PARANOIA

I am putting together Extreme PARANOIA, the big 128-page rules supplement for PARANOIA due this August. Extreme PARANOIA gives rules for playing characters of all security clearances from ORANGE through VIOLET. Among many features of life at all clearance levels, I'd like to include a small text box at each clearance giving typical occupations and duties one might encounter at that clearance. As I explain in this Paranoia-Live.net post, I'd like your help coming up with typical duties.

For example, the PARANOIA rulebook includes this list in Chapter 4, "Spending your credits" (I have moved some entries that reflect changed thinking):

• Typical RED citizens: Troubleshooters, senior clerks, low-level technicians, Armed Forces grunts.


• ORANGE: Technical supervisors, assistant managers, mundane programmers, vidshow actors, Armed Forces corporals.


• YELLOW: Mid-level bureaucrats, vidshow hosts, Armed Forces sergeants, PLC artisans crafting handmade trinkets for High Programmers.


• GREEN: Senior supervisors, managing directors, elite artisans, junior R&D lab technicians, vidshow producers, Armed Forces lieutenants, IntSec goons.


• BLUE: Junior execs on the rise, R&D project researchers, Armed Forces captains and majors, IntSec officers, Central Processing managing directors.


• INDIGO: Senior execs, R&D project leads, Armed Forces colonels, IntSec deputy supervisors, Central Processing chief director, HPD&MC vidshow studio chiefs.


• VIOLET: CEOs, generals, IntSec chief supervisor, Free Enterprise society capos, Machine Empaths.

I'd like to expand this list to encompass a lot of neat or funny occupations. I need your help! Please post your duty ideas in the comments, with the clearance you think appropriate. If I use your ideas in Extreme PARANOIA, Mongoose Publishing won't pay you anything or send you a free copy of anything, but if you include your real name, I'll try to credit you in the book. Thanks!

This August Extreme PARANOIA, the major must-have 128-page rules supplement for PARANOIA, offers rules for playing characters of all security clearances from ORANGE through VIOLET. In it I'd like to offer a section about Access, the character attribute that governs your insider connections in Alpha Complex.

As the rulebook makes clear, Access isn't security clearance. A high clearance lets you march to the front of the PLC warehouse supply queue, but you'd still need to fill out the proper forms once you're there; Access tells you which forms you need and possibly even a likely amount to offer as a bribe for "expedited processing." That said, people with higher security clearances usually do find it easier to learn the ropes (i.e., raise their Access ratings).

In the Extreme PARANOIA section about Access, I'd like to offer a table of tasks and perks grouped by Access rating. The tasks listed at a given rating are generally within the reach of any citizen with that rating. I'm looking for suggestions. Here are a few examples, though I'd like to have different tasks for each rating from 1 through 20.

Access 1: You can find out where you're supposed to eat and sleep.

5: You can easily get a broken showerhead repaired.

10: You know who really runs your service firm, their addresses, their hobbies, and the names of their allies and enemies.

15: You know the secret societies and degrees of several powerful citizens in your sector -- even if they aren't in your own society.

20: You could get this hour's passwords for entry into your sector's central CompNode.

I'd like a whole bunch more of these. If you suggest a task and I use it in Extreme PARANOIA, Mongoose Publishing won't pay you anything or send you a free copy of anything, but I'll credit you in the rulebook if you include your real name.

On Omega Complex, a thoughtful post by Paul Baldowski (AKA Costin-U-MOR, member in good standing of the Traitor Recycling Studio) about adapting Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World (discussed previously on this blog in the post Exile in Alpha Complex?) to the PARANOIA setting. Granted, Alpha Complex is already heavily influenced by Huxley's 1932 dystopia (see Somaweb.org for the original text and many good essays). But Paul has interesting thoughts on altering the basic Alpha Complex assumptions to a more realistic Straight-style Huxleyan vision. I'm not sure how well this would play, but I hope someone tries it.

By the way, late 2006 should bring a PARANOIA supplement titled Brave New Complex. The book will offer alternate versions of Alpha Complex -- one where the secret society First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer has openly taken over and worships The Computer as a god, another where The Computer has bred humanity into various "gene pools," one where technologically advanced androids are indistinguishable from humans, and many more.

A section of Brave New Complex will include historical and fantastic Complexes. Don't know exactly what that section will include yet, but I hope there will be a fantasy version, a couple of space-opera satires (where you're basically playing Imperial Stormtroopers or red-shirt ensigns), and I hope to see one set in the Chinese Celestial Bureacracy. Paul has proposed a version of PARANOIA set during the historical Avignon Papacy. Your guess is as good as mine, folks....

The "PARANOIA in the real world" meme spreads to RPG.net, where Oddsod Blok'd links to an Associated press news story about Scooba, a forthcoming real-life scrubot from iRobot, the folks that made the Roomba robotic vacuum. (The Scooba site itself is currently Slashdotted.)

