Paranoia - History

This episode we take a look at Paranoia; the roleplaying game that took all pre-conceived notions of what an RPG should be, and threw them out the window (probably whilst yelling "TREASON!"  Dystopia, techno horror, deceit, betrayal and well...paranoia all rolled into one wonderful package.  Oh, and did I mention it was genuinely funny to boot?

This is part one of our Paranoia episode - part two will feature a round table discussion where we put on our rose tinted glasses and talk about our favourite memories of the game.  That, or the people that I've run games for will complain what a heartless monster I am.  One of the two.

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
TWITTER: @savepodcast
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOST: Iain Wilson
FRIEND COMPUTER: Keeley Wilson
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to Roll to Save, the RPG history podcast, Paranoia.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

Welcome to today's show, and for long-time listeners, apologies about the delay in getting this one released. At the time of broadcast, we're still in the thick of our COVID-19 lockdown, but despite this, I found myself surprisingly busy. Hopefully, with this episode being released, we'll be back on schedule. For today's show, we're travelling to the far future, after a great cataclysm has wiped out most of humanity, leaving the few survivors huddled in an underground bunker Wow, I hope I'm not jinxing things with that last sentence. The game we're going to be talking about is Paranoia, one of the funniest role-playing games ever produced. Released at the height of the Cold War, it explores post-apocalyptic life in an underground utopia called Alpha Complex, run by a benevolent and well-meaning computer. Paranoia proved to the role-playing world that not only could RPGs be funny, but that you didn't need all that cooperation and teamwork to have a good time. Yes, unlike every other game out there, Paranoia actively pitied the players against each other with hilarious results. With an initial run of 13 years, unlucky for some, followed by a reboot 7 years later, Paranoia endured a rollercoaster ride but thankfully it is still alive today, although by my reckoning it's on its 6th clone by now. We're going to follow its journey from great to amazing to bad to worse to what the hell of a thinking and back to amazing again and we'll also take a peek at some of the most famous and infamous supplements released for it along the way so without further ado stay alert trust no one keep your laser handy enjoy the episode citizen happiness is mandatory

SPEAKER_02: 2:16

request to access history files processing what is your security clearance citizen

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

If George Orwell ever wrote an RPG, it would be Paranoia. Indeed, when you consider that the game's premise is a futuristic dystopia ruled over by an omnipresent all-seeing ruler where anyone could turn on you at a moment's notice, where facts that are patently true are denied in favour of the party line and where surveillance is rife, it's hard not to imagine a more Orwellian setting. It is therefore fitting that Paranoia was released in the year 1984. It has always been a very unique game and this was doubly so in the year of its release. Whereas previous years had seen a surge of fantasy and sci-fi games, 1984 saw no less than five superhero-themed games released. The likes of Golden Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes and Heroes Unlimited suggested that there was an appetite among the role-playing public to don spandex, fly through the air like a speeding bullet and fight crime with an array of dazzling powers. These games, more so even than their fantasy and sci-fi counterparts, saw the players take on the roles of larger-than-life heroes bristling with raw power and all the advantages that came with it. These characters would fight for truth, justice and all that was good and pure. They would band together in mighty superheroic teams, take on villains and generally make the world a better place to live in. There was no obstacle they couldn't overcome, no enemy they couldn't face. They were brave Anyone who knows anything about Paranoia will know this is pretty much the antithesis of anything played in that game. The brainchild of Greg Costichan, Eric Goldberg and Dan Gelber, a trio of world-famous games designers at West End Games, and conceived at the height of the Cold War, Paranoia invited players to explore Alpha Complex, an underground city existing at some vague point far in the future. Paranoia is a game Set some time after a cataclysm had wiped out most of humanity, players in Paranoia took on the role of troubleshooters, elite agents of the benevolent computer that rules over Alpha Complex. And this, my friends, is where the Paranoia begins. You see, in a bid to understand the event that devastated the world, the computer searched its incomplete and damaged memory banks and pieced together the limited and incomplete information it had access to. The cataclysm had devastated and damaged a lot of the computer's subsystems so a lot of the information it had access to was mostly in the form of Cold War era civil defence files leading the computer to the logical conclusion that all this chaos was caused by the communists and they might at this very minute be trying to infiltrate Alpha Complex and put an end to this last bastion of freedom. Concern for its citizens the computer put Alpha