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

Monday, May 17, 2010

Actual Play: Spin War 

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!

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Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Actual Play: "PARANOIA is EXHAUSTING" 

On the Mongoose Publishing forum, Gamemaster Eric Phillips posted a valuable Actual Play account of his recent PARANOIA game:
Compared to other games, PARANOIA is EXHAUSTING to run. I was on my feet, yelling mission alerts, having NPCs mess with players, dealing with their own attempts to get their secret society and service duties done. It was supposed to be Classic [play style], but the players made it kinda Zap, ending up everyone died at least once (one guy three times).

After three hours I needed to collapse. It was like I ran a marathon or something. Or more like I channeled Robin Williams on speed, jumping from this to that to character to event, making combat go fast and improvising to many many weird things the players say or do. I intended to keep the pacing faster than other games I run.

In the end it was a load of fun. Everyone seemed to enjoy stepping out from normal roleplay, where team killing is looked down on and team bickering slows play. They were able to indulge in the anti-normal roleplay and they dug it.
I have felt similar exhaustion running TOON, The Cartoon Roleplaying Game, but I've traditionally found PARANOIA a much more relaxing game to GM; the players are strongly motivated to provide the entertainment themselves, inasmuch as the usual ground rule is "Entertain or die." Thoughts?

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Friday, March 13, 2009

Actual Play: Delivering a cup of water 

Experienced PARANOIA Gamemasters frequently observe the best mission to assign to a pack of nervous Troubleshooters is to deliver a memo to an unguarded office a hundred yards down an empty, unobstructed hallway. Nothing demonstrates this idea more dramatically than this jaw-dropping, heartwarming Paranoia-Live.net forum summary, "Pointlessly above and beyond the call of duty."

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Monday, January 12, 2009

Actual play: Inhuman Treason! 

The most precious of PARANOIA treasures, and the most valuable selling tool for those who support the game, is the rarely seen recounting of someone's actual physical roleplaying session. Loyal citizen and new Gamemaster Teucer has now posted "PARANOIA: [mission title containing pun about Outside redacted for security reasons]" on the RPG.net Actual Play forum.

Teucer sent his Troubleshooters Outdoors "to shoot some trouble that had been encountered by the crew of the popular HPD&MC vidshow Inhuman Treason, a documentary series about the horrors of Outside from which Friend Computer so wisely protects us." The account starts coherently but then dissolves into fragmentary recollection of various highlights, which is probably the best way to reminisce about a PARANOIA mission.

Commendation point to Teucer, and to all loyal citizens who generously write up and post their mission summaries.

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