The envelope, please:

Other improvements were of such magnitude as to deserve their own award; Steve Long's new Dark Champions simply added a ton of excellent new material to an excellent book, while Allen Varney added an actually non-terrible game engine to Paranoia XP while rediscovering the original genius therein. An even greater rediscovery of paranoia shines through the transcendent vision in the art and presentation of Malleus Monstrorum (also from Pegasus Spiele), which wins it the Most Improved Retread Outie for 2004, even though it's in German. Even though it was actually released in 2003. That's how good it is.

Lost out to a German game -- from 2003! We wuz robbed!

The 128-page STUFF equipment book for PARANOIA XP, due in April from Mongoose Publishing, features 250 all-new weapons, gadgets, and services in 15 categories. One category is Malfeasance Control Devices ("McDs"), introduced in the XP rulebook. McDs are gadgets or inventions Internal Security inflicts temporarily on citizens suffering Probation. A McD enforces the citizen's good behavior and loyalty.

This lovely McD comes from Bill O'Dea (aka Biggles of FriendComputer.net):

Say-No-Evil Speech Censor

Category: Treason / Verbal Treason / Standards and Practices
Qty available: 9
Offered by: No Clone Left Behind Re-Education Camps (a licensed firm of Internal Security)
Current bid: 750cr
Item location: UUD Sector IntSecMart
Delivery: Black Box Package Transit, Personal Pick-up
Payment accepted: ME Card, PayNow, QwickCredit

Clones can say the stupidest things. Avoid wasteful terminations with this mobile speech sensor! Attached to the throat, the censor monitors the wearer's vocal chords for matches in a growing library of 4,520,442 treasonous words. Once detected, the censor overrides the wearer's voice and replaces treasonous speech with helpful and loyal phrases. Strap only opens to fingerprint of GREEN clearance or higher. Why bug when you can prevent!

Comment on this item:
This has saved me from Buy Crunchee Cold Fun Curlz, now with 25% more algae! a lot of needless Test drive the new G-type Autocar 14 DX today! clone replacements. - Peter-R-NEJ-4

Customers who bought Say-No-Evil Speech Censor also bought:
Hear-No-Evil Auditory Flaps
See-No-Evil Eye Drops

((GAME STAT BOX: GREEN. 500cr. This is a small black box with two lights on the front and a small, thick throat strap. Prevents a character from saying anything treasonous. It costs IntSec a lot to maintain the word library, so IntSec accepts advertisements to help cover costs. Characters become walking endorsements for a variety of Alpha Complex products and services. Throat strap cannot be cut by anything less than a tablesaw.))

Eric Reuss, STUFF contributor and author of the imminent XP supplement The Mutant Experience, suggested that this entry could include a couple of lists of advertisement phrases the GM can photocopy and hand to the player. At the risk of conveying the mistaken impression that Alpha Complex is now totally advertising-crazy, I have another request, much like my last entry's request for banner ads: ad slogans. Please post them in the comments.

I am laying out the forthcoming 128-page equipment book for PARANOIA XP, forthrightly titled STUFF. The supplement presents hundreds of items as entries from the largest Alpha Complex online auction site, C-Bay. I'm making a passing attempt to fashion the pages to look approximately like Web pages from eBay, Amazon, and similar sites.

I needed to fill some holes here and there, so I AIMed Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, mastermind of Paranoia-Live.net. Andy does all the graphics for his site, using 3DStudio Max and Poser among other programs. I asked Andy if he could put together a Bouncy Bubble Beverage Web-style banner ad for the STUFF book. he asked a few questions, said, "Give me a moment," and -- I swear -- ninety seconds later, he sends me a beautiful ad featuring a B3 can and the traditional motto, "It's the MANDATORY thing!"

Okay, maybe Andy happened to have a Bouncy Bubble Beverage banner ad waiting on his hard drive. But honestly, isn't that impressive in its own right?

Anyway. Andy is creating about three dozen little banner ads I can scatter liberally through the book. He's done algae chips ("Buy 1, get 1!") and even did a very silly ad for the Illuminati. ("Murder? Blackmail? Extortion? Call the experts!"). I vetoed that one -- I'd like to maintain the barest pretense these could be actual ads on the actual Alpha Complex site.

I trust Andy to devise any number of funny ads all by himself. But if you have ideas, post them here and I'll pass them along.

In an entertaining RPG.net thread entitled "Alternate Uses for PARANOIA," check out this excellent monster-movie crossover by "Oddsod." Could be a new play style here, to go with Straight, Classic, and Zap -- "Horror." Hmmm...

A fresh coat of CSS, diligently applied by a fleet of cleaning bots under the command of High Programmer Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, has made Paranoia-Live.net and its copious forums an even happier and more hygienic hangout.

