PARANOIA

PARANOIA in the real world: UK cop chases himself

2012-02-07T12:58:00.000-05:00

According to a February 7, 2012 story by Andrew Hough in The Daily Telegraph (UK), a British undercover police officer accidentally chased himself for 20 minutes:

An undercover police officer "chased himself round the streets" for 20 minutes after a CCTV operator mistook him for a suspect.

The junior officer, who has not been named, was monitoring an area hit by a series of burglaries in an unnamed market town in the country’s south.

As the probationary officer from Sussex Police searched for suspects, the camera operator radioed that he had seen someone "acting suspiciously" in the area. But he failed to realise that it was actually the plain-clothed officer he was watching on the screen, according to details leaked to an industry magazine. The operator directed the officer, who was on foot patrol, as he followed the "suspect" on camera last month, telling his colleague on the ground that he was "hot on his heels."

The officer spent around 20 minutes giving chase before a sergeant came into the CCTV control room, recognised the "suspect" and laughed hysterically at the mistake.

PARANOIA: 2011 in review

2012-01-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

Chronometric innovations introduced during Year 214 by The Computer's loyal servants in Central Processing have been, through traitorous sabotage, unevenly applied. In particular, the new mandate to report all times to femtosecond precision has met with unexpected resistance, possibly due to consequent variance in reports due to the time elapsed in writing, reading, or speaking said times. CPU has determined a need for additional education. For these and other reasons, our friend The Computer has ordered Year 214 to be repeated, commencing promptly at 214.00.00.00.000000000.

The big news for PARANOIA in 2011 -- at least I hope it will turn out, in retrospect, to be big news -- was the launch of the new line of official novels from Ultraviolet Books. As I mentioned in the original Ultraviolet Books launch post, these books are never-before-published novels written by Famous Game Designers long associated with the roleplaying game. Inexpensive (holiday sale price US$2.99 apiece) and DRM-free (not copy-protected), they feature new covers by The One True PARANOIA Artist, Jim Holloway. Three novels have been posted in Kindle format on Amazon:

S1 Reality Optional by Gareth Hanrahan
Y1 Traitor Hangout by WJ MacGuffin
T1 Stay Alert (Book 1 of the trilogy The Troubleshooter Rules) by me, Allen Varney

I'm editing the fourth book now, an introductory promotional anthology called The Computer is Your Friend. Soon I hope to post ePub versions of all these on many bookselling sites. Follow @UVBooks on Twitter for updates.

There will be more Ultraviolet novels in 2012 and, if all goes well, in the years beyond. In these books we're hoping to continue a tradition of smart science fiction satire in the mode of Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, John Sladek, and Pohl & Kornbluth. In my view that tradition has subsided in recent decades. The audience is relatively small, and for a publishing conglomerate the finances don't make sense. But for a small, scrappy band of High Programmers -- on our own! backs to the wall! fighting The Man! -- the business case is more attractive.

The main obstacle right now is a shortage of reviews on Amazon. If you're inclined to read one of these novels and post a review, contact me at allenvarney (at) Gmail and I'll send you links to free downloads of all three books. If you're not inclined to write a review, you can find the Kindle versions of all three novels in the Ultraviolet Books Amazon store, which is spartan right now but at least includes links to current PARANOIA roleplaying books.

Speaking of which: The roleplaying year for PARANOIA was unremarkable. The only Mongoose Publishing releases were the two hardcover compilations of past missions, Flashbacks Redux and Flashbacks Redux Redux. The latter, through traitorous sabotage, accidentally reproduced the same My First Treason mission already included in Flashbacks Redux. Mongoose Publishing CEO Matthew Sprange has announced a corrective Materials Treasonously Deleted volume that will be issued free to all purchasers of the errant volume.

(The following opinions are mine alone and don't necessarily represent those of Mongoose Publishing or the owners of PARANOIA).

It seems obvious the commercial tabletop roleplaying business -- the traditional three-tier model of publisher-distributor-retailer -- is stagnant and probably moribund. When RPG.net forum members post questions like "Is the hobby doomed?" (as they do with increasing frequency), some naysayers always pipe up with, "People have been saying the hobby is doomed since the 1980s" -- as if that somehow proves the field's vitality. I never understand this; people have been saying "the RPG field is doomed" for 30 years because, hellooo, the commercial field has been visibly, provably dying for 30 years. The two temporary episodes of commercial vitality (White Wolf in the early '90s and the OGL fad) were intermissions, impermanent stalling actions in the long gradual decline of the player base since the D&D fad of 1979-82. The bright spots today, such as Pathfinder, the Old School Renaissance, retro-clones, and the effervescent indie scene -- and some other isolated examples in this cheerleading RPG.net thread, "RPGs are NOT doomed" -- aren't bringing in large numbers of new players and, more to the point, aren't earning much money.

One recent example: The finale of Greg Tito's three-part Escapist article series, "The State of Dungeons & Dragons: The Future," cites the sad condition of the field's flagship game and speculates briefly about a 5th edition rumored to arrive in 2013. Raise your hand if you think a new edition of D&D will bring lots of players back to tabletop roleplaying. Uh-huh.

But for PARANOIA, at least, there has been one hopeful sign. Though the fan site Paranoia-Live.net continued quiet in 2011, the last High Programmer still standing, Phial, has recently acquired root access from longtime P-L.net doyen Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick. Phial is leading an overdue site redesign -- nothing ambitious to start, but well conceived and helpful -- that may restore vigor to PLN Sector. My congratulations and best wishes to Phial and all the loyal PLN citizens. Stay tuned.

PARANOIA in the real world: Hexagon

2011-12-26T01:18:00.000-05:00

Decades later, a Cold War secret is revealed (Associated Press):

DANBURY, Connecticut (AP) — For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets. They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized "cleanroom" where the equipment was stored. They spoke in code.
Few knew the true identity of "the customer" they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.
At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. [...]
It was dubbed "Big Bird" and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles (100 kilometers) of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth's atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.
The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves. [...]
According to the National Reconnaissance Office, a single Hexagon frame covered a ground distance of 370 nautical miles (680 kilometers), about the distance from Washington to Cincinnati. Early Hexagons averaged 124 days in space, but as the satellites became more sophisticated, later missions lasted twice as long. [...] Among other successes, Hexagon is credited with providing crucial information for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
From the outset, secrecy was a huge concern, especially in Danbury, where the intense activity of a relatively small company that had just been awarded a massive contract (the amount was not declassified) made it obvious that something big was going on. Inside the plant, it was impossible to disguise the gigantic vacuum thermal chamber where cameras were tested in extreme conditions that simulated space. There was also a "shake, rattle and roll room" to simulate conditions during launch.
"The question became, how do you hide an elephant?" a National Reconnaissance Office report stated at the time. It decided on a simple response: "What elephant?" Employees were told to ignore any questions from the media, and never confirm the slightest detail about what they worked on.
But it was impossible to conceal the launches at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, and aviation magazines made several references to "Big Bird." In 1975, a piece on the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" on space reconnaissance described an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where American and Soviet intelligence officials knew of each other's "eyes in the sky" — and other nations did, too — but no one confirmed the programs or spoke about them publicly....

Guiding Sun Ray sets

2011-12-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

Glorious comrades! The Amazing Politician, Beloved Father, Beloved and Respected Father, Beloved and Respected General, Beloved and Respected Leader, Bright Sun of Juche, Bright Sun of the 21st Century, Brilliant Leader, Commander-in-Chief, Dear Leader, Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have, Ever-Victorious Iron-Willed Commander, Fate of the Nation, Father of the Nation, Father of the People, General, Glorious General Who Descended From Heaven, Great Defender, Great General, Great Leader of our Party and of our Nation, Great Leader, Great Leader, Great Man Who Descended From Heaven, Great Man Who Is a Man of Deeds, Great Marshal, Great Sun of The Nation, Great Sun of the 21st Century, Guarantee of the Fatherland's Unification, Guiding Star of the 21st Century, Guiding Sun Ray, Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love, His Excellency, Invincible and Ever-triumphant General, Leader of the 21st Century, Leader of the Party and the People, Leader of the Party, the country, and the Army, Leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Leader, Mastermind of the Revolution, Party Center, Peerless Leader, Respected Leader, Savior, Shining Star of Paektu Mountain, Sun of Socialism, Sun of the Communist Future, Sun of the Nation, Superior Person, Supreme Leader of the Nation, Symbol of the Fatherland's Unification, The Great Sun of Life, Unique Leader, Wise Leader, and World Leader of The 21st Century has died.

New PARANOIA novels from Ultraviolet Books!

2011-12-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

Attention, citizens! Throughout this Year 214 of The Computer, your friend The Computer has tracked the rapid growth of ebook publishing. Now The Computer's loyal servants in Housing Preservation and Development & Mind Control are proud to announce Ultraviolet Books, publisher of all-new official PARANOIA ebooks.

Licensed and approved by the PARANOIA owners, edited and laid out to professional standards, these DRM-free (not copy-protected), never-before-published novels are written by Famous Game Designers long associated with the roleplaying game; they feature new covers by The One True PARANOIA Artist, Jim Holloway; and they’re even for your security clearance.

The first two novels of the initial six-book license, in Kindle format, are now available for purchase and immediate download on Amazon:

PARANOIA S1 Reality Optional by Gareth Hanrahan, designer of the 25th Anniversary rulebooks and writer of every PARANOIA RPG supplement published in the past several years. Conspiracy theorist Jerome-G, a worker in the Threat Obfuscation Department, creates fake dangers to cover up real ones. Now, somehow, his fictitious threats are turning real. Jerome-G finds a pair of experimental Augmented Reality goggles that reveal the truth behind everything -- and now he's more confused than ever.
PARANOIA T1 Stay Alert by Allen Varney, longtime PARANOIA writer and designer of the 2004 edition. Troubleshooter Fletcher-R leads Team Rotisserie-459 on a mission to return a stolen helpbot. The bot isn't annoying or repetitious at all, no siree (“You look like you’re about to shoot your teammate! Would you like help?”). Embroiled in a gang war for control of the bot, Fletcher hopes to complete his mission before his teammates find out he's a traitor.

Two more PARANOIA books will follow later this month: Traitor Hangout by WJ MacGuffin (author of the PARANOIA RPG supplement Criminal Histories); and a promotional anthology, The Computer is Your Friend, designed to gently (well, more or less) orient new citizens of Alpha Complex.

Initially available for the Amazon Kindle family (.mobi format), the Ultraviolet Books line will soon have ePub versions suitable for the Nook, iPhone/iPad, and other e-readers. The books have no DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), so you can transport them easily among all your readers.

The Ultraviolet Books website tells more about the books and their authors, and will soon have free sample chapters and news. Sign up for the FREE (and spam-free) mailing list, and follow UVBooks on Twitter and Facebook.

State of the Mongoose 2011

2011-12-07T15:52:00.001-05:00

At the Mongoose Publishing forum, Mongoose CEO Matthew Sprange gives his annual overview of Mongoose's past year and the one ahead. Matthew has cheery news about Mongoose's new website, the Legend (nee RuneQuest) and Traveller RPGs, Lone Wolf solo books, and the company's miniatures lines, including a Star Fleet Universe sublicense from Amarillo Design Bureau. There is hardly anything, good or bad, about PARANOIA:

Overall, the RPG market has a pulse but that is about all can be said for it (though there are high points). We think the bottom mark has been reached but that has been said many, many times before. [...] PARANOIA core books continue to be relatively strong, month in, month out, the supplements… not. A continuing conundrum for us. [...]There is a lot more happening in the Star Fleet Universe. We are currently discussing several projects, from novels through to iPhone games, and there is even talk of a PARANOIA/Star Fleet Universe crossover where players take the role of hapless away teams....

State of the Mongoose 2011

Geek of the Week on RPGGeek

2011-11-13T16:18:00.001-05:00

For the next seven days I (Allen Varney) will be sitting in the friendly dunking booth at RPGGeek, the roleplaying site spun off from the authoritative BoardGameGeek.com, as RPGG Geek of the Week #97. I'll be answering questions about PARANOIA and whatever else the assembled geeks wish to ask. Thanks to my predecessor, novelist and designer Matt Forbeck for inviting me.

