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Secret Societies in PARANOIA are both a carrot and a stick. On the one hand, it's a neat little secret that gives your character personal goals and something resembling beliefs, even though you can't be too conspicuous about it. On the other hand, they're a license for termination and a nice way of burdening players with additional duties that must be worked into the goose-chase-du-jour. They can get you out of trouble, and then get you right back into it. THE TRAITOR'S MANUAL is the first full supplement book for PARANOIA XP, and it focuses entirely on the workings of these clandestine plot devices. Like the core book it's both well thought-out and genuinely funny, maintaining the sharp tone of the line despite an entirely new author.
The book is split into two main sections, one "Red" and the other "Ultraviolet" (though, of course, displaying ANY knowledge of something called "The Traitor's Manual" is probably treason in itself.) The red section has a brief introduction dealing with the basics of secret societies, and the general nature of treason in Alpha Complex. Basically, most people in the Complex believe they're decent, loyal clones- it's just that getting toilet paper is so much easier on the IR market, and hey, us guys in the Romantics don't hurt anybody, we just hang out and watch old vidshows that you can't get anywhere else. This cycle of self-justification and rationalization continues until you either have a very good moral reason for shoving your fellow Troubleshooters into incinerators, or you give up and focus on how to justify your actions to everyone else. This introductory section covers concepts like cells, message drops, codes, initiations, and even how much blackmail material goes for on C-Bay.
Then we get to the meat of it- every secret society in the game is given a write-up running about three pages. These are basically extended versions of the write-ups in the core book, with more information on internal organization, beliefs, the duties and benefits of a member of a given degree (High level Illuminati mission briefing: "Illuminatus Priscus! Fnord!"), and some societies get unique details, like the Romantics' timeline of history, or the rules for determining how "cool" a Death Leopard's latest stunt is. The added detail for each society is usually welcome- their individual character starts to shine through, allowing you to easily distinguish the somewhat confused Communists from the deadly efficient Humanists and the prone-to-martyrdom PURGErs. There's also a good bit of propaganda on display in various sidebars. Three of these, in the Anti-Mutant, Communist and FCCCP sections, are riddled with extensive spelling and formatting errors which have to be intentional (they don't occur in any other sections of the book) and I think represent the garbling of Secret Society communications, broadcasts, etc. Then again, FCCP sometimes gets a blind eye turned to it, so you'd think they'd be more brash. If it's not deliberate, that works too.
The Ultraviolet section begins with a very brief section on how to tweak Secret Societies in your game, coming up with ways that they differ from the RED-Clearance description, etc. These are things like having them be full of double agents from another group, having High Programmer support, having no High Programmer support, etc. I was slightly surprised that there was no discussion of the idea of creating new Secret Societies. True, it'd screw up all the tables, and it'd be hard to make a new one that doesn't overlap with what one group or another isn't already doing. It'd be kinda cool if they'd done that, though.
Then it's on to the adventure, a particularly clever concoction called "Down and Out in Alpha Complex." Skip the next paragraph if you think you might be playing in this.
The Troubleshooters are assigned to collect information on a suspected traitor living in MUD sector. To be less conspicuous, they're all temporarily made into Infrared drones, with the promise that once the mission's over, they can report to the briefing room (which is being colored black) and regain their identities. When they get to MUD sector, their suspect, on his last clone, throws himself in front of a Transbot. Due to the disruption, anyone wanting to leave MUD sector will have to have all their proper travel papers. If the Troubleshooters want to get back (and presumably they do- there's no mission anymore, and being Infrared sucks) they have to navigate a circular bureaucracy where getting one thing requires that you have another that requires that you have another, you get the idea. There's a very good structure here, and though depriving the PCs of status and possessions is usually anathema to players, a PARANOIA GM should have some idea of how to make them enjoy it. The mission is classified "Classic", but it should make
Jim Holloway does the art for this one, and it's a consistently good job, with a particularly neat cover. (Ever see an eyeball frown?) The formatting is consistent, though there's no index. The style of writing is perfectly in line with that of the core book- there are lots of funny bits in all sorts of places, and some genuine insight into what this world would be like. There's one line that gets to the heart of it all- "This is the true horror of Alpha Complex: the place is so culturally blighted that showing reruns of Melrose Place is an utterly mind-blowing event." There are some fun tables too, including one that lets you decide the true nature of the Illuminati. I recommend rolling every time an Illuminati character needs a mission, and deciding on his task accordingly.
The usefulness of this book will vary depending on the degree to which you'll be using Secret Societies, but in any case it's a sign that the line is on track, handled by folks who get PARANOIA and know how to make it good. Sure, the core book was excellent, but The Traitor's Manual proves it wasn't a fluke. The Computer has everything under control. Trust it.
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