Reading Paranoia XP: Alpha Complex Nights 2

This is another review of a Paranoia XP book, for those interested. If you’re not interested in a review of a 20-year old game book, well… skip it!

In this case, I’ll be discussing the adventure collection Alpha Complex Nights 2, designed by Gareth (Ryder-)Hanrahan!

Paranoia XP: Alpha Complex Nights 2

This is another collection of adventures from Gareth [Ryder-]Hanrahan, published in 2008. Unlike the earlier collection, this is a softcover and it includes just two missions. both unusual in taking “the semi-radical step of giving the Troubleshooters a considerable amount of influence and authority, then making them exercise it, and finally judging them on how they screw up.” As the introduction points out, having a little power isn’t incompatible with the essential powerlessness that is at the heart of a game of Paranoia.

One thing to note is that the interior art here is not by James Holloway, but rather by Alison Blackwell. (Holloway did the cover, just not the interior art.) Some people have negative feelings about Blackwell’s art, but while I prefer Holloway’s, I think she did a reasonable job on it.  

The Communist Cafeteria Conspiracy

This is an absurd mission involving a complete macguffin: a nonexistent Communist plot involving a nonexistent commie mind-control ray device embroils a long list of service firms and secret societies, all in competition to take control of it, find it, destroy it, set it off, and so on. The plot is centered on a special cafeteria, and of course the mission involves characters being placed in charge of the cafeteria and having to keep it running (that is, feeding citizens of all clearance levels there) while also dealing with a constant barrage of nonsense and chaos brought about by those different service firms’ and secret societies’ response to the commie mind control ray. 

The adventure is highly readable, silly as all get-out, and feels almost like the prequel for Hanrahan’s later work on Paranoia: High Programmers. I think it’s a model adventure in terms of mobilizing as much of the familiar landscape of Alpha Complex as possible. Unlike some of the older classic adventures, I can see running this from the book, though I’d have to read it a couple of times in order to be able to do so. 

Viva La Revolution

A shorter mission by about ten pages, this one involves a citizen uprising against the Computer’s control in one sector of Alpha Complex. Intel about the uprising was funneled to Internal Security, who decided to let it go ahead, the better to terminate everyone involved. The Troubleshooters are given a simple mission in this same sector, and complete it just in time to be around for—and roped into—the revolution as executioners for the new regime. This has all the hallmarks of a Paranoia screwjob adventure, and the concept is very simple, with lots of support for the scenario in the form of random tables for everything from what one character shouts during a firefight to what Troubleshooters run into when they’re not holed up deciding whether to execute Computer loyalists. Again, this is one I can see myself running straight from the book, and it seems like it’d be a lot of fun. 

All in all, I think this collection of adventures is well worth it. They have a classic Paranoia vibe: a simple scenario goes wrong in the most extravagant ways, and Troubleshooters are lucky if they can manage to get out at all, let alone unscathed. These would be some of the first adventures I’d run for a group if I was looking to get people used to Alpha Complex and the lore of Paranoia, since they feel, to me, like classic Paranoia adventures, but without the bewildering complexity and sometimes overwhelming episodic structure.