Lithuania's Soviet-nostalgia theme parks

2011-10-02T18:49:00.001-04:00

I'm months late noting this May 1, 2011 Guardian story by Dan Hancox, "Lithuania's Soviet nostalgia: Back in the USSR":

This is 1984: Survival Drama in a Soviet Bunker, a three-hour long, quasi-theatrical experience in a genuine Soviet bunker in the middle of the Lithuanian forest [...] We stand to attention for the Soviet anthem and hoisting of the red flag, and then down we go, into the freezing-cold bunker. For three hours, we are force-marched through icy, virtually pitch-black corridors, barked at (by canine and human alike), humiliated, interrogated, forced to sign false confessions to imagined crimes, shown propaganda, and taught to prepare for a nuclear attack by the imperialist pigs. Each stage is designed to illustrate, with little allowance for subtlety – or health and safety – an aspect of life in the Soviet Union.
Six metres underground, and comprising 3,000 square metres of tunnels and cave-like rooms, the bunker was built in 1984 as an emergency base for Lithuanian state TV transmissions, in case the capital Vilnius came under attack from Nato. It boasts stand-alone heating and sewerage facilities, and communication lines to Moscow, and a roof designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear bomb.
Less theatrical, but equally harrowing, is the Museum of Genocide Victims, housed in a former KGB prison in central Vilnius where hundreds were tortured and killed. [...]
The final, stunning plank in the trinity of Lithuanian exercises in Soviet memory is Grutas Park, known slightly glibly to some as "Stalin's World". It is not exactly a theme park (though there is a playground, and a zoo featuring llamas and bears), but a massive outdoor collection of the country's Soviet-era statues, as well as log cabins containing thousands of other exhibits, from rugs with Lenin's face on them to Pioneer drums, communist toys, flags, paintings and Soviet-era calculators. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, this macabre oasis of socialist realism was built on snail money (the owner Viliumas Malinauskas is a wealthy snail and mushroom farmer) [...] Grutas Park is unapologetic about using mockery as a weapon: on special occasions, they employ lookalikes to pose as Lenin, Stalin et al, and put on performances by young actors dressed up as Pioneers. "Now we can laugh at our Soviet past," announces the park's audio guide at one point. Vanagaite eventually agrees there is a role for this, as well as shock tactics: "I suppose it's about finding the right mixture of absurdity and horror."

(Thanks to loyal citizen Allandaros, who sent the link promptly back in May.)

Eric Zawadzki's "Kingmaker"

2011-09-28T12:47:00.000-04:00

Eric Zawadzki, former Famous Game Designer and contributor to PARANOIA supplements like Service, Service!, has written (with Matthew Schick) a young-adult high fantasy novel, Kingmaker. It's available now on Amazon and Smashwords, with other sites to follow.

In a forum post on Paranoia-Live.net, Eric teases out a PARANOIA connection:

[E]ven when I'm not writing in the light-and-funny tone of [PARANOIA's] source books, the underlying mistrust of anything that looks easy or straightforward (or impossible and complicated) remains hardwired in my brain.

Best of luck with the new novel, Eric!

Alternate Alpha Complexes

2011-09-28T12:40:00.000-04:00

Loyal citizen Silent has assembled a Google Site of Alternate Alpha Complexes settings, mostly drawn from published supplements and fan sites. Silent's site isn't associated with the long-planned, never-published campaign supplement Brave New Complex, which by golly I still hope may see print (or photons) one of these days. This site should prove useful for Troubleshooter player characters who roll "Spy for Another Alpha Complex" as their secret society.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out

2011-09-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

Game designer Monica Valentinelli has founded Speak Out With Your Geek Out:

"Take a stance against baiting nerd rage and stereotypes of geeks.
"Post about how much you love your geeky hobbies or vocation from Monday, September 12th, 2011 to Friday, September 16th on your blog, website, social media account or in a forum somewhere. Then come here and tell us about it. We'll have a kick-off post where you can stand and be counted.
"Let's show the world why we're awesome and why there is nothing wrong with being a geek."

The Twitter hashtag is #speakgeek.

Commendation point and good luck!

PARANOIA Jenga

2011-08-07T11:16:00.000-04:00

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."

Drone Ethnography

2011-07-24T19:43:00.000-04:00

Adam Rothstein in Rhizome magazine writes about "Drone Ethnography":

All of us that use the internet are already practicing Drone Ethnography. Look at the features of drone technology: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Surveillance, Sousveillance. Networks of collected information, over land and in the sky. Now consider the “consumer” side of tech: mapping programs, location-aware pocket tech, public-sourced media databases, and the apps and algorithms by which we navigate these tools. We already study the world the way a drone sees it: from above, with a dozen unblinking eyes, recording everything with the cold indecision of algorithmic commands honed over time, affecting nothing—except, perhaps, a single, momentary touch, the momentary awareness and synchronicity of a piece of information discovered at precisely the right time. An arc connecting two points like the kiss from an air-to-surface missile. Our technological capacity for watching, recording, collecting, and archiving has never been wider, and has never been more automated. The way we look at the world—our basic ethnographic approach—is mimicking the technology of the drone. [...]
And we don’t just want this. We need this. In a humanitarian crisis, the very first data that must be collected is Geographic Information Systems data. We need flyovers, photographs, the most recent maps fed to us with live updates of the topological information that is changing our world right out of our control. The singular telescope of Gallileo has evolved into a bug-eyed drone from Northrop-Grumman. It is no longer a research instrument, but an extension of society. Technology is no longer something that can be banned or controlled. Fear of the Swarm is forever joined to love of the Swarm. [...]
We have learned to love the drone. The only question that remains, is how will we express this love?

Boy, I dunno -- how about in a PARANOIA mission?

Mutant Experience RPG.net review

2011-06-24T09:42:00.000-04:00

Perhaps some traitorous citizens might question the value of reviewing a six-year-old PARANOIA supplement that's out of print. But hey - eBay! .PDFs!

Neil Lennon reviews The Mutant Experience on RPG.net.

PARANOIA in the real world: Japanese TV watches you

2011-06-01T15:11:00.000-04:00

"The next best thing since the TV programming guide" is the dry title for this Newlaunches post:

Japan based NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) is testing an interface which observes TV viewers, determines their interest, and provides information related to the TV program in accordance with the way they are watching it. UTAN (User Technology Assisted Navigation) TV viewing interface, as it is called, has a camera mounted on the TV which photographs the viewer and estimates the viewer's degrees of interest, concentration, etc., from circumstances such as who is watching the TV with how much interest. [...]

The viewer's interest is determined by observing his face, facial expression, and motion. For [example,] if the viewer's expression does not change for a brief period, then he may be concentrating on the program. At the moment the differences are derived by comparing to the normal state, but it is also possible to ascertain if the viewer is happy or angry.

[Via Midnight on Paranoia-Live.net.]

Cosmonaut doomed because no one showed Brezhnev a memo

2011-03-18T16:59:00.000-04:00

In "Cosmonaut Crashed into Earth 'Crying in Rage'," National Public Radio reporter Robert Krulwich discusses the forthcoming book Starman by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, which recounts the sad death of Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, burned alive in the 1967 crash of a Soyuz module after re-entry:

The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships. [...] It would be, Brezhnev hoped, a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Brezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen.

The problem was [Yuri] Gagarin. Already a Soviet hero, the first man ever in space, he and some senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203 structural problems — serious problems that would make this machine dangerous to navigate in space. The mission, Gagarin suggested, should be postponed.

The question was: Who would tell Brezhnev? Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command. Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, "I'm not going to make it back from this flight."

[Via Popehat.]

Paranoia-Live.net Fun-Fun Fund

2011-03-12T23:46:00.000-05:00

Time once more for the annual server-cost fund drive at the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net. From High Programmer Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick:

Paranoia-Live.net urgently requests all citizens pay what they can towards the sector's 'We Love Friend Computer Fun-Fun Fund' (or 'server costs', as the High Programmers call it).

Participation is nearly optional.

Further details can be found on the P-Live forums -- or for those in a hurry, just point your PayNOW! account at andy_fitz (at) btinternet (dot) com.

Thank you.

This webcomic is not available at your security clearance

2011-03-11T00:43:00.000-05:00

On her LJComics Tumblr site, Ladyjdotnet does her own riff on PARANOIA in the real world.

(Here's her LJComics Tumblr archive, and she's Narcissica on Twitter.)

New from R&D: Electric thinking cap

2011-02-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

'Thinking cap' makes brain waves in Australia (AFP):

SYDNEY — Scientists in Australia say they are encouraged by initial results of a revolutionary "thinking cap" that aims to promote creativity by passing low levels of electricity through the brain.

The device, which consists of two conductors fastened to the head by a rubber strap, significantly boosted results in a simple arithmetic test, they said. Three times as many people who wore the "thinking cap" were able to complete the test, compared to those who did not use the equipment. Sixty people took part in total.

Allan Snyder, director of the University of Sydney's Centre for the Mind, said the device worked by suppressing the left side of the brain, associated with knowledge, and stimulating the right side, linked to creativity. "You wouldn't use this to study or to help your memory," Snyder told AFP. "You would use this if you wanted to look at a problem anew. If you wanted to look at the world, just briefly, with a child's view, if you wanted to look outside the box. [...] The dream is that one day we may be able to stimulate the brain in a particular way to give you, just momentarily, an unfiltered view of the world," Snyder said.

Here's the paper, "Facilitate Insight by Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation" (co-authored by Snyder), and an Australian news interview with Cambridge scientist Dr. Chris Smith.

(Thanks to David Boyle.)

Wired: Underground storage centers

2011-02-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

Erin Biba's photo feature in the February 2011 Wired magazine, "Underground Caverns Keep Things Cold, Safe... And Secret," features a CPU CompNode, a PLC food warehouse, HPD&MC film preservation cabinets, a Power Services generator, and a secret chapel for the First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer.

The Feeble Files

2011-02-03T11:50:00.001-05:00

Can't believe I never heard of the 1997 Adventure Soft computer game The Feeble Files. Designed by Simon Woodroffe, this point-and-click adventure game is set in a galactic empire ruled by the insane OmniBrain:

The OmniBrain is the governing power of the galaxy, controlling and seeing everything via the all-powerful OmniCorporation and its tortuous bureaucracy, and the sinister Enforcers. The game states "he considers all life forms everywhere to be his citizens, and he loves them and cares for them in the way that is best for them, and wants them all to be happy. Praise be to the OmniBrain!" This fine line between a god and a dictatorship is explored at many points throughout the game. One example of this is the Happy Bots who patrol the city to ensure that everyone is happy. However, they achieve this in a rather unorthodox way, by killing anyone who is sad. [...]

Feeble works for the Ministry of Galactic Uncertainty (Crop Circle Division). It is his job to fly to undeveloped planets, such as Earth, and create crop circles in order to increase the indigenous population's paranoia and uncertainty about the universe. This is to stimulate greater scientific investigation and technological development, until the planet is sufficiently advanced that it is ready to be absorbed by the OmniCorporation.

I learned of The Feeble Files from one OreWaUsopp, who ducked in to the forums on the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, to alert loyal citizens to his new Feeble Files playthrough videos posted on YouTube. (OreWaUsopp has already made quite a career with his "Babbleplay" videos -- over 1,000 of them since 2007. Commendation point!)

At this writing OreWaUsopp's playthrough is still in progress. (Update February 7: Now complete!) If you don't want to sit through all three hours (to date), at least check out (say) Episode 5 - Happiness is Mandatory, Citizen -- especially starting at 5:30 in, when a Happy Bot terminates an unhappy citizen. You'll feel right at home.

Invisible tanks will watch you

2011-01-11T18:05:00.000-05:00

The news in this Daily Telegraph (UK) story, "Invisible tanks could be on the battlefield within five years," isn't just about invisible tanks with perfect camouflage and transparent armor. No! Reading all the way to the end, we learn the invisible tanks with perfect camouflage and transparent armor will be watching us and identifying suspicious behavior:

Also being developed is a technology known as "biometric integration," which uses advanced algorithms to analyse crowds and to search for potential threats from suicide bombers by analyzing suspicious behavior in groups or individuals.

Electronic scanners would search for suspicious behavior, inappropriate clothing or individuals on wanted lists who can be identified through facial or iris recognition. The information would then be displayed on screen within vehicle or handheld vehicles carried by dismounted troops.

Hisham Awad, the head of the Future Protected Vehicle project, said: "The trick here is to use machines to do what they are best at (and humans are not) -- ploughing very quickly through dull, repetitive data [...] Then you can quickly bring human intelligence to bear where it excels - making life-or-death decisions based on 'real time' information on suspicious activity flagged up by the machines."

Life-or-death decisions, when seconds count, based on the invisible cybertank's opinion of your wardrobe. Don't you feel safer already?

Signs & Portents 88

2011-01-03T04:51:00.002-05:00

There's a new PARANOIA article in this month's Signs & Portents magazine, covering the rather topical issue of passenger scanners at airports and intrusive searches. Oh, and rubber gloves.

(The Onion article referenced in the mission is here, by the way.)

Underplex review at RPG.net

2011-01-03T01:43:00.000-05:00

Darren MacLennan's glowing review of Paul Baldowski's PARANOIA supplement The Underplex (Style: 5, Substance: 5):

The entire book is packed, is the best way to put it. Instead of hammering a point to death over and over again -- stop snickering, I do not do that in my reviews -- the book gives you just enough to let your imagination do the rest of the work, then sprints to the next idea. An Old Reckoning military base, for instance, gives you just enough of an idea to flesh it out in your mind, then seamlessly introduces a plot complication that'll keep Troubleshooters dealing with chlorine-spewing scrubots. Almost every section has an adventure seed to go along with it, or a mission and counter-mission for secret society members. [...]

