Rebuilding Paranoia OSS Style 20
hapwned writes "In the latest Escapist issue, Allen Varney explains how he built the latest version of the Paranoia RPG from the ground up in an Open Source fashion. From the article: 'Fans vetted the playtest rules and contributed lots of material, like coders on an open-source software project. It wasn't really open-source; everyone knowingly surrendered their material to PARANOIA's owners, without hope of compensation. (The blog disclaimer read, 'All your rights are belong to us. No bloody Creative Commons here! Bwahahaha!') But - this is the key point - they pitched in anyway, hoping they would benefit by getting an improved game.'"
Paranoia Has Rules?! (Score:5, Interesting)
We had six character templates that were geared to specific "roles", so when the players arrived they would discuss what they wanted to play that night, so we would never have to roll stats. In addition, we would not need to figure out secret societies or mutant powers, as the GM would write those elements into the adventure. Despite the practice sounding restrictive, no one ever did anything as planned, which always caused interesting (often hilarious) results.
By liberally ignoring structured rules and dice, the GM could move the story along as they saw fit, which made pacing a lot more fun. I've been in numerous D&D campaigns where something came up where a character needed to spend extended time with the DM in order to roll for such and such so they can accomplish a certain task. By throwing out the technicalities, everyone was engaged at all times and decisions had to be made very quickly, which completely fit the mood of the game.
As a result of these decisions, it was very easy to indoctrinate new players into the game, because they didn't have to learn any rules, they simply had to get a feeling for the milleu of the game. In addition, any revisions to the rules really didn't matter. All we needed was new content every once in a while (mutant powers, secret societies, R&D gadgets), which could simply be created by the players or GM.
Regardless, I am glad this game is receiving some new life. I cannot express how hard I have laughed while playing this game. Despite its label of "RPG", I would recommend this game to any group of creative friends, as they don't necessarily need to be gamers in order to enjoy it.
Done Before (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, then they threw the Elephant out, and it all went to heck. But thats neither here nor there. Point being, a community of fans that has access to a creative work can dramatically aid in its creation.
Has anyone ever actually played Paranoia? (Score:3, Interesting)
We always found Car Wars funny enough.
Re:Has anyone ever actually played Paranoia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh man. You so missed out!
The key to understanding Paranoia (and it took me a failed session and some time to understand this) is that it's a competition. The mission is only a pretext for the players trying to kill each other. Often, missions are impossible to complete.
You can't just shoot the other players however; that's treason. Despite its reputation, not everything is treason in Paranoia BTW, though many things are. Instead, you have to find proof of treason before you shoot. Many times this proof is spurious, or even forged, which naturally is treason itself, but so long as the authorities don't find out about it, you're in the clear.
So in a way, the game is about putting one over on The Man. When The Man is your fellow Troubleshooters, backed by a gigantic totalitarian/capitalist bureaucracy overseen by an omnipresent Computer, it just makes it more fun.