Complex in lockdown and it has remained that way to this very day. Not only that, but in a bid to defend its citizens from the evil commie mutant traitors who were working insidiously to collapse society, the computer instituted a system of surveillance, internal security and constant monitoring of activity for the duration of the emergency. Reasoning that happy citizens are loyal citizens, the computer took control of all means of production Yeah, those of you who are astute students of history are probably smiling at this point. That's right, in its fight against the commies, the computer has essentially created a miniature Soviet Union. Okay, so it's got a dystopian setting, but so what? There's plenty of sci-fi games around, what makes this one so special? Well, for starters, the computer's paranoia is infectious. Think about it. When your all-powerful leader is convinced that there are enemies everywhere, what are you going to do to prove that you're not one of those enemies? That's right, you're going to start rooting out the enemies. And what happens when the majority of those enemies are more imagined than real? Right again, you're going to find evidence proving that they are real and more importantly, prove that you are not one of them. And what do you think uncovering actual enemies does to an already paranoid yet all-powerful ruler? Yep, they're going to realise they were right and they're going to double down on rooting out more enemies. And what are you going to get the idea? Unlike most role-playing games that are cooperative experiences, paranoia actively pits the players against each other. The cleverest part? Each of the players is a bona fide traitor. In Alpha Complex, it is illegal to be either a member of a secret society or a mutant. Each player is both a member of a secret society and a mutant, and everyone knows this. They just need to find the evidence. What is more, Paranoia actively encourages the GM to stir the pot. The best Paranoia adventures give the players pre-written characters, characters that are pre-written with objectives that bring them into conflict with the other characters. In any given game, your character will have a mission that the group has to complete, but you'll probably be given a mission by your service group or secret society that will bring you directly into conflict with another character and probably with your team's mission objectives. For example, your team might be instructed to repair a malfunctioning robot. However, your character works for power services and the leader of power services wants to make technical services their biggest rivals look bad and the robot is technical services responsibility so maybe you could ensure that the robot malfunctions in some spectacular and public way that tech services will be blamed for meanwhile one of your teammates who works for the armed forces has been instructed to alter the robot's programming so that it only takes instructions from armed forces soldiers while your colleague from research and design has been instructed to outfit the robot with some experiments gizmo that does dear knows what. Oh, and all the while, you don't want to make it look like it was you who were the one who sabotaged the robot. In fact, it would be much better if you made someone else take the fall for this. Couple this with missions that characters are given from their secret societies that will inevitably bring them into conflict with yet more people and it's easy to see how players in Paranoia become, well, paranoid. Given that in most cases treason is punishable by summary execution and given that all troubleshooters carry large and powerful weapons, it is also easy to see just how lethal this game can be. And that's why, thank you friend computer, that every character has six clones. Identical copies of each other that can be activated in the event of a previous clone's unfortunate demise. This simple device leads to most Paranoia players having a fairly cheerful and nonchalant attitude to death. And it also ensures that players don't take it personally when one of their characters is caught doing something rather not and then subsequently terminated. There's also the small matter of information control. You see, one of the first things that the rulebook encourages the GM to do is to foster an atmosphere of fear and ignorance. The computer has enforced a system of security clearances across Alpha Complex which corresponds to the electromagnetic spectrum. At one end is infrared, represented by the colour black, and at the other end, ultraviolet, represented represented by white. In between are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Everything in Alpha Complex from people to corridors to equipment is assigned to security clearance. You must remain in areas that are equal to or lower than your security clearance. You can only use equipment of the same or lower security clearance. Most importantly for a GM, you can only access information available at your security clearance. Many paranoia players after asking the GM a question, will automatically start mouthing the phrase, I'm sorry citizen, that information is not available at your security clearance. This fact, whilst amusing the first few times you say it, works nicely to help the GM shape adventures. Most paranoia adventures would be fairly easy if the characters had access to the correct information. When it's not available, and the players have to fumble around in the dark, that's where the humour begins. Oh, and the game's rules? They