The Pick Up Pile. Pondering Paranoia.

The first Pondering of the Pick Up Pile, Paranoia (2023 Edition) from Mongoose Publishing.

The first section of the book is the intro covering what is the game and how to use the book, the usual fare for this section, what is this, how to use it? etc. this is just a few pages. then we get on to Chapter 2, the rules, which is 45ish pages including character creation, how to play, and gear.

Character creation is quick, it takes up about 6 pages, including some nice half page art pieces. Though you will need to refer to later sections for more detail on Service Groups (jobs) and Secret Societies, both of which your character must have, this section just giving an overview.

As I noted in my entries for the January Character Creation Challenge using Paranoia, I really like the character generation for this game. The adversarial selection of skill points sets the tone already, putting players at odds with each other. Picking a +5 to give your neighbour a -5 in a skill they really want must feel really good. (There’s also an option for more traditional individual character creation if the adversarial method isn’t for your group.)

There’s little in the way of narrative/background for each character, but there’s enough for broad strokes. The Treason Button and Violence Button sections give a bit more to role play with, what causes you to fuck around and what causes you to fuck shit up.

This all adds up to characters you probably won’t get too attached to, even if you get unreasonably attached to a few scribbled notes like I do. Perfect for what seems to be a “drive it like you stole it” attitude to playing the characters, getting you burning through those six clones you have.

The system is simplicity itself, build a dice pool from the scores on your sheet, roll and count successes (5+ on a die). It really gets out of the way of the game. Enough to resolve tasks and move on to the next argument.

In describing how to run the game it keeps coming back to the idea of being unfair, but fairly. So shit sucks, but for everyone equally. I’m sure anyone that’s dealt with the DWP will be able to get the tone right here.

I know humour is subjective, but a lot of the jokes in this book don’t land for me. A shame for something often billed as a comedy game. I found some of the jokes were over explained, running way past a a good punchline (often in parentheses following the joke). Others pull up short. This could be just a taste issue, and it’s not something that prevents the game from working.

Another issue with he book is the typos. Not a glashouse I should be throing stones in, I know. A page reference that tells you to go the page you’re already on is unfortunate, a section referring to the part above when it should be the part below is easily ignored, a typo in the description of the main dice mechanic is really disappointing.

The NODE score it the size of your dice pool and the book gives and example that adds up to a NODE 6, but the book says 7 (incorrectly), and then says you roll 6 dice (correctly). Hopefully this is fixed in future printings.

The next 50 pages are Chapter 3: Alpha Complex Lore. This has a possible history of Alpha Complex, details of security clearances from Infra Red up to Ultraviolet, organisations, secret societies and many other bits of flavour.

Each organisation has details of what they’re responsible for, who they are at odds with, and what kind of favours you can pull in from them. Favours range anywhere from queue skipping and cutting local power for a short time up to starring riots, obtaining bombs or demoting citizens of higher security clearance.

This setting really gives you a lot to be going on with to build your own Alpha Complex to your exact tastes.

Chapter 4 then covers missions. Mission design is a few pages giving the structure of a typical troubleshooter mission, from set up to rewards and punishments at the end. A really useful tool if you’re new to the game.

There’s a little bit about Campaign play and how to string missions together. Again good advice here and could even be used in other games.

Rounding out the chapter is a sample adventure “Arbitrary Justice” which uses the type of structure detailed earlier in the chapter. Showing the structure in action like this is a nice move, it demonstrates how to flesh out each stage of the process. This adventure has a few tasks for the troubleshooters to do and a lot of well detailed NPCs for them to interact with. I’d be comfortable running this adventure for new players after a cursory re-read of the book to refresh my memory on a couple of details.

Finally there’s the Appendices. First up is a guide to converting things from the Red Clearance Edition (the previous edition of the game) to the current rule.

Then theres a couple of cheat sheets, one for rules and one for the setting. This is great and would be good copied a few times and handed to players with their character sheets. That way they’d have pretty much all they need.

Appendix N follows with influential and inspirational media. I do appreciate these sections having films in now (as opposed the original AD&D Appendix N all being books) as you’re more likely to get a prospective player to set aside a couple of hours for a film than however long it takes for them to get through a novel. Especially when it’s for a game like this which feels more suited to one shots or short campaigns. And it reminded me I need to rewatch a few of the absolute classics listed in there, such as Logan’s Run and THX 1138.

Finally there’s the character sheets, which are also available as form fillable downloads, however I’d recommend downloading THIS ONE from Reddit, as it gives more available characters in the name box, so you can fill it in properly.

Overall a straightforward ruleset that does what it needs to and gets out of the way. Enough supporting material to build adventures even in this slim volume. Good advice given for anyone running the game. Just a few typos that need ironing out.

I would run this.