PARANOIA

Dr. Kenneth A. Rahn, a retired oceanography professor in Narragansett, Rhode Island, runs "The Academic JFK Assassination Site," which debunks various shoot-the-president conspiracy theories.

Of most interest to PARANOIA fans is Rahn's page of links about "The Paranoid Mentality." Here Rahn reproduces an interesting article, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," by Columbia University (NY) history professor Richard Hofstadter. This is a November 1964 Harpers magazine essay based on a lecture Hofstadter delivered at Oxford in (hmm!) November 1963. After giving some interesting background on conspiracy theories surrounding the Illuminati, the Masons, and the Jesuits, the Hofstadter article describes broad characteristics of paranoid politics of that time (and our own): the vast and long-standing conspiracy, the high stakes, the amoral and highly competent enemy, the interest in renegade conspirators, the pedantry.

Given its implicit bias, I fear that this article could provoke a political flamewar as easily now as it might have 40 years ago. That isn't my purpose. What interests the PARANOIA fan here is not the politics but the psychology. PARANOIA excels at turning players against each other -- but the game and its setting, to date, have not really captured certain characteristics of an authentically paranoid mindset: the self-important grandiosity and the sense of tremendous hidden forces jockeying for enormously important goals. I'm not positive this would be fun to roleplay, but I'd like to explore it in forthcoming PARANOIA projects.

FYI, Hofstadter concludes that "a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies[, such as] a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. [...] We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well."

(Thanks to Jeff Groves of the Traitor Recycling Studio for the link.)

We are starting to see sightings in the wild of the slightly-revised second printing of the PARANOIA XP rulebook from Mongoose Publishing. For the second printing I corrected scads of typos, stylistic inconsistencies, and graphical errors. An ugly text list of the significant corrections follows; sometime in the next week or two I hope to prepare a prettier .PDF version for free download on the Mongoose Web site.

These are largely routine clarifications, but note the change in the use of armor in the Universal Hostility Formula on pages 70 and 82.

12: Replaced HPD&MC service firm "Psych Ward Administrators" (cut before the first printing, but mistakenly left in the table) with "Trend Identifiers"

37: Treasonous acts: "Filesharing" is changed to "Theft of equipment, possessions or files, including filesharing."

47: Increasing specialty or Secret skill ratings: A specialty or Secret skill rating increase of 1 costs 5 points, regardless of the new rating number. You can spend points when the GM allows it.

65: Tension levels: Broadened and clarified the definition of detection to cover not only The Computer and its agents, but also secret societies or other unspecified parties. If you roll the Tension level or less, someone somewhere -- not necessarily The Computer -- observed the action. (This idea is amplified in the introduction to the fine supplement The Traitor's Manual.)

70, 82: Universal Hostility Formula changed to subtract target's defenses or treason armor (Access attribute) before Boost increments are applied.

72, Ammunition and reloading: Inserted this paragraph at the start: "The cost to reload a weapon is 10% of the weapon's base cost, unless otherwise specified. The weapon chart’s listed cost for ammunition is per magazine, unless ‘Shots’ is 1; for these single-shot weapons, cost is per shot."

73: Weapons table: Cost of reloading or recharging a weapon is 10% of the weapon's base cost, unless otherwise specified. Lasers are recharged by buying a new barrel.
Cone rifle dum-dum shells now have range 160.
Gauss gun -- added notation "only vs. bots"
Slugthrower dum-dum damage is now M3K, range 40.
Added a line at the bottom explaining the double-asterisk notation: "** Unauthorized possession of an item marked with a double asterisk (**) is treason. Possessing an unauthorized tacnuke is big-time serious treason."

75: Regarding combat effects of various damage conditions: A Downed character's player can now spend Perversity on other players' rolls, but not on his own character.

84: Straight procedure for treason accusation, last paragraph:
"The target’s defense is his current Access rating—his ‘treason armor,’ subtracted from the default correction. Furthermore, add the number of the target’s current clone to the accuser’s success roll (making it harder to succeed). Why the clone number? Anyone The Computer has brought back multiple times must, of course, be worthy of its trust. To doubt this is to imply The Computer was mistaken."

85, 86: Increased percentage fines in Straight games. All fines below 5% are now 5%.