are secure That's right, apart from the rules outlined in the player section of the rulebook, knowledge of any other rules is illegal. Again, whilst largely a humorous device, this rule does make it so that the GM can focus on making the game entertaining rather than having to deal with rules lawyers. With all these conceits, it's easy to see why the authors chose the tagline of the role-playing game of a darkly humorous future. That being said, the first edition of Paranoia took fairly serious tone. However, as supplements were released over the course of 1985 and 1986, the game and its playstyle took on the lighter tone that is usually associated with it. Gone were the allusions to 1984 and Brazil, and instead scenarios encouraged a much more playful, freewheeling style. Rather than assuming that the players were trying to survive in an insane, nightmarish dystopia, most supplements played up the comedy aspects of Paranoia, putting players in touch with wacky characters and wacky situations, encouraging a cheerful, carefree attitude to death. Adventures were clearly written as one-shots. The very notion of a paranoia campaign was ridiculous given the high levels of mortality, but most of them were great fun. At that time, paranoia adventures introduced several staples into their scenario design, which most paranoia GMs and future writers followed faithfully. Amongst these were running jokes that rapidly get out of hand, insane firefights involving dozens of participants, situations of escalating degrees of danger that would probably be fairly easy to navigate if only the PCs would cooperate with each other, and crazy malfunctioning equipment that the players were obligated to test. Unlike a lot of RPG companies that flood their release schedules with various splat books, player and GM guides and other accessory books, First Edition Paranoia simply focused on the publishing adventures. There was a GM screen, but other than that, the entire First they'd run was all scenarios. A lot of these early Paranoia supplements were genuinely funny and a pleasure to read, even if you were never going to run them. One of my absolute favourites was Acute Paranoia, a volume that included, amongst other things, the excellent adventure Me and My Shadow Mark IV, which sees the players assigned to guard the new Warbot Model Mark IV, a gigantic weapons platform with enough firepower to take on the entirety of Alpha Complex's armed forces single-handedly, and with a suitably smug and arrogant personality to boot. Every time I've run this, I've loved watching the players debate amongst themselves who's going to have to go and explain to Mark IV that they are to guard and protect him. This adventure does a brilliant job of introducing all the elements that make paranoia scenarios so much fun without going off the rails into the realms of over-the-top cartoon craziness. Although it could be played that way if you wanted to, there's an optional Wily-kind Unsurprisingly, Paranoia won the Origins Award in 1984 for Best Role-Playing Roles, and one of its supplements, the Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, won the HG Wells Award for Best Role-Playing Adventure of 1985. I also just surprised myself there, I managed to say that in one take, it's a very difficult title to pronounce. It should be noted at this point though, that both first and second editions were published in two separate forms. won by West End Games in the US and won by Games Workshop in the UK. The West End Games first edition was a boxed product consisting of the Player Handbook, the Games Master Handbook and an Adventure Handbook. It also came with a couple of 10-sided dice. The second edition was also boxed and came with a new introductory adventure, two 20-sided dice and a guide called The Complete Troubleshooter, which included details on mandatory bonus duties. These were assignments for team members like team leader, loyalty officer and recording officer that have since become a staple of the setting. The idea is that each player is given some extra responsibility to make their life that more interesting and to give their teammates another reason to be paranoid. The game's workshop first edition was a hardcover volume that included all three books from the basic set as well as three additional short adventures that were published with the first edition Paranoid GM screen. It also didn't come with dice obviously. GW's second edition was identical to West End's second edition, again it was bound as a single hardcover and it didn't include the complete troubleshooter or dice. Come 1987, the second edition of Paranoia was released. This was much more rules light than the first edition, abandoning complexity in favour of a much looser system that favoured Paranoia's crazy fast moving style of play. As shown by the rules changes Paranoia's second edition fully embraced the move from the dystopia suggested in First Edition's main rulebook to more comic territory. With Ken Ralston's line editor, Paranoia defined a style for itself, a style that was funny, clever, irreverent and utterly unlike any other role-playing game out there. Jim Holloway's superb artwork brought this dark, insane world to life. Players found themselves falling in love with this game that was utterly unlike anything they'd played before. After years of being told that RPGs were all about collaborating, here was was a game that actively encouraged you to hose your friends. Second Edition, at least initially, was generally considered to be the high point