PARANOIA originally relaunched as XP, then it became XP Service Pack One… and then the XP vanished, because it wasn’t worth making Microsoft grumpy. For collectors, the middle copy is the holy grail, because so few of that edition exists (if any!), and purists might prefer to cling to the original XP edition (because how could The Computer have been wrong?!).
Anyway… you can – apparently – still get the XP edition off of DriveThruRPG as a .pdf. Same price as the Service Pack One edition (without the XP). If you feel that way inclined. Preview pages certainly hold up to scrutiny (i.e. this doesn’t appear to be an administrative error). So, by all means – avail yourself of this original version to complete your collection.
While Gareth Hanrahan indicates that the release of The Big Book of Bots in August might be a tad ‘ambitious’ (considering he’s only just handed over the art notes and the book is still in editing and layout), that shouldn’t stop fans of Jim Holloway‘s PARANOIA art going over to engage in a brief act of appreciative salivation.
While you’re at it… follow that last Jim Holloway link for a superb piece of ‘Star Trek’ art.
Until July 27 (which to my reckoning gives you three days) DriveThruRPG have declared Christmas in Summer for a plethora of games. Forget the Non-Fun Games though… You could own almost the entire run of new PARANOIA for £82.92… or $165.48 (which, in my calculations means you save $0.60 going with the Pound Sterling option). For that outlay you get:
…all in easy to transport electronic format (the favoured format of sentient electronic devices everywhere!).
While that may not be the complete run of PARANOIA books currently available, you’ll have Service Firms, Service Groups, Secret Societies, Mutations, dangerous equipment, complex personal histories, all the classic PARANOIA missions worth reprinting, tons of colourful background material, and around twenty new missions to throw at your unsuspecting players.
I’m not pressuring you or anything, but – to quote an unscrupulous Romulan ambassador – ‘there has never been a better time.’
I dislike simply linking to entertaining articles, but sometimes you have to do it. In a way, there is relevance here, as a recent thread of discussion on the Mongoose forum queried the future of PARANOIA and wondered what a revised core book for the game might hold. Over the past several Year 214s since the re-release of the game, PARANOIA has clocked up an impressive support line – so, what would you scavange from the line to pump up the core book, what would you drop, what would you re-engineer to enhance the playing experience.
Going through my collection of ancient roleplaying magazines the other day I found an article referring to archetypal RPG elements – and it asked how you could ever consider PARANOIA without Treason Points. The current edition doesn’t have ‘em, so is it less PARANOIA than it could be? Maybe. Allen Varney admits “the treason mechanics haven’t been widely adopted†and that another mechanic might well better handle the concept and flavour of treason within the game.
So, what would you change? What elements of other sourcebooks would you integrate into the core? And how would you foresee PARANOIA developing, without retreading old ground? (like certain Unfun Game Systems have a tendency of doing with each new drive for Unit Sales, Profit, and ‘A Better Playing Experience’)
Sometimes books slither like snails in the face of an oncoming predator. For all the enthusiasm shown by those involved, somehow the creative process fails completely to kick-start, chugging and choking like an ill-maintained TransBot. In the case of the two PARANOIA gear books – STUFF and STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets – this never happened.
Fueled on CoffeeLyke and Doctor Bot, frenzified with an cascade of bile and imagination, both books streamed forth… hundreds of entries from a multitude of Traitors. Eric Minton quite probably didn’t sleep for days, typing until his fingers became bloody stumps, his swollen eyes weeping crimson tears. All who tried to match his productivity failed miserably…
While you might think the sheer weight of content means that some of the material might fall short of the quality mark, you probably haven’t taken account of the fact that we created many more entries than finally made it into the books. Many many more.
STUFF comes to mind, because I hadn’t noticed the extra material on Mongoose Publishing before. If you combine the Page Template and STUFF graphics you can create your own gear in an authentic C-Bay format, plastered with motivational slogans like ‘Non-Treasonous’, ‘Live The Adventure’ and ‘Entirely Funky’… Which discerning citizen could refuse offers like that?
I’m happy to say a lot of my own material made it into both books (like the refreshing taste of Doctor Bot). I’m also happy to say, both volumes of STUFF far exceed the accomplishments of the old R&D Catalog, which provided lacklustre detail of a dozen or so items. You can feel the love flicking through STUFF volumes… knowing that willing and eager Traitors hand-crafted every item…
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