The game is dead! Long live the game!
Apparently I've decided to get into a system that is no longer printed by anyone, and with sourcebooks varying from extremely cheap to absurdly expensive.
That being said this game I a classic (am loving the stuff I picked up).
Anyone for storytime?
Anyone for pdf links?
Recommendations on how to run the game?
Other urls found in this thread:
dropbox.com
hp.trm.io
twitter.com
So here's a story about one particular session of Paranoia that I played in.
> GM has premade characters for us all, informs us that this is a mission he made himself
> Super [DELETED FOR SECURITY REASONS] Brothers
>I get the Wario analogue because I'm the fattest fuck out of all the players
> among other things, I have a narrow specialization for ordering food over my PDC
> early in the mission, I order a very large supply of sticky snack food because Free Enterprise wants me to sabotage a new transit tube prototype that happens to look like a large, flared green pipe
> roll a 1, which is Paranoia for "you have succeeded in a strange and hilarious way"
> but my food never shows up
> continue with the adventure, get killed and/or executed five times
> sacrifice my sixth clone to do a sick piledriver on not!Bowser through some bricks and into an open smelter, while screaming that R&D are commie mutant traitors
> rest of the team rescues not!Peach and heads back towards the briefing rooms
> they go back via the previous transport tube
> my food finally arrives
> in a single crate
> which is airdropped straight onto the VIP
>I laugh like a goddamn jackal as the entire team gets executed for incompetence
Months later, I learned he had also run it for an online group, and their Wario clone did the same shit.
Honestly, about half the excitement in my games came from the R&D equipment the clones were forced to test out. Rocket boots are never not hilarious, but my favorite was a hands-free laser. It was built into helmet that was locked in place by the R&D guys (don't want a clone losing valuable equipment by taking it off or letting it get knocked off) and operated simply by looking at your target and blinking. There was a safety mechanism, of course, but it was glitchy, and whenever the player blinked (well... was specifically noticed to blink), his clone's helmet-laser blasted whatever he was looking at.
Golden..
I wonder why no one even sells the PDFs anymore. I know the kickstarter new version is coming out (apparently its printing right now), but hell. There is nowhere that has a complete copy of troubleshooters or xp that isn't a physical copy from amazon or ebay.
Mah niggas
Tfw you accuse your classmate of being a mutant commie traitor.
Thought that was a pdf for a second.
Firstly: dropbox.com
Secondly: grab High Programmers. It's my personal flavour of amazing. I have yet to have a bad game of it.
Thirdly, I love High Programmers so much I made a fucking generator for it. Use and abuse it as you wish: hp.trm.io
High Programmers is basically a bunch of UVs in a room, ordering their minions to fix whatever problems the sector is currently facing. Of course, every UV has directives that conflict with each other, so there's this horrible mix of trying to fix the problem while doing it your specific way. In the interest of efficiency of course, there's always multiple crisises happening, usually crisises that overlap and cause problems for each other.
Particular storytime moments involve launching an entire sector into space, accidently pulling the moon into the earth, then being in a complex on said moon while it was hurtling towards the earth (They didn't realise for the first hour or so until they cleared the ash cloud). The latter is a particularly good one, as the last 2 minutes was the players just blaming each other for their incoming death.
Notes on running the game (High Programmers, anyway). Prepare your improv. There's no way you can prepare any sort of rails for this game, there's just far too many things that can happen, so most of the time you're on your toes. Most of your job is just managing pace. Every time things slow down or they're just arguing too much, FC pops up. Things going too fast? There's no such thing. Let 'em fucking stress and sweat.
In fact, I'm probably running a game of it in about 4 hours, so you've got that long to ask more questions if you have 'em
They're not being sold precisely because the kickstarter. And desu, the kickstarter is shaping up to look terrible due to sjw pandering and only catering to a zappy style rather than the far superior straight style.
Give it a couple months after the kickstarter is dead, and hopefully the actual good pdfs will be back on sale.
>dropbox.com
I have high programmers and several other supplements. I got them all 80% off. Thanks for the pdfs.
I plan to run troobleshooters to introduce players to the setting. Is that a good idea or should I just let them goes balls deep on whatever splat I have?
ugh, that sucks.
I feel dirty for saying this but I run all my Paranoia games in GURPS these days because I don't have any physical copies to reference anymore. So I pull plot seeds out of PDFs (usually Troubleshooters is where I do most my browsing but HP has been fun to use too) and stuff beforehand and run outside the system.