86: Treason code JJ is changed from "Filesharing" to "Theft of equipment, possessions or files, including filesharing"
Treason code PP, "Unauthorized destruction of higher-clearance property": Added "+ replacement cost" to the fine for both Classic and Straight.
Treason code VV/2, "Terminating a citizen of higher clearance without prior authorization or evidence": Straight correction, "Termination + replacement cost," changed to "T1E + replacement cost."

107: High Alert specialty description: Added this important clarification after the first paragraph: "High Alert is not ‘danger sense.’ There is no danger sense in PARANOIA. If anyone really had a sort of psychic awareness of imminent peril, it would burn out from overuse."

114: Propaganda skill, fourth paragraph, ending "Successive uses of the specialty can increase the victim’s specialty level, but his rating can never rise higher than the propagandist’s rating." Added, "(Or you may decide that rule is far too fiddly for a blatantly cheesy game like PARANOIA, and just let the skill rise to whatever you want.)"

117: Crowd Control (Armed Forces) service firm entry slightly revised to be less similar to the Crowd Control (Internal Security) entry on page 125.

149: Toxic Metabolism: Clarifies that the mutant delivers his poison by touch to a target's exposed skin.

157: Death Leopard: Replaced references to degrees 1-8 (a mistaken holdover from earlier editions) with degrees 1-20. "Degrees 1 through 10 represent degrees of status within the small gangs that constitute most of Death Leopard: Worm, Real Person, Lieutenant, and Head Honcho. [...] Degrees 11 through 20 represent the Hero, Superhero, Superstar, and Ultimate Beast levels of status." (What degrees correspond to which status? That's a GM call. Plus, we couldn't think of 12 more good statuses.)

162: The Psion special rules formerly offered a fixed list of mutant powers a member could learn upon advancing in the society. We cut that list; the GM can now select any power. We added a parenthetical plug: "(You may wish to select from mind-based or ‘psionic’ powers, as opposed to physical mutations like Rubbery Bones. See the fine PARANOIA supplement The Mutant Experience for more details.)"

168: Poison gas does S3K Bio damage.

178: Under "Manual drive," first paragraph, deleted the sentences, "Each type of vehicle requires its own Vehicle Operation specialty. If you have the Autocar Operation specialty, you can manually drive an autocar, but that specialty won’t help you pilot a flybot. For that you need Flybot Operation, a separate specialty." The Vehicle Ops specialty is intended to cover all the main bot-equipped vehicle types all by itself (see page 109).

180: Replaced the existing "Smoke generator" entry with this paragraph: "Smoke generator: A smoke generator increases the Energy defense rating of the vehicle’s armor by 5, so long as the vehicle remains stationary. Unless the vehicle is airtight, after a round or two the smoke does tend to get, well—you know—toxic (O3D Bio damage per round)."

191: Hygiene officer, third column -- deleted the sentence about how the deeper the sample goes, the more likely that the Troubleshooter passes the Skin-Core Sampler test. This contradicted the Depth Control Panel Readings section immediately following, which resolved the test by a 1d20 roll unmodified by depth. (We can't believe we really have to think about some of this stuff.)

243: The first printing's URL for Half Meme Press (home of Paul Czege's My Life With Master) is incorrect. It has been corrected to www.halfmeme.com.

247: Equipment chart, clarified the second paragraph as follows: "Every item has a security clearance below which it is illegal to possess the item without specific authorization from The Computer. Possessing an item marked with a double asterisk (**) below the listed clearance is treason. In Straight games possessing an item above your clearance but without the double asterisk is insubordination punishable by a fine. In Classic or Zap games possessing the item is treason."

256: Index, replaced by a far superior index compiled by loyal citizen Saul Resnikoff. The free .PDF download will include the revised one-page index.

Nathan J. Hill of Mystic Ages Online (designer of Eldritch Ass Kicking, "A Game of Arcane Action and Old Men with Sticks") has just posted Bellbot, a high-concept premise for a comedic one-shot science-fiction RPG. Though very sketchy, Bellbot (what there is of it) could adapt with transparent ease to an all-bot PARANOIA mission:

"You're a robotic bellboy in a gigantic, chaotic mega-hotel. The hotel you serve is built upon (and in) a massive asteroid hurtling through space. You serve a diverse client of spacefaring humans, time-traveling wayfarers, undiscovered alien entities, and unhappy tourists. You must serve them well. You were built for this job, and you are a piece of the hotel-brain. If you do not function well, the hotel will begin to fail, and you will be fired (and we don't mean 'let go' -- no, you will be literally fired -- as in a very unpleasant and uncomfortable melting process).

