General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
For the Paranoia-in-a-Dungeon game, I think Paranoia might have beaten D&D at its own game on that one. Don't know if medieval fantasy is ever going to take that one back. The debriefing with the computer is such a great set piece that it might give Paranoia an insurmountable lead. A game that promised that would have to convince me.
"The Computer is My Friend" is one of the great lines in all of RPGdom, but its entirely possible to run that kind of game in another system...
CoC did it in a way by virtually ensuring a high body count.
But the question is, of course, how, in a D&D campaign, do you recapture and recreate that Paranoia feeling (if possible)?
1) You need an authoritarian figure to replace the Computer.
Any powerful PC can fill that role, but an Arcanist or Divine Caster would be best since they can enforce their will from seemingly out of the blue. Properly designed, they can literally seem to be watching you at every moment.
2) That authoritarian must be off-kilter in some sense.
Again, easy. A touch of insanity or delusion is all you need.
In another thread, I proposed a campaign designed around defeating a Lich...who, as it turned out was quite demented. Essentially, it had Alzheimer's. Its orders were often contradictory, and equally often, it simply forgot what it had ordered its underlings to do.
So, take your arcanist/divine caster and give him Swiss-cheese for brains.
3) You need a closed, hierarchical society.
You've got feudalism, 'nuff said.
4) You need a bit of kookiness.
Wild magic zones work for this, as does introducing a bit of an error rate in the magic of the campaign world. Wonderous Items (closely followed by weapons) would be the largest class of magic items, as your ruler's research assistants (and those of any similarly malfunctional society) pump out bizare item after bizarre item.
5) You need opposing societies to struggle against.
Again, you've got feudalism. In a world in which the predominant top-level political organization is the city-state, you've got the very medieval model for a Paranoia-like world.
Much like in Dark Sun, where every city-state is ruled by a Dragon-king, in Paranoia & Dragons campaigns, every city-state would have a similarly demented ruler.
6) You need a reason why the world is run by crazies.
In Paranoia, it was a "Big Whoops!" that made the world's defense computers go nuts.
In P&D, perhaps it was a magical war that drove the most powerful casters insane while making magic less dependable. Heck, perhaps it is even the nature of powerful magic to affect the psyche negatively. One cannot expect to warp reality (Level 8+ spells) and remain unaltered, after all...
7) You need players who buy into the campaign design.
This may be the toughest part. Paranoia and D&D have radically different expectations about what a good game or session is like, including notions about PCs actually surviving (or not).
The best way I can see to handle this is with the old DarkSun PC trees...
OTOH, in a uniquely wacky twist, the Demented leader of the society may insist that new members of his "Task Squads" costume themselves as if they were the person they were replacing. IOW, if Brutus the fighter were to replace Boris the Mage, he'd have to wear a wig and robe and carry a staff- and possibly even be called "Boris the Mage"- by royal decree. Now, he might wear that robe over his armor, and his stick might be a sword with the word "staff" painted on it...but by god, he will be Boris the Mage 2!
9) You're Not (Color-) Cleared for That, Citizen
I think that you could easily institute a color-coded societal ranking system in a feudal system.
In addition (and as I recall, possibly done in Paranoia itself), that scale may be reversed in another city state...or even be replaced by a different ranking system entirely.
10) Commies!
I'm not sure there is a true analog you could come up with here, but Commies were essentially the "boogeymen" of the Paranoia setting.
Thus, in a sense, you could use any of the traditional "evil races" to replace them. Orcs, for example. And since Orc hordes are a common feature of fantasy games, they'd be just fine in that role...ESPECIALLY if (as in one Paranoia module) you flip the script and play from the other side.
Other races? Well, if you go for a real Paranoia feel mixed with a bit of Logan's Run, for instance, your city-state might be partially or entirely subterranean...which opens up your list of "commie" wannabes to Drow and the like.
11) Lasers!
Wands, rods, and staves could fill that role, especially if you design them like the ones from Harry Turtledove's Darkness series.
12) Secret Societies
These should be easy enough- the only real trick will be to make them setting appropriate. Instead of the anti-robot group, you'd have an anti-Warforged group, for instance.
13) The hyper-processed food
Gruel, Gruel and more Gruel. Plus Diskworld-style Dwarf bread (hard enough to build fortresses with).
Maybe I should elaborate now that there's a whole thread.