of the original line. And then 1989 happened. Actually, I should back up for a moment and give this some context. With the release of Second Edition in 1987, West End Games were pretty slow in getting supplements out. Three Adventures showed up in 1988, but until then, Paranoia GMs were left either running old adventures or writing their own. Ken Ralston left around this time, as did the mainline developers. However, regardless of this, 1989 saw a deluge of supplements released, and what's more, four of them were apparently connected in an arc called The Secret Society Wars. It's here that I'm going to provide two warnings, one for spoilers, and one for the rant I'm probably about to embark on. The Secret Society Wars were the beginnings of what we'd probably nowadays term meta-plot, That is, an overarching storyline, the outcomes of which could affect your game, and which would affect the development of future supplements. Those of you familiar with White Wolf Products will know all about this, the kind of supplement that says, yeah, you're free to ignore this stuff, but future books will take it into account. Full disclosure, the secret society was that these books referenced aren't really a war per se, or something that the players can easily get involved in without substantial work on the behalf of the games master. For example, in the DOA Sector Travelog, the first book in this series, it's simply mentioned that someone is targeting members of the Sierra Club Secret Society for termination. That's it. I'm not even sure they address who this is in the later supplement. Anyway, as I just mentioned, The Secret Society Wars begins with the DOA Sector Travelog, a guide to an entire sector. On the face of it, this is an okay idea. Up until this point, there has never really been any guidance as to what a sector actually was. How big was it? Who lived there? What went on there? Then again, one of the most beautiful aspects about paranoia was its vagueness. Alpha Complex could be anything you wanted it to be. Did we actually need things defined? There's also the problem of absurdity. Unlike the original premise of paranoia where the humour came from the situations that arose simply trying to survive in Alpha Complex a lot of which was fairly dark in nature, this supplement is rooted firmly in the cartoonish. Take its entry for the Junior Citizen Nursery Station. This is one of the areas detailed in the travelogue and it's where the clones of Alpha Complex are raised and educated. Now, if you were to choose to go down the darkly satirical route, you could probably conjure up a lot of black humour with the possibilities afforded here. Images of 1984, Brave New World and Soviet education spring to mind. Here, young clones are indoctrinated, and this is where we see the roots of paranoia beginning. Fear and ignorance is fostered in the youth of Alpha Complex so that, when they go out into the world as adults, they do so looking over their shoulders, seeking to get ahead through duplicity and backstabbing rather than cooperation. This is why troubleshooter teams don't work. Rather than create the next generation of bold clones who will change Alpha Complex for the better, The computer, in its paranoid state, has sown the seeds of mistrust and misery and contributed to another cycle of things deteriorating across the complex rather than improving. Instead of this, what the travelogue treats us to is a room filled with conveyor belts, babies in conveyor belts, servo arms flinging baby food around the place and characters with names like SesameYSTR5 and MrRJers2. Yeah, this book goes all out the pun names and the pop culture parodies. However, bad puns and wacky humour aside, the one thing that really stood out to me when I opened this book was the art. Or rather, the fact it's not Jim Holloway art. For long time fans of paranoia, Jim Holloway's drawings defined the setting. They absolutely captured the insanity of living in Alpha Complex and really helped the setting come alive. These drawings though, they're not bad exactly, they just don't feel the same. Also, there are far too many commies and furry hats for my liking. The second book in the secret society cycle though is The People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure and if I thought there were enough commies with big hats in its travelogue, this book takes it and ratchets it up a notch. Now, spoiler warning again, on the face of it, this adventure itself is actually based around a fairly clever premise. In a bid to understand the communist threat and what makes supposedly loyal citizens join them, Friend Computer has walled off a disused sector and set it up as Alpha State, even going as far as turning the resident cop node, which is to say that part of Friend Computer that oversees the sector, into Tovarish Computer. It then populated the sector with lots of citizens of proven loyalty who were all given hypnosis drugs and told that they were commies. Each of these citizens was given a carefully constructed past and none had any memories of life in Alpha Complex. The computer then settles back to see what happens. Again, handled correctly, this would be a really interesting adventure. Having the players realise that their entire existence is a lie, all while realising that Alpha State isn't actually that different from Alpha Complex could be a lot of fun. However, the way this adventure is presented? In the section on roleplaying, it suggests everyone nail for state dot with good take Russian accent. This is followed