In 1991 West End published a book named Extreme Paranoia: Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Shot, that is set in the Paranoia universe.
The novel was written by Ken Rolston, PARANOIA's original line editor at West End during the game's golden period. Ken later went on to design the Morrowind computer game and is still involved with the expansions and future games in the series. Ken has provisionally agreed to contribute new material to PARANOIA XP, time permitting.
Is the accusation that Paranoia is a private job between the creators and the GM fair? Is there any truth to it?
Yes, historically. Too many adventures were written solely to be fun to read, as opposed to fun to play.
Is Paranoia fundamentally an extremely difficult game to run?
No. PARANOIA is generally an extremely easy game to run. Players aren't allowed to demonstrate knowledge of the rules (no rules-lawyer arguments). The Gamemaster has absolute and unquestioned authority. Players generally entertain themselves by busily plotting against one another.
That said, good gamemastering does call for a sharp sense of humor and a willingness to improvise. This can alienate certain prospective Gamemasters.
Are you changing anything to address these concerns (including possibly working to clarify incorrect perceptions?
The PARANOIA supplement line will have to do this. I'm just writing (most of) the basic rulebook. I hope the Mongoose line editor will avoid the trap of PARANOIA's adventures from the latter 1980s and early 1990s, which had The Computer deliberately setting up traps to kill its Troubleshooters. This is all wrong. The Computer means well; it wants loyal Troubleshooters to survive and thrive in its service. The problem is that The Computer is totally nuts and inevitably finds treason even where none exists.
I will certainly include campaign advice along this line in the rulebook, which may help Gamemasters detect and correct errant supplements.
What do you feel is the key attraction to playing for players?
In every other RPG on the market, you're supposed to cooperate with everybody, be a team player, know the rules, and generally behave. In PARANOIA you are specifically enjoined against any of this. You aren't allowed to behave. For players this can be an exhilarating and genuinely liberating experience.
Besides updating the game to include more modern references, what changes are you making to the system?
I'm drafting my proposed rules now, and then everyone involved will render a verdict. I'm aiming to emphasize the elements that have historically contributed to people's favorite PARANOIA anecdotes, and de-emphasize the elements that didn't.
I've always wondered if there was a way to make campaign play possible, or if that was even desirable.
In my experience the setting hasn't been suited to a continuing campaign in the traditional sense. But it's certainly possible to run episodes week after week as long as the jokes stay funny; I've done that myself. If anyone has ideas for making a conventional campaign fun and interesting, I'm listening.
Given that the cold war seems to have passed us by, who is the computer's main nemesis?
I'm surprised at you, citizen! Don't you see that traitors are everywhere? The Department of Unspecified Threat Assessment has recently raised the Unfocused Anxiety Index to THREE, and I don't have to tell you what that means.
We will keep the Communists -- that is, the absurdist PARANOIA flavor of Communists established in past adventures -- but we'll also add plenty of new and subversive secret societies, new "service firms" (privatized service groups) in bitter commercial rivalry, and weirdly altered bot behavior provoked by zealous open-source bot-liberation advocates. Among many other things. Trust me -- enemies are everywhere!
Are you going to keep the preferences for pre-generated characters in the new edition?
Yes, very strongly so. I personally favor giving GMs pregenerated "six-packs" of Troubleshooters, all with ready-made reasons to kill one another.
There will be a character generation system for those times when you run out of clones and can't afford new ones. (In PARANOIA XP you'll be able to buy indefinite numbers of clones to fill out a depleted clone family.) Ideally I'd like to keep the character generation process under four minutes, plus whatever time the GM requires to explain all the reasons you want to kill the other Troubleshooters.
It's a jab at Windows XP, but when Microsoft originally announced Windows XP, they explained that XP stood for "experience." This nod to roleplaying game terminology ("experience points") warmed my heart.
In any case, PARANOIA XP may not be the final title. None of us could think of anything better. We're certainly open to better ideas.
Back in the 80's, it was OK to make fun of people and organizations. I wonder if the publisher will have to tone down the game because of the prevalence of political correctness today.
So far no one involved has raised that as a concern. PARANOIA co-designer Greg Costikyan has been inalterably opposed to such thought control for many years, as have I. I'll be writing the rulebook with the attitude that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Will the new version have a brand new system, use an existing system (D20, GURPS, ad infinitum), or use a mod of it's original system?