I should also mention Jim Holloway's artwork, which is just sterling; his style is one of the reasons why it's so easy to grasp PARANOIA's concepts. [...] Even better is his reluctance to draw people as anything but people; you can imagine seeing the people he draws on the street, as opposed to the smooth-faced fashion models you see in every piece of game art ever. That's not to say that he doesn't dip into caricature, but it's the good kind of caricature, where you can see a character's entire personality in a single facial expression.

PARANOIA: 2010 in review

2011-01-01T00:26:00.000-05:00

The impressive and timely finish of Year 214 of The Computer has prompted nostalgic recollection across Alpha Complex. Who can forget the many landmark victories of loyal citizens against the retreating Communist threat? Who can fail to shed a tear for the noble spirit of sacrifice and camraderie engendered in loyal citizens by the ever-growing Communist threat? Let us recall and celebrate the signal achievement of [NAME DELETED by order of Internal Security], whose actions against the [DELETED] menace have proven to be [DELETED]! In that spirit of remembrance, of happy optimism and courageous vigilance, The Computer's loyal servants in Technical Services have reported Communist sabotage of certain timekeeping devices that require reset, and therefore Year 214 will be repeated. Give thanks for this exciting opportunity!

In February Mongoose Publishing produced Gareth Hanrahan's High Programmers -- the last of their three 25th Anniversary PARANOIA rulebooks. Using a unique and highly original system unrelated to the other PARANOIA rulebooks, High Programmers revealed how to play the highest of the high, the psychopathiest of the psychos, the ULTRAVIOLETs who rule Alpha Complex.

Soon afterward, Mongoose also published Gareth's collection of High Programmers missions, None of This is My Fault (which, almost in passing, revived and updated Sam Shirley's 1988 West End Games adventure The Iceman Returneth), as well as a new mission collection for Troubleshooters, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Termination Booth.

These fine books proved to be Gareth's grand finale as a Mongoose staff designer. He has embarked on a successful freelance career, with many supplements in the pipeline for Pelgrane Press, Cubicle 7 Entertainment, and others. Cubicle 7 has just published The Laundry RPG; Gareth was a principal designer. And he's still writing freelance for Mongoose. The upcoming issue 88 of Mongoose's free in-house magazine, Signs & Portents, includes Gareth's newest PARANOIA mission, "Security Theatre."

2010 brought some obstacles. When Google's Blogger service treasonously shut down this blog and many others (they say it was for technical reasons), we commenced a rocky transition to Blogspot that is still causing problems. (The last nine months of archive links are, um, broken.) After a four-year delay, I finally managed to produce the WMD bonus material .PDF and posted it as a free download on the leading fan site, Paranoia-Live.net. As though jinxed, Paranoia-Live went down in early May. But the site surged back a couple of weeks later and is still, knock electrons, poking along pleasantly enough. In fact, the future is brightening for JParanoia, the free client/server application for playing PARANOIA online. In November High Programmer NoryB unexpectedly announced he intends to release the JParanoia program as open source.

It's been a tough year and a nightmare decade. The commercial roleplaying market is increasingly challenging, and the delta of the increase will rise in the years ahead. But so long as paranoia remains strong in the world, PARANOIA will remain strong. Stay strong with it, and all will be well.

Dan Curtis Johnson's microfiction year

2010-12-27T17:24:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to PARANOIA mission designer Dan Curtis Johnson as he nears the end of his year-long exercise in sustained microfiction, straightforwardly called "Write Something Every Day." Dan, who has designed many fine missions (including "Mister Bubbles," "Stealth Train," and "Hunger") and has scripted dozens of comics (Dan's bibliography), resolved on New Year's Day 2010 to write new fiction each day for a year and post it to his LiveJournal, Scribbles and Lies.

"Someday, I'd like to get back into writing professionally, even if only on the side," Dan says -- he's a quality manager in Software Engineering at Apple in Cupertino, California -- "but to do so I have to make myself write -- no matter what -- when I have the time. So I wanted to see if I could train sheer force-of-will into overcoming writer's block."

Dan achieved what he modestly calls "reasonably good results": 175,000 words of entertaining reading, mostly in short laser-focused bursts. (Several dozen entries are exactly and explicitly 100 words long; my favorites include the inventive 11-part series Hell Frozen Over.) As for PARANOIA referents, any Troubleshooter who has climbed a small mountain of CPU paperwork (or endured a Humanist secret society meeting) may appreciate the fussy bureaucratic AIs of Dan's five-part Landmine Nation story.

Dan says, "Though I did miss a few days, pretty much all of them were because either I was sick, one of my kids was sick, or I was out of town away from computers and things to write on. The results were about as uneven as any prolific body of work, I expect; sometimes it's good and sometimes it's just words.

"One really positive side effect is that, along the way, I dragged around half a dozen pieces of unfinished short story work that had been languishing on my hard drive (in some cases, as much as twenty full years) and finally finished them. The desperate need to have something, anything, made me go back and cannibalize past work really effectively at times." Just last week Dan finished a piece he'd made notes on in February: "HalfLANG," about a language for the lucrative market of hobbit programmers. Reddit picked up the link, and now 45,000 people have read it, making it the year's most popular piece.

Other highlights: "Fade Away" (March 26), a hundred-word ghost-tech story that desperately needs a novella-length expansion; "Getting Paid" (October 15), which reads like Act 1 of a Tim Allen movie; and "Triage" (December 8), a note-perfect zombie tale. I liked Dan's May 19 entry so much that (with his permission) I made it a poster and put it up as a free download on the document-sharing site Scribd: Before You X, Make Sure Y.

Does Dan's example inspire you? "In case anyone decides to try this particular nutjobbery, there are three things I'd do differently," he says, "all of which can be summarized as 'I really should have been publicizing it, and myself, the whole time.'

"I would have tweeted a short link to each day's new story after it was posted." [Dan is @dcurtisj on Twitter.]
"I would have added a line specifying 'Write Something New Every Day is a 365-day project by Dan Curtis Johnson' with a copyright reminder.
"I would have written a pre-dated January 1st post explaining the project, so that it would always appear at the very top of the first page of my main LJ.

"In short, I am crappy at promoting myself, and it's only now at the end I realize what I should have been doing from the start."

What's next? "I'll assemble some sort of anthology book out of the 2010 pieces for publication. Then I intend to edit an existing sort-of-novel that I wrote a few years back, get it into publishable shape. And I am going to try to pitch comics on a regular basis in 2011.

"But all of those things come after January 1st, a day on which I am going to write absolutely nothing whatsoever. Man, that is going to be great."

Flashbacks Redux cover

2010-12-14T14:01:00.000-05:00

Mongoose Publishing has posted the cover (by Chris Quilliams) for the forthcoming updated Flashbacks Redux mission collection.

The most popular XP-edition [supplement] is back, in its 25th Anniversary guise! Filled with hand-picked classic adventures from all previous editions of PARANOIA, Flashbacks Redux is gaming hilarity at its greatest. Re-live the most terrifying moments of "Me and My Shadow Mark IV," or revel in the confusion of YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues.

These and many other classics are found in Flashbacks Redux, all suitably trimmed, tweaked and tailored for the latest edition of PARANOIA: Troubleshooters.

State of the Mongoose 2010

2010-12-02T16:19:00.001-05:00

On the Mongoose Publishing forum, Mongoose CEO Matthew Sprange has posted his latest annual overview of the PARANOIA publisher's status. The lengthy State of the Mongoose 2010 discusses plans for Mongoose's many roleplaying lines in sober and pragmatic terms. Here is Matthew's discussion of PARANOIA:

This one has been a funny old fish for us. We announced that, as part of PARANOIA’s 25th Anniversary, we would be breaking the game into three ‘flavours,’ covering Troubleshooters, Internal Security and High Programmers. The idea was that core books for PARANOIA have always done exceptionally well, but the supplements never followed suit. With three core books, PARANOIA would naturally become a more frontline product set.

It has so not worked out that way!

Troubleshooters sells as well as a core book for PARANOIA ever has, but Internal Security and High Programmers, both complete core books, do about 20% better than an average supplement.

This is very frustrating for us because these two are damn good books -- High Programmers especially is a work of art from Gareth Hanrahan, and it deserves far more attention than it has received. After all, allowing players to use ULTRAVIOLET-level characters with all the power and resources of Alpha Complex at their disposal – what is not to like? The cover, done by Chris Quilliams, has especially nailed the game. In fact, PARANOIA creators Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan have said they consider that cover to be the best of any PARANOIA book, published at any time.

And yet gamers are still treating the game as second-fiddle to Troubleshooters…

For 2011, there will four books released for PARANOIA, roughly one every quarter. Two will be brand new adventures (likely for Troubleshooters and High Programmers). The other two will be fulfilling a commitment to keep the classic PARANOIA adventures in print, and have the titles Flashbacks Redux, and Flashbacks Redux Redux. They won’t have the same content as the original Flashbacks books, and will include not only the earliest PARANOIA adventures, but some of the favourites from the XP years as well. The first is due to appear in January and will include YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues and, my personal favourite (and taking centre stage for the cover art, again by Mr Quilliams), Me and My Shadow Mark IV.

We remain interested in expanding PARANOIA to other territories, but the question always comes back asking what we can do with it. We remain fairly convinced that there is a decent PARANOIA graphic novel or comic strip in there somewhere but, despite several draft scripts, we still have not found the hook.

We’ll keep plugging away at it though. That is the new Mongoose mandate!

Matthew concludes, "Mongoose has taken some knocks over the past few years but the important thing is that, to quote Morpheus, we are still here. Not dead yet. Not all of our peers can say the same thing."

JParanoia software to go open-source

2010-11-13T20:17:00.000-05:00

On the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, shadowy High Programmer NoryB has suddenly returned from a years-long absence in the dark corners of Sector BEE to deliver a striking pronouncement: Before year's end, NoryB intends to open his JParanoia software as open source:

After too many cycles of neglect, I have once again picked up the source for JParanoia and am presently in the process of cleaning it up, tweaking it to make use of contemporary Java features, and will be RELEASING IT UNDER THE GPLv3 OPEN SOURCE LICENSE so that the community can maintain and improve it in perpetuity.

This should happen before the end of this yearcycle (discounting the possibility of commie sabotage).

JParanoia, as all good citizens know, is the free client/server application for playing PARANOIA online. It has lain dormant for a classified length of time, but now the future looks bright. Commendation point, NoryB, and good luck!

A hair-raising (or ear-lowering) mission

2010-10-14T21:36:00.000-04:00

Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, High Programmer of leading fan site Paranoia-Live.net, is helping his longtime partner, Jan, through a tough time as she undergoes chemotherapy for breast cancer. Jazzer has directed to all good citizens an unusual request, a Very Special Mission:

The mission: Obtain a short haircut and photograph yourself. Once suitably cut and/or shaven, you are asked to send a virtual postcard to me at slimturtle (at) gmail (dot) com offering well wishes and/or good luck to Jan. These will be forwarded to her as and when most needed. Before/after pics are not necessary, but are welcome. Already-hair-deprived individuals are also welcome to participate (as is anyone). Shaving your head is not necessary, but extra Cold Fun rations go to anyone loony enough to go for it. Anyone who simply wishes to send supportive emails to Jan is also welcome.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart and appreciate any support you can muster.

Your orders are clear, citizen! Report at once to your nearest Tonsorial Redress & Reclamation Office!

Spy on your fellow citizens, win prizes

2010-10-06T06:35:00.002-04:00

Citizen! Internal Security has volunteered you to monitor CCTV footage of your fellow citizens. Locate traitors and win big prizes! PARANOIA mission or real world scheme?

"Alpha Complex Soixante"?

2010-09-07T19:04:00.000-04:00

Alpha Complexe Soixante:

[I]t used to be Montreal. Now it's like the Godard movie Alphaville + Alpha Complex from PARANOIA. Everyone is sentimental, speaks French, and is trying to kill everyone else for reasons no-one can quite understand. Mass executions look like pieces of weird performance art. People smoke in noiry stairwells and commit suicide.

It's incredible, but I think this is the first time I've heard Godard's 1965 film Alphaville invoked in the context of Alpha Complex. And yet, just look at this user review on the IMDB page:

Godard creates a world of the future and sets it in modern Paris. The city of Alphaville is run by Alpha-60, a supercomputer, which dictates the society and forces it to operate exercising extreme logic. Logic = happiness and reason. This sounds completely insane. Rather, it would have sounded completely insane in 1967.

Sounds like a new play style - "Noir"!

(To forestall anxious moralists: Though its title (and a few sporadic entries) mischievously suggest not-work-safeness, Zak Sabbath's "Playing D&D With Porn Stars" has become one of the most intriguing and respected blogs of the Old School Renaissance.)