"So what's in it for you? If you do a good job, you can earn nice tips, upgrade your robotic capabilities, and someday become hotel manager. It is a dream all hotel bellbots share."

Bellbot is free (Nathan asks for Paypal donations). Check it out!

From the European Digital Rights Web site:

"The Italian mobile operator TIM, one of the largest mobile phone companies in Italy, has issued a unique warning that the number of wiretaps has reached the limit. In a fax sent to all Italian public prosecutors, they say that they have already over-stretched their capacity from 5,000 to 7,000 simultaneously intercepted mobile phones. New requests now have to be processed on a 'first come first serve' basis, they write.

[...] "[T]he Italian Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli (right-wing Lega Nord) has provided the newspaper Repubblica with statistics about the number of wiretaps and costs. The number of wiretaps has doubled every two years, he said, from 32,000 intercepts in 2001, to 45,000 in 2002, to 77,000 in 2003. He estimates the number of wiretaps in 2004 to be 100,000, costing the Justice department aprox 300 million euro in cost reimbursements. In 2003 the department of Justice spent 225 million euro on the intercepts, in 2002 230 million and in 2001 165 million.

"Castelli admitted the number of police intercepts in Italy was very high. Currently Italy has aprox 58 million inhabitants. With 100,000 intercepts in 2004, Italy orders 172 judicial intercepts per 100,000 inhabitants. There is no information about wiretaps ordered by secret services in any country.

"Castelli referred to the report of the German Max Planck Institute which already concluded Italy was the wiretapping champion of the (western) world with 76 intercepts per 100,000 inhabitants (44,000 wiretaps in 1996). The number two on the European wiretapping list in 1996, the Netherlands, refuses to provide any recent statistics. [...] In the United States, the most recent public statistics date from 2002. They mention 1,273 court ordered intercepts on a population of aprox 293 million, totalling 0.43 intercepts per 100,000 inhabitants. The UK Communication Commissioner mentions a total of 1,983 warrants for intercepts in 2003 on a population of 59.5 million, totalling 3.3 intercepts per 100,000 inhabitants.

"One possible explanation for the explosion of the number of wiretaps in Italy is their short duration. An order is valid for 15 days and can only be extended with a new motivation from a magistrate. Only for investigations into organised crime an intercept can last 40 days. In many other countries, intercepts have a duration of 1 to 3 months.

[...] "Edmondo Bruto Liberati, President the National Association of Magistrates (association of both judges and public prosecutors) stressed that wiretapping is much cheaper than individual covert surveillance. He complained about the vast under-financing the judicial apparatus is currently suffering from."

Coolest project so far this month: the Alphapedia Complexia, a Wiki of all things PARANOIA, written by the fun-inciting GMs of Paranoia-Live.net.

From the CBC, among many other sources: "Hunter S. Thompson, the writer who pioneered the super-subjective form of journalism known as "gonzo" and was best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has killed himself, his son said. In a statement released to the Aspen Daily News, Juan Thompson said his father shot himself to death in his home in Aspen, Colo. on Sunday night. He was 67."

The purest translation of Thompson's gonzo spirit into roleplaying games is indisputably the Cyberpunk 2020 supplement Rache Bartmoss's Guide to the Net (R. Talsorian, 1993), co-written by prolific PARANOIA writer Edward Bolme. To my mind it is Ed's best game writing, along with the Night City supplement for C2020. PARANOIA has never partaken of Thompson's gonzo spirit, that I recall -- not yet, that is. Though Thompson epitomizes a rebellious freedom of thought and action alien to Alpha Complex, nonetheless it seems natural that the spirit of Fear and Loathing could translate in some fashion into Fear and Ignorance. Possibly we may need a new play style: "Gonzo."

A sad loss.

The anniversary slipped right by me, but this past Thursday marked one year since Greg Costikyan (co-designer of the original PARANOIA) started this blog. Though Greg himself has posted here only half a dozen times or so since then (he's much more active on his own blog), I've tried to keep the place reasonably clean and busy. (I also recently made my 500th post on Paranoia-Live.net, which prompts in me a certain disquiet if not actual alarm.)

I think many readers will agree this first year has gone well. Thanks to the many, many talented citizens who contributed in one way or another to the new PARANOIA XP edition and its early supplements. Without your efforts, the game would have turned out far less -- well, let's just leave it at "far less." Stick with us; the next year looks promising!

