PARANOIA

With Year of The Computer 214 fast drawing to a close, The Computer's loyal servants in Power Services are making excellent progress on their latest Five-Year Universal Illumination Optimization Plan to upgrade the fluorescent bulbs in all public facilities in Sectors AAA through CZZ and associated sectors, subsectors, and corridors to new energy-efficient Hyper-Mercuron bulbs. (Rest assured the gas in these bulbs is only minimally radioactive and in no important way more toxic than their precursors, given reasonable maintenance.) To constructively address an unexpected 20% shortage of Hyper-Mercuron gas production, and to rectify consequent temporary shortfalls in FYUIOP milestone completion achievements, The Computer has wisely instructed all affected sectors to repeat Year 214 indefinitely until further notice. Thank you for your cooperation -- and keep those lightbulbs clean!

(The following opinions are by me alone, Allen Varney, and don't necessarily represent those of PARANOIA's owners or publisher.)

In 2008 there was essentially no PARANOIA news at all until just this month, when Mongoose Publishing suddenly produced three new books in two weeks: Alpha Complex Nights 2, Big Book of Bots, and The Thin Green Line. (A fourth book, Mandatory Mission Pack, will appear in January 2009.) All these supplements were designed by Mongoose's gifted staff writer Gareth Hanrahan, who had a banner year with a well-received new edition of Traveller, as well as the webcomic Fish for Fish and a new blog, Figures of Text. All these books also featured covers by the One True PARANOIA Artist, the incomparable Jim Holloway.

Though there was little news to report this year, we can expect wonderful things in 2009. In his 2008 State of the Mongoose post, CEO Matthew Sprange brought the news:

PARANOIA has always been an odd duck for us. You see, when publishing RPGs there is a set formula you can follow as to how many supplements you will sell, based upon how many main rulebooks have sold. With the exception of Flashbacks, PARANOIA does not follow this. At all. The main rulebook is one of our bestselling titles of all time, but the supplements, while cheerful enough at the sales end, are disproportionately low compared to the rulebook. Clearly, this is something we need to take a look at, and as 2009 is PARANOIA’s 25th Anniversary, it seems like the perfect opportunity!

First up will be a 25th Anniversary rulebook. Don’t panic, this is not a new edition per se, and if you want to stick with your current rulebook, you’ll find it works just fine with everything else coming for PARANOIA in the future. We are twiddling a few bits and pieces in the rulebook, including moving Zap and Straight games to an appendix, while concentrating on Classic (all future supplements will follow the Classic mould too). There will be a limited-edition version of this book to mark the anniversary, and we are currently putting together a plan of what this will include (we are currently investigating the possibility of using Rebellion’s recording studios...). If you are a PARANOIA fan, you will not want to miss this one, as we are packing a lot into it.

That will be the Troubleshooters taken care of. Later in the year, two more rulebooks will appear – the second covering IntSec troopers, the third High Programmers (there was actually a lot of debate about the third, as Vulture Warriors were the first choice – but when Gareth Hanrahan suggested that High Programmers might play like an insane version of Yes, Minister, he won the argument hands down). Each will form its own ‘sub-line’ in Alpha Complex, with its own set of scenarios appearing throughout the year, each providing a very, very different take on Alpha Complex as a whole.

This is an experiment in expanding the scope of Alpha Complex, while staying true to the roots of PARANOIA itself. The analogy we have used is actually some of White Wolf’s games – if PARANOIA is the World of Darkness, then IntSec troopers, High Programmers and, of course, Troubleshooters are the equivalent of Vampire, Werewolf, and Hunter (won’t say which is which, of course!). If this idea proves popular, we may add some new dimensions to Alpha Complex.

I think this is an inspired approach, entirely in keeping with the Mongoose edition's avowed goal to expand the range of experiences players associate with PARANOIA. I won't be involved with these three (!) new rulebooks, but I'm confident Gareth will do a terrific job, and I look forward to reading them.

PARANOIA continues to hold the gaming community's respect. This past fall, among 1,100 core rules sets, the Mongoose PARANOIA edition rose as high as #10 in the comprehensive RPG.net Game Index. At this writing, the rulebook stands at #16 among core rules sets, #40 among all 11,117 indexed products. The Flashbacks hardcover reprint collection is #30 among 2,542 adventures, #296 overall. Meanwhile, the leading fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, still simmers in a low-key way, though it has declined with the departure of most of its original High Programmers.

For me, the most exciting development of 2008 -- my 30th anniversary in the roleplaying field, counting from my humor article "Pond War" in Metagaming's magazine The Space Gamer #19 (Sept-Oct 1978) -- has been the chance to work again with several writers from the Traitor Recycling Studio, the gifted bunch who wrote almost all the books in the first two years of Mongoose's PARANOIA support line. Our new satirical humor site, Ninjalistics, is still finding its way, but all goes well. Last week, "Six additional political operatives die in separate accidents unrelated to Karl Rove" became our first article to get more than 1,000 hits, and its affiliate link earned our first US$1 of income, of which I was foolishly proud. Anyone who enjoys the PARANOIA style of humor will find Ninjalistics worth a look.

Of course, for me and all the Traitors, PARANOIA remains our first love. Though we have moved in many different directions, in 2009 we'll still follow the game closely, and I expect we'll enjoy it a lot.

Labels: yearinreview