HappyLife

2010-09-04T13:05:00.002-04:00

Thermal cameras + algorithms + cryptic displays=HAPPYLIFE.

PARANOIA reviews by Petri Wessman

2010-08-28T02:49:00.000-04:00

Loyal citizen Petri Wessman, on his blog var/log/orava, has reviewed most of the Mongoose Publishing PARANOIA support line from STUFF onward. That link gathers all the reviews tagged PARANOIA; check the tag cloud in the right margin for many other reviews, including practically the entire Pathfinder line. Multiple commendation points, Petri, but as "Wristy," Your Friendly HPD&MC Ergonomics & Usability Mascot, reminds you: "Wise citizens guard against excessive eyestrain!"

[Via Gareth (@mytholder) Hanrahan on Twitter.]

Gamasutra on PARANOIA

2010-08-14T19:15:00.002-04:00

An article on Gamasutra about what computer games can learn from other games has a nice write-up of PARANOIA, here.

More Inevitable news

2010-07-31T05:13:00.000-04:00

This past February we mentioned the forthcoming satirical-dystopia boardgame Inevitable, by Jeremy P. Bushnell and Jonathan A. Leistiko -- "people who think Orwell's 1984 is a comedy and the Necronomicon is a romance."

In May Inevitable got some big-time attention -- even more high-profile than this blog, if you can conceive such an idea -- from Gawker Media's increasingly interesting science-fiction fansite io9. Ed Grabianowski writes "Inevitable, the Boardgame of Insane Supercomputers, Zombies, and Sociopolitical Satire." Both designers are on hand in the comment thread to answer questions; Leistiko writes, "My elevator pitch: It plays like a cross between Talisman, PARANOIA, and Illuminati. Yet it's still uniquely its own thing."

Inevitable has been in the works quite a while but now at last seems imminent. A Kickstarter campaign raised over $9,000, triple its original goal. Check the official Inevitable game site for updates.

Kafka's lost works trapped in bureaucratic nightmare

2010-07-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

Lost Kafka writings resurface, trapped in trial (Aron Heller, Associated Press):

JERUSALEM — It seems almost Kafkaesque: Ten safety deposit boxes of never-published writings by Franz Kafka, their exact contents unknown, are trapped in courts and bureaucracy, much like one of the nightmarish visions created by the author himself.

The papers, retrieved from bank vaults where they have sat untouched and unread for decades, could shed new light on one of literature's darkest figures.

In the past week, the pages have been pulled from safety deposit boxes in Tel Aviv and Zurich, Switzerland, on the order of an Israeli court over the objections of two elderly women who claim to have inherited them from their mother.

"Kafka could easily have written a story like this, where you try to do something and it all goes wrong and everything remains unresolved," said Sara Loeb, a Tel Aviv-based author of two books about the writer. "It's really a case of life imitating art."

Literary experts in both cities are sifting through the boxes, and the contents are expected to be of priceless literary and monetary value. What exactly is there remains unknown, but the papers include handwritten manuscripts, letters and various literary works by the famed Jewish writer, said Meir Heller, an attorney for the Israeli National Library, which also claims ownership of the trove.

Loeb says the cache could include endings to some of Kafka's major works, many of which remained unfinished in his lifetime. [...] But the newly emerged writings won't see the light of day until the Israeli court unravels the tangled question of the collection's rightful owner.

Paranoid Munchausen

2010-07-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

An intriguing topic on the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, discusses adapting James Wallis's lovely tall-tale-telling RPG The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen to an Alpha Complex debriefing.

(Mongoose Publishing sells Munchausen as part of its Flaming Cobra line. Here's Munchausen on Boardgamegeek. I wrote about Munchausen for Green Ronin's 2007 essay collection Hobby Games: The 100 Best, edited by James Lowder.)

Grognardia PARANOIA retrospective

2010-06-16T16:10:00.000-04:00

Designer James Maliszewski, on his popular Old School RPG advocacy blog Grognardia, does a PARANOIA retrospective of the 1980s West End Games edition. He and most of the commenters seem completely unaware of the current Mongoose Publishing edition, but it is an Old School blog. ("What? 'Advanced' Dungeons & Dragons, you say? Get away from me, whippersnapper.")

PARANOIA in the real world: Non-suicide oaths

2010-05-27T16:19:00.000-04:00

Singapore newspaper Today describes the way beleaguered Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, which has endured 12 employee suicide attempts and ten deaths in the last five months, has redressed the problem: by requiring employees to sign oaths not to kill themselves:

Workers have reportedly been told to sign letters promising not to kill themselves and even agreeing to be sent to psychiatric institutions if they appear to be in an "abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others." [...]

But workers spoke of long hours, harsh supervisors and low pay. A 21-year-old employee from Guangxi province said she worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. "The atmosphere inside our workplaces is so stifling and depressing that we're not allowed to speak to each other for 12 hours or you'll be reproached by your supervisors."

But there was no shortage of people trying to get through the factory gates, with about 8,000 job applicants every day during the hiring season.

Foxconn's Shenzhen factory has 330,000 workers, so its suicide rate this year is in line with China's reported suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000 (1999 figures) -- which, itself, isn't grossly higher than the US suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000 (2005 figures). Maybe the non-suicide oath should be a checkbox on each year's tax return.

Operation Ironside

2010-05-25T14:15:00.000-04:00

On Paranoia-Live.net, Operation Ironside, aka "The Trial," is now proceeding in all its Kafkaesque glory. Good luck to defendant Adam-R-LON, assuming he is deserving of said fortune; otherwise, die, Commie scum!

Secret ULTRAVIOLET Diaries back online

2010-05-22T22:41:00.000-04:00

After an entirely planned and predictable downtime that, despite treasonous rumors, did not last a full four years, the Secret ULTRAVIOLET Diaries have returned. As before, these entries present the confidential spew of several Paranoia-Live.net High Programmers -- currently Jazzer, Phial, and CPUreaucrat -- all brought to you through unauthorized access by traitorous hacker Alpha One.

Obviously reading these Secret ULTRAVIOLET Diaries entries is horrible, unforgivable treason, so we thought you ought to know about them so you can assiduously avoid them.

Actual Play: Spin War

2010-05-17T23:57:00.000-04:00

Very little is as precious, as important to PARANOIA's good health as a steady supply of Actual Play reports of fun game sessions. Loyal citizen Insertname has posted one of these rare treasures, "Spin War," on the RPG.net Actual Play forum. Read and enjoy his account, then consider posting one of your own!

Paranoia-Live.net is back online!

2010-05-11T14:39:00.001-04:00

Via efforts coordinated through an RPG.net forum thread, citizen Adam-R alerted High Programmer Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick to the recent downtime. Thanks to good work by High Programmer Takyn-U-RUN, the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, is now back to normal, for certain definitions of "normal" specified in CPU Central reference documents classified ULTRAVIOLET. Jazzer reports, "I am writing a full and 100% reliable account of events to be posted soon, including an outline of the trial of citizen Adam-R on a charge of Uncredible Treason. Sign up now to be part of the jury!"

Malcolm Gladwell on spycraft

2010-05-10T14:25:00.001-04:00

The May 10, 2010 New Yorker features Malcolm Gladwell's "Pandora's Briefcase," about the World War II intelligence maneuver "Operation Mincemeat" (memorably recounted in Ewen Montagu's 1953 book The Man Who Never Was) and the larger implications of spycraft:

[I]n Peter Ustinov’s 1956 play, “Romanoff and Juliet” [...] a crafty general is the head of a tiny European country being squabbled over by the United States and the Soviet Union, and is determined to play one off against the other. He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he tells the Soviet Ambassador, Romanoff, “They know you know their code.” Romanoff is unfazed: “We have known for some time that they knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be duped.” The general returns to the American Embassy and confronts Moulsworth: “They know you know they know you know.” Moulsworth (genuinely alarmed): “What? Are you sure?” [...]

In the nineteen-sixties, Angleton [James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA's counter-intelligence division] turned the CIA upside down in search of KGB moles that he was sure were there. As a result of his mole hunt, the agency was paralyzed at the height of the Cold War. American intelligence officers who were entirely innocent were subjected to unfair accusations and scrutiny. By the end, Angleton himself came under suspicion of being a Soviet mole, on the ground that the damage he inflicted on the CIA in the pursuit of his imagined Soviet moles was the sort of damage that a real mole would have sought to inflict on the CIA in the pursuit of Soviet interests.

Paranoia-Live.net is down

2010-04-27T14:19:00.001-04:00

Long established as the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net is down. UPDATE May 11, 2010: The site has returned! All is well.

According to former High Programmer Takyn-U-RUN, the P-L.net Dreamhost account, owned by High Programmer Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick, was suspended. I've been out of touch with Jazzer for years and don't know how to reach him. Though Takyn-U has expressed willingness to host the site on his own account, he has no recent backups. At this point we can only hope Jazzer returns.

If some loyal citizen wishes to start a new PARANOIA fan site, by all means let me know and I'll be happy to promote it here. (And this blog itself had to migrate to a new URL recently. Man!)

Russian secrets at a real-life IR Market

2010-03-17T15:07:00.004-04:00

In the March 17, 2010 Los Angeles Times, Megan K. Stack reports in "Russian secrets for sale, no questions asked" that "At Moscow's Savyolovsky Market, anyone can buy discs filled with information hacked or leaked from government databases. Reporters or hit men, it really doesn't matter":

They are selling secrets along the shining corridors of the Savyolovsky Market: Unlisted numbers. Tax returns. Customs declarations. Wanted lists. Police reports. Car registrations. Business permits.

Wrenched from the bowels of government by the forces of runaway capitalism and corruption, the hush-hush databases have made their way to this market in central Moscow [...] In a country where you have no right to know, but really you can know anything, anybody can anonymously buy discs burned with private information such as rape victimization, financial holdings and the suspicion of CIA involvement. Asking price (it's negotiable): $40 to $60.

Nobody asks whether the buyer is looking for a competitive edge, an address to plan a hit, research for a newspaper article. The sale of these databases is illegal, sure, but nobody seems to care. A few beat cops browse lazily among the stalls, studying cellphones. [...]

A browse through the database of phone directories turns up full names, addresses and telephone contacts for employees of the FSB, the secretive intelligence service that is a successor to the KGB. [...]

If sympathies run in the other direction, you might phone the woman whose name was found in the notebook of a suspected CIA agent.

The police records offer a window on a compulsively secretive world. Crimes committed by police officers on a single September day included rape, hooliganism, embezzlement, bribe-taking and false testimony. "Suicide of an arrested person" also appeared in this category. And on that same day in Novosibirsk, a traffic police captain hanged himself in his shed. "The motives are being established," the report says helpfully.

Treason Point For...er, me

2010-03-01T20:09:00.002-05:00

Loyal IntSec spies have reported that A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Termination Booth has been released by Mongoose Publishing. However, these same spies inform me that one key credit was left out at some point in the production schedule. Hero of Our Complex Andy Solberg was to have been saluted for his role in suggesting the plot of Episode Three (the bit where the Troubleshooters are miniaturised and injected into the bloodstream of a High Programmer). Commie Mutant Traitor saboteurs deleted this vital information, and for this we must apologise.

Citizen Andy Solberg! We have stolen the fruit of your brainmeat without due credit. In recompense, your oxygen ration will be increased by 30%. Respire with joy, citizen!

Inevitable

2010-02-19T14:13:00.002-05:00

Inevitable, a card game designed by Jeremy P. Bushnell and Jonathan A. Leistiko, forthcoming this summer from Invisible City Productions:

Inevitable is a satirical board game set in a slapstick dystopian future. Every play is designed to provide 2-6 players with hours of quality entertainment, danger, violence, betrayal, mayhem, and laughs. It contains a robust amount of high explosives and dead things. It was designed by people who think Orwell's 1984 is a comedy and the Necronomicon is a romance.

Purple Pawn calls Inevitable "a board game in the same dystopian comic world inhabited by games such as PARANOIA and its ilk. Your job is to beat the overlord computer system in an election."

High Programmers imminent!

2010-02-12T16:14:00.003-05:00

From today's Planet Mongoose blog entry by Mongoose Publishing CEO Matthew Sprange:

High Programmers/White Washes: Approval took much longer on this title than expected, but it is now all cleared and has been at print for some time - we'll likely be getting our copies towards the end of this month, but it will probably lap round into early March before it appears on shop shelves (worth waiting for though - this is a good 'un!).

High Programmers, you'll recall, is the final volume in Gareth Hanrahan's trilogy of 25th-Anniversary PARANOIA rulebooks, this one for infighting and intrigue at ULTRAVIOLET Clearance. (White Washes is the limited collector's edition of the same book.)

High Programmers uses an entirely new and unusual rules system, unrelated to earlier PARANOIA books, inspired by Amber Diceless Roleplaying and Nobilis. You don't need to know or own the earlier rulebooks to use it. The Mongoose forum thread "How does High Programmers play?" gives more details.