by a section that begins, everybody knows all Russians have big moustaches, even the women. Just look at any Russian Olympic team and tell me the women weren't shaving at a younger age than most American males. Right. Crass stereotyping aside, how does the adventure play? As I said before, it's wacky. It features mud pies, pun names, far too many tractor jokes and a plane armed with banana peel dumpsters Yeah, there's another nod to the secret society wars, which at this point is simply three masked men wiping out another small group. Again, no explanation is offered. Following this book came more songs about food vats, and it was so memorable that I'm afraid I can't actually remember what it was even about. I own a copy, but something is preventing me pulling it off the shelf and reading it. Probably some kind of post-traumatic defence mechanism Finally, the conclusion of the Secret Society Wars came in the form of The Iceman Returneth, which I think honestly left a few people going, huh? As so far the wars had amounted to two on-screen scenes and one off-camera reference in the travelogue. The book met a mixed reception. On one hand, some fans applauded West End for trying to do something new to freshen up the setting. On the other hand, there were people who pointed out that the setting didn't actually need freshening. and that by doing so the line developers broke things. Iceman featured the return of a cryogenically frozen programmer from the past, one of the computer's original programmers in fact. He is horrified in what he sees in Alpha Complex and enlists the player's help in setting things right. Like the People's Glorious Revolutionary Adventure, the premise is rather interesting. What would Alpha Complex look like to an outsider and could it be saved? However, also like the People's Glorious revolutionary adventure, it falls down horribly in the execution. The main character is uninteresting, there's more shenanigans with non-lethal weaponry, which is the author's excuse to put in more custard pies, water pistols etc, some indestructible leaflets and underwear inspections. What's more, the plot is For example, near the end, the PCs are in a direct position to threaten the computer itself. If one of them dies, why would the computer activate their clone replacement? Simple answer, it wouldn't. Yet it does, so that the plot can happen. So, prior to recording this podcast, I ran a game of paranoia for my co-hosts and some friends. The thing that really struck me about it was that it was genuinely funny. I actually laughed out loud a few times. But all the humour came through the player's interaction with the scenario and the other characters. There were no jokes per se written into the scenario. Sure, each of the characters was given objectives that clashed with those of the other characters, but nothing was written as funny haha. There were no pun names, there were no ridiculous slapstick, yet people still found humour in the situations. One of the players said he loved when the computer would randomly interject and ask for a status update, usually at the most inconvenient moment. None of the players would say anything particular comedic at these moments, but watching the object of the computer's scrutiny try to think on their feet whilst everyone else around them desperately is hoping that they would fail, that's where the humour would come in. This probably explains why I'm so down on the Secret Society Wars supplements. Something like Me and My Shadow Mark IV finds humour in Alpha Complex's bureaucracy and simply trying to stay alive in such an insane world. The Secret society war scenarios finds humour in people slipping on banana skins and being hit by custard pies. Anyway, back to The Iceman Returneth, the players end up killing the computer. Yeah, seriously. At the end of the scenario, they cause the computer to crash. And this is what is the focus of the next supplement, Crash Course Manual, and the next iteration of the meta plot. I personally bot crashed course when it first came out as the setting intrigued me. Actually, if I remember correctly, my friend Callum and I actually chipped in together to buy it when we were in the Virgin Megastore in Glasgow. But I was usually the GM. I ended up having it around my house more often than now. 31 years later, it's living here in the US with me. Sorry about that, Callum. Anyway, this was the book that described Alpha Complex without the computer. It had a few nods to the secret society wars, but no real conclusion. Oh, and remember earlier how I mentioned that in the DOA sector travelogue the writers had started to include pop culture references like Mr. R. Drew's 2? Well, starting with The Crash they went all in on parody. The sample adventure that came with the manual, a passage to NDA sector India sector, get it? contains enough on its own. The expedition is led by Marco B. Olo and the travelogue Transport is the Simbot, which looks like an elephant. They come across Olly B. Abba, who has 40-odd thieves as his cohorts. They encounter a sailor called Sin B. Ad and meet the would-be king of I. Am. Sector called Yule B. Erner. Actually, just reading these out loud, you realise how stupid they actually are. In earlier supplements, a pun name like Johnny B. Good worked because it sounded like it was written. Olly B. Abba, though, it's clearly meant to be Olly B. but it just doesn't work when said out loud. Anyway, it doesn't stop there. There are FSA sector battle bots. There's a troubleshooter team called Kel Eads