PARANOIA XP will use an updated and simplified version of the rules from PARANOIA's much admired second edition. The extent of the revision is still under discussion. More precisely, I have to type up a draft of my proposed rules and let everyone involved pass judgement.
In any case, the fundamental precept will remain: Players are not allowed to demonstrate knowledge of the rules. Knowledge of the rules is treason.
Is there going to be a beta testing program? Where can I sign up? And are the modules going to be updated as well? What mods to the tech trees are you going to add considering "pre-whoops!" developments like the Internet?
My, citizen, you certainly do have a lot of questions! Such inquisitiveness suggests that your creche's teacherbots have been remiss in conveying Alpha Complex etiquette.
Mongoose will reissue a collection of classic Paranoia material, updated to match the new rules, within a few months after the main rulebook appears in August 2004.
We will certainly need playtesters (as beta testers are quaintly called in the backward paper-game business). No sign-up information yet, but keep checking Greg Costikyan's Paranoia blog for updates.
As for modifications to the "tech trees" -- that information is available only to Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET. Thank you for your cooperation!
I'm an Alpha Complex Dandy
(Sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy)
Those lyrics were written by Warren Spector, my collaborator on the early Paranoia adventure Send in the Clones. Truth! Warren has since become a well-known producer of computer games, including Deus Ex, and runs the game studio Ion Storm Austin.
I know I can throw the GameCube in the closet and pull it out a few years later and introduce them to [...] Animal Crossing
The trouble is, your house will be overrun with cockroaches and nobody in the village will like you any more because you didn't write. That could traumatize your new kid.
I wrote a short article for the January 1997 issue of Collect! magazine that recounted some of the interesting history of the original King Kong filmmakers, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. Collect! (now defunct) covered non-sports trading cards, so don't be puzzled that there's a paragraph of commentary near the end about several Kong-related card sets.
Sending a few of our kind to explore a whole new world (literally) at the cost of their "premature" deaths is an extremely trivial thing in that light - if the rest of us could stomach it as individuals.
Okay, you first. I promise I'll stomach your sacrifice.
Nothing will demonstrate my Slashdot nerd credentials better than confessing that I sang Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" on the Konami disc, but substituted the lyrics to the Weird Al Yankovic version, Jerry Springer. I found it easier to look away from the picture to keep from getting distracted by the real lyrics. Scored only 8100 points, whoopdedoo, but it was more of a stunt than an actual effort.
The "Code Junkie" page supposedly linked above brings up a GameSpot blurb about Datel's "Karaoke Party," but nothing with the words "Code Junkie," nor does a quick Google search bring up anything with that term. ???
I'd really like some way to easily convert a song into Konami Karaoke Revolution format. The game aspect of KR really captures people's enthusiasm, but the pop tunes skew a little young for my aging crowd. Personally, I'd love a disc of old 1930s Tin Pan Alley or Andrews Sisters songs, and the only way I'm ever going to see that is if I can create it myself.
THATCHER Tell me honestly, my boy. Don't you think it's rather unwise to continue this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer, that's costing you a million dollars a year?
KANE You are right, Mr. Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year! You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in -- sixty years.
Last year when I was writing dialogue for the Star Wars Galaxies online roleplaying game, I named one character "Wilhalm Skrim" in honest tribute to this scream.
1. Involve a patent/IP lawyer from the outset so's you don't get ripped off.
I have a mod point left, but there's no rating for "Amateurish Bad Advice." I often hear this paranoia about IP theft from unpublished writers, but in my 19 years as a professional game designer in paper and computer games, I've never seen any IP theft of any kind. It's a combination of (a) small stakes (at least in the paper game business); (b) wide reliance on work-for-hire contracts that let a publisher buy all rights anyway, legally; (c) a tight, clubby industry in which a bad rep would get around instantly; (d) generally small publishers who can as little afford a legal battle as you or I. Etc. If you think a printer has time or bandwidth to pirate game ideas, think again.
As for "use places like WOTC, etc. as distribution channels" -- maybe you're confusing publishers (Wizards of the Coast et al) with distributors (Alliance, Diamond, et al), or maybe you're thinking of the Wizards retail stores. But in any case, this is misstated advice. A small publisher makes distribution agreements with regional distributors or, for very marginal operations, publishes in.PDF form for download from online sites such as the highly regarded RPGNow.