One of the ways that some old school games worked was a player vs DM game where the DM gleefully killed off character after identical character as the party attempted to get through some death trap of a dungeon using every underhanded trick in the book along the way. Not only did players go through character after cloned character (Matthias II, Matthias III, etc) until they reached high enough level to no longer serially croak, they also cajoled, coerced, or bribed dozens of faceless henchmen into wandering to their doom in the party's stead.
I think Paranoia was designed to recreate that feeling, but with a complete focus on it instead of just leaving it as an incidental way you could play if you chose. As a result, I think Paranoia has certain advantages in that style of play.
1. It provides character motivation. Why are you going into these incredibly dangerous situations? The computer told you to, and it has guns.
2. Where are all your serial PCs coming from after they die? Instead of being the twin/son/brother/nephew of the original PC, they're actual clones.
3. Why is combat to be avoided? Its intentionally designed to be erratic. That's not an emergent feature, it was coded directly into the game. Your laser just isn't a reliable weapon, and beyond that your only weapons are probably things like experimental NewCLEE-R boomerangs.
4. Why do the PCs backstab? Its not just for money, its for survival.
I could probably go on. Paranoia also went beyond this and came up with a bunch of original ideas that facilitated the game, like the debriefing- a genius bit of roleplaying that casts the PCs as henchmen having returned from utterly failing at their mission, and blaming one another.
So that's where I'd go if I were creating a Paranoia style D&D game. I'd make the characters henchmen. Probably kobolds. And then I'd give them impossible missions, with contradictory orders from multiple masters. And then they'd go out and fail (or surprise me and succeed!), and be brought back to bow before their Dark Overlord and explain what went wrong.
My view of the essential nature of Paranoia can be summed up by:
You are a Troubleshooter. Your job is to identify Commie mutant traitors and shoot them. You work with other heavily-armed Troubleshooters. You are a Commie mutant traitor. Aren't you glad you're heavily armed, too?
So, switching that over to D&D sort of fantasy setting:
You are an Inquisitor. (This could be a secular or magical enforcement group, but the Inquisition has the right feel to me.) Your job is to kill heretical monsters-- people can be heretics (members of weird cults or secret societies with condemned beliefs) or monsters (creatures like werewolves, vampires, tieflings, doppelgangers, and other monsters that can infiltrate human society-- depending on feel, you might add elves or half-orcs to the list). The conceit of the game is that every PC is both a heretic (member of a cult/conspiracy) and a monster (instead of a mutation, characters all have a monster-type-- one might be a werewolf, another a doppelganger, etc.)
When characters die, raise dead magic is used to restore them-- the institutional church (or whatever) firmly believes that the raise dead ritual/spell/whatever restores people free of heresy and without any monster corruption. This is of course false.
The PCs then get sent by a senior Inquisitor on quests (read missions) and hilarity ensues. Magic items are of course highly valued and powerful, but unreliable and dangerous.
I have to admit that I'm tempted to throw something like this together for a con game. I'm not sure what game system to use though-- I think you'd want something lighter and faster (and more lethal) than most versions of D&D. Perhaps a very low-level group could work.
Aye, Dark Overlord!, from Fantasy Flight Games, is a card and narrative game all about a debriefing.
It is indeed a key to Paranoia that every Troubleshooter is a Commie Mutant Traitor. If one were running such a scenario in (say) D&D, then one might be able to convince each player that his or her character is special in that regard.
Last edited by Ariosto; 14th June 2009 at 08:37 PM..
Having run four games of Paranoia this weekend, the subject is much on my mind. I think the sense of dark humor needs to permeate any variation of the game. Without the hilarity, it loses a lot of its joy and appeal. As one of the ads said:
"Paranoia. Sure, it's a one-joke game... but it's a really funny joke."
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I have to admit that I'm tempted to throw something like this together for a con game. I'm not sure what game system to use though-- I think you'd want something lighter and faster (and more lethal) than most versions of D&D. Perhaps a very low-level group could work.
Low-level anything would work, honestly, and would be very appropriate given that most Paranoia PCs start off as Reds or Infrareds. Yes, there were a couple of adventures in which PCs were started off as Blues, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
However, all you REALLY need to do is make sure the party is ill prepared for whatever it is they're to face. That could be done by equipping each PC with inappropriate gear- as implied before, the Wizard gets Platemail, the fighter gets a dagger, etc.- or their intelligence on the situation is so appallingly bad that they're wandering XP for the monsters.