In the same RPG.net post, Oddsod also relates a depressing story about getting change at the laundromat, then creatively translates it for PARANOIA GMs seeking yet more frustration to inflict on Troubleshooters awaiting service at PLC.

We need some kind of permanent "PARANOIA in the Real World" forum and repository. The meme is all too useful. Maybe Paranoia-Live.net...?

Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, mastermind of Paranoia-Live.net, is working up an Internal Security graphic for the forthcoming PARANOIA XP supplement Extreme PARANOIA. He asked if IntSec has a motto, like "Serve and Protect." I can't recall whether the PARANOIA line has ever established an official IntSec motto. Anyone?

As long as I'm asking, I'll mention that Service, Service!, a 128-page supplement due in October, will cover all the service groups -- their functions, mandates, facilities, personnel, typical service services, and new service firms. We could use new slogans for all eight service groups: Armed Forces, CPU, HPD&MC, IntSec, Power, PLC, R&D, and Tech. Suggestions?

Famous Game Designer Aaron Allston, contributor to the PARANOIA XP rulebook, is the subject of a lengthy and justly laudatory profile from the May 19th print edition of the Austin American-Statesman (Austin, Texas). This profile concentrates on Aaron's work as a bestselling Star Wars novelist -- for some reason Star Wars news is hot right now, no idea why.

The Statesman article also mentions Aaron's current project, writing-producing-directing a low-budget horror movie called Deadbacks. This weekend I myself, along with a score of Aaron's other friends, will play an undead extra in the film. The shoot begins at 8 AM Saturday, which for me means playing a zombie will be no challenge at all...

In this Paranoia-Live.net thread, loyal citizens Tombking and Allon alert us to the Communist menace posed by Mario and the Smurfs. What other threats might be out there, masquerading as innocent children's entertainment? Remember, traitors are everywhere!

This Mongoose Publishing forum announcement heralds the imminent arrival on game store shelves of STUFF, the 128-page equipment book for PARANOIA XP written by Eric Minton and the Traitor Recycling Studio. With 225 items in 14 categories, STUFF represents by far the largest trove of equipment ever made available in Alpha Complex. Some of it is even safe and effective! Well, sort of.

Entries in this STUFF book are drawn from the leading Alpha Complex auction site, C-Bay. These entries are for all citizens (INFRARED Clearance and up), and a kindly anonymous Computer Phreak has hacked them to show buyers' higher-clearance comments -- sometimes negative, usually revelatory. Each entry also includes a GM-only text box (Clearance ULTRAVIOLET) that explains what really happens to players who use this gimcrack in the game, so you players, don't you go reading that GM-only info! That would be wrong!

Here's a brief but typical STUFF entry by R. Eric Reuss, designer of The Mutant Experience:

BotKiller Ammo

Category: Ordnance / Ammunition / Slugthrower

Qty Available: 2,000

Offered By: Creative Annihilation AF

Current bid: 150cr

Item location: CA munitions depot #005-97322P7

Delivery: Courier, Jackobot Delivery, Vulture Express

Paymt accepted: ME Card, Payment++

Are you having trouble taking out those frankenstein warbots? Are you so harried by scrubots you're willing to pay the fine for blowing them away? Look no further! Creative Annihilation's BotKiller ammunition turns an ordinary slugthrower into a bot's worst nightmare. [Disclaimer: Creative Annihilation does not claim bots have nightmares. Please use BotKiller Ammunition responsibly.]

Comment on this item:

Anyone using this ammo is a sick, twisted freak. --botspotter_0492C

This ammunition is a hoax. The force of impact would undoubtedly demagnetize the shells to the point of merely ordinary efficacy. -- RnD4FR

Sez you, bulbhead. I've taken out three bots this week! Creative Annihilation knows its stuff. --DieBotDie


Customers who bought BotKiller Ammo also bought:

2-meter Ceramic Prybar, MagnetoShield PDC Carrying Case

GM ONLY! YELLOW. 200cr per six-shot clip. These highly magnetized dum-dum slugs work normally against most targets (W3K impact) but are especially damaging to bots and other electronic devices (I2J impact). In addition, damaged devices may malfunction in whatever way is most inconvenient, entertaining or just plain lethal. Until empty of magnetic ammo, the ammunition clip adheres with nigh-unbreakable force to nearby metal items, including any slugthrower into which it's loaded.

*****

Actually, I don't remember just now whether this entry made it into the published STUFF book. For this project the Traitors went sort of, well, nuts, creating twice as many great gadgets as I could fit. The rest will appear in next spring's STUFF 2, which features lots of illegal equipment from the Alpha Complex Gray Subnets.

I have to confront this sooner or later, so I'll get it over with.

Longtime PARANOIA fans may find a shock in the new PARANOIA Flashbacks, the 256-page hardcover reissue of the best of the 1980s West End scenarios for first and second edition. These gamers will note immediately that some high-handed vandal excised from the main text almost all the scores of punning character names: Sue-R-RAT, Roger-O-VER, Tammy-Y-NET, Schwartzenne-G-GER, and all the rest up the spectrum to Nevo-U-MYN. The vandal -- that would be me -- quarantined all the puns in a historical appendix.