SAC Command Post film

2010-02-11T09:08:00.002-05:00

From The Grauniad - a film made (but never released) to counter the negative impact of Dr. Strangelove. After all, it would be terrible if the apocalypse happened accidentally, instead of on purpose.

The film is available online, and is ideal PARANOIA fodder.

PARANOIA in the real world: Registering subversives

2010-02-08T14:57:00.002-05:00

If you plan to overthrow the government of South Carolina, the Secretary of State first requires you to pay US$5 and register as a subversive organization. If you overthrow the government without a license, you face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Deserted Latvian town for sale

2010-02-05T23:07:00.004-05:00

Comrades! Now to be leavink corrupt capitalist running-dog Alpha Complex (ptui!) and be movink Outdoors to glorious deserted Russian military town in Latvia:

[B]idding has opened to find a new owner for the former top secret Russian military town of Skrunda.

Bids start at 150,000 Lats (about $290,000 USD). The winning bidder will become the owner of the entire town -- including 5 million square feet of land, 10 apartment buildings, two nightclubs, a shopping center, a child care center, a sauna, and of course a variety of abandoned military buildings. The radar facilities were sadly destroyed, so anyone thinking of starting their own secret missile base will need to find somewhere else.

The town has been abandoned since 1999, so you'll need to make a couple of trips to the local equivalent of Home Depot to fix things up.

Capitalist pig-dog commenter on post: "Wow, a town in Latvia costs as much as a budget condo in the Bay Area."

UPDATINK: Capitalist pig-dog Russian investor is buying Skrunda for US$3.1 million. Never be mindink!

Except for small detail of beink landlocked, Skrunda-1 is othervise beink perfect dock for formerly super-secret Sea Shadow stealth ship, built at cost of US$200 million, now beink given away for free by US Nawy.

WMD bonus material .PDF

2010-02-02T18:33:00.002-05:00

Four or five or eighty-five years ago Mongoose Publishing brought out the PARANOIA Straight-style mission collection WMD. I edited and packaged WMD, and in the introduction I said the Mongoose website would offer a free downloadable WMD bonus .PDF containing material cut for space from the book.

The Earth spun, the seasons passed, the hourglass emptied, the months flew off the wall calendar in a tasteful animation, yet I never got around to putting together that WMD bonus .PDF. Never, until a few months ago, JUST in time for Mongoose to pull all the bonus .PDF content for the 2004 PARANOIA edition. Yeah, I know. Go me.

But! Now! Thanks to kind permission from Mongoose and from PARANOIA's owners, the fan site Paranoia-Live.net has kindly made available the free downloadable WMD bonus .PDF. Commendation point to P-L.net High Programmer Phial for his worthy assistance in making the .PDF available.

Dear me, it's out at last. Whatever shall I procrastinate about now?

PARANOIA in the real world: The friendly euthanasia booth on the corner

2010-01-25T17:20:00.004-05:00

English novelist Martin Amis, doing publicity ahead of next week's publication of his new novel The Pregnant Widow, spoke to the Sunday Times of London. At the end of a long interview, Amis predicted an imminent demographic timebomb, a "silver tsunami" of old demented boomers. His suggested solution provided the grabber headline "Martin Amis calls for euthanasia booths on street corners":

“There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years’ time.”

Amis, himself 60 and a grandfather, added: “There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal.”

The writer says his support for euthanasia has deepened since the deaths of Lord Kilmarnock, his stepfather, and Dame Iris Murdoch, the writer. Amis said: “My stepfather died very horribly last year ... He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

Murdoch died in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Amis said: “I’d known her a very long time, a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’.” [...]

“There should be a way out for rational people who’ve decided they’re in the negative. That should be available, and it should be quite easy. I can’t think it would be too hard to establish some sort of test that shows that you understand.”

Would he kill himself? “There’s a certain point where your life slips into the negative. If you can recognise that point . . .”

In later comments to The Guardian, Amis clarified his comments were meant to be satirical rather than glib:

"What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction. [...] Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they'll say 'he asked me to do it', or 'he wanted to die', Amis said. "That's what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on."

Answering critics who said his comments were "offensive' to older people, Amis, a grandfather, said: "Well, I'm not a million miles away from that myself."

He added: "I had a friend who was desperately ill and she wanted to go to Switzerland, to Dignitas, but she was defeated by bureaucracy at this end. And, I think it is existentially more terrifying to feel that life is something you can't get out of.

"Frankly, I can't think of any reason for prolonging life once the mind goes. You are without dignity then."

Interesting, if not exactly supportive, discussion at Skeptic Exchange.

(Hat tip to GRWatson on Twitter.)

FRUP!

2010-01-22T14:04:00.002-05:00

Long-long-longtime gamers may remember talk throughout the 1990s of a forthcoming comedy-fantasy RPG called FRUP. A brainstorm from British gentleman game designer James Wallis (The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and his company Hogshead Publishing (which published many licensed Warhammer FRP books), FRUP made you laugh from the moment you heard the premise:

Come with us into a strangely familiar world of warriors and wizards, elves and dwarves, character sheets and combat rounds, dungeons and… what do you call those big lizard things? This is the land of Frup, where three enormous RPG rulebooks fell from the sky and were proclaimed as a Message from the Gods. Two thousand years later the holy rules contained in the Great Books have become the foundation for Frup’s entire religion and law. Breaking the rules is heresy. Heretics get burned at the stake.

So you’re in a world where everybody absolutely believes that they’re characters in a huge campaign of a certain market-leading RPG, being played by the Gods of Frup. Everyone has a character chart with their attributes (Brawn, Agility, Stamina, Influence, Cunning and Sagacity and morality (from Evenly Nice to Oddly Naughty) on it, plus their Career and Stage if they’re a PC. Anyone found without a character chart is clearly a monster, and will be butchered for career points. The same treatment is usually given to NPCs, and PCs a few stages lower than yourself. Stay alert. Keep your longsword handy.

Though long forthcoming, FRUP never came forth. But now James Wallis's FRUP may be rising! He has started a What is Frup blog, where he reprints the original 1995 FRUP preview article distributed as a handout at Hogshead convention tables.

Let's hope some sort of Frupping is imminent!

New Paranoia-Live topic lists

2010-01-19T23:59:00.004-05:00

On the Paranoia-Live.net fan forums, loyal and hard-working Citizen No. 5127 has once again posted several helpful indices of interesting topics discussed in 2009. For instance, his Information Booth forum topic list includes everything from A Great Big List of Uncommon, Unlikely, and Unhealthy skills to Ready to Buy: XP or Troubleshooters?

No. 5127 has also compiled a 2009 Rec Hall topic index and (accessible to those cleared for the Gamemaster-only forum) an annual GM Meeting Room topic index. For your sterling efforts, Citizen No. 5127, accept with gratitude and grace this shiny commendation point!

Orwell's diaries

2010-01-14T11:42:00.002-05:00

Tangential to PARANOIA, but interesting in its own right, is this Times (UK) review of George Orwell's diaries by Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor.

PARANOIA: 2009 in review

2010-01-02T01:03:00.000-05:00

The Computer's loyal servants in Housing Preservation & Development and Mind Control report greatly increased happiness metrics associated with Year 214 across all polled sectors. Congratulations to all sector entities that achieved performance review ratings of Acceptable or higher, and best wishes to the successors of those that didn't. Following recommendations by the HPD&MC Committee for Applied Social Tranquility Resource Allocation and Technical Optimization (CASTRATO), The Computer has instructed all service groups to repeat Year 214 until further notice.

The first edition of PARANOIA, from West End Games, debuted at Gen Con in August 1984. In 2009 Mongoose Publishing marked PARANOIA's 25th year in high style with two new anniversary rulebooks: Troubleshooter, for RED-Clearance missions (a "point-one" revision of the 2004 edition), and Internal Security, for BLUE-Clearance missions. For each of these rules sets, Mongoose issued a companion mission collection: Treason in Word and Deed for Troubleshooter, and Termination Quota Exceeded for Internal Security. Soon the new year will bring another Troubleshooter mission collection, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Termination Booth, and -- ta dahh! -- the third and final anniversary rulebook, High Programmers (for ULTRAVIOLET-Clearance missions). The companion High Programmers mission collection, None of This is My Fault, will include a partial adaptation of Sam Shirley's 1987 West End PARANOIA adventure, The Iceman Returneth.

These fine books were all written by one gifted designer -- Mongoose's ever-industrious staff writer Gareth Hanrahan. Gareth also wrote Citizen's Guide to Surviving Alpha Complex, published this past spring for Free RPG Day. All told, in 2009 Gareth wrote or adapted over 700 pages of PARANOIA -- around 400,000 words! He also found time to write Aslan and Scoundrel for Traveller and an ongoing webcomic, Fish for Fish. We are fortunate Gareth has chosen to use his powers in the cause of good.

At this writing PARANOIA ranks #14 of 1,422 core rules systems in the RPG.net Gaming Index, and #18 overall of 13,550 products. Among RPGs originally published in the 1980s, only King Arthur Pendragon, Call of Cthulhu, Talislanta, and Warhammer Fantasy rank higher, with Fantasy Hero close behind. Fine company!

Commie Mints

2009-12-24T13:56:00.002-05:00

Comrades! Now to be repudiatink capitalist running-dog (ptui!) consumer-drunk materialist holiday by purchasink glorious Commie Mints! "Revolutionize your breath!" Is good!

(Thanks to loyal citizen David Boyle.)

INTSEC review

2009-11-30T14:43:00.002-05:00

Commendation point to citizen Aratos for his fine review of the new PARANOIA INTSEC rulebook on the leading fan site, Paranoia-Live.net.

State of the Mongoose 2009

2009-11-25T10:17:00.003-05:00

Mongoose Publishing CEO Matthew Sprange continues his long-standing annual tradition of "State of the Mongoose" posts on the Mongoose forum. Learn about Mongoose's successes in the past year and ambitious plans for 2010, including a new edition of RuneQuest, lots and lots of Traveller goodness, and this bit about PARANOIA:

Right now, we are waiting to see what PARANOIA fans make of our two latest core rulebooks, Internal Security and the imminent High Programmers. They are part of a grand experiment to see whether fans are ready to explore other aspects of Alpha Complex beyond Troubleshooters.

All three core books will be supported by missions next year, and PARANOIA High Programmer Gareth Hanrahan has been hard at work on them already. There are some great titles coming – literally, some of these missions have great names, such as Scenes From a Surveillance Society, Meltdowns get me Down, and A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Termination Booth. We are going to have trouble fitting some of those on the front cover of the books!

While there are no solid plans as of yet, we are also looking at the possibility of new core books for PARANOIA, such as delving into the Vulture Squadrons – but also looking beyond Alpha Complex to see whether the rules and dynamics can work in other settings. There are two lead contenders for this idea at the moment, and we’ll keep you informed as to how they are turning out.

State of the Mongoose 2009.

Friend Computer resumes tweeting

2009-11-07T21:06:00.002-05:00

After a brief and long-planned and entirely not-unexpected and not in any way non-routine downtime, Friend_Computer's Twitter account is once more active.

The Happiness Hat

2009-10-30T22:45:00.003-04:00

Yes, we do already know about interactive artist and designer Lauren McCarthy's Happiness Hat. (Thanks to loyal citizen Allandaros.)

High Programmer Biographies

2009-10-27T11:29:00.003-04:00

One chapter of the upcoming High Programmer rulebook discusses sample NPC High Programmers. These Heroes of Our Complex (or disgraced traitors, depending on which of them was the last to edit The Computer's memory files) are for use both as non-player characters by GMs and as inspiring examples for the players.

We need a few more, though, so get writing! High Programmer biographies should be short, punchy and funny. We take no responsibilities for any terminations resulting from your involvement in this chapter.

Again, submit via comments to this post.

Attention, Hygiene Officers!

2009-10-27T10:16:00.001-04:00

Slashdot: Clean smells promote ethical behavior. Check the comments for trenchant analysis. Or, at least, for dumb jokes.

Innocent? Pay up!

2009-10-26T11:05:00.000-04:00

Loyal citizen Zild points us to the United Kingdom government's latest ingenious cost-cutting/fundraising move, described in this September 28, 2009 Telegraph (UK) story by Transport Editor David Millward, "Innocent motorists to be asked to pay court costs":

Drivers will fall victim to reforms which will see people who are acquitted by the courts expected to foot the majority of their own defence costs. It is thought some innocent motorists will plead guilty to reduce their costs.

Currently, somebody who is cleared of a motoring offence can expect to be reimbursed most, if not all, of the money they spend clearing their name. [...]

According to the Ministry of Justice's own statistics, 24 per cent of 1.4 million motorists prosecuted in the courts in 2007 were cleared. It meant that nearly 380,000 motorists recouped about 80 per cent of their costs.

Under the new arrangements, which come into force next month, acquitted defendants will only get a fraction of their money back. The reimbursement of lawyers' fees is being limited to the legal aid rate of £60 an hour – around a quarter of the what is normally charged.

