I spent 99 pence on this item. Plus postage. I do not have high expectations. Actually, I have no specific expectations. Do not judge me on this purchase – I needed to complete my pre-Mongoose PARANOIA collection, and this item remained outstanding. Admittedly, I might later choose to disassociate the volume from any link to the word ‘outstanding’.

I will return with comments of some kind. I doubt I can regret a mere 99 pence. The eBay seller should have the book to me in the next few days.

I daresay this subsidised paradise in the chilly north could easily form the backdrop for some modern day PARANOIA or perhaps some spin on the The Prisoner, with happy workers leading happy family lives amidst a basically fabricated and unsupportable community. Mandatory sports days, social events and art classes anyone?

Perhaps Pyramiden could be that colony set up on the agreement of The Computer, or one of the High Programmers, as a way to understand the way a small, above-ground community might work – or to comprehend the Communist mindset? Could the Troubleshooters wake to find they have led happy, ordinary lives as honourable and loyal Communists with loving families and generous prospects? Take them through the routine of labour in the mines, followed by swimming, song, and sitting around the fire telling stories to the children – but, over time, introduce clear signs of hardship, of a lack in essential maintenance skills and materials (because the central office back home always sends a replacement) and the remoteness of the colony. Then cut the lifeline completely, pull the plug, and leave them with nothing but static. Invariably, panic will grow, desperation follows when bellies grumble, and The Computer will send in ‘support‘, highly likely to be mistaken by the mind-altered inhabitants of the colony as a Capitalist invasion force… What fun!

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…

Following on from my last post (in March!), I have been reading Traveller. Reading through the content of the last post, it dawned on me that a serious game of PARANOIA might be run with the Traveller rules. I’m not sure why that makes sense to me; but, I do know that it does for whatever reason. Perhaps it has something to do with the presence of a rulebook. If I turn up with the PARANOIA rules, then I will be playing that game. If I turn up with the Traveller rules, then I will be playing Traveller – even if the adventures I run with those rules have a striking resemblance to PARANOIA missions. With reference back to the previous post, it would be like playing Warhammer with War Machine rules and tri-fold paper miniatures. I may be using the background and battle setups of the Warhammer world, but because I’m using different rules and different figures it might be perceived that I’m not actually playing Warhammer.

It would be interesting to have a go at dressing up PARANOIA in new clothes and giving it a go. I might not necessarily attempt it with Traveller, but using some other system will certainly draw players off the scent; and if I muddy the waters then they may never realise they have been led up the garden path (to seriously mix up a metaphor).

To go off on a tangent, my sons wargame. They wargame irregularly these days, as Magic seems the game of the moment, but they still do and cart their great black 40K boxes around filled to the brim with plastic figures. In the past, I have offered non-Warhammer models to them, fully painted, and been snubbed. ‘Yes,’ they’ll say, ‘it is a vicious flesh-rending android in disguise, but it doesn’t have a plasma cannon and a chain-sword.’ If the figure doesn’t fit the stats and equipment, they’re not interested. Even if you use the same not-right model for a whole unit – thus clearly identifying the type of troop they represent – it isn’t good enough. I could never get them to see the point. They could buy models from anywhere or – shock horror – make them or print them or something, and then it would cost so much to create a full army. Why link one thing to another when it’s all about creativity and imagination.

My roleplaying mind works the same way. Why can’t I run a Doctor Who game with the Gumshoe system? Or Star Trek with Traveller? Or Primeval with QUERP? And, why can’t I play a more serious strain of PARANOIA over more than one mission? Or with a different system? For a hobby about imagination, sometimes the systems create their own bottleneck to creativity, especially those systems with a ‘name’. Got a great system intended to run a game about a certain TV or literary property? Dump it and improvise. Create something new and pepper it with house rules to make it work – then note down those that really work and use them again next time.

So, yes – I’ll be running PARANOIA at some point. And, rather than running a one off, I’ll break the ‘rules’ and try for something a little different… another mission after I’ve finished the first one!

[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…

From: BBC News – Technology, 17 Feb 2011

The encounters / questions pass from member to member, complicating actual incidents within the proper mission. Then, two-thirds of the way through, one of the Troubleshooters (probably the one who already has a weight of suspicions and malice aimed in his/her direction) receives a direct command from The Computer to go directly to Hygiene Cubicle SVZ-4451 for an important mission update. The High Programmer makes a direct and brazen request of the Troubleshooter to drop the current mission and report directly to his sub-node. The ULTRAVIOLET Clearance citizen has watched the Troubleshooter’s performance closely and believes he (or she) would make an ideal new member of his Program Group. The rendezvous at the sub-node will provide important debriefing, re-equipping and assignment to a new team / mission / sector / Security Clearance / Service Group / sub-arm of a Non-Administrative Regulatory Function.

While in communication with the High Programmer, the rest of the team get sent to a location directly adjacent to the Hygiene Cubicle (assuming they didn’t just follow the Troubleshooter anyway) where Control believe a specific threat may manifest at any moment. As they search, the team come under fire from hidden assailants – and mid-firefight, the Troubleshooter with the offer emerges from the cubicle. The team might well wonder whether he’s turned to the other side / been brainwashed / undergone techno-psychological reprogramming / been replaced with a doppelgänger / gone rogue on illegal meds / shown his true colours for the first time and come out as a supporter of a glorious Communist revolution. The Programmer will deny all knowledge of the communication if contacted and all evidence of the conversation will be scrabbled / erased / destroyed / disintegrated / replaced with re-runs of Teela-O‘s 1000 Finest Moments / near undetectably altered to make it look like the Troubleshooter was trying to blackmail the High Programmer on some trumped up charge of lese majesty.

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.

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.