A prospective publisher would do well to attend one of the big gaming conventions, like Origins, Gen Con, Toy Fair, or the GAMA trade show in the US, or the Essen fair in Germany -- the world's largest game show. Ask around, get the basics. It's not hard, and the advice will be a lot better quality than you'll get on Slashdot.
You should check out machinima, the making of movies using 3D game engines. You can have actors, costumes, vehicles, sets, lighting, and special effects for free. Most of it so far has been pretty lame, but Red vs. Blue, made with the Halo engine, is hysterically funny and has become pretty successful. (Season 2 debuts at Lincoln Center soon.)
It's not "open source" exactly, but it does put a lot of tools in the hands of would-be indie filmmakers.
The most famous famine in recent history, in Ethiopia, was engineered when it was a colony of the USSR. The USSR is gone, and so is socialism in Ethiopia. The famine there is long over as well.
Wow, the number of errors in these short sentences is astounding. Ethiopia has never been colonized. It is currently suffering another terrible famine that began in 2000. This calamity has less to do with government than with drought, like the famines currently gripping Zambia and Malawi.
Ethiopia did flirt with Marxist-Leninist ideas in the 1980s under the "Workers' Party of Ethiopia," but as I understand it, it was still just the same kind of top-down authoritarian big-man system as it was under Haile Selassie, as it still is today.
There are many better explanations for any African famine than politics: bad land use, bad weather, tribal rivalries, extortionate taxation, short-sighted local planning, and devouring corruption independent of political affiliation. To attribute any African country's troubles to socialism is to miss a really large forest by concentrating on one outlying tree.
"Or how we're going to feed the billions and billions of people on this planet?"
That question is based on out of date predictions of the population - in most countries the birth rate has declined significantly since the overcrowded earth scenarios became popular.
It's not a "prediction." There are "billions and billions" of people on the planet right now -- six billion -- and there will be through the rest of the century, barring total catastrophe. And asking how we're going to feed them all is a perfectly sensible question, given that a signficant fraction of the population (including a disquietingly large number of American children) are malnourished.
I went to one of the "More News Stories" pages and then clicked a few links from there. I couldn't get through; all the links are apparently routed through "c.moreover.com," which my ad-blocking Hosts file currently has blocked.
A Google search says Moreover.com is a blog search for businesses. "Moreover launches world first real-time weblog search to offer enterprises access to high value information." Anyone know why a Hosts file would block them?
I can always unblock that line in my Hosts file, of course, but this is a silly nuisance that I don't encounter on Google News pages.
Like Ozymandias in WATCHMEN
on
News at a Glance
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a superhero, Ozymandias, in their 1985 graphic novel WATCHMEN. He had a huge wall of TV screens that showed the whole world's channels, each screen switching randomly every few seconds. Being incredibly intelligent, he could divine the state of the world through these Burroughsian blipvert glimpses, like a prophet reading entrails. This page reminded me of Ozymandias.
Slashdot Mirror
The novel was written by Ken Rolston, PARANOIA's original line editor at West End during the game's golden period. Ken later went on to design the Morrowind computer game and is still involved with the expansions and future games in the series. Ken has provisionally agreed to contribute new material to PARANOIA XP, time permitting.
Yes, historically. Too many adventures were written solely to be fun to read, as opposed to fun to play.
No. PARANOIA is generally an extremely easy game to run. Players aren't allowed to demonstrate knowledge of the rules (no rules-lawyer arguments). The Gamemaster has absolute and unquestioned authority. Players generally entertain themselves by busily plotting against one another.
That said, good gamemastering does call for a sharp sense of humor and a willingness to improvise. This can alienate certain prospective Gamemasters.
The PARANOIA supplement line will have to do this. I'm just writing (most of) the basic rulebook. I hope the Mongoose line editor will avoid the trap of PARANOIA's adventures from the latter 1980s and early 1990s, which had The Computer deliberately setting up traps to kill its Troubleshooters. This is all wrong. The Computer means well; it wants loyal Troubleshooters to survive and thrive in its service. The problem is that The Computer is totally nuts and inevitably finds treason even where none exists.
I will certainly include campaign advice along this line in the rulebook, which may help Gamemasters detect and correct errant supplements.
In every other RPG on the market, you're supposed to cooperate with everybody, be a team player, know the rules, and generally behave. In PARANOIA you are specifically enjoined against any of this. You aren't allowed to behave. For players this can be an exhilarating and genuinely liberating experience.