Having finally turned in (three weeks late, argh!) the massive 256-page reprint collection PARANOIA Flashbacks to Mongoose Publishing, I turn immediately to editing the 128-page Paranoid STUFF equipment book.

The Traitor Recycling Studio, the informal assemblage of writers who created Crash Priority, has outdone itself in creating many, many new items to ornament Alpha Complex. How many? I haven't started selecting the entries to be published, but here are the raw number of entries in each category, before culling:

• 01 Weapons and ordnance (44)
• 02 Defense (28)
• 03 Spying and surveillance (20)
• 04 McDs [Malfeasance Control Devices] (24)
• 05 Clothing and personal equipment (45)
• 06 Software (27)
• 07 Bots (28)
• 08 Vehicles (17)
• 09 Medications (23)
• 10 Cybernetics (24)
• 11 Food & drink (26)
• 12 Entertainment (21)
• 13 Sports and recreation (18)
• 14 Great gifts! [i.e, junk] (29)
• 15 Personal services (25)

Egad, nearly 400 items! A significant fraction, probably 200-300, will make it into the book -- though as I say, I haven't selected these yet. I congratulate and thank the Traitors, especially the tireless Eric Minton, who alone submitted over half of these.

The priorities for a PARANOIA equipment book differ somewhat from the usual RPG purposes. In other (non-fun) games, it would be folly to include a "Great gifts!" category of explicitly useless junk. Yet every PARANOIA Gamemaster out there will delight in the unsuspected PC-damaging consequences of a HappyScents Aroma Generator, ConjectureSphere Mark 8, or Squeeze'N'Salute Mini Troubleshooter. Players in other games would obsessively crave weapons and defenses, but the wise PARANOIA Troubleshooter would gladly prefer a useless BeatMaster Piezoacoustic Audio Stick ("The most excellent music device around! Harmonic crystal technology sends phased pulse signals into anything you hit, forcing things to make their own distinctive music.") over the Gyrostabilizing All-purpose Flux Fortifier, Magnetic Flux Cannon, or Original Indefatigable Webulator Suit.

Or maybe I'm wrong. What categories do you think should get the most space in the STUFF book?

Testing, testing....

PARANOIA co-designer Greg Costikyan, our Tech Services rep, has terminated the saboteurs of the PARANOIA XP development blog, and the RSS feed is now working perfectly once more. He says. If you haven't heard from us in a while, hello again! Greg has also implemented a search feature. Haven't tried it myself -- let me know whether this works.

POSTSCRIPT Jan 7: Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick alerts me that he has installed an RSS feed for the vibrantly active forums on Paranoia-Live.net.

Mongoose Publishing and I had mulled over possible PARANOIA promotion ideas that would use the Web URL www.friendcomputer.net. We have now missed our chance, but if anyone had to get the domain, there are far worse choices than good Citizen Biggles, a fine and meritorious writer who recently joined the Traitor Recycling Studio, the gang of freelance writers who will produce most of the upcoming year's PARANOIA supplements. Check out Biggles's friendcomputer.net site -- though you should move fast; it's a GeoCities site, so his bandwidth is probably limited.

(Better that it go to Biggles than to the detestable squatter who seized paranoiaxp.com the instant the game was announced last year...)

The forthcoming mission collection PARANOIA Flashbacks gathers the best of the old West End adventures: "Robot Imana-665-C," "Trouble With Cockroaches," "Das Bot," Vapors Don't Shoot Back, YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues, Send in the Clones, "Me and My Shadow Mark 4," Alpha Complexities, and the Code 7 mini-missions "ARD Day's Night," "Reboot Camp," and "Whitewash."

If you have fond memories or funny anecdotes of actual play relating to any of these specific missions, I can use them as sidebars in the text of the relevant mission. Please post your stories in the comments to this post. If I use your contribution, neither I nor Mongoose Publishing will pay you anything nor give you a free copy of anything, but if you post your full name, I'll credit you as the author of the sidebar.

UPDATE: I originally said I needed your stories by Sunday, January 2nd, but my deadline is blowing by, whoosh, and I still have lots of space to fill. So please, let's hear your stories -- and it would help if they're about something other than "Me and My Shadow Mark 4."

Farewell to Year 214 of The Computer and greetings to the new revised Year 214. Really, 214 was such a good year for PARANOIA it makes sense to recycle it.

I hope you bade farewell to 2004 in enjoyable ways. My wife, Beth Fischi, and I saw it off, and welcomed the first few hours of 2005, with incessant editing and layout of PARANOIA Flashbacks, the 256-page compilation and update of the best West End Games adventures from the 1980s. We had, oh, such fun we'll probably spend each New Year's Eve that way from now on, toiling on frenzied deadlines. In fact, we may even just re-edit and lay out Flashbacks itself, over and over again each December 31, for our personal amusement. Such was our fun. And it's still not over.