Zild comments that this is an obvious idea for PARANOIA. "IntSec could falsely accuse a citizen of a crime simply to charge them for the cost of the resulting investigation -- presumably a tactic reserved for days when they are too busy to plant sufficient evidence for a conviction."

Zild also highlights another aspect of the ever-evolving UK strategic interception landscape, "Public to monitor CCTV from home" (BBC October 6): "Members of the public could earn cash by monitoring commercial CCTV cameras in their own home, in a scheme planned to begin next month. The Internet Eyes website will offer up to £1,000 if viewers spot shoplifting or other crimes in progress."

Charles Farrier from No CCTV said: "It is a distasteful and a worrying development. This is a private company using private cameras and asking private citizens to spy on each other. It represents a privatisation of the surveillance state."

Internet Eyes has defended its plans, saying viewers will not know exactly which camera they're watching or where it is located.

Although the UK is the "world capital of CCTV" - with an estimated one camera per 14 people - viewing hours of mostly tedious and often poor quality images is a lengthy and unpopular job, said the BBC's home affairs correspondent Andy Tighe.

In August, an internal report commissioned by London's Metropolitan Police estimated that in 2008 just one crime was solved per thousand CCTV cameras in the capital. The deficit was partly blamed on officers not being able to make the best use of the many thousands of hours of video generated by CCTV.

How will they fund these rewards for civilian snoopery? Hmm -- how about from court costs paid by accused innocents?

iWatch the LAPD watch you

2009-10-24T12:09:00.002-04:00

Alison Kilkenny at True/Slant reports on the Los Angeles Police Department's re-broadcast of HPD&MC's latest ad campaign to encourage your neighbors to snitch on you.

High Programmer dialogues

2009-10-22T14:30:00.002-04:00

Mongoose Publishing staff writer Gareth Hanrahan is in the final stretch of High Programmers, last of the three 25th-Anniversary PARANOIA rulebooks. This version, you'll recall, casts players as ULTRAVIOLET-Clearance supremos, the rulers of Alpha Complex. For one of the last fiddly bits of High Programmers, Gareth wants your help.

Past PARANOIA rulebooks have illuminated the entries on service groups (CPU, PLC, R&D, etc.) with bits of illustrative dialogue. You'll recall, for instance, this Armed Forces dialogue:

IntSec goon: We have a major problem here.

Army: Why, you just let my boys have a crack, and we'll settle this little contretemps in no time a-tall.

High Programmers needs an equivalent brief conversation for each service group, one that captures the group's characteristic form of subservient truckling to some UV's whim. Please write such a conversation and post it in the comments. Be terse, punchy, funny.

As always, neither Gareth, Mongoose Publishing, nor anybody at all will pay you anything or give you a free copy of anything. You grant Mongoose Publishing a dreadfully perpetual right to use your contribution in any way they see fit. Gareth will try to credit you in the rulebook, but no promises; if you post in the comments, please include your real name, or send it along separately. (See this blog's footer for the full horrifying rights-grab.)

PARANOIA in the real world: Hither and yon

2009-10-12T21:47:00.003-04:00

Loyal citizen George R. Watson (@grwatson on Twitter) points us to a worthy Troubleshooter assignment at the British Festival of Science.

Parliament has forbidden the UK newspaper Guardian from reporting on Parliament, for reasons Parliament has forbidden the paper to reveal:

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented -- for the first time in memory -- from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Update Oct. 17, 2009: The restriction on reporting has been lifted. Lawyers for oil trader Trafigura had tried to conceal a report on toxic waste dumping in west Africa.

In The New York Review of Books, James Bamford's "Who's in Big Brother's Database" reviews Matthew M. Aid's The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency:

On a remote edge of Utah's dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America's equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges's "Library of Babel," a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world's knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. [...]

Unlike Borges's "labyrinth of letters," this library expects few visitors. It's being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency—which is primarily responsible for "signals intelligence," the collection and analysis of various forms of communication—to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital "pocket litter." [...]

Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A clue comes from a recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank. "As the sensors associated with the various surveillance missions improve," says the report, referring to a variety of technical collection methods, "the data volumes are increasing with a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (1024 Bytes) by 2015."[1] Roughly equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text, numbers beyond Yottabytes haven't yet been named. Once vacuumed up and stored in these near-infinite "libraries," the data are then analyzed by powerful infoweapons, supercomputers running complex algorithmic programs, to determine who among us may be—or may one day become—a terrorist. In the NSA's world of automated surveillance on steroids, every bit has a history and every keystroke tells a story.

The Central Organization Department

2009-10-01T19:06:00.002-04:00

As part of the newspaper's coverage of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, Richard MacGregor in the Financial Times describes the Chinese Communist government's formidable and all-encroaching "Central Organization Department," the third component (with the army and the media) of its absolute control:

The department replicates what was known in the Soviet Union as the nomenklatura, the “list of names” of party members who formed the Communist ruling class through their eligibility to fill prized jobs in any sectors the state controlled. “The system is all from the Soviet Union, but the CCP has taken it to an extreme,” says Yuan Weishi, of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong. “China is more radical. [The party here] wants to lead everything.”

To glean a sense of the dimensions of the organization department’s job, conjure up a parallel body in Washington. The imaginary department would oversee the appointments of US state governors and their deputies; the mayors of big cities; heads of federal regulatory agencies; the chief executives of General Electric, ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart and 50-odd of the remaining largest companies; justices on the Supreme Court; the editors of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, the bosses of the television networks and cable stations, the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation.

All equivalent positions in China are filled by people appointed by the party through the organization department. With a few largely symbolic exceptions, the people who fill these jobs are also party members. Not only that, the vetting process takes place behind closed doors and appointments are announced without any explanation about why they have been made. When the department knocks back candidates for promotion, it does so in secret as well.

The patronage dispensed through the department, in the form of the most powerful party and government positions in the country, has turned it into a forum for the system’s toughest internal political battles. Politburo members, factional groupings, the centre and the provinces, and individuals aligned to different ministries and industries all struggle to place their people into positions of influence in state institutions. [...]

Officials holding posts such as governor or mayor are rated according to a lengthy list of numerical indicators that look like they were drawn up by management consultants. Economic growth, investment, the quality of the air and water in their localities and public order all theoretically count in the performance metric.

Richard MacGregor's article is "The party organiser," from the September 30, 2009 FT.

On a completely unrelated note, Gareth Hanrahan continues to work on High Programmers, the third of the PARANOIA 25th-Anniversary rulebooks, this one for players of ULTRAVIOLET Clearance. The elevator pitch was "Yes, Minister with lasers and a high body count."

PARANOIA in the real world: The short legs of the law

2009-09-22T23:18:00.003-04:00

You recall the early George Lucas feature THX-1138 was a key influence on PARANOIA. Remember how, in the final chase scene, THX-1138 escapes the pursuing security forces because -- well, no, I won't spoil it. But to those who recall that plot twist, I present the mayor of Wellford, South Carolina and her recently announced no-chase policy:

The Mayor of Wellford is defending her policy which bans police officers in that city from chasing suspects. Sallie Peake says the policy also includes vehicle chases along with pursuits on foot.

A memo issued on September 2nd from Peake to all Wellford officers reads:

“As of this date, there are to be no more foot chases when a suspect runs. I do not want anyone chasing after any suspects whatsoever.“

WSPA first reported the mandate on Wednesday after an anonymous citizen faxed a copy of the memo to our newsroom. Peake was out of town and unavailable for comment. On Friday, reporter Chris Cato caught up with her in her office and questioned her about the origin of the policy. Peake says she issued the mandate because several officers have been injured during chases, driving up insurance costs for the town.

“The officers are costing us more money on insurance than most citizens here in the city of Wellford are even earning,“ says Peake.

She says the city is paying out $20,000 annually in workers’ compensation claims, much of it due to the police force. In July, two officers wrecked their cruisers while chasing suspects and had to go to the hospital for minor treatment. The police chief says three officers have been injured during foot chases in the last two years.

Reporter Chris Cato, in quizzing Mayor Peake about the policy, says she became "defensive and irate," certainly an inexplicable response to his barrage of inane and silly questions. Full story at the WSPA-TV Channel 7 news site. (Commendation point to loyal citizen Veton at Paranoia-Live.net.)

HIGH PROGRAMMER: Cover!

2009-09-12T07:59:00.002-04:00

The cover art for the upcoming ULTRAVIOLET clearance rulebook may be foundat the Mongoose Publishing website - assuming, of course, you've got the security clearance to see it.

PARANOIA in the real world: Chemical neurowarfare

2009-09-05T10:19:00.003-04:00

Ryan Sager of True/Slant's Neuroworld blog summarizes a Nature editorial about weaponized drugs that decrease aggression and increase trust:

Imagine a future where the Iranian regime didn’t need to spend weeks in the streets beating, killing, and jailing protesters to put down the reform movement. Imagine in this future that the beatings would be replaced with something gentler, but ultimately more sinister: non-lethal, weaponized drugs designed to decrease aggression and increase trust.

From the unsigned Nature opinion piece, "Biologists napping while work militarized":

In my opinion, all use of novel non-lethal agents such as fentanyl for law enforcement should be prohibited, or at least heavily restricted. If, instead, we sit on our hands we must accept that new incapacitating agents are just the beginning. We will be, as the British Medical Association concluded in its 2007 study, The Use of Drugs as Weapons, “knowingly moving towards the top of a ’slippery slope’ at the bottom of which is the spectre of ‘militarization’ of biology” including “intentional manipulation of peoples’ emotions, memories, immune responses or even fertility”.

Improved index for Troubleshooters

2009-08-30T16:59:00.001-04:00

Loyal citizen No. 5127 on Paranoia-Live.net has kindly prepared an improved index for the new PARANOIA Troubleshooters rulebook (.PDF link). Conscientious 5127 also lists the entire index and miscellaneous errata in a Paranoia-Live.net forum topic, "Troubleshooters SP1".

Weird Soviet metro stations

2009-08-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

Comrades! Now to be viewink Treehugger slideshow by Alex Pasternack "The Weird, Beautiful Metros of the Soviet Union."

From Petersburg to Novosibirsk, the former Soviet Union boasts some of the world's most unique and ambitious metro systems. Built at command-economy speed, these metros were the result of a political ideology that placed heavy emphasis not only on infrastructural prowess and efficiency (could communism be, dare we say, green?) but also on military readiness. Indeed, subways were seen as a crucial transport link for soldiers, and some of the USSR's metro stations were intended to double as bunkers in the event of war. Even if many of the subways have suffered from the financial and political turmoil left in the wake of the Soviet Union, they are still crucial modes of public transit -- and awesome eye candy for underground architecture buffs.

Tashkent

Leading architects and artists from Uzbekistan took part in creating the stations of the capital's metro, which remains the only subway in Central Asia. The seventh metro to be built in the USSR, the Tashkent metro is typical of Soviet subway systems: its stations are very deep, in the event that they need to serve as bomb shelters, and each is intricately decorated with mosaics, sculpture and bas-reliefs made of engraved metal, glass, granite, marble, or carved alabaster.

The themes of progress and internationalist culture are familiar, but the presence of Islamic motifs make the metro a singular, sometimes bizarre trip into elaborate Soviet subway design. It's not easy to take it with you though: it is illegal to take pictures inside the subway system or any of the stations because they are considered military installations.

PARANOIA in the real world: CPU enhanced interrogation restrictions

2009-08-26T14:16:00.005-04:00

As science fiction writer Eileen Gunn put it on Twitter, "This is where the authentic Nazi analogies lie -- in the bureaucratization of evil." From an August 25, 2009 New York Times report by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, "Report Shows Tight C.I.A. Control on Interrogations" (free registration required):

Two 17-watt fluorescent-tube bulbs — no more, no less — illuminated each cell, 24 hours a day. White noise played constantly but was never to exceed 79 decibels. A prisoner could be doused with 41-degree water but for only 20 minutes at a stretch. The Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy. [...]

Managers, doctors and lawyers not only set the program’s parameters but dictated every facet of a detainee’s daily routine, monitoring interrogations on an hour-by-hour basis. From their Washington offices, they obsessed over the smallest details: the number of calories a prisoner consumed daily (1,500); the number of hours he could be kept in a box (eight hours for the large box, two hours for the small one); the proper time when his enforced nudity should be ended and his clothes returned. [...]

“The interrogators’ objective,” the background paper says, “is to transition the HVD [high-value detainee] to a point where he is participating in a predictable, reliable and sustainable manner.” The policy was to use the “least coercive measure” to achieve the goal. The harsh treatment began with the “attention slap,” and for three prisoners of the nearly 100 who passed through the program, the endpoint was waterboarding.

Waterboarding might be an excruciating procedure with deep roots in the history of torture, but for the C.I.A.’s Office of Medical Services, recordkeeping for each session of near-drowning was critical. “In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented,” said medical guidelines prepared for the interrogators in December 2004.