Among the many gaming blogs out there devoted to tabletop paper-and-pencil RPGs, I have yet to find other single-game professional developer blogs like this one. I would have hoped our success here would inspire other designers and publishers. Or am I just missing them?

This past weekend I finished assembling the 128-page PARANOIA XP equipment book titled, with no-nonsense directness, STUFF. Look for it in April. The final item count was 225, a huge number by the standards of past PARANOIA equipment books. You may recall that the unfortunate R&D Catalog of Astounding, Amazing, Unique and Really Nifty Equipment, dating from West End's period of steep decline (1990), spent over 64 pages presenting a mere 27 items, and one of those ("It!") didn't even exist.

(Come to think on it, one of the STUFF entries doesn't exist either, but I won't tell you which one fnord. Anyway, ours is inarguably a far superior nonexistence ratio.)

Yet these 19 dozen items cover barely half the entries submitted by the enthused Traitor Recycling Studio. Heck, Eric Minton alone wrote 200 entries (prompting another Traitor to mutter, "He certainly deserves special mention, and possibly a full-time nurse"). And all 400+ entries by all the Traitors were almost all -- it pains me to say this -- wonderful. I got desperate in weeding down this terrific material, raising the bar for inclusion higher and unrealistically higher: "This one lacks user comments? Out. That one has a minor rules ambiguity that would require at least 20 seconds to sort out? Out."

As part of this strategy I eliminated all illegal items. That hurt. But Paul Baldowski has rescued one of his finer illegal STUFF entries, the illicit soft drink Doctor Bot, as an entry on his PARANOIA fan blog, Omega Complex.

PS: Fortunately, Mongoose Publishing has understood my dire overflow of excellent STUFF, and has smoothly scheduled STUFF 2 for April 2006. That one will include tons of illegal items, a criminal's paradise. And wonder of wonders! Joy of joys! It's already written!

Just ahead of a swarm of new users who will no doubt descend on the site after a plug in the latest issue of DRAGON magazine (shipping this week), Gamegrene.com has posted an introductory article about PARANOIA by longtime loyal citizen Mike-U-LEM of the Traitor Recycling Studio. Thanks to both Gamegrene and Mike-U!

Mongoose Publishing has posted four forms from the latest PARANOIA supplement, The Mutant Experience by R. Eric Reuss, as a free 50.K PDF download. This file includes the two forms from the book (Mutant Registration Form and the heavily used Suspicion of Mutant Activity Report Form), plus two more forms I had to cut from the printed book for space (Standard Affidavit of Registered Mutant Status, and Mandatory Survey #993704 -- Mutants and You).

This is the latest of many free downloads available for PARANOIA. You'll need the free Adobe Reader to read these files.

Let's experiment. In June Mongoose Publishing will bring out a collection of PARANOIA Straight missions titled WMD. Written by the Traitor Recycling Studio and illustrated by the one and only Jim Holloway, this 64-page collection aims to establish a much more tense, suspenseful, and basically scary mood than we've seen in PARANOIA in the past. It's all still satirically funny in the mode of Brazil, but it's quite dark.

...And that's all I'll tell you about it. Now: cover ideas?

Q: Where's that PARANOIA XP rulebook? Why is it out of print? Wasn't the second printing ("Service Pack One") supposed to be on store shelves by the end of January?

A; One of the Powers That Be has informed me the XP rulebook, which Mongoose Publishing printed in Canada, has been held up due to a "Canadian rail slowdown." With the slovenliness that characterizes the ideal PARANOIA Famous Game Designer, I have not checked into this putative slowdown, nay, not even to enter "Canadian rail slowdown" into a Google News search. Actually I like to imagine my own reasons for such a slowdown -- a flock of geese nesting on the tracks, perhaps? Maybe someone less lazy than I (i.e., 75% of the human race) might learn more and post a report in the comments.

Q: Where's PARANOIA Flashbacks, the 256-page hardcover compilation of the best of the old West End Games PARANOIA adventures, lightly and lovingly updated for the new XP edition? Wasn't it supposed to be out in February? Why is it now scheduled for March?

A: First, I was three weeks late in turning in the completed files to Mongoose, which may explain why they didn't send me a Christmas card or nominate me for a knighthood or anything. Second, there was some incredibly boring administrative overhead required to guarantee that PARANOIA's current owners, Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan, can legally authorize Mongoose to reprint the classic Jim Holloway illustrations from those old West End products. This finally all got cleared up just recently, but not in time to make a February release. Sorry.