Heroes. It's a Y. Again, another case where it works better written down than it does said out loud. There's a clone wandering the corridors who doesn't adhere to any security clearance colours known as Dan G. Alf the Grey. Again, doesn't work when it's said out loud. There's even a clone called Mad O' Na In the illustration she looks like drumroll please 1980s Madonna. You get the idea. Bad puns and parodies aside, although the setting is interesting as a premise, it practically guts paranoia of everything that makes it worthwhile. What makes paranoia funny? It's certainly not slapstick stupid puns or pop culture references. No, the humour in paranoia comes from the setting. It comes from struggling in a dystopian world where you're constantly under surveillance where everyone wants you to fail and where you're serving the needs of an inept bureaucracy and trying to satisfy a well-meaning but insane ruler. Take all of that away and you have to manufacture your humour as the post-apocalyptic setting you're left with isn't exactly busting at the seams with comic potential. This is readily apparent in the other supplements that were released for the crash. Take for example Gamalot where part of medieval England is teleported into Lot Sector. You see what they did there? They're not using anything to do with post-crash alpha for the humour, they're dredging it up from outside sources. We then have the Vulture Warriors from Dimension X trilogy, which is a series of time-travelling adventures where the troubleshooters are sent back to stop the crash. What follows are three adventures that parody Cyberpunk, Twilight 2000 and Doctor Who. In a bid to be innovative, the first two are I guess this could be fun as a one-off, but it's not really explored in great detail. The adventures are all presented from the troubleshooters' perspectives. Anyway, they end up resolving nothing and return to a crashed complex. Again, this is a case of wasted potential. These adventures could be interesting if they weren't so damned insistent on cramming in tired, unfit people. funny gags. I put that last word in the air quotes, by the way. Look at Twilight Cycle 2000, for example. And again, another warning about a name that works better written down than said out loud. The main antagonist in this is an ultraviolet communist called Big Bro Uther. It's meant to be Big Brother. But when he's hanging around with 21st century Soviets, he goes by the name of Bigelis Broderkov. Oh, and of course, he speaks with the Russian accent. Really Following these books comes Death Lies in Vid Tape, supposedly the conclusion to the secret society wars and an adventure in which the computer returns. Yeah, after West End killed it off, they decided a couple of years later to bring the computer back. Amusingly, this adventure was written by Alan Varney, a very talented writer who went on to head up Mongoose Publishing's re-release of Paranoia XP in the early 2000s. When asked about Death Lies in Vid Tape, he described it as something he wrote because of an urgent cash flow crisis, one of the sorriest projects of my bibliography. Following the conclusion of the secret society wars such as they were, West End started the next phase of the metaplot with the Paranoia sourcebook. They gave a guide to post-reboot alpha. I'm not going to bother going into masses of detail here because by this point Paranoia is limping along like a lame dog. There's a phrase in TV, Jumping the shark to describe that moment where a show that was once widely popular but which has since grown less popular resorts to increasingly desperate tactics to keep viewers' interest. If the crash was Paranoia's attempt to jump the shark, post-reboot alpha was an attempt to turn the boat back around for a second pass. The supplements that were produced for this were bland, unfunny and lacked everything that had once made Paranoia great. In fact, Alan Varney sums it up best when he says, top to bottom, stern to stern, front to back and throughout, the meta plot was poorly conceived, disastrously executed, hermetically free of actual humour, in short, a complete waste of time and effort. Would you believe the worst was yet to come? In 1995, West End Games released Paranoia the 5th edition. Wait a minute, I hear you say, this is only the 3rd edition. Yeah, calling it the 5th edition was a hilarious joke. That really sums up all you need to know about 5th edition. In humour terms, it was completely bankrupt. Oh, you do need to know about the artwork though. Remember how I was bemoaning the fact that Jim Holloway no longer did the art for a lot of 2nd Ed? Well, the artwork for 5th edition is so bad, so cartoonish, it makes the non-Holloway art of 2nd Ed look like a breath of fresh air. They released one supplement for 5th edition, Creatures of the Night Cycle, that was a parody of Vampire the Masquerade. It was bad. Really, really bad. The pun names were awful, and yes, you're probably thinking, but characters have always had bad pun names in Paranoia. True, there have been puns throughout Paranoia's history, but whereas in previous editions you had characters like Sue R. Rat and Barb R. Ella, at least you could shorten them to things like Sue R. or Barb R. when your characters were interacting with them. In this monstrosity, and yes, that pun was for intended. You've actually got sentences that read like and used to be a mystic. How the hell do you bring these characters into the game? Hey look, Bramst O is waving to you. Looks like Mask R wants a word with you. Ugh. That's