PARANOIA

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

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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."

Labels: state of the mongoose

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.

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Every year, Matthew Sprange posts his annual State of the Mongoose report. This year's report has just come out, and includes a section on future plans for PARANOIA. Go, read, comment.

Labels: state of the mongoose