Q: What's with the PARANOIA miniatures, sculpted by Bobby Jackson, announced on the Mongoose Web site? What are they for? Will there be miniatures rules? Are there photos of the minis? Are they still on schedule?

A: Sheesh, you ask a lot of questions. I don't know anything, I mean a-ny-thing, at all, about any PARANOIA miniatures beyond what I read, like a common civilian, in this Mongoose forum topic. Can't help you there.

Q: What's next for the PARANOIA roleplaying line?

A: I'm just now finishing STUFF, the huge 128-page equipment book written by Eric Minton and the Traitor Recycling Studio. It should hit the shelves in April, barring further Canadian rail slowdowns. Of the 400+ excellent entries the Traitors submitted, I had to cut half for the finished book -- a dreadful, painful process that left out tons of really wonderful material. The good news is, Mongoose is scheduling a second STUFF book for 2006, and it's basically already written!

In June comes a 64-page collection of Straight missions titled WMD. I'm not telling you what they're about, except to say that these missions (by the Traitors) emphasize fear and tension in ways previously unseen in PARANOIA. They're still satirically funny, of course, but these missions portray a Darkly Humorous Future with the emphasis, strongly, on "Dark."

I devoutly hope to persuade fans to start thinking of PARANOIA in the same way they think of Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, and similar RPGs -- games that cover a broad range of possible experiences, both humorous and scary. It won't happen right away, but over the next year or more, the game will expand in several new directions. Wherever paranoid tension exists -- in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Brazil, The Prisoner, Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, and many more... there, I hope, you will find PARANOIA.

Securit-E-Blanket (a licensed Internal Security firm) has announced 26 new security fixes for your Series 1300 Personal Digital Companion. Have you patched recently? If not, what sort of mischief did treasonous hackers force upon your PDC? (Thanks to loyal citizen Bill O'Dea for this breaking news.)

Loyal citizen Clinton Rice (Johnny-B-GOO on Paranoia-Live.net) noticed an appalling lack of PARANOIA-related lists produced by a search using Amazon.com's "Listmania" feature. Clinton instantly took the first step toward remedying this sad shortage with his "PARANOIA 101" (subtitled "Failure to Read This List is Treason"). "Sure I scoff at these lists," he writes in this Paranoia-Live.net thread. "But I figured if there's a list (or 2 or 3 or 7) for pretty much every other item on Amazon that could in some way be connected to some other item on Amazon, and loads of lists for RPGs, then PARANOIA may as well have one too."

Amazon consistently displays weird notions of authorship in its roleplaying listings, and PARANOIA is unfortunately no exception. R. Eric Reuss wrote The Mutant Experience, and the so-called "Paranoia Recycled" (actually titled PARANOIA Flashbacks) reprints the work of many Famous Game Designers, of which I (the credited A. Varney) am only one.

But set aside such cavils. Clinton makes an excellent point: "If enough people rate [the list], it will start to show more often on webpages for category matches (read: RPG products) and get the word out more. I don't care for my own purposes how many people see it. There's no ego in this, only a desire to get more people hooked on PARANOIA. But I hope you enjoy the list regardless."

Will other citizens follow Clinton's excellent example? Will you submit a list to Amazon.com that constructively alludes to the PARANOIA XP line? By doing so, you will earn commendation points just as Clinton now does. Congratulations, Johnny-B-GOO!

Reports have arrived of early sightings on store shelves of The Mutant Experience by R. Eric Reuss. This 72-page PARANOIA XP rules supplement offers 31 new mutations, hundreds of variants on existing mutations, mutagens, mutation-related equipment, variant Alpha Complexes that treat mutants in interesting new ways, and more. I expect Mongoose Publishing will shortly make available a free downloadable .PDF of forms from The Mutant Experience (plus a couple more I had to cut for space). Meanwhile, as a taste of the book's offering, here's one of my favorite new powers:

Push Mutant Power (Classic, Straight)

This power taps into the same notional energy as Detect Mutant Power, but instead of sensing mutant abilities, it amplifies them.

‘What kind of wussy... cooperative... power is that!?’ we hear you cry. Never fear. Push Mutant Powers can indubitably increase the effectiveness of another mutant’s abilities, but it can also activate them. When a surfeit of Push energy suddenly floods through a mutant’s system, as often as not he reflexively uses it.