The required records, the medical supervisors said, included “how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.” [...]

But defenders of the program say the tight rules show the government’s attempt to keep the program within the law. “Elaborate care went into figuring out the precise gradations of coercion,” said David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. “Yes, it’s jarring. But it shows how both the lawyers and the nonlawyers tried to do the right thing.”

Satire is becoming impossible nowadays. Rather, one looks for any remaining trace of humanity and humility, such as Spencer Ackerman's "I was an Early-20s Torture Advocate" (commenting on the CIA's 2004 Inspector General Report on Torture):

I bought into an untenable distinction between "torture" and "torture-lite" and it led me to sadistic places that I just didn't think through. [...] I wrote the repugnant line that we didn't have to torture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed because we could just tell him that we'd harm his children if he didn't tell us what we wanted to know. My friend Julian Sanchez has a typically precise account of what's so morally obscene about this:

"I guess what especially turns my stomach here is that the idea wasn’t just to inflict mental anguish on a presumably odious man in order to extract information. It was to inflict that pain by exploiting, as a weakness, whatever flicker of nobility or love remained in an otherwise wretched soul. It was a method of torture that would have been effective only because and to the extent there was something human left in him."

Sanchez's linked blog post concludes, "Actually, the more I think about it, it’s hard for me to imagine that the physical suffering is any worse than holding a sincere belief that a group of soldiers are going to rape and murder your family."

The Land of No Smiles

2009-08-24T13:23:00.003-04:00

Foreign Policy magazine has posted a photo feature (from its May/June 2009 issue) of Pyongyang, North Korea -- "The Land of No Smiles":

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people—images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.

INTSEC Cover Up

2009-08-19T12:17:00.001-04:00

And it's shiny.

Discovering a Titan missile base

2009-08-14T23:58:00.004-04:00

On the geography blog Bearings, Jonathan Haeber relays an account of an extended exploration through a Titan I missile silo in Colorado.

On Memorial Day of 2007, and then again in December, I visited two separate Titan I missile sites. The first was quite the introduction. The second was mind-blowing. There are no words to describe being in what is perhaps the world’s largest underground missile complex. In fact, I’ve tried more than once, and in my mind have not achieved an adequate description. Last month, I clicked on a random link and encountered the narrative of another man who had done the same. His words, and his story came much closer to describing the feeling in detail. Even better, this man knew all of the intricacies of the base. He was a true savant of Titan I – and probably the foremost non-military expert of these historic bases. I contacted him and asked if he would be willing to talk about his experience and he readily agreed.

Check the great 3-D map of the Power Dome, and download the base's "Dash-1," a complete technical manual for a Titan missile complex. Build your own!

Soviet B-413 submarine

2009-08-10T13:21:00.004-04:00

Comrades! Now to be lookink at werry fine English Russia blog photos of interior of Soviet B-413 submarine, built in Old Reckoning year 1969, decommissioned in 1990, and now displayed at Museum of the World Ocean in Kaliningrad. Photos especially useful for GMs runnink Ken Rolston's 1985 PARANOIA mission "Das Bot," reprinted and updated in glorious hardcover mission collection Flashbacks. Is good!

INTSEC: Clone Budgets

2009-08-08T07:49:00.004-04:00

One of the new concepts introduced in the upcoming INTSEC rulebook is the Clone Budget. As you know, Bob, all citizens in Alpha Complex are given six clone backups by The Computer, to provide instant replacement in the event of lethal accident, termination, equipment failure, terrorist attack or other.

For most citizens, six is more than enough. For IntSec Troopers, some days six clones don't last until lunchtime. Troopers are sometimes - ok, regularly - assigned missions of staggering lethality. Therefore, in its electric wisdom, The Computer mandates a clone budget for each mission. Fallen Troopers get their clones from this budget, but once the clone budget is exhausted, Troopers must draw from their personal clone allocation.

For example, if a mission has a clone budget of THREE, then the first three deaths are paid for by The Computer. If Bob-B-3 dies, and his replacement clone is paid for out of the clone budget, then he's still on his third personal clone.

It pays to read the small print, of course. The clone budget doesn't apply, obviously, if the Trooper was terminated for treason. It also doesn't apply if the death wasn't 'in the line of duty'.

Who decides whether or not a death counts for the clone budget? The Lead Trooper does. So, if you're gunned down by a nest of Commie Mutant Machinegunners, then the Lead Trooper can decide you died heroically and deserve a free clone replacement... or he can decide that you were suffering from a pre-existing condition that you don't deserve access to the clone budget.

INTSEC Clone Budgets, just one of the many teamwork enhancements coming soon to a mission near you.

Pepper spray ATMs

2009-07-19T22:43:00.003-04:00

Obviously nothing at all could go wrong by installing pepper spray anti-theft devices on South African cash machines.

The extreme measure is the latest in South Africa's escalating war against armed robbers who target banks and cash delivery vans. The number of cash machines blown up with explosives has risen from 54 in 2006 to 387 in 2007 and nearly 500 last year.

The technology uses cameras to detect people tampering with the card slots. Another machine then ejects pepper spray to stun the culprit while police response teams race to the scene.

But the mechanism backfired in one incident last week when pepper spray was inadvertently inhaled by three technicians who required treatment from paramedics.

Patrick Wadula, spokesman for the Absa bank, which is piloting the scheme, told the Mail & Guardian Online: "During a routine maintenance check at an Absa ATM in Fish Hoek, the pepper spray device was accidentally activated. At the time there were no customers using the ATM. However, the spray spread into the shopping centre where the ATMs are situated."

As the Credit Slips blog presciently comments, "If this idea comes to the United States, I can just see it now on my bank statement: '$20.00 -- Pepper Spray Fee.'"

Sniffer-dog clone family

2009-07-19T16:55:00.002-04:00

A family of six identical clones of a Labrador Retriever dog has taken up drug-sniffing duties at South Korean airports and border crossings, says the BBC:

Six puppies cloned from a Canadian-born sniffer dog in late 2007 have reported for duty after completing a 16-month training programme. The clones are all called Toppy, a combination of "tomorrow" and "puppy."

The customs agency says clones help to lower crime-fighting costs as it is difficult to find good sniffer dogs. Only about 30% of naturally-born sniffer dogs make the grade, but South Korean scientists say that could rise to 90% using the cloning method.

The new recruits are part of a litter of seven puppies who were cloned from a "superb" drug-sniffing Canadian Labrador retriever called Chase in 2007, officials said. One dropped out of the training due to an injury.

"Injury." Yeah, right, good luck with that story at debriefing, Toppy-2.

Your passport needs a tinfoil hat

2009-07-19T15:23:00.002-04:00

A July 12, 2009 Washington Post story by Todd Lewan, "Special alloy sleeves urged to block hackers?", discusses the dangers posed by US passports and driver's licenses tagged with radio frequency identification chips (RFIDs or "arphids"):

To protect against skimming and eavesdropping attacks, federal and state officials recommend that Americans keep their e-passports tightly shut and store their RFID-tagged passport cards and enhanced driver's licenses in "radio-opaque" sleeves. That's because experiments have shown that the e-passport begins transmitting some data when opened even a half inch, and chipped passport cards and EDLs can be read from varying distances depending on reader techonology. [...]

Another test on the enhanced driver's license demonstrated that even when the sleeve was in pristine condition, a clandestine reader could skim data from the license at a distance of a half yard. Will Americans consistently keep their enhanced driver's licenses in the protective sleeves and maintain those sleeves in perfect shape - even as driver's licenses are pulled out for countless tasks, from registering in hotels to buying alcohol? The report's answer: "It is uncertain ... "

And when the sleeves come off, "You're essentially saying to the world, 'Come and read what's in my wallet,'" says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. [...]

Some RFID critics wonder: Could government officials read the microchips in an enhanced driver's license or passport card by scanning people via satellite or through a cell phone tower network?

The short answer is no - because the chips in PASS cards and EDLs are "passive," or batteryless, meaning they rely on the energy of readers to power up. Passive tags are designed to beam information out 30 feet. [...]

[A] system called STAR, that adapts deep-space communications technologies to read passive tags from distances greater than 600 feet, was announced last year by a Los Angeles startup called Mojix, Inc. It uses "smart antennas" and "digital beam forming" to process signals in four dimensions - time, space, frequency and polarization. Mojix, founded by a former NASA scientist, promotes the technology for supply chain management and asset tracking.

Science fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling blogs about the WaPo story in his July 19, 2009 "Beyond the Beyond" entry "Arphid Watch: Passport Sleeves":

Here’s the Obama State Department shrugging about their RFID train wreck, and hoping nobody notices that the previous Administration installed zillions of terror-friendly radio beacons in the purses and pockets of the American civil population. [...]

Given their mournful fait accompli on the ground, they probably lack any rational alternative, except to INSIST that everybody go buy some tinfoil hat for their passport, in which case the Global War on Terror situation looks even more aggressively crazy than it was before. Not to mention the tremendous publicity boon for RFID hackers seeking employment with terrorist hotel-bomber types, who’d no doubt love to bug any doorway anywhere on Earth, and automatically count the vulnerable foreigners walking through it.

Also, according to the original genius plan, you were supposed to be using these safe-and-secure arphid beacons to merrily zip through airports, en-masse, subway-style, like with [London Underground] Oyster cards. Seen any of that jolly high-tech activity anywhere lately? Me neither. Instead we’ve created a huge, botched superpower effort that is paranoid, semi-secret, global in scale, leaky in security and at best semi-functional. “Gothic High-Tech.”

INTSEC Community Mission: Miranda Warning

2009-07-17T18:03:00.002-04:00

As I come to the end of development on INTSEC, I realise that the book really needs something that Troopers can shout at suspects.

There's the US version: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?"

Or the Canadian: "You are under arrest for _________ (charge), do you understand? You have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. We will provide you with a toll-free telephone lawyer referral service, if you do not have your own lawyer. Anything you say can be used in court as evidence. Do you understand? Would you like to speak to a lawyer?"

Or in the UK: "You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but I must warn you that if you fail to mention any fact which you rely on in your defence in court, your failure to take this opportunity to mention it may be treated in court as supporting any relevant evidence against you. If you do wish to say anything, what you say may be given in evidence."

What should they say in Alpha Complex?

Fire alarm security device (1938)

2009-07-17T16:07:00.002-04:00

Via loyal citizen George Watson on Twitter, who remarks, "I espy the hand of R&D in this," a Failblog judgment of this helpful fire alarm security device featured in Modern Mechanix magazine, February 1938:

The sending of false fire alarms by mischievous persons may be eliminated through use of a newly developed call box. To use the device, the sender of an alarm must pass a hand through a special compartment to reach the signal dial. Once the dial has been turned, the sender's hand is locked in the compartment until released by a fireman or policeman with a key.

The joke is somewhat quenched when we learn the makers wussed out: The compartment detaches from the alarm box, so the user can escape, albeit with a bulky handcuff.

For a more effective Alpha Complexian implementation that keeps you right where the authorities can conveniently locate you (or your burned corpse), check the Experimental Security Terminal in Episode 1 of John M. Ford's classic 1985 PARANOIA mission The YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues, reprinted in the Flashbacks hardcover mission collection.

PARANOIA in the Real World: Scientist Calculates Value Of Memories To Sell Blu-Ray

2009-07-17T09:33:00.002-04:00

The story's here. There's also a link to a spreadsheet so you can calculate the cash value of your most cherished memories.

ObAC: Citizens! The Computer has generously allocated a memory budget to all citizens. Memories not covered by your budget will be chemically or mechanically erased from your brains. Please submit a full memory budget by 2400 or face summary full erasure.

A Word From The Computer

2009-07-14T14:02:00.004-04:00

Friend Computer!
At your service, citizen. How may I help you?

I feel uneasy about the rumoured new editions of PARANOIA.
Fear and apprehension are not permitted. Joy is mandatory. If you not experiencing mandatory joy, report for chemical joy enhancement therapy.

Would you mind answering a few questions about the new edition?
Not at all.

I've heard there are going to be three books.
There will now be three core rulebooks in the PARANOIA line. These are the TROUBLESHOOTERS book, the INTSEC book, and the HIGH PROGRAMMER's book. Each of these books is self-contained and focusses on a different way to play PARANOIA.

The 2004 PARANOIA XP rulebo-
ATTENTION! ALL REFERENCES TO A PARANOIA EDITION DENOTED BY A TWO-LETTER CODE ALSO USED BY A CERTAIN WINDOWS-BASED OPERATING SYSTEM ARE TREASON. OR LEGALLY ACTIONABLE, ANYWAY.

Oops, sorry.
A note has been made on your permanent record. Continue with your question.

The, er, 2004 PARANOIA book was all about Troubleshooters. Isn't that the same thing as the new TROUBLESHOOTER book?
The upcoming TROUBLESHOOTER rulebook is indeed a new edition of the basic PARANOIA rules, and so is largely the same as the 2004 rulebook.