not the worst part though, the writing. I think they're trying to come off as glib and casual but it's just really bad and feels feels really forced. Again, paranoia doesn't need humour hammered into it. The situation it creates, when played properly, should be funny enough in themselves. In one paragraph, where it talks about tips in getting PCs to travel to a certain location, it reads, and I'm quoting this word for word, I don't know, have giant alien spaceships that run on DOS TM fly over the complex and kill everyone except the characters who, because they're the protagonists, can hide in the one doorway that doesn't get blown down and then retreat to the secret underground laboratory from which they can save the world with the Power Mac or something like that. I've re-read that a couple of times and I still don't know what they're aiming for with it. Yes, Independence Day had some plot holes but I don't understand what it's got to do with getting your characters to travel from A to B. Compare this style to a piece written in one of the Ghostbusters supplements that was produced around the same time as second edition Paranoia was at the height of its powers and penned by the same folks that made that edition of Paranoia so memorable. The context is the same, it's offering the game's master advice on getting the players to do what they're supposed to do. Now we've set everything up in a nice neat order for you. Are your players going to follow that nice neat order? Well, probably. Really clever players may think up ways to bypass a couple of steps. Really cheerful players may resolutely pursue self-destructive, impractical Hey, we never promised you a rose garden. The message is clear. Know your audience, Mr. GM. But the way it's delivered is amusing. However, the agonising writing style of this book isn't the worst thing about it. There's a scene in a lab where there are two R&D techs who are straight up copies of Bunsen and Beaker from the Muppets. Nope, I don't know what either. Oh, actually, yes I do. You see, this scene leads to a song and dance act. I kid you not. It actually reminds me of a movie. reads. Then suddenly a broad smile moves across his face and music begins to play. As he sings mutants pop out of the walls next to him joining in. What follows is a parody of the opening song sung at the beginning of each Muppets episode and because it's bold it means the GM has to read it out loud to the players. It should be noted that this isn't the only song in the adventure. There's a clone who can only speak in song and rhyme. There's a parody of the time warp. There's even a parody of the Jack Rabbit Slims twist contest from Pulp Fiction. Okay, enough. This is not good for my blood pressure. Sadly, or perhaps mercifully, this bloated, humorous mess of a supplement was the last thing that West End Games published for Paranoia. According to the introduction to Paranoia flashbacks released for Paranoia XP, the whole Secret Societies Wars arc, the crash, the reboot and the abomination that was 5th edition resulted in West End Games seeing a 9 When the company went under shortly afterwards, many thought that Paranoia was dead and buried for good. Until in 2004 when those nice folks at Mongoose Publishing released Paranoia XP, shortly followed by Paranoia XP Service Pack 1. Mongoose had to drop the XP part, apparently a certain tech giant had issues with it, but this game was, how do I put this without sounding hyperbolic, blah blah blah. Amazing. XP did several things. Firstly, not only did it take Paranoia firmly back to a computer-controlled alpha complex, it also made the bold move of declaring most of the Secret Society War adventures and everything that followed them, including the Crash, the Reboot, and everything 5th edition related, as unproducts. As bold as this Orwellian statement was, it was welcomed by almost all fans of the game, as it made it quite clear that XP and of its up-and-coming supplements would remain firmly rooted in the setting that had made Paranoia great. What's more, the developers acknowledged that there were different ways to play Paranoia, unlike the assumption that had crept in towards the end of the West End reign that wacky craziness was the default. Firstly, there was Classic, the playstyle made popular in the halcyon days of the first edition and early second edition. This is the Paranoia of rapid-fire host jobs, malfunctioning equipment, stifling insanity blasting bureaucracy and jokes that reoccur with terminal frequency. Troubleshooters may go through a clone or two before a mission even starts and probably will say goodbye to all of them before the mission is over. Players are generally at each other's throats from the get go and work frantically to pin an accusation of treason on their rivals. There was also Zap, that style that people who didn't play Paranoia associated with it and which proliferated sadly during the last days of West End names. Pop culture parodies, cartoon physics, custard pies, silly strings and cries of TRAITOR punctuated by laser fire every time someone so much as opens their mouth. Character names were always outlandish puns without any nods to plausibility. In short, chaos and mayhem abound. Now, while these two were acknowledged as the most common ways of playing, Mongoose made the step of also suggesting a third way, a style they called straight or sometimes In this mode, Alpha Complex is actually functional. The computer is present, but not omnipresent. Rather than focus on the crazier aspects of the