In my quest to uncover what I assumed to be the truth about Paranoia I downloaded the latest edition. I thought I would make an OSSR of it and it might be worth some laughs but by the first chapter I realized I could not review it because Paranoia is madness incarnate. Paranoia is so fucking insane, so mind-bogglingly terrible, so Incredifucked that I cannot even review it. It is ironically alike some Lovecraftion tome. I do not possess the mental fortitude to comprehend it let alone analyze it. My review of every chapter would just be this
Over and over again. So this is not so much a review as me explaining what Paranoia says in it's own book and then challenging someone on this board to explain to me not why Paranoia is good, but what Paranoia even is.
I will first try to describe Paranoia as it is written.
The Unworkable Concept
Page 5 tells us directly that the gamemaster is "against the player characters". In his fight against the players he has total control over every aspect of the game. Players who know or reference the rules of the game are to have their character killed. Referencing or doing things out of character should result in that character being killed, listed examples include things like rolling dice or having the Paranoia book. Ponder that shit.
On page 6 the game describes what it is. Things like what the players are, what the world is like, and the basic idea of the game begin to get covered but before you get too cocky with your knowledge of what the game is they include a "Note" so insane I'll just write it here myself.
That is a line in the rulebook telling you that the rulebook is untrue, and it's not talking about the in-character pieces, it is specifically referencing the parts outside of the in-character segments. Paranoia's descriptions of Paranoia are false. The book is a hardbound liars paradox."We could say everything in the main text is true, but we'd be lying. Not everything you read about Alpha Complex, Troubleshooters, Paranoia or anything else in this book is completely true. Or maybe it is."
The Unusable Setting
The Paranoia world is vague and internally contradictory. It says this is intentional and that giving you information would be against the whole point. That is to say the gameworld, which is also a lie, does not explain what it is or how it works. I would say that is the least useable setting idea it is possible to think up. What little information is given is that the characters are clones created in a vat with no history or identity. This means every character is the same character and that if a player fell unconscious during character creation and woke up exactly as play started they would have exactly the same amount of story created for their character as anyone else could have created for theirs.
The PC's are clones who go on missions. We get examples of the sorts of missions they go on. The first example is to kill a sewer rat. The second example is classified. Then we're told that the PC's should be trying to sabotage their missions and their teammates. You are not told what you are doing and you are trying to stop your teammates from doing it. It then says that if players do play the way you want them to, that is turning on each other and doing "smart play" as the game calls it then you should punish them. Try and read this.
The Rules: Fuck!Characters who let other take the risks will at first feel safe because characters who take risks in Paranoia get turned into vat-paste. However when you see players holding back too often you should start having the risk takers succeed at ludicrous actions, gain promotions, and lose less lives than those who are playing it smart
EXAMPLE: The characters are pinned down by enemy fire behind a rapidly dissolving pile of cover. All the players are arguing over what to do, when one heroic soul declares:
Player: "Humph! Stand back, timorous cravens! My character leaps over the barricade into the hail of bullets, sowing grenades like seeds, charging resolutely toward the Commie traitors
Gamemaster: "Bravo! Bravissimo! Well... you leap out of cover and lob your grenades at the enemy gun emplacements — and that's what they are: gun emplacements manned by reprogrammed scrubots! (Rolls dice, ignores result.) You make your perception check and notice that they are mindlessly firing at the cover you were hiding behind. (Rolls dice again, obviously ignores result.) Dextrously, you dodge out of the way, tossing grenades hither and yon. (Rolls dice yet again, wincing convincingly.) Oooh! Too bad — a critical failure. (Contemplates for a minute, rolls dice and seems to study them, then sighs.) Well, the grenades take out most of the scrubots, but a few bounce down into the cover your 'friends' are hiding behind. (Clatter of more dice.) Which explodes in a ball of fire. The remaining scrubots begin to fire at the craven cow — I mean, at the rest of the team unobstructed. (Clatter.) Ow! That's gotta hurt..."
I could review the rules but that last example tells you I don't need to. I don't need to tell you that the skills don't tell you what they do, or that the DC's are made up with no guide or any other thing because none of it matters! The ACTUAL LISTED PROCESS for any action occurring in Paranoia is that the player says they use a skill, the GM makes the DC as low or as high as they want, the player rolls their dice in that skill, adds that number to their governing ability score to get the total score then GM ignores the result then tells you what happened! Holy fuck why! Why are their MULTIPLE math steps for the player and MULTIPLE decision points for the GM if none of it matters! If my stats never mattered why must they also be random? Why did we have to randomly generate each stat and skill one at a time! Why does every action add two meaningless random numbers then ignore the meaningless result! MY BRAIN IS FULL OF FUCK
Paranoia does not seem to fulfill the definitions of "game" or "playing" or "roles". I don't know what it is.
