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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.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Stalin's Story 

Greg Costikyan, co-designer of the first two editions of PARANOIA, now runs Manifesto Games. On the company's Play This Thing blog, Greg tells of a free indie RPG (designed by Victor Gijsbers) that sounds strangely familiar:
It is 1928, the kulaks are starving by the millions, and the collectivization of agriculture is proving to be a disaster. Careworn by his awesome responsibilities, our beloved leader, Comrade Stalin, wishes to have a pleasant evening with the other valiant leaders of the CCCP, and be told a folk tale similar to those he was told in his youth. Naturally, Comrade Stalin being who he is, at least one of the rest of us will be executed before the evening is out. And try to stay off the subject of agriculture.

Stalin's Story [.PDF link] is a short indie RPG, of the tabletop/live action variety, that is played out on two levels: On the first level, half the players are actors, acting out the story, and the other half are courtiers, trying to curry favor with the Soviet leader, trying to sabotage the play that the actors are performing (lest they curry favor with Stalin and perhaps be appointed to some position of power that might otherwise go to you) -- and, of course, trying to avoid being shot. On the second level is the folk tale itself. The "story" is invariant -- the dragon will be slain -- but the outcome for the players on the top level may vary greatly from one session of play to the next.

After you breeze through the lighthearted Stalin's Story (.PDF), why not top off the evening with a pleasant session of Dan Curtis Johnson's Straight PARANOIA mission "Hunger," from WMD?
Posted by: Allen Varney / 12:36 PM

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