For example, their overlord could equip them all with shiny metal armor, masterwork weapon and the like, designed to protect them from undead...but they get sent to the wrong province and wind up facing some ravenous Rust Monsters.
Or perhaps they're just fighting out of their weight class- they have possession of the Realm's Übersword of Flying Buzzsaw Doom to complete their mission, but it refuses to be wielded by any of the party out of disgust at their lack of potence. And then the Dragons return to Capistrano...Or that million-bat swarm (like the one in Austin, TX) happens to be a Dracula family reunion.
So that's where I'd go if I were creating a Paranoia style D&D game. I'd make the characters henchmen. Probably kobolds. And then I'd give them impossible missions, with contradictory orders from multiple masters. And then they'd go out and fail (or surprise me and succeed!), and be brought back to bow before their Dark Overlord and explain what went wrong.
If the players are playing henchmen, the computer's obviously the adventurers. "The PCs are my friends!"
PS
I was thinking of making the PCs henchmen of the villain.
"Your mission is to kidnap the Princess Peach. Climb the castle wall, sneak past the elven guards, and carry her away. Oh, right, last time I sent you on a mission you whined that you weren't tough enough to kill the Dragon of Doom, so I'm giving you some better armor and weapons this time. The quartermaster will issue you your platemail and your lances. Don't lose it, don't even take it off. I'll be checking on you periodically with my crystal ball and if I find you've removed so much as a gauntlet I'll boil you in oil. So, where was I. Climb the castle wall, sneak past the elven guards, and kidnap the princess. And don't take off the armor or lose the lances. How should you kidnap the princess? I dunno. Here's a bag."
Well it isn't D&D but I think that Kobolds Ate My Baby has some resemblance to Paranoia. At least the way I run it.
In terms of an overlooming authority there is King Torg (ALL HAIL KING TORG!). Even when he is not directly present the players are all required to hail him anytime his name is mentioned.
There tends to be somewhat of a PvP component with some of the PC's tasting like babies and others that might be hungry enough to eat them regardless of how they taste. I've seen instances of PC's riding one another, tricking each other into certain death and all kinds of other dirty tricks that vaguely remind me of Paranoia.
KAMB doesn't include clones per se. But the way I run the game you can rejoin as soon as your character dies (and your character will almost certainly die during the course of the adventure) minus the 3-5 minutes it takes you to roll a new one.
It's a wacky, fun game and I'd recommend trying it if you get the chance.
There tends to be somewhat of a PvP component with some of the PC's tasting like babies and others that might be hungry enough to eat them regardless of how they taste. I've seen instances of PC's riding one another, tricking each other into certain death and all kinds of other dirty tricks that vaguely remind me of Paranoia.
I've seen that in D&D campaigns...
No, I'm not kidding.
However, another dead-simple RPG that might be suitable for running this is the venerable- and sadly, long OoP- Fantasy Trip/In The Labyrinth/Melee/Wizard/etc. system that was the precursor to GURPS. Only 3 or 4 stats- it takes 5 minutes to make your first PC, and 3 or less for every subsequent one.
I was thinking of making the PCs henchmen of the villain.
"Your mission is to kidnap the Princess Peach. Climb the castle wall, sneak past the elven guards, and carry her away. Oh, right, last time I sent you on a mission you whined that you weren't tough enough to kill the Dragon of Doom, so I'm giving you some better armor and weapons this time. The quartermaster will issue you your platemail and your lances. Don't lose it, don't even take it off. I'll be checking on you periodically with my crystal ball and if I find you've removed so much as a gauntlet I'll boil you in oil. So, where was I. Climb the castle wall, sneak past the elven guards, and kidnap the princess. And don't take off the armor or lose the lances. How should you kidnap the princess? I dunno. Here's a bag."
I was thinking more along the lines of "your mission is to enter the Tomb of Horrors, set off, err, bypass all the traps, reclaim the lich's treasure, and return it here..."
PS
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I was thinking of Paranoia the Ascension. The Technocracy is your friend. The Progenitors provide citizens with backup bodies and happy pills. The New World Order keeps services and Alpha Complex life running smoothly. Rumors that R&D Technology produces paradox are treasonous. Rumors that digital adepts have hacked portions of the Iteration X Computer and bots are treasonous. Magic and Miracles and Yoga do not exist and are treasonous.
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