Paranoia is a humorous role playing game set in a dystopian future similar to 1984, Brazil, Brave New World and especially Logan's Run; however, the tone of the game is rife with black humor, frequently tongue-in-cheek rather than dark and heavy. The game is set in Alpha Complex, an immense and futuristic domed city controlled by The Computer, a schizophrenic civil service AI. The Computer has made happiness mandatory. Failure to be happy is punishable by summary execution. This article is about traditional role-playing games. ... This article is about the philosophical concept. ... This article contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... Book cover of Brave New World. ... Logans Run is a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, published in 1967. ... Black comedy, also known as black humor, is a subgenre of comedy and satire that deals with serious subjects – death, divorce, drug abuse, et cetera in a humorous manner. ... Sarcasm is the making of remarks intended to mock the person referred to (who is normally the person addressed), a situation or thing. ... The domed city is a recurring concept in science fiction. ... Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis denoting a persistent, often chronic, mental illness variously affecting behavior, thinking, and emotion. ... A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. ... Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial entity. ...

2nd Edition rulebook cover

The Computer fears a number of threats to its 'perfect' society, such as The Outdoors, mutants, secret societies and of course communists. To deal with these threats, The Computer employs Troubleshooters, whose job is to find trouble and then shoot it. These are usually the player characters (PCs) (although later game supplements offered other roles for player characters, such as robots), and they are invariably traitors of the very sort feared by The Computer. The PCs are given incomprehensible or self-contradicting mission goals, faulty or experimental futuristic gizmos as equipment, and sent off to their (usually humorous) deaths. Cover of Paranoia Role-playing Game 2nd Ed. ... Cover of Paranoia Role-playing Game 2nd Ed. ... A mutant (also known to early geneticists as a monster) is an individual, organism, or new genetic character arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a sudden structural change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new... A secret society is a social organization that requires its members to conceal certain activities—such as rites of initiation or club ceremonies—from outsiders. ... Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. ... This article or section should include material from Playable character A player character or playable character (PC for short) is a fictional character in a game, usually a role-playing game (RPG), that is controlled by one of the players. ... In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to ones nation. ... Gizmo is a placeholder name for any small technological item. ... Death is the cessation of physical life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ...

The Troubleshooter's credo is, "Stay Alert! Trust No One! Keep Your Laser Handy!"
The Computer's credo is, "Trust The Computer. The Computer is Your Friend."

The Basics

In most scenarios, each player character is in fact a mutant, commie and/or secret society member, and is given a hidden agenda separate from the group's goals, often involving swindling or killing teammates. Hence the name, Paranoia. Therefore, Troubleshooter missions invariably turn into a constant comedy of errors as everyone on the team seeks to double-cross the others while keeping their own secrets. The game encourages an air of suspicion between the players, offering several tips on how to make Paranoia as paranoid an experience as possible. If the lasers come out before the players are out of the briefing room, the game is on the right track.

Cover of XP edition

Since every character comes in a six-pack of clones, death is less of an issue than in most RPGs, allowing Troubleshooters to be routinely killed (either deliberately or accidentally); instead of leaving the game, the player simply portrays the next member of the clone family, who is assigned to continue the mission. This easy spending of lives tends to frequent firefights, gruesome slapstick, and frequent horrible and humorous demise. The term 'six-pack' is intentional, and is allegedly part of game design, where each player is given a six-pack of beer to represent his remaining clones. Paranoia XP rulebook cover. ... Paranoia XP rulebook cover. ...

Intended as a spoof on other RPGs, the Paranoia rulebook is unique in a number of ways. For example, in earlier versions of Paranoia, the entire chapter on rules is labeled 'optional', and player knowledge of the rules is treasonous (treason, of course, being punishable by summary execution). Most of the rulebook is written in an easy, conversational tone that scoffs at how screwed the players are and frequently takes potshots at other notable RPGs. It also had outrageous mechanics--such as the 'Falling From Great Heights' table, which would start with a five-foot fall and end in a category labeled 'Orbital' (which has actually been used in official supplements).

The Mutant Experience

Equipment includes futuristic weapons such as tangler guns and plasma rifles, but also Heisenberg uncertainty projectors, personal force shields working on a fusion reactor kept stable by a hand crank, robots with obnoxious personalities, and small boxes with a load of different buttons, dials and LEDs (the manual for which is not available at your security clearance). The Mutant Experience cover. ... The Mutant Experience cover. ...

Mutations include abilities such as invisibility or pyrokinesis, ranging to more exotic ones such as a constantly runny nose or machine empathy (the latter being the only mutation which, upon discovery, will always result in termination). It is rumored that mutations are the result of cloning humans into six-packs. Rumors are treason.

Secret Societies

Secret societies tend to be based on sketchy and spurious knowledge of pre-apocalyptic matters. In previous editions they included societies such as the Seal Club (that worships animals but is unsure what an animal actually looks like), the Knights of the Circular Object, the Trekkies and the First Church of Christ Computer Programmer. And, of course, Communists, who tend to speak in Slavic accents, wear furred hats, and eat borscht. This being Paranoia, a lot of secret societies have spies or double agents in each other's organization. A secret society is a social organization that requires its members to conceal certain activities—such as rites of initiation or club ceremonies—from outsiders. ... For other uses, see Apocalypse (disambiguation). ... Trekkie (or Trekker) is a term that in recent decades has been used to describe a fan of the Star Trek science fiction franchise. ... The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia. ... chicken wing ...