I'm drafting my proposed rules now, and then everyone involved will render a verdict. I'm aiming to emphasize the elements that have historically contributed to people's favorite PARANOIA anecdotes, and de-emphasize the elements that didn't.
In my experience the setting hasn't been suited to a continuing campaign in the traditional sense. But it's certainly possible to run episodes week after week as long as the jokes stay funny; I've done that myself. If anyone has ideas for making a conventional campaign fun and interesting, I'm listening.
I'm surprised at you, citizen! Don't you see that traitors are everywhere? The Department of Unspecified Threat Assessment has recently raised the Unfocused Anxiety Index to THREE, and I don't have to tell you what that means.
We will keep the Communists -- that is, the absurdist PARANOIA flavor of Communists established in past adventures -- but we'll also add plenty of new and subversive secret societies, new "service firms" (privatized service groups) in bitter commercial rivalry, and weirdly altered bot behavior provoked by zealous open-source bot-liberation advocates. Among many other things. Trust me -- enemies are everywhere!
Yes, very strongly so. I personally favor giving GMs pregenerated "six-packs" of Troubleshooters, all with ready-made reasons to kill one another.
There will be a character generation system for those times when you run out of clones and can't afford new ones. (In PARANOIA XP you'll be able to buy indefinite numbers of clones to fill out a depleted clone family.) Ideally I'd like to keep the character generation process under four minutes, plus whatever time the GM requires to explain all the reasons you want to kill the other Troubleshooters.
It's a jab at Windows XP, but when Microsoft originally announced Windows XP, they explained that XP stood for "experience." This nod to roleplaying game terminology ("experience points") warmed my heart.
In any case, PARANOIA XP may not be the final title. None of us could think of anything better. We're certainly open to better ideas.
So far no one involved has raised that as a concern. PARANOIA co-designer Greg Costikyan has been inalterably opposed to such thought control for many years, as have I. I'll be writing the rulebook with the attitude that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.
PARANOIA XP will use an updated and simplified version of the rules from PARANOIA's much admired second edition. The extent of the revision is still under discussion. More precisely, I have to type up a draft of my proposed rules and let everyone involved pass judgement.
In any case, the fundamental precept will remain: Players are not allowed to demonstrate knowledge of the rules. Knowledge of the rules is treason.
My, citizen, you certainly do have a lot of questions! Such inquisitiveness suggests that your creche's teacherbots have been remiss in conveying Alpha Complex etiquette.
Mongoose will reissue a collection of classic Paranoia material, updated to match the new rules, within a few months after the main rulebook appears in August 2004.
We will certainly need playtesters (as beta testers are quaintly called in the backward paper-game business). No sign-up information yet, but keep checking Greg Costikyan's Paranoia blog for updates.
As for modifications to the "tech trees" -- that information is available only to Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET. Thank you for your cooperation!
Those lyrics were written by Warren Spector, my collaborator on the early Paranoia adventure Send in the Clones. Truth! Warren has since become a well-known producer of computer games, including Deus Ex, and runs the game studio Ion Storm Austin.
The trouble is, your house will be overrun with cockroaches and nobody in the village will like you any more because you didn't write. That could traumatize your new kid.
I wrote a short article for the January 1997 issue of Collect! magazine that recounted some of the interesting history of the original King Kong filmmakers, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. Collect! (now defunct) covered non-sports trading cards, so don't be puzzled that there's a paragraph of commentary near the end about several Kong-related card sets.
Okay, you first. I promise I'll stomach your sacrifice.
I pointed out these similarities in an article for Amazing Stories back in 1998, and I was nowhere near the first to make the observation.
Nothing will demonstrate my Slashdot nerd credentials better than confessing that I sang Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" on the Konami disc, but substituted the lyrics to the Weird Al Yankovic version, Jerry Springer. I found it easier to look away from the picture to keep from getting distracted by the real lyrics. Scored only 8100 points, whoopdedoo, but it was more of a stunt than an actual effort.
The "Code Junkie" page supposedly linked above brings up a GameSpot blurb about Datel's "Karaoke Party," but nothing with the words "Code Junkie," nor does a quick Google search bring up anything with that term. ???
