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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.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Duane O'Brien's ingenious R&D gadgets 

Loyal citizen Duane O'Brien, a PARANOIA Gamemaster with a fine future in Technical Services or R&D, describes (in mild engineer-speak) two ingenious electronic props he built -- physically! with atoms! -- for a recent convention game:
The Beeping Thing: I pulled the plans for this from an issue of MAKE Magazine. It's a small circuit using a 555 timer, some resistors, and other bits to cause the circuit to beep every minute or so. The parts can be had for a couple dollars, and it was reasonably easy to build. In the end, I stuck it in an Altoids tin and issued it to the Troubleshooters as a piece of R&D equipment. Every time it beeped, I made someone roll, noted the number, and put a Post-It note on them if the roll was a 20. At five rolls of 20, it exploded dramatically. If they had rolled all numbers, 1-20, before five 20s, I would have given them, I dunno, candy.

The E:CHING: This is an Arduino-controlled LED display that gives a 10-digit number in binary (0110100101). Looking up the number in a manual I printed, the team received additional instructions. The top was not labeled, so there was no real way to tell 0110100101 from 1010010110. And most of the instructions were treasonous anyway. The instruction changed after 30, 15, 8, 4, 2, 1, .5 and .25 seconds after the device was activated, making following instructions challenging.

I want to draw up full postings for these, so other players can enjoy them. I have half a dozen Arduino-based props in mind that would be really exciting and fun for people to build. My Big Goal is to build the "Das Bot" control panel [from Flashbacks] for real, and let the players actually interface with it.
Truly there are times when mere commendation points seem pale and insufficient. Congratulations, Duane!

Labels:

Posted by: Allen Varney / 5:09 PM

Comments:
If you are interested in viewing the E:CHING manual, you can find a copy here:

chaoticneutral.net

As I get better instructions together, I'll be posting them all there.

Thanks, Allen, for the mention. Your clone's death will be quick and merciful.
# posted by Blogger A Terrible Idea : September 10, 2008 7:14 PM
 
i would really like to see a version of your binary game done in flash
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : October 03, 2008 2:13 AM
 
I hadn't thought of doing a version in flash. I don't really do flash, but keep an eye on chaotic neutral, and if I do a flash version I'll certainly post it there.
# posted by Blogger A Terrible Idea : October 14, 2008 11:17 PM
 
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