"Argh!" say these old fans and true. "Vile pun names are an integral part of PARANOIA! They make Alpha Complex what it is! How could you?"

Puns are the only aspect of PARANOIA, I think, where I'm clearly out of step with the majority of the fans. Most of them love the puns. Yet, save for a few Zap-style player characters in Crash Priority, I have forbidden puns throughout the line. And barring direct orders from PARANOIA's owners or publisher, I'm absolutely not gonna budge.

It's all about broadening the range of experiences players associate with the game. PARANOIA can inspire fear and suspense as well as comedic mayhem. But if every character the players meet has a name like Grade-B-DUD, to say nothing of Loxanne-B-GLZ, everyone moves promptly into Zap play style whether the GM wants it or not.

The Famous Game Designers in the Traitor Recycling Studio, who wrote Crash Priority, the forthcoming STUFF equipment book, and in fact the entire upcoming PARANOIA line, hold varying opinions about puns. A few support my edict; most politely tolerate it. A couple of unreconstructed second-edition fans blandly insert pun names anyway and hope, presumably, that I'll drop dead of a heart attack before removing them. Dan Curtis Johnson ("Mister Bubbles" in the PARANOIA XP rulebook, "Stealth Train" in Crash Priority) tries to slip ever more subtle puns under my radar. I've let some of these through. Subtlety is fine; the point is to avoid losing credibility with a blatant groanmaker.

But pun fans, just hang tough. At some point I'll move on from packaging the PARANOIA line and find respectable work. No doubt my successor, whoever he or she may be, will promptly reinstate the puns. That's okay; the nature of Alpha Complex is historical revisionism. I just hope someone draws the line at Schwartzenne-G-GER...

This August the big 128-page PARANOIA rules supplement Extreme PARANOIA offers rules for creating and playing characters at all security clearances from ORANGE through VIOLET. Extreme also offers new non-Troubleshooter professions, some intended for one-shot change-of-pace games (YELLOW assistant retail managers, anyone?), others suitable for entire series of missions.

The GREEN section of Extreme PARANOIA features rules for playing GREEN goons, the delightfully corrupt and engagingly thuggish musclemen of Alpha Complex Internal Security. This section will adapt the roleplaying material from Ken Rolston's multipurpose West End Games supplement/adventure/miniatures treatise/thing HIL Sector Blues (1987).

I expect we can do a global search-and-replace to change Ken's BLUE IntSec officers to GREEN goons without notably marring the original. Some details make me scratch my head, though, such as the name itself. For you youngsters in the audience, the name HIL Sector Blues puns on a NBC crime drama popular at the time, "Hill Street Blues" (1981-87). Now, with the series long since passed into syndication and the player characters playing GREENs instead of BLUEs, I wonder whether anyone cares if we change the setting from HIL Sector to -- I dunno -- someplace non-punning, probably. Then again, it doesn't hurt to pay respect to our antecedents and keep HIL Sector, for nostalgia if nothing else. I have no strong opinion either way, so I'll ask here: Anyone have a preference?

Mongoose Publishing has posted an image of its forthcoming set of six bot miniatures for PARANOIA, a worthy accompaniment to this month's Troubleshooter miniatures. Click the thumbnails to bring up larger images.

'Inside you will find a combot, docbot, jackobot, scrubot, warbot and a petbot (don't ask).'

It's sooo chancy, linking to a Geocities site with bandwidth measured in kilobytes. But the ever-active Bill O'Dea (proprietor of FriendComputer.net and contributor to the forthcoming PARANOIA mission collection WMD) has posted a new page for the Alpha Complex service firm They Surrender R&D. So it is my civic duty to point all prospective Troubleshooters to the They Surrender online catalogue.

And if the Geocities pages haven't blown up by the time you get there, maybe you could copy the pages and post a mirror link in the comments?

This August, the big 128-page rules supplement Extreme PARANOIA will offer new rules for playing PARANOIA characters of all security clearances from ORANGE through VIOLET -- not just Troubleshooters, but also other interestingly perilous professions.

For ORANGE, industrious Eric Minton of the Traitor Recycling Studio is developing rules for playing Alpha Complex vidstars. You're a Star, or a Co-Star, or (perish forbid) a Supporting Player, maneuvering through weekly episodes of a series to score maximum Popularity at the expense of your fellow actors. Intrigue, temporary alliances, social snubs, backbiting, and the endless quest for ratings -- it's Hollywood distilled to its purest paranoid form, though I doubt much distillation was required.

Anyway, we're looking for suitably Alpha-Complex series premises, cast member descriptions, and episode summaries -- including ratings-grabbing stunts like deaths, twists, cast shuffles, "A Very Special Episode," et al. If we use your suggestions, Mongoose Publishing won't pay you anything or give you a free copy of anything, but if you include your real name I'll credit you in the ORANGE section of Extreme PARANOIA. If I remember.