setting, straight play focuses on fear, ignorance and power. There's even a chance for, whisper it, the players to succeed. Rather than running around pointing at their teammates and screaming, I burn him with my laser, straight play encourages players towards mutual suspicion and the careful collation of evidence against rivals. Troubleshooters didn't always turn on each other at the drop of a hat and this resulted in an environment where tension and paranoia rapidly build. Think about it. In classic you knew that everyone was out to get you. Here you didn't. Who's your friend? Who can you trust? Which setting is scarier? This version of paranoia is much more 1984 than Laurel and Hardy. Mongoose even released an entire supplement of straight adventures which includes the darkest scenario ever written for paranoia. As well as bringing the rules up to date, XB did the same for the setting. Alpha Complex now had much more in common with communist China than it did with communist Russia. The Cold War fears of the 80s were replaced with, well, the paranoias of the early 2000s. File sharing, computer viruses, terrorism, WMDs, spam and an unstable economy were in This made the whole thing much more relevant to newer audiences who had perhaps only heard of Paranoia by reputation before. Mongoose went on to publish a whole swathe of wonderful supplements for Paranoia XP between 2004 and 2009. Special mention must go to Flashbacks, which revisited some of the classic Paranoia adventures from the glory days of first edition and brought them straight up to date for the new edition. Also of note was the Traitor's Manual, which was went into depth in each of the secret societies. For those of us who like dabbling with the new straight style of play, this book was a godsend. Thought the Paranoia commies were mustachioed Cossacks, wearing those glorious furry babushka and talking in a Russian accent? Take a look at them in straight play, with their genuinely scary terrorists that blow up buildings full of innocent people. Come 2009, Mongoose released the 25th anniversary edition of Paranoia, this time a week read different rulebooks which allowed players to create troubleshooters, internal security troopers or, wait for it, high programmers. Now, playing as different clearances of characters was nothing new. Back in first edition there was the Hill Sector Blues supplement with rules on playing internal security troopers and XP had published Extreme Paranoia that included rules for citizens all the way up to Violet. However, rules to play ultra-Violet high programmers? Blimey. Production continued until 20 Finally, in 2017, Mongoose released the Red Clearance Starter Set. Featuring completely reworked mechanics and updates to the setting, this edition nonetheless carried on the tradition of fear and ignorance started over 30 years previously. I've not played this edition so I can't comment on it, but the reviews I've read seem favourable. So there you have it. One of the funniest roleplaying games ever made, conceived and firmly based on the mindset that made the prospect of nuclear or Armageddon a very plausible reality for decades. Despite being almost 40 years old, I'd argue that Paranoia remains as tangible and relevant today as it did in the quote-unquote glory days of the Cold War. Sure, we might not be huddling in fear of the commies unleashing a hellstorm from above, but just turn on the news and tell me that a game dealing with fear, ignorance, hatred of those who are in some way different, shadowy conspiracies, terrorism, etc Excessive bureaucracy, technofare and excessive gun violence isn't topical today. In fact, when you see who's in charge these days, suddenly friend computer doesn't seem that bad. At least in Alpha Complex, you get six lives.

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And that

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was a brief history of paranoia. We hope you enjoyed it. Actually, hang

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on. Enjoyment of this episode is mandatory. Failure to enjoy this episode is treason. You did enjoy it, didn't you, citizen? I thought so. Have a nice day.

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Tune in to the next part of this episode to hear us wittering on about our memories of the game. Now, please stay behind after the closing jingles. We've got something tagged onto the end of this episode that we'd very much like you to listen to. We're a podcast about old-school role-playing games, and if you enjoyed this episode, Please get in touch with us on Twitter at Save Podcast or email us at roll.to.save.pod at gmail.com. Yet we still haven't got rid of all those dots. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Roll to Save. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to leave us a review on your podcast directory of choice. We really appreciate them and it helps us with visibility. Thanks again for listening.

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Laser Handy.

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Are you looking for a D&D podcast for the dark side? Something more like Game of Thrones and less like Monty Python? Tale of the Manticore is part dark fantasy audio drama, part solo D&D RPG. There's no plot armor here. The dice make all the important decisions. Join me as I resurrect the excitement, wonder, and emotion of old-school D&D. Made for a mature audience, Tale of the Manticore is both a fiction and a game. It's the story where chaos rolls.