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.
Welcome to the first post in a new series, The Pick Up Pile. I’ve been looking for something to do with this blog as it’s been sitting idle apart from the January Character Creation Challenges, especially with my solo Twilight: 2000 game being on hiatus as it’s a bit depressing to play in light of current world events.
Also it keeps my little grey cells bubbling away and it kinda justifies my game collection whilst I don’t have a game group.
So whats in the Pick Up Pile? Well, as the name suggests it’s going to be about games and game related stuff I’ve recently picked up. I got a few game books for Christmas and have picked up a bunch of things on Ebay and elsewhere recently.
Christmas gifts were the Paranoia core cook, Fallout: The Role Playing Game core book, Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades, Tales from the Loop, and The Deck of Many things.
Initial thoughts on each of these;
Paranoia is a slim hardcover, with substantial glossy pages. The writing is quite large and well laid out making it easy to read. Art is interspersed throughout and is of a decent quality, showing characters, scenarios, equipment and organisation logos
Fallout has a ribbon bookmark, more books should have ribbon bookmarks. (I have a thing for ribbon bookmarks!) It’s a hefty book, that looks well laid out and separated into clear sections. Lots of really nice art that I think is concept art from the videogames.
Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades is a nice convenient smaller size hardback, with 260+ pages. The art is great, thematic and consistent all the way through. The text is clearly laid out in, full page width and of a easily readable size.
Tales From the Loop has some THICK paper, 192 pages in a book thicker than some 300+ page ones I have. As expected in a game derived from an artist’s work, the art is fantastic. From what I’ve read this really gets what the 80s were really like, more than a lot of properties do. I’d bet on it having been written by people that actually lived through the decade.
The Deck of Many Things box set is striking. The books and cards are really nice looking pieces. The Book of Many things appears to be a good DM targeted expansion, items, creatures, idea prompts etc. The cards themselves feel nice and the companion book details a few ways of using them.
Purchases were all D&D related, I got the 4th edition PHB, the 3rd edition DMG MM and PHB, and the 1st edition DMG.
Initial thoughts on these;
I like the cover art on the 4th Edition PHB having spot gloss effects highlighting the logo and the central figures in the art. The interior is clearly laid out and readable. The art in each section has a very distinctive style that seems unique to this edition, everything’s so curvy and pointy at the same time. It’s odd seeing magic items in the PHB, I’m more used to seeing them in the DMG. From an initial skim combat does seem very minis and grid based.
For my tastes 3rd Edition has the best spine artwork, that old mage’s tome look. The text looks a little cramped and the sketchy lines around it make it a little less immediately readable to me. The sections seem laid out as you’d expect from 5e. The Monster Manual has a bunch of critters in it that don’t appear to have been updated to 5e, that’s something I might look into doing. Finally it is nice to see the tables listed in the contents page at the start of each book, so if you know what table you are looking for you can jump straight to it, this needs to return.
The 1st Edition DMG shows people in the 70s had better eyesight, the text is tiny. It’s a solid book, from what I can tell my copy is 44 years old, and even missing its spine the text block is holding together. There’s a lot of detailed stuff in here and it will take me a while to work though. As shown in the Character Creation Challenge I really like the funny little guy generator in Appendix D.
I intend posts for this to be split into two categories. “Pickups” where I post about something new I got in, maybe a photo or two and a couple of thoughts after a brief skim through (I guess this counts as the first “Pickup”) , and “Ponderings” where I’ll put up a larger entry for each book as I work through them. I’ll give and overview of the physical appearance of the book, and a few thoughts for each chapter highlighting things that stand out to me.
I’ll also add new purchases to the pile as I pick them up, putting them in the queue to be covered. They won’t necessarily be covered in the order that I got them, more likely when they excite my “Ooh shiny!” impulse.
If I ever get to the end of the queue then I’ll pick something older out of my collection and cover that until I get something new and shiny.
No plans for a schedule yet, as that depends on how long it takes me to get through a book and how much I have to say.
Day 23 and back to Paranoia for the last time, this week we have Mark-R-AMN-4, a Power Services worker with an incredibly low engineering skill.
As pointed out above, Marky here has a -4 to Engineering, which is not great when working for the power company. Another example of how players could screw each other over in character creation.
As he works keeping the juice flowing, I thought it interesting to make his treason buton the lights going out. Combining this with his low engineering skill possibly resutling in a lot of blackouts this could see a lot of treason. A good explanation for why he’s already on clone 4.
Paranoia’s character creation is quick, suitable for making clones that you don’t get too attached to and play in a “drive it like you stole it” kind of way. It really suits the tone the game is going for and helps set everyone’s expectations.
Next week’s character is TBD, I have a couple of ideas floating around but nothing concrete.
Tomorrow’s Deadlands character is Loretta “The Shark” Fisher, a Huckster.
Day 16, past half way! This week’s troubleshooter for Paranoia is DeeDee-R-AMN-3, Equipment officer and pyrokinetic mutant.
Another quick one as is the way with this system. Due to the possible stat fuckery mentioned in previous entries for this game here we have a member of the Housing Production and Development and Mind Control department (HPD&MC) who is absolutely terrible at anything construction related. Demolitions on the other hand he is very good at, and he is very charming about it.
Next week’s Paranoia character is Mark-R-AMN-4, rounding out the team. Week 5’s Tuesday is still TBD.
Tomorrow’s character for Deadlands is Archibald Stanton, Harrowed Legend o’ the Wierd West.
Troubleshooter Tuesday is back Citizens! This weeks character is John-R-AMN-2, made at the sam time as last week’s character due to the group character generation method.
As with Joe-R-AMN-1 from last week, the skills were selected in a you get +1 to something, your neighbour gets -1, up to +5/-5.
When deciding on Mandatory Bonus Duties, basically team roles, I approached it as a GM handing them out to who it would be funniest to give them to. So John ended up bing team leader based on his low Brains and Chutzpah related skills, for maximum failure chance. Not something I would do in any other game, but it fits for paranoia.
Also for his Treason button; a team leader that commits treason if things slow down too much will either keep the team moving, or result in chaos.
Not too much depth as this was more and exploration of a system I;ve not used before, but I think I got something decent out of it.
Next week’s troubleshooter will be DeeDee-R-AMN-3, and tomorrow’s Deadlands character will be Eleanor Sheopard, a Blessed.
As I’m sure you are aware citizen, the first four Tuesday’s of the month are now designated Troubleshooter Tuesday. This serves to highlight the brave citizens in red that keep Alpha Complex trouble free.
So yeah, after getting the core book for the new edition of Paranoia for Christmas I decided to make a troubleshooter team for Tuesdays. First up is Joe-R-AMN-1.
I’ll post a Troubleshooter each week, but they were made together as Paranoia has adversarial group character creation. This really sets the tone for the backstabbing nature of the game.
One detail I really liked is picking your Service Group first and this being public, then picking stats. Because of the you get +1, your neighbour gets -1 nature of the chargen this could lead to you seeing what your neighbour wants to do career wise based on Service Group, and then pick stats to deliberately fuck with them. Putting PCs at each other’s throats fresh out of the cloning vat.
For example seeing your neighbour is in one of the security/violence type groups and picking +5 melee for yourself, giving them -5 in that skill.
From reading more of the rules this results in a pretty simple dice pool system. Ideal for this game as anything more complex would slow things down and really hamper the comedy potential.
Next Tuesday’s troubleshooter is John-R-AMN-2, and tomorrow is Weird West Wednesday so I’ll be posting my first character for Deadlands (Savage Worlds), Virgil Witt.
Three Kobolds With A Trench Gun 