<$BlogRSDURL$>

Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

PARANOIA Jenga 

Epidiah Ravachol's well-regarded tabletop RPG Dread (The Impossible Dream, 2006) won awards for its innovative task resolution system that uses a tower of Jenga wooden blocks. When a character attempts an action, the player must pull a block from the tower; if the tower collapses the character fails and is removed from the game. (RPG.net Game Index entry for Dread.)

Stephen Jarjoura, on his Runester blog, posts photos of a Dread-inspired PARANOIA mission run using the Jenga task resolution system, where -- this is the brilliant bit -- the blocks are colored according to security clearance. Note, in the photo, the preponderance of green and blue blocks at the top....

Thanks to Gareth Hanrahan for the link. I asked what happened when the tower fell over. Gareth's sober response: "I'm guessing someone got terminated."
Posted by: Allen Varney / 11:16 AM

Comments:
Hello! I took that photo and played in that game. On the one hand, the GM did not enforce the "color of block must be at your security level" rule, I just wrote that in my description for humor. On the other hand, you are right about the tumbling tower: your clone dies.

I ended up with a reputation for insane pulls which should have never worked, but did. Other poor fellows died while trying to operate their PDC's. It was a fantastic game; very faithful to the spirit and setting of Paranoia but with an added visceral tension brought by the Jenga tower.
# posted by Blogger runester : August 08, 2011 8:44 PM
 
Post a Comment

Copyright © 2004-2013 by Greg Costikyan and Eric Goldberg. All your rights are belong to us. No bloody Creative Commons here! Bwahahaha!
No, seriously. If you make non-commercial use of stuff here, that's fine, but we reserve all commercial rights, and all rights to prepare derivative material on things posted here. In addition, posters of comments must be aware that we reserve the right to use whatever material they post here, and/or derivative works therefrom, in PARANOIA, supplementary products, licensed products, or derivative work, without any compensation whatever, for all time to come and throughout this universe and any alternate universes that may be discovered. At our discretion, and without obligation, we may, if it strikes our fancy, make a good faith effort to credit you for stuff we use, but we can't promise it won't slip our minds, in the hurly-burly of meeting deadlines. (Actually, we intend to do that, but it's possible we'll screw up.) By posting comments, you grant us a non-revocable, perpetual, non-exclusive license to use whatever you post, in whatsoever fashion we deem useful, here or in any other forum, in PARANOIA or in any and all future products, including but not limited to derivative works, and specifically but not exclusively including the microbrewery beer, ale and porter; salty and sugary snack; and tattoo design rights deriving therefrom. Woohoo! Is that enough legalese for you? The Computer is Your Friend.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?