What's changed?
The new rulebook is organised to facilitate the core PARANOIA experience of running a mission. Extra support is included for the Gamesmaster. The Treason rules have reverted to the simpler, more direct system used in 2nd edition.

What about the variant playstyles?
The STRAIGHT and ZAP playstyles appear as an appendix in the TROUBLESHOOTER book. HORROR, OVERKILL and HEIST appear in the INTSEC appendix. The contents of the HIGH PROGRAMMER appendix have yet to be determined.

What if I already have the 2004 rulebook. Do I need to purchase the new edition?
No. However, as a long-term PARANOIA fan, you may be interested in the BLACK MISSIONS collector's edition, which includes a CD-ROM of bonus material including interviews with the original designers.

And if I don't have the 2004 edition...
Then the new TROUBLESHOOTERS book is an ideal entry point to PARANOIA!

Let's talk about INTSEC.
Certainly, citizen. In the INTSEC game, you play members of an elite Sector Security Team. Investigate crimes! Interrogate Commie Mutant Traitors! Keep that Happiness Index up! Meet your Termination Quota. INTSEC is designed for longer-term games with more plot development and intrigue.

That sounds suspiciously like the old HIL Sector BLUES supplement.
HIL Sector BLUES was indeed a significant influence on the INTSEC rules, and parts of the text have been repurposed and included in the new book, but there's lots more than just a rehash of Hil Sector+the basic rules. New secret societies! Surveillance rules! New ways to doom other characters!

How about HIGH PROGRAMMER?
In HIGH PROGRAMMER, you play an ULTRAVIOLET High Programmer. You control different factions and power bases in Alpha Complex. The other High Programmers may attempt to subvert your control - you must prevent this and crush their schemes. You crave the awe and fear of your peers, and must impress them with your culture, wit and social graces while plotting their humiliating downfall.

But what could possibly threaten a High Programmer? Surely there won't be any terminations or treasons in this game!
Ah, but you also have a retinue of servants, bodyguards and hangers-on. These characters are played by the other players when the action focusses on your High Programmer. Elements of your retinue may be terminated.

How does HIGH PROGRAMMER play?
The elevator pitch is Yes Minister with ray guns, but you could also say 'Wodehouse meets Illuminati'.

I have further questions about the new edition.
Please post them in the comments.

PARANOIA in the real world: The Wanted

2009-07-14T13:30:00.002-04:00

On the No Fear of the Future blog, writer Chris Nakashima-Brown discusses the new NBC reality-news-adventure-manhunt TV show "The Wanted":

The show teams a 60 Minutes producer (who also worked as a lawyer for the CIA), a former Navy SEAL, a former Green Beret, a reporter and a war crimes prosecutor to hunt terrorists alive and well and living among us.

Like a cross between "To Catch a Predator," the NBC Dateline series that confronted accused sex offenders on live TV, and Jack Bauer's 24, [The Wanted brings] the mainstream media's commercial exploitation of geopolitical fear and internecine xenophobia to entirely new, PKDickian levels. ... Simultaneously so hilarious and so horrifying that I fear my Zeitgeist irony governor may now be permanently damaged. ...

I anxiously await the series finale, in which our heroes travel to Argentina and abduct Dick Cheney while he is off fly-fishing, protected by his coterie of secret service agents chosen for their resemblance to famous action heroes of the 70s and 80s.

"It's not a show. It's a mission."

The Form That Lets You Request Other Forms

2009-07-13T13:09:00.002-04:00

This NY Times article is a CPU Form Management & Processing clerk's dream.

Aaron Allston benefit auction July 19

2009-07-12T17:37:00.000-04:00

You may recall that novelist and game designer Aaron Allston, who contributed to the 2004 PARANOIA rulebook and Gamemaster screen and wrote many classic supplements for Champions, Car Wars, and other games, suffered a serious heart attack in late March 2009 and quadruple-bypass surgery April 2. Now back in his longtime home in Round Rock, Texas, Aaron is recovering reasonably well, as he recounts in his July 11 Livejournal entry:

I've completed about fifteen sessions of cardiac rehabilitation [...] I've had mixed luck. My wind has gotten better and I've experienced general improvement. But my blood pressure is flaky. It's lower in standing position than sitting or lying, and becomes lower still when I exercise, which is not normal. I've come close to graying out on the treadmill. So I get to go through a new series of tests starting Monday — echocardiogram, thyroid, and blood count — as my puzzled cardiologist tries to sort it all out.

Like many freelance writers, Aaron has no health insurance. He faces huge medical bills. The local science fiction fan group, FACT (Fandom Association of Central Texas), is holding an Aaron Allston benefit auction Sunday, July 19, 2009 in Georgetown, Texas, northwest of Austin. Please consider donating an item for the auction or, if you prefer, making a contribution directly to the Aaron Allston Donation Fund via Paypal: gifts (at) aaronallston (dot) info.

Recent PARANOIA RPG links of interest

2009-07-09T15:42:00.003-04:00

I don't usually post linkfests here (though my Twitter feed is almost all links), but many minor developments warrant interest in aggregate:

Duane O'Brien, whose innovative experiments in proppery we have covered before -- see his real laser pistol (March 1, 2009) and real plasticreds (October 14, 2008), as well as "Straight-style PARANOIA can work" (May 28, 2009) -- recently posted two interesting PARANOIA-related entries on his blog ChaoticNeutral.net: "On Writing Up a Module" (June 24, 2009); and an excellent introduction to PARANOIA for convention games (June 22), which includes a dandy two-page .PDF handout summarizing the setting, rules, and appropriately servile attitude. Commendation point, Duane!

Mongoose has announced forthcoming French translations of several roleplaying lines, including PARANOIA. The Mongoose French-language forum thread Paranoia - date probable discusses this, or so I (a non-speaker) assume.

PARANOIA in the real world: Military theorist John Robb (Brave New War) on his must-read Global Guerrillas blog analyzes the simple steps in leveraging information terrain (July 9, 2009) -- in this case, using a few internet rumors and videos (such as "Chinese Commies Massacre Uyghur Innocent Workers") to provoke the bloody Uighur uprising in western China.

Both Duane and loyal citizen Jaagup Irve noticed this Telegraph (UK) story about Japanese railway workers who face enforced daily "smile scans." Also covered on Slashdot, where many commenters instantly noticed the PARANOIA angle.

Jaagup also sent a photo from Ground Zero in Manhattan, showing a Port Authority ad with the civic-minded message, "Now's the time to report something, not when it's on the news. If it looks suspicious, it is suspicious." He asks, "What could one possibly report there? 'Hello, I would like to report suspicious activities near the former World Trade Center. They've been constantly building nothing there for eight years.'"

INTSEC Community Mission - Collateral Damage

2009-06-30T16:51:00.002-04:00

Troopers get much, much bigger guns than Troubleshooters, so we need a much, much bigger Collateral Damage table for those unfortunate occasions when a player rolls really badly with a tacnuke shell. Think of it as a Rolemaster fumble table for cone rifles. Suggestions for horrible collateral damage in the comments, please.

Rob MacD's alternate PARANOIAs

2009-06-29T14:56:00.001-04:00

Loyal citizen Rob MacDougall, who participated bravely in The Toothpaste Disaster PARANOIA Lexicon game in 2004, has posted three inventive PARANOIA variant settings on the gaming blog Claw Claw Peck.

First up is "Slave Complex of the Under There":

Black Tunnels descend from the surface world to the Crimson Caves of Blood. Below lie the Ochre Delves, the Azure Sepulchre, and the Temples of Elemental Indigo. The descending levels of the Under There represent a kind of, let’s say, “security clearance” for the pecking order of the dungeon. Under constant surveillance by unblinking beholders, ogres bully hobgoblins who bully goblins who bully bootlicking kobolds, who get stuck cleaning elf-gunk out of the death traps. It’s like high school with gelatinous cubes.

Then a steampunk PARANOIA, "Alpha | State," that will ring true to fans of the indie RPG a|state:

One hundred years after Babbage, one hundred years after Lord Byron’s coup, the Alphan Empire is a steam-driven superpower stretching from Barbados to Bangalore. At its heart squats perfidious Alpha, the not so Green and Pleasant Isle, and at Alpha’s heart sprawls the Empress, the city-sized analytical engine that rules and mothers the Empire. And oh, does it need mothering. For the paranoid Empress imagines a thousand perils to her binary virtue. Bomb-throwing Luddites! Bearded onanists! Filthy communards! And behind them all, the agents of another analytical AI: the Empress’ libertine continental nemesis, the Turk.

And finally "Alphaville," which, if you haven't already clicked through based on the two summaries above, just read it.

Man, it makes me yearn to return to Brave New Complex, the huge campaign supplement of variant Alpha Complex settings the Traitor Recycling Studio put together a few years ago. Nothing came of that -- no market -- but perhaps somehow, in some alternate timeline, that book actually got published.

Archive links fixed

2009-06-29T02:41:00.003-04:00

Just as certain R&D biolabs fall empty for decades at a time (when a particularly enterprising mutant creation gets loose), so this blog's archives have been partly broken for about 18 months. The archive links in the sidebar, the bottom right, were correct for posts dated 2007 and earlier. But owing to some boring bug in Blogger's archive auto-generation script, posts from 2008 and later had broken links. The only way to access those months was to insert an additional "p" in front of the "public_html" part of the URL -- to wit, "ppublic" -- and I never mentioned the workaround here because it was so stupid. Now -- still with me? -- I've pulled the auto-archive script and manually inserted good links to all the archived months back to late 2005. I'll have to add another line at the end of each month, so be a good citizen and remind me, hmmm?

Speaking of tasks I've let fester for years, I do hope to finally finally finally get to the .PDF of material cut from WMD, and sooner rather than later. The text of WMD (the 2006 collection of Straight-style PARANOIA missions) is included on the 25th Anniversary CD-ROM in the Black Missions limited edition due later this year, so a new cohort of Gamemasters will join the many wondering what happened to the free .PDF download I referenced repeatedly in the text. Okay, okay. Give a guy a few years of slack, okay? I was busy all that time, wondering how to fix the archive links.

PARANOIA IntSec - Community Mission #3

2009-06-28T16:37:00.001-04:00

I'm toying with a rule in INTSEC - the idea is that at the end of a scene, the first player to come out with a cheesy cop-show-esque line marking the transition from one scene to the next gets a few Perversity Points. Ideally, these lines are delivered with absurd intensity, ala William Shatner.

The question is, can people come up with

PARANOIA on TV Tropes

2009-06-22T23:14:00.002-04:00

I've blogged here before about TVTropes.org, but I hadn't realized there's a TV Tropes PARANOIA page.

As before, fair warning: If you're into the taxonomy of genre elements, TVTropes will consume hours and hours.

Skulduggery

2009-06-20T19:09:00.002-04:00

Soon, perhaps, PARANOIA will gain distinguished company in the realm of RPGs that turn players against one another.

Pelgrane Press recently allowed its license for The Dying Earth RPG to lapse. (I did the layout for the Dying Earth rulebook and the first supplement, Cugel's Compendium.) Though the license to Jack Vance's wonderful fantasy novels currently lingers in abeyance, the fine rules system by Robin D. Laws lends itself well to characteristically Vancian interactions in other settings. Pelgrane publisher Simon Rogers is collecting opinions on new settings using the Dying Earth rules, such as this new proposal, Skulduggery, a game of "verbal fireworks and sudden reversals":

Skulduggery, Pelgrane Press’ hilarious new roleplaying game of doing unto others because they’re sure as heck planning to do unto you. [...] quick, uproarious games of treachery and oneupmanship in any setting. Fine-tuned for one-shot and impromptu sessions, it can be adjusted for longer-running series as players demand.
The tongue is sharper than the sword. Skulduggery makes verbal persuasion as suspenseful and decisive as physical combat.

There’s always another comeback. Don’t like the results when you roll a die? Skulduggery’s reversals-based resolution system lets you roll again -- if you can afford to pay the price. . .

Characters in minutes. The GM hands out stacks of cards. The players trade for a few minutes. Presto: instant characters, ready to play!

Wit wins out. Strategic deployment of dialogue snippets recharges your supply of the points you need to succeed.

Think you’ve got it all under control? Just when they think they’re ahead, characters must face their own worst enemies—the all-consuming temptations driving them to distraction and doom.

From the moment The Dying Earth RPG appeared, gamers have connected it to PARANOIA. (See, for instance, this 2003 RPG.net forum thread on player-vs-player conflict.) Now, depending on the feedback Simon collects from his readers, the connection may become easier than ever. Drop by the Skulduggery post and comment.

Unconcealed secret buildings

2009-06-19T14:21:00.002-04:00

Granted, they're all aboveground, but even so, the forbidding monolithic architecture of these 15 not-so-secret secret-service buildings on oObject should evoke a sense of Alpha Complex.