I have been mulling over using a new set of rules to run a PARANOIA adventure, transplanting the setting on to a new system. I have been quietly impressed by the potential of Hollowpoint (a violent game of action, ammo and adrenaline – briefly reviewed on my other blog) as the basis for game about capable characters facing potentially overwhelming odds in pursuit of a shifting objective. Yes, capable people – but, not necessarily well-informed or in complete control.
Hollowpoint boils down to achieving something without getting too bogged down in the business of initiative and hit points. First edition PARANOIA had lasers, sure – but the eye always drifted towards the cone rifle, the plasma generator, and the tacnuke. Why would someone worry too much about getting the right clearance barrel for the right colour Reflec, when you could wipe them all out with a well placed tacnuke strike? I mean… it’s the only way to be sure, right?
It seems to me, that the simplicity of the system and the ultra-brutal potential of the combat make Hollowpoint a potentially ideal fit for the concept. Mind you, I can also see the game needing to be set-up in just the right way. I can’t see a pure Troubleshooter game really working, because they genuinely don’t seem to have the right level of competency. At least, I don’t see them having the right level of competency straight out of the box. I could see them working at agents of Internal Security, however, and having the right resources on hand to get the job done. Perhaps, ORANGE Clearance, a little above the ‘rookie’, but nothing so significant as to make a great difference in the scheme of things. A Troubleshooter Agent can have the backing of an Agency that doesn’t need to worry about being questioned too closely about it’s motives and intent, because in the end a scapegoat will always present itself (or, at least, represent a tertiary Objective for the Agents to achieve in every mission they pursue).
I suspect you could have the game centred on Internal Security members themselves, but then again that might be too competent… and I can see IntSec reps as more sort of Operative level. When an Agent bites the dust and moves on, an IntSec Operative can step in to show the lowly Troubleshooter just how it’s done.
PARANOIA Hollowpoint becomes an act of outsourcing, providing moderately capable Troubleshooters with the weapons and support they need to accomplish the goals of their higher clearance supervisors. At the end of the day, the characters stalk the corridors of Alpha Complex to keep the citizens in line and suppress the threats of villainous terrorists; and IntSec plan to operate efficiently, effectively and without any dangling strings attached in achieving their objectives.
I’ll start to rough out the Hollowpoint essentials over forthcoming posts and then test the idea out on unsuspecting guinea pigs…
[Professor Stone and colleagues at Yale University] have now succeeded in building [an anti-laser].
[The] device focuses two lasers beams of a specific frequency into a specially designed optical cavity made from silicon, which traps the incoming beams of light and forces them to bounce around until all their energy is dissipated.
In a paper published in the journal Science they demonstrated that the anti-laser could adsorb 99.4 per cent of incoming light, for a specific wavelength.
So, we now have a device that can deal with those pesky RED Clearance lasers, but can’t handle a different wavelength. R&D, no doubt, can guarantee that the 0.6% failure to dissipate won’t be a problem. As all loyal citizens know, at least 87.5% of all Commie Traitors can’t shoot straight to begin with…
Troubleshooter Central Control has implemented a new resource integration and management system (RIMS) for which the Troubleshooter team has been selected as test subjects, along with several other teams. The system, a sub-node of a division of a lesser matrix of The Computer, takes all the information about the resources available and the tasks currently requiring attention, from Commie attacks and outer wall breaches through to pedestrian transit hygiene operations and ambient habitat temperature monitoring malfunctions.
Everyone gathers at Control prepared for the shift ahead, then intermittantly new jobs come through on the team PDAs. On completion of a task, the team need to log off and awaiting a new job. The system juggles the available teams and the incoming tasks, trying to figure out the most efficient application of resource against mission priorities. Of course, the system isn’t working in sync with the PDAs or Alpha Complex internal clocks, or forgets it has teams available temporarily, or duplicates a team and assigns them too much work, or assigns phantom teams in support of the Troubleshooters in high hazard locations, or assigns the wrong skill templates to the team members resulting in allocation to inappropriate activities, or goes into a short term loop returning the teams, via circuitous route, to repeat the same task claiming ‘ac7ivi7y inc0mpl3te’ on the previous occasion.
The RIMS tries to fit the best teams to the most appropriate tasks, but matters become more complicated when Commies launch an attack on WXV Sector by breaching the north wall. The team find they’re constantly being assigned high priority menial tasks while passing through areas of heavy fire and open combat. Teams assigned to the conflict seek help and assaults by Commies complicate travel, but the RIMS feedback indicates increasing concern over service level failures. The Troubleshooters have to keep to their assigned roster of jobs and keep them all at green status for fear of reprisal. At the same time, they face increasing danger in moving from one location to the next, especially when the conflict with the Commies begins to render direct routes impossible, despite the RIMS persistance that they’re used to maximum travel efficiences.
Having stared down the Vultures guarding the door and made it into the room, the Troubleshooters watch the Briefing Officer keel over halfway through the mission brief, without explanation. He’d been telling them about the Commie infiltration of a sub-level warehouse facility in AKZ Sector, gone boggle eyed, then collapsed like a stone. After lying on the floor for a moment, he probably starts spurting blood out of all his orifices, or exudes a foul smelling, but innocuous, gas, or starts to make a strange keening whistle, or spasms violently, and randomly, or turns into a brain-hungry zombie. Whatever happens, the Troubleshooters find themselves in a briefing room with a senior clearance administrator knowing full well they have a couple of trigger happy Vultures right outside the door…
Perhaps if the Troubleshooters can patch in a link to Troubleshooter Control or through to The Computer they can present the evidence for their innocence and get out of this situation with their skins, clearly proving that the briefing officer’s subordinate personal assistant killed him with poisonous micro-needles, or he suffered lethal radiation doses from a key fob he got at his last Sierra Club meeting, or his psychokinetic mutant power caused massive swelling of his pineal gland, or a HPD & MC operative spilt a noxious chemical in the vent under the officer’s briefing station, or a Death Leopard member called Rubik has set this whole room up with a series of fiendish bowel-churning booby-traps and anti-personnel devices, or he had lupus.
If they can get a solid case together and enough evidence, it shouldn’t be problem to get themselves cleared of his death and get right on to that mission they never quite got all the details for.
It was ever so kind of Citizen Shart to point out that Mongoose has hit DriveThruRPG / RPGNow with a very pleasant surprise:
Just thought you’d like to know Mongoose has just reduced price of ALL THEIR PRODUCT DOWNLOADS at RPGNow/ DriveThruRPG by about 40%. This includes PARANOIA and Classic PARANOIA lines (25th Anniversary & XP editions).
According to Mongoose site, this is a PERMANENT price reduction.
So, in the words of a Romulan ambassador, “There will never be a better time.” If you don’t already own them all for real, or didn’t manage to get hold of (almost) everything on DVD when the Limited Edition trilogy came out, now would seem an ideal moment to head over to the store and stock up on those missing gems of recent PARANOIA infotainment.
Bad Behavior has blocked 150 access attempts in the last 7 days.