Of special notice is the secret society known as the Wobblies. The Computer was worried about this society, and sent a pack of troubleshooters to investigate. Since the society didn't actually exist, the troubleshooters found nothing to report, and were terminated for laziness and insubordination. After a couple of troubleshooter groups were thus disposed of, a newly sent group got smart and founded the society themselves in order to have something to report on. Since then, a number of other secret societies have sent spies to join the Wobblies, and the end result is a group that consists entirely of spies for other groups. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It contends that all workers should be united within a single union as a class and the wage system abolished. ...

Paranoia XP (and The Traitors Manual) book include the following societies:

• Anti-Mutants
  

  The Traitor's Manual
• Communists
• Computer Phreaks
• Corpore Metal
• Death Leopard
• First Church of Christ Computer Programmer (FCCC-P)
• Frankenstein Destroyers
• Free Enterprise
• Humanists
• Illuminati
• Mystics
• Pro-Tech
• Psion
• PURGE
• Romantics
• Sierra Club

The Traitors Manual cover. ... The Traitors Manual cover. ...

Publications

Four editions of Paranoia exist:

• 1st edition (ISBN 1869893) - written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg - published in 1984 by West End Games. In 1985, this edition of Paranoia won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984.
• 2nd edition - written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, Eric Goldberg, Ken Rolston, and Paul Murphy - published in 1989 by West End Games.
• "Fifth Edition" - published in 1995 by West End Games. It has since been declared an "un-product" (cf."unperson") by the current writers, due to its being generally hated by players.
• "Paranoia XP" - written by Allen Varney, Aaron Allston, Paul Baldowski, Beth Fischi, Dan Curtis Johnson and Greg Costikyan - published in 2004 by Mongoose Publishing. In 2005, Microsoft requested that the XP be removed. As such, the name was shortened to just Paranoia.

Related publications: Greg Costikyan, also known as Designer X, is an American game designer and science fiction writer. ... Lead animator of such characters as the Genie in Aladdin and Phil in Hercules. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... West End Games is a company that makes role playing games. ... This article is about the year. ... The Origins Awards, presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, are presented at the Origins International Game Expo for outstanding work in the game industry. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... West End Games is a company that makes role playing games. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... West End Games is a company that makes role playing games. ... From George Orwells book Nineteen Eighty-Four, unperson is the newspeak term for a person who has been not only killed by the state, but effectively erased from existence. ... Aaron Allston is an author of many science fiction books, notably Star Wars books. ... Greg Costikyan, also known as Designer X, is an American game designer and science fiction writer. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKEx: 4338) is the worlds largest software company, with 2005 global annual sales of 40 billion US dollars and more than 55,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. ...

• Acute Paranoia
• Alice Through the Mirrorshades
• The Bot Abusers Manual
• Crash Course Manual
• Crash Priority
• Creatures of the Night Cycle (a pointed spoof of Vampire: the Masquerade)
• Criminal Histories
• Death, Lies, and Vidtape
• Don't Take Your Laser to Town
• Extreme Paranoia
• Gamma-Lot
• Mad Mechs
• The Mutant Experience
• Paramilitary
• Paranormal / CTV
• Service, Service!
• STUFF
• STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets
• The R&D Catalog
• The Iceman Returneth
• The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues
• The Traitors Manual
• The Underplex
• Twilightcycle: 2000
• Vulture Warriors of Dimension X
• WMD
• and many more...

Vampire: The Masquerade (Revised Edition) cover. ... A paramilitary organization is a group of civilians trained and organized in a military fashion. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues was one of the first true missions for the Paranoia role-playing game. ... Weapons of Mass Destruction is also the name of rapper Xzibits 2004 album. ...

Paranoia-related software

Originally being a "pen-and-paper" game, Paranoia has since evolved into a game played over the internet. A program specifically created for playing Paranoia in such a way, "JParanoia", has been released and can be downloaded from Paranoia Live.

Paranoia was also made into a video game called The Paranoia Complex released in 1989 by Magic Bytes. It was available for Amiga, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced game console. ... Amstrad CPC 464, with CTM644 colour monitor The Amstrad CPC was an 8-bit home computer produced by Amstrad in the 1980s. ... Commodore 64 (1982) The Commodore 64 (C64, CBM 64/CBM64, C=64) is a home computer with 64 kilobytes of RAM that was popular in the 1980s. ...

Finally, a Paranoia-themed piece of "choose-your-own-adventure" hyperfiction was published in issue #77 of SpaceGamer/FantasyGamer magazine in the late '80s. Since then, various unauthorised automated versions of the story (a Troubleshooter's assignment to undermine the subversive activity known as Christmas) have been circulating through mainframes and PCs, with machine-independent ports to C, Python and Inform as well as to AGT and for Applix, CP/M and the Cybiko. Cybiko Xtreme Cybiko is a hand held computer designed for teenagers (although available and suitable for all ages, including adults). ...

External links

• Mongoose Publishing's Paranoia Homepage
• Paranoia XP Design Blog
• Paranoia Live
• CRD Sector
• Omega Complex
• http://dmoz.org/Games/Roleplaying/Genres/Science_Fiction/Paranoia/
• Paranoia hyperfiction