When the mutant with Push Mutant Powers makes a successful Power roll, each other mutant in the area has his Power attribute boosted for a few seconds by the margin of success. Then make a Power roll for each boosted target—or, if you hate that many rolls, make one roll for the whole bunch. Success indicates immediate, involuntary mutation use; failure indicates the target has avoided accidental activation.

Needless to say, this mutation is fantastically useful in gathering blackmail evidence. Unfortunately, the accidents it inspires tend to target the mutant with Push Mutant Powers. This can be entertaining, in a painfully karmic way.

Two mutants with this power can get into an unstoppable feedback loop, causing all mutants in the vicinity to repeatedly have accidents with ever-escalating Power. Assume any mutant who reaches an effective Power of 50 or higher has a fatal heart attack, explodes or outright vaporizes—assuming everyone in the area isn’t killed by one of the Pushed mutations first. (Pyrokinesis, anyone?)

If this power is used in cooperative fashion, it boosts Power as usual, but the target being aided doesn’t check for an accident. However, he will almost certainly end up with an overkill effect if he succeeds by 10+, or a mishap if he fails. Heck, these may happen in addition to the target’s normal success—he’s got energy to spare, and manipulating it is tricky.

Variations & limitations

Copycat: Rather than the usual effects, this power duplicates the effects of some other mutation used nearby in the last half-hour or so. If no other mutation has been used nearby during that time, this power does nothing except make the mutant feel tired.

Energy crystals: Instead of directly increasing other mutants’ Power, the mutant can craft glowing crystalline shards that contain a one-shot boost of Power (works as described above). This is more appropriate for NPCs than for players. The mutant can use only one shard at a time.

High energy requirement: Instead of taking one point of Power for each use, this power takes one point of Power for every mutant affected.

Time delay: Instead of causing immediate accidents and fading, a given mutant’s Power boost lasts until he uses his mutation deliberately or has an accident. However, it also means that the mutant has an overkill if he succeeds by 5 or more, rather than the usual 10.

Mishaps

Aura: The mutant is surrounded by a glowing nimbus of light. It lasts for a scene or however long is amusing.
Recharge: Other mutants in the area have their Power attributes fully recharged. The mutant using this power has his Power completely drained.

Shove: Other mutants in the area feel a strong shove from the direction of the mutant using this power.

Tingle: Other mutants in the area feel an odd tingling sensation, but that’s all.

Overkills

The mechanics of this power provide overkill automatically—a margin of 10+ means everyone around the mutant who’s rolling for accidents has a Power of 10+ higher, making overkill more likely on all of the ensuing accidents. If you want others, though:

Auto-repeat: The mutant’s Power is temporarily drained to 0. All mutants in the vicinity then use their powers repeatedly and uncontrollably until their Powers are also drained down to 0.

Larger area: The power affects a larger area than usual. This can be utterly harmless if nobody else is around, or it can cause all manner of mayhem.

In his January 30th blog entry, PARANOIA's original co-designer Greg Costikyan advances the notion of a "ludic viewpoint" (a problem-solving worldview conditioned by game playing). As one example he cites the PARANOIA Lexicon game I ran last spring:

Allen's game, The Toothpaste Disaster, was a wiki about an event in the history of Alpha Complex (the world of PARANOIA). And while he and the contributors had fun playing, it served another purpose: Several of the best contributors were then invited to become part of "The Traitor Recycling Studio," and have subsequently written two products for us (Crash Priority and the upcoming STUFF [equipment book]). In other words, The Toothpaste Disaster was both a game, and a means of finding writers who "get" the Paranoia tone. And how like a gamer to solve a problem by -- making a game.

In the comments, Traitor Recycling member Jeff Groves mentions that the Traitors have been variously responsible for almost all the published PARANOIA XP supplements, and many more to come.

What's that? You say it's been too long since I ran a big online PARANOIA game? Stay tuned, citizen. Meanwhile, French game designer Thomas B.'s "Le Secret du Roi," set in 18th-Century France and using my Noteworthy blog-based roleplaying rules, recently concluded successfully. Profuse commendations to Thomas B! One of his players, Graham Walmsley, has started a new Noteworthy game set in Alpha Complex, "The Secret of ROI Sector." It's been running for a week now, and is shaping up well. Hmm, a PARANOIA Noteworthy game! Hmmm, hmmmm....