My esteemed friend Steve Long has once more posted an annual retrospective of the year at his company, Hero Games. Inspired (and because I can't stare at Vapors Don't Shoot Back another second), I talk here about PARANOIA in 2004 and the year ahead.

I started designing the new PARANOIA edition in late February. My overriding purpose was to heal the game's damaged reputation and restore it to glory after its sad and infuriating senility at West End Games in the 1990s. After an exhilarating, highly productive, even revolutionary online collaboration with dozens of talented writers and fans, Mongoose Publishing debuted PARANOIA XP at Gen Con in August to wide acclaim. Reviews of the 256-page rulebook and the first supplements -- the Gamemaster Screen (with its 24-page insert booklet, including the excellent "mission blender"), the 96-page Traitor's Manual, and the 64-page Crash Priority -- have repeatedly sounded the exact note I hoped to hear: PARANOIA is good again.

For 2005 I hope to broaden the range of experiences players associate with PARANOIA. The core, the crown of PARANOIA gameplay will always be the beloved Classic play style of slapstick satire. But there can be more. The XP rulebook's Straight style is only the beginning; there will be new styles, new ways to play. The gaming community's nigh-universal view is, "PARANOIA is fine for occasional filler games, but that's all -- it's too frenetic and the death rate too high." This is like saying Call of Cthulhu would only work for one-shots because it's all about terror, and investigators keep going insane. Among the field's fine games of fear -- CoC, the World of Darkness, My Life With Master, Kult, many more -- none has quite claimed the specific territory of paranoid tension. PARANOIA can own it outright.

The 2005 schedule, though correctly centered on Classic, expands in new directions starting this summer:

• January: The Mutant Experience by R. Eric Reuss -- 64-page rules supplement with tons of new mutant powers. I suspect this may become the bestselling PARANOIA supplement.
• February: PARANOIA Flashbacks -- Contains the three West End GM Screen adventures, Vapors Don't Shoot Back, The YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues, Send in the Clones, "Me and My Shadow Mark 4" from Acute PARANOIA, Alpha Complexities, and three Code 7s from Acute PARANOIA, including "Whitewash."
• April: Paranoid STUFF -- 128-page equipment book absolutely loaded with hundreds of new items. By the Traitor Recycling Studio, the band of merry traitors who wrote Crash Priority. If Mutant Experience isn't the bestselling supplement, this could be.
• June: WMD -- 48-page Straight mission by me and my wife, Beth Fischi. No, I'm not telling you what it's about. I'm currently trying to persuade Mongoose to up the page count and turn this into a collection of Straight missions by several designers.
• Gen Con (August): Extreme PARANOIA -- Massive 192-page rules supplement with rules for playing characters at all security clearances through VIOLET, as well as new Mandatory Bonus Duties, rules for playing bots (based on Greg Costikyan's rules from Acute PARANOIA), and more. Includes material adapted from the West End supplement HIL Sector Blues. By me and the Traitor Recycling Studio. I'd really like to hope this will be the bestselling supplement.
• Probably October: Service, Service! -- 128-page supplement about service groups and service firms. By the Traitor Recycling Studio.
• Possibly December: A 64-page book, currently called Criminal Histories (though I like the title My First Treason), of character kits and background generation, styled along the lines of the Lifepaths for Cyberpunk 2020 and the old Heroes of Fantasy/Now/Tomorrow books from Task Force Games. The idea is to give your Troubleshooter character an actual background full of treason, misdeeds, and stuff other players can actively investigate, as well as connections and perks that make Alpha Complex more interesting for two- or three-player groups. Like, when you go to PLC for outfitting, might the YELLOW clerk at the counter be your old bunkmate from the INFRARED barracks, who still recalls how you betrayed him? Written by the Traitor Recycling Studio, probably.

Tote up these page counts and compare them to the good or decent products in the old West End PARANOIA line -- the first- and second-edition rulebooks (144 pages apiece, if you include the second edition's "Compleat Troubleshooter" booklet), the early adventures reprinted in Flashbacks (the original GM Screen booklet, Vapors, YELLOW Clearance, Send in the Clones, and Alpha Complexities ran 192 pages total), Acute PARANOIA (80 pages), Orcbusters (32), Clones in Space (48), HIL Sector Blues (80), People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure (40), and even the DOA Sector Travelogue (96). Those 840-odd pages made PARANOIA great.

From August 2004 to August 2005, the Mongoose PARANOIA XP line will comprise at least 880 pages, not even counting the Flashbacks reprint volume or the fall releases. I'm here to tell you, it's all gonna be good. Just 12 months of XP will match and surpass the entire worthwhile corpus from the West End days. And we'll keep the same pace into 2006.

Believe it: PARANOIA is good again.