I'd really like some way to easily convert a song into Konami Karaoke Revolution format. The game aspect of KR really captures people's enthusiasm, but the pop tunes skew a little young for my aging crowd. Personally, I'd love a disc of old 1930s Tin Pan Alley or Andrews Sisters songs, and the only way I'm ever going to see that is if I can create it myself.
Last year when I was writing dialogue for the Star Wars Galaxies online roleplaying game, I named one character "Wilhalm Skrim" in honest tribute to this scream.
Gamers who enjoyed reading about these fictional robots from the penny-dreadful and dime-novel days should check out Forgotten Futures. From the site: "Forgotten Futures is Marcus Rowland's table-top role playing game based on scientific romances, the predecessors of science fiction that were published in the late 19th and early 20th century. Each collection focuses on a different theme, and include space travel through the heavily populated solar system of 1900, Ghost Hunting in Edwardian England, and adventures with Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger." Fun stuff, and great value too.
I have a mod point left, but there's no rating for "Amateurish Bad Advice." I often hear this paranoia about IP theft from unpublished writers, but in my 19 years as a professional game designer in paper and computer games, I've never seen any IP theft of any kind. It's a combination of (a) small stakes (at least in the paper game business); (b) wide reliance on work-for-hire contracts that let a publisher buy all rights anyway, legally; (c) a tight, clubby industry in which a bad rep would get around instantly; (d) generally small publishers who can as little afford a legal battle as you or I. Etc. If you think a printer has time or bandwidth to pirate game ideas, think again.
As for "use places like WOTC, etc. as distribution channels" -- maybe you're confusing publishers (Wizards of the Coast et al) with distributors (Alliance, Diamond, et al), or maybe you're thinking of the Wizards retail stores. But in any case, this is misstated advice. A small publisher makes distribution agreements with regional distributors or, for very marginal operations, publishes in .PDF form for download from online sites such as the highly regarded RPGNow.
A prospective publisher would do well to attend one of the big gaming conventions, like Origins, Gen Con, Toy Fair, or the GAMA trade show in the US, or the Essen fair in Germany -- the world's largest game show. Ask around, get the basics. It's not hard, and the advice will be a lot better quality than you'll get on Slashdot.
You should check out machinima, the making of movies using 3D game engines. You can have actors, costumes, vehicles, sets, lighting, and special effects for free. Most of it so far has been pretty lame, but Red vs. Blue, made with the Halo engine, is hysterically funny and has become pretty successful. (Season 2 debuts at Lincoln Center soon.)
It's not "open source" exactly, but it does put a lot of tools in the hands of would-be indie filmmakers.
Wow, the number of errors in these short sentences is astounding. Ethiopia has never been colonized. It is currently suffering another terrible famine that began in 2000. This calamity has less to do with government than with drought, like the famines currently gripping Zambia and Malawi.
Ethiopia did flirt with Marxist-Leninist ideas in the 1980s under the "Workers' Party of Ethiopia," but as I understand it, it was still just the same kind of top-down authoritarian big-man system as it was under Haile Selassie, as it still is today.
There are many better explanations for any African famine than politics: bad land use, bad weather, tribal rivalries, extortionate taxation, short-sighted local planning, and devouring corruption independent of political affiliation. To attribute any African country's troubles to socialism is to miss a really large forest by concentrating on one outlying tree.
It's not a "prediction." There are "billions and billions" of people on the planet right now -- six billion -- and there will be through the rest of the century, barring total catastrophe. And asking how we're going to feed them all is a perfectly sensible question, given that a signficant fraction of the population (including a disquietingly large number of American children) are malnourished.
I went to one of the "More News Stories" pages and then clicked a few links from there. I couldn't get through; all the links are apparently routed through "c.moreover.com," which my ad-blocking Hosts file currently has blocked.
A Google search says Moreover.com is a blog search for businesses. "Moreover launches world first real-time weblog search to offer enterprises access to high value information." Anyone know why a Hosts file would block them?
I can always unblock that line in my Hosts file, of course, but this is a silly nuisance that I don't encounter on Google News pages.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a superhero, Ozymandias, in their 1985 graphic novel WATCHMEN. He had a huge wall of TV screens that showed the whole world's channels, each screen switching randomly every few seconds. Being incredibly intelligent, he could divine the state of the world through these Burroughsian blipvert glimpses, like a prophet reading entrails. This page reminded me of Ozymandias.