[OT] Anyone who plays Paranoia (especially Piratecat) please respond!

[kkoie]

I recommend taking Piratecat up on his offer. I ran his adventure adventures in clonesitting and it was a blast. I even made custom images and badges for it, which can be found in the art and minatures messageboard.

K Koie

 

[Oracular Vision]

Hey Paranoia WAS the original D20 game....hell, we could WRITE the damn rules in D20 in like 3 minutes.

Yeah, that's how I feel too. I was trying to get that across. Wish one of the Publishers that frequent these boards would get in touch with him and get it back in print.

He said the next version would be called something like "Paranoia ME" or "XP". funny....

 

[GravyFingerz]

There's nothing left for me to say!

Excellent advice. In Paranoia you really need to think on your feet, to take what the players say and twist it. The first time someone says "Jesus Christ" or "Oh God!" kill their character for possessing treasonous knowledge unless they can wriggle their way out of it ("Err, GOD sector, friend Computer!"). Lordy, I love this game.

The various adventures I wrote have some decent tips in them. You want a copy? Email me at kevin@kulp.org, and make sure you have enough space in your in-box (they're pdfs; figure 1 mb per adventure, including PCs.)

I'll definetly have to take you upon your offer

All the advice given so far is excellent, and there is so much of it, it will give me something to go over again and again Thank you guys, you've been very helpful

 

[Nathanael]

I am an old hand at this...

These are a few of the things I've done...

1. Let them find a mislabled grenade that turned out to be a tacnuke. Then handed out so many posthumous treason points for the massive destruction of a whole sector that their next two clones were excecuted as soon as they reported for duty.

2. Gave one player the job of hygiene officer and a R&D high pressure (and I mean HIGH) sprayer for cleaning up dirty clones. The sprayer was also mistakingly filled with Sulphuric Acid. After a good 'cleaning,' the other players clone replacements were up for some extreme retribution. Oh, and the Hygiene officer was excecuted at debriefing for treasonous possession of a high level chemical substance. Smoking boots all around...

3. Placed the whole party in a dark sewer, had the bad guy turn out the lights so he could escape, and let nature take its course.

Hack-R: 'I hear the traitor in that direction!'

Everybody: ZAP ZAP ZAP Ka-friggin-BOOM!

Lights come on, revealing the burnt, laser riddled body of the late Fred-R. Fred R's clone arrives by S.C.U.D

Fred-r: 'Hey, that was my clone, you morons!!!'

Hack-R: 'Sorry, but you must have got in the way. Hey! You were trying to help that traitor to escape!'

Everyone: ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!

DM as the Computer: You just killed a loyal citizen for a treasonous act commited by his predecessor for which he carries no responsibility. You are all guilty of conspiricy to commit clone-icide. Obviously the sewer underneath this sector is too infested with traitors to handle individually so I'll just have to give it a really good cleaning.

A Large Flush is heard...

 

[slaughterj]

To be honest, it's the players that make Paranoia what it is. As a GM, the best thing you can do is explain the following things to everyone:

1. Lying, backstabbing, and being a mutant are all important and expected.

2. You get executed if you get caught doing any of the above and also by arbitrary GM fiat.

3. You get 6 lives. Make the most of them.

If you've got the right group of people, the rest should take care of itself.

This is so true, the players make it happen, they have to have the right mindset. Also, the group size is important - only having a couple of people isn't enough. Back when I ran Paranoia (which I'd say was one of the best things I've fun / funnest game ever!), my typical group I ran was 10 people! There were so many interrelated conflicts between secret societies, mutant powers, etc., that they mission quickly faded into the background (as it should). There were several times in which an event set off a chain reaction among party members where half would get killed by one another in a single round - with the survivors all pausing, glaring around, and waiting to see who was going to make the next move. Things only got better the one day I ran 24 people! Wow, what a massacre! And everybody loved it!

 

[Kibo]

The Blame Game

Make sure you give one of your characters the mutant power of Luck, and the backstabbing will really take care of itself. On our first mission for the computer, everyone died, one guy twice, except me. What really kept pissing people off was I'd pass a post-it to the Ref, and somehow my butt would get saved, and never the same way. Well a few clones later, it didn't matter that they had nothing on me, they were more than happy to provide "observations", and the computer doesn't care if information conflicts as long as everyone's is happy. Unfortunately lying makes people sad, so we were all a few more clones fewer after the mission debreifing.

The computer isn't completely unlike the worlds best, most amoral lawyer, and John Ashton's character from Attack of The Killer Tomatoes II.

Paranoia allows for metagamming at its finest.