- Series: Paranoia XP Reviews, Book-by-Book
- Reading Paranoia XP: Paranoia [XP], Service Pack 1 (Core Rulebook)
- Reading Paranoia XP: The GM Screen, Mission Blender, and Mandatory Mission Pack
- Reading Paranoia XP: Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Alpha Complex and The Little Red Book
- Reading Paranoia XP: Service, Service!
- Reading Paranoia XP: The Traitor’s Manual
- Reading Paranoia XP: STUFF and STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets
- Reading Paranoia XP: The Mutant Experience
- Reading Paranoia XP: Extreme Paranoia
- Reading Paranoia XP: Criminal Histories
- Reading Paranoia XP: Big Book of Bots
- Reading Paranoia XP: The Thin Green Line
- Reading Paranoia XP: The Underplex
- Reading Paranoia XP: Flashbacks
- Reading Paranoia XP: Flashbacks II
- Reading Paranoia XP: Alpha Complex Nights
- Reading Paranoia XP: Alpha Complex Nights 2
- Reading Paranoia XP: Crash Priority
- Reading Paranoia XP: Sector Zero
- Reading Paranoia XP: War On [Insert Noun Here]
- Reading Paranoia XP: WMD
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 mission collection WMD, designed by the Traitor Recycling Studio!
Paranoia XP: WMD
I explained what the Traitor Recycling Studio was in my post about Crash Priority. In this case, there’s a different lineup of contributors—not surprising, since the Traitor Recycling Studio was a pool of potential contributors—and this collection came out in 2005.
There are four missions in this collection, all of them in “Straight” mode, and all of them centered on something with the acronym “W.M.D.” Yeah, that much is a product of the time, but since I was around in that era, I remember it well and it’s funny to see it mocked like this.
Dan Curtis Johnson‘s Hunger is inspired by The Great Leap Forward, and features something called Whirlwind Miracle Destiny, which involves a wonderful (not) plan by the Computer to ramp up food production and distribute it using the “Wholesome Meal Distribution” service. That’s a couple of WMDs for you. There’s a warning preceding the mission, noting that it’s probably the darkest mission ever published for Paranoia, and… yeah, I think it is. (No surprise, if you know anything about the Great Leap Forward.) Let’s just say that quota-watching in Alpha Complex is a lot like quota-watching under Mao, and… well, the inevitable result is truly horrifying. (If you don’t end up having some starvation and cannibalism along the way, you’re probably doing it wrong.) This one mission was terribly clever, but perhaps a bit too dark for some groups. Not your average dedicated Paranoia group, probably, but it’s not for casual players of the game.
Hot Potato by Jeff Groves features an actual Weapon of Mass Destruction, the eponymous “hot potato” (an Old Reckoning antimatter bomb). The Hot Potato is recovered by some Sierra Clubbers from a ruin in the Outdoors, and by the time it gets to the PCs, there are more people after it than you can count: secret societies (including some really fanatical splinter groups), squads of Vulture Troopers, and more. This is one of those missions where you basically throw everything including the kitchen sink at the players, but it looks like a good time. At least, you know, for the GM!
InfoHazard by Bill O’Dea is a mission centered related to a Wireless Memory Downgrade. It’s a pretty straightforward disaster for the Troubleshooters, who’re sent into a sector to deal with a rogue computer virus that infects everything: doors, gear, bots, the local Compnode. Basically, this is another “everything including the kitchen sink” scenario, including a ludicrous promotion to Ultraviolet that, alas, cannot last if they want to survive. I think this would be both very fun (in a horrifying way) and also relatively easy to run, with things swerving completely out of control, only to serve even more out of control with each twist and turn of the mission. Again, I think it’s best if people are used to your standard Alpha Complex mission before playing this, but have no other reservations about this mission.
Finally, there’s a mission titled WMD by Beth Fischi and Allen Varney. This one is about a Weapon of Memory Destruction. It’s utterly bananas, though to be honest I had a little trouble wrapping my head around it at first. Basically, the PCs have been mindwiped and, among all the regular insanity of a Paranoia mission, they’re supposed to be discovering clues to how and why they were brainwiped, who they really are, and their role in getting a whole Loyalty Assurance RD’s worth of workers wiped out by a Loyalty-bot (lobot), and then deciding what to do about it all. I’m not sure if it was reading fatigue or the twistiness of the mission, but I found parsing everything a bit of a challenge, though once I got the basic idea it was pretty funny. I especially like the idea of PCs being unable to get any help from anyone because they can’t remember who they can trust, or why others are so distrustful of them.
As an exploration of a new playstyle for Paranoia, I found WMD very interesting and mostly quite good. There’s something appealing about the Straight playstyle for me, especially when considering running a game of Paranoia that goes beyond a one-shot. The idea of play modes was innovative, and has been replicated elsewhere since—most notably in Kenneth Hite’s Trail of Cthulhu—but I get the impression that the idea has been abandoned in later versions of Paranoia. (Right? I haven’t pored over the later editions, it’s just the impression I get from discussions.)
If I’m right, it’s not terribly surprising: though it does appeal to me, I think Straight Paranoia is an odd proposal, especially when player expectation is likelier to be either for Classic play or some mix of Classic and Zap. It feels almost like it would be easier to get people onboard playing a Straight game of Paranoia if one avoided calling it Paranoia at all. Of course, all of these missions could also be run in Classic mode, at least with a little adjustment—or cannibalized for parts in an ongoing Classic mode game, if the GM preferred. For anyone trying to get a handle on the playstyles as described in the core Paranoia XP rulebook, I think it’s an invaluable resource.
One more thing: the book was accompanied by a packet of free extra printable handouts (for the fourth mission) that were hosted on the Mongoose website. They don’t seem to be there any longer (or at least not in any easy-to-find way), but good news: they’re included in the PDF version of the book that is available at Drivethru RPG, so I’m not going to post a copy here.