Of course, I still have people roll random mutations, gear, aptitudes, secret missions, skills and attributes because that's just how it should be.
I just can't give it up as a fallback session no matter how dead its publishing gets, kickstarter notwithstanding.
I've considered running it in GURPS. How does that compare to running the actual system feel wise?
Troubleshooters is good as an introduction, but be wary of falling into a trap: never, ever kill the players off yourself. Always make it known that when a player dies, it's another player's fault. (With the exception of someone who's blatantly being treasonous in front of FC). If the players ever die because of you the GM, it'll turn into players vs gm. You want it as PvP as possible, especially since the players are much more creative when pitched against each other.
You actually use rules when running Paranoia? I just pretend I use complex rules, when in actuality they're the most barebones shit I can deal with. Also, I do all the rolling and shit behind the screen, so my players can never actually dispute rules. (They're too busy stressing about fucking everything else going on to worry about silly things like rules).
That sounds like good advice. What do you recommend doing if they don't do any pvp? My group used to have that tendency, but now they are reigning themselves in.
Also, do you recommend this as kinda a one shot deal or something else? I get the impression it gets used as a one short or extremely short campaign (an adventure or two) more often than not.
Advice for pitching it to ADHD players that don't like to read more than they need to?
Feels great. The last two games of the three I've run in GURPS so far were probably the best Paranoia games I've ever personally GM'd. I really have no complaints about it at all aside from having to kludge a few tables together for the random rolling shenanigans, which felt important to the spirit of it to some extent.
It helps that any semblance of balance or fair play is basically a total nonissue for the setting. Fast and loose is always the best way.
Sweet. Anyway I can get a hold of those tables? I am all for customizing my own stuff, but its good to have somewhere to start. From the sounds of things they are probably perfect for what I need until I get a better feel (if I end up going the GURPS route).
>You actually use rules when running Paranoia? I just pretend I use complex rules, when in actuality they're the most barebones shit I can deal with. Also, I do all the rolling and shit behind the screen, so my players can never actually dispute rules. (They're too busy stressing about fucking everything else going on to worry about silly things like rules).
Hilariously that is actually literally what I do. I mean, the rules are nice to have there, but nothing ever gets looked up, it's all "roll and shout", hidden rolls for stuff I may or may not be making up, badly misremembered rules judgements and blatant threatening of players who think too hard or too long about it. All part of the fun, wouldn't be Paranoia without it.
When you start running troubleshooters, it's a one-off thing. More than likely they won't make the debriefing because they'll be too busy killing each other off.
With High Programmers however, there's a lot more stress and a lot less death, and there's no clone limit (although erasure is fairly common given how expensive terminations are). I've been running a campaign of it for 6 months, and because of the episodic nature of it players dropping in/out is no problem at all. Their characters just haven't been summoned that week.
So saying you run it in GURPS is just a way to make them think you're actually following a ruleset?
So first rule is keep it fast and keep it rowdy? Sounds like something my group will enjoy. Now I just gotta think of a way to prevent them from blowing up the solar system every session (its what they'd do if they got to high programmer.. unintentionally).
Absolutely. Let me see if I have them on my drive; if not I may have to come back after I have the chance to upload them from my home comp.
Use the generator I made, it comes with a minion generator. I removed the "Doomsday Device" and split it into a few other specific ones. The original doomsday device has an amazing, but random table. The time the moon got pulled down?
> Roll a 20 "Roll again twice"
> "Cataclysmic Solar Flare"
> "Pulls the moon down on top of its target"
That was a fun end to the world.
>So saying you run it in GURPS is just a way to make them think you're actually following a ruleset?
Well, yes and no. To any onlooker we're obviously playing GURPS with its stats, damage mechanics, resolution system, disad system etc. it's just used in the most fluid and backhanded way possible with half or all of it being changed or made up as the moment sees fit, as befits Paranoia. But if that doesn't count as using the system then I guess not.
>So first rule is keep it fast and keep it rowdy?
100% yes. Though I consider that a good rule of thumb for most games I run, really.
Alright, the more options I have the better.
No dice on the drive, I'll come back to this thread and post a link (it's like three files, all tables) once the requisition for UV clearance has been authenticated and accepted for my hab unit console access. I sent it months ago, should be any day now.