Paranoia
Since I'm bad at writing descriptions, I'll just copy/paste the one from Wikipedia:
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"Paranoia is a dystopian science-fiction tabletop role-playing game originally designed and written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg, and first published in 1984 by West End Games."
"The game's main setting is an immense and futuristic city called Alpha Complex, which is controlled by The Computer, a civil service AI construct. The Computer serves as the game's principal antagonist, and fears a number of threats to its 'perfect' society, such as The Outdoors, mutants, and secret societies (especially Communists). To deal with these threats, The Computer employs Troubleshooters, whose job is to go out, find trouble, and shoot it. Player characters are usually troubleshooters, although later game supplements have allowed the players to take on other roles.
Frequently the player characters receive missions that are incomprehensible, self-contradictory or fatal, issued equipment that is dangerous, faulty or "experimental" (i.e.: almost certainly dangerous AND faulty), and side-missions which conflict with any other instructions the players may have received. Additionally, each player character is generally an unregistered mutant and/or a secret society member, and has a hidden agenda separate from the group's goals, often involving stealing from or killing teammates. Missions can therefore turn into a comedy of errors as everyone on the team seeks to double-cross everyone else while keeping their own secrets. The game's manual encourages suspicion between players, offering several tips on how to make the gameplay as paranoid as possible.
Every player's character is assigned six clones, known as a "six-pack," which are used to replace the preceding clone upon his or her death. As a result, Paranoia allows characters to be routinely killed yet the player can continue instead of leaving the game. This easy spending of clones tends to lead to frequent firefights, gruesome slapstick, and the horrible yet humorous demise of most if not all of the player character's clone family.
The Paranoia rulebook is unusual in a number of ways; demonstrating any knowledge of the rules is specifically forbidden for players (and punishable by the summary execution of their character) and most of the rulebook is written in an easy, conversational tone that often makes fun of the players and their characters, while occasionally taking digs at other notable role-playing games."
Paranoia features a security clearance system based on colors of the visible spectrum which heavily restricts what the players can and cannot do; everything from corridors to food and equipment have security restrictions. The lowest rating is infrared but the lowest playable security clearance is red."The full order of clearances from lowest to highest is Infrared (visually represented by Black), Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and Ultraviolet (visually represented by White). Within the game, infrared-clearance citizens live dull lives of mindless drudgery and are heavily medicated, and those with Ultraviolet clearance are almost completely unrestricted and have a great deal of access to The Computer; in fact, they are the only citizens that may (legally) access and modify the Computer's programming, and thus Ultraviolet citizens are also referred to as "High Programmers". Higher level citizens, especially those of Blue and above, can demote and or even summarily execute lower level citizens. Security clearance is not related to competence or even authority, though there is often a correlation; clearance is instead a measure of The Computer's trust in a citizen."
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Just found this gem today, a friend linked it to me and I've immediately struck interest in it. Since I've never played it, I can't say whether or not the game is good. :/
Anyone played/owned/heard of this game before? If so, how is it?
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Topic: Paranoia: Troubleshooters (Tabletop RPG) (Read 9245 times)