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First off, some history: I bought the Second Edition of Paranoia back in 1991, I think. I’d never quite been able to get a handle on it, and although I talked big about running it every now and again, I was never confident in my ability to sustain the required atmosphere of “fear and ignorance”.

Still, I followed the line through the Crash (where things started going downhill) and Reboot (a valiant but drastically flawed attempt to restore some paranoia to Paranoia) eras, and then on into Paranoia: The Fifth Edition. By then, Paranoia had essentially degenerated into an ill-executed parody of not only RPGs (including such supplements as the White Wolf take-off Creatures of the Nightcycle) and pop-culture but also of itself.

The unfortunate near-death of publisher West End Games in the late nineties seemed the end of Paranoia, until original co-developer Greg Costikyan acquired the rights to the game from West End. In early 2004, Mongoose Publishing, a British firm known for D20 adaptations of such properties as Judge Dredd and Babylon 5 (making the firm something of a spiritual successor to West End, known in its day for licensed RPGs), announced that it had signed a deal with Costikyan to publish the upcoming new edition of Paranoia, to be written by industry vet Allen Varney.

Crediting the Forge as inspiration, Allen took an “open source” approach to development of the new edition, allowing long-time Paranoia fans to help develop his ideas and suggest new ones on Costikyan’s Paranoia XP web log and the Paranoia-Live forum. The latest edition, Paranoia XP, hit shelves in August 2004. By then, I’d sold off my Second and Fifth Edition kit on eBay, and, still feeling like Paranoia just wasn’t my kind of game, wasn’t planning to pick up the new edition.

Second off, a conflict-of-interest notice: Although not intending to buy, I still participated in the development effort on the Paranoia XP blog, and am credited with “Valuable service to The Computer” on page 4 – this is, in fact, the reason why I changed my mind and bought the new edition. The dialogue between Mark-R and The Computer on page 87 is by-and-large written by me. Make of that what you will when reading this review.

And just one quick note: taking a page from Dan Devenport, I’ve included notes from my playtest of Paranoia XP throughout the review. They’re indented from the main text

like this.

So: On with the review!

Style: Paranoia XP is a 256-page, hard-bound book. Having seen the First Edition supplement, The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, I can say that the internal layout, aside from the chapter headings, is quite similar to that of First Edition; a little flat and bland. The main text is laid out in a dense-feeling, three-column format; both that and the flat, Arial-style font give the book an intimidating, technical manual feel. It’s not quite as sleek as West End’s presentation and layout on the Second Edition. The good news is that the layout is almost entirely clean and error-free, and I don’t believe I spotted a single typo or unintentional misuse of grammar.

One minor fan-boy gripe: the “i” in “it” is rarely capitalised when referring to The Computer. But the “T” in “The Computer” is always capital, which is a relief after wincing my way through Fifth Edition.

Long-time Paranoia fans will be glad to know that iconic Paranoia artist Jim Holloway has returned for Paranoia XP. His unique style has always captured the world and atmosphere of Paranoia perfectly, gleefully using exaggeration without crossing the line into cartoon. His Troubleshooters have always looked like the adult-bodied-children that the play style encourages Paranoia PCs to be.

All is not perfect, though. While there’s little recycled art (being the Computer’s Monitor icon, unchanged since First Edition, the secret society logos and the MBD badges), many pieces are re-draws of art from previous editions. Some of the alterations improve on the originals, but I found many to be un-necessary. Also, the line work isn’t as clean or sharp as it was in the Second Edition (whether this is a change in Holloway’s style or something to do with Mongoose’s publishing process, I’m not sure); in fact, there are a couple of pieces of art (see, for example, page 53) that look as though they weren’t cleaned up properly after inking. Furthermore, the Secret Society logos are not only obvious scans of those from Second Edition, but also the images weren’t cleaned up prior to going into the book; there’s an obvious grey box around the logos (see, for example, the Mystics logo on page 161).

Such flaws are disappointing after the high standard of the Second Edition rulebook, but the overall product is still worth a Style score of 4.

Substance: So what is Paranoia XP about? What does it aim to have PCs do, and how well does it enable them do it?

Paranoia XP is, in large part, about the fun one can have by backstabbing and betraying one’s friends and/or fellow gamers. This is fun (instead of aggravating or friendship-breaking) because no one’s character is likely to finish the session alive anyway (if nobody wins, backstabbing or betraying your friends has no real sting).

Paranoia XP is set in the future, in an underground city called Alpha Complex. Alpha Complex is run by The Computer (think Nineteen Eighty Four’s Big Brother as an actual leader instead of a television figurehead), and it is perfect. The Computer says so. Everyone is happy in Alpha Complex. Failure to be happy is treason, which can be punished by fines, medication, chemical lobotomy and termination (perhaps even all at once).

In Its wisdom, The Computer has established an elite force to root out the forces of Communism; specifically, mutants (genetically impure) and members of secret societies (organisations not sanctioned by The Computer). This force is the Troubleshooters, and players will play members of a Troubleshooter team as they strive to protect the happy citizens of Alpha Complex from Commie mutant traitors and ensure our friend The Computer’s utopia remains unsullied.

Of course, every player character is secretly a mutant and a member of a secret society. Which turns the point of the game away from heroism and saving the day (the default activity of a fair chunk of RPGs) and into surviving/getting ahead at the expense of your fellow players (hence the aforementioned bckstabbing and betrayal). After all, why go looking for traitors when you can unmask those in your own team?

As each additional player character in the group is one more potential threat to every other player character, the Paranoia atmosphere of fear and ignorance only really works with a large group of player characters (at least four and six at the most). Each character has secret stuff that the other characters are attempting to discover (without revealing their own secrets), so each player should have only one character.

Sooner or later (depending on play style, see below) the PCs will use their Troubleshooter issue lasers against each other (and maybe NPCs). This can easily be fatal, but not permanently so. Every citizen of Alpha Complex is a clone (hormone suppressants eliminate all that messy and genetically random sexual intercourse), and has five backup copies. Upon death, the next clone is decanted, downloaded with its prior incarnation’s memories and sent back into the field. Once you’ve died six times, though, you’re out of the game (unless you can pay for more backups).

As mentioned above, the tone of Paranoia has changed over its years in print, from the darkly satirical (I understand, having never owned it) First Edition through Second Edition’s freewheeling, slightly biting comedy to the trigger-happy exuberance of Fifth Edition. Interestingly enough, instead of picking a particular style, Paranoia XP caters to all three. It’s written in a happy medium between satire (which relates to the game style called Straight, or Dark) and comedy (the heart of the Classic, or Second Edition style), allowing GMs to cater to either with relative ease. Moving to Zap, the blast-everything, pop-culture-geek-in-jokes style favoured by Fifth Edition, requires little work beyond giving the players their characters and standing back.

The book is split into four sections: the Player Section, which runs for forty-four pages, and the Gamemaster Section, which takes up the rest of the book and includes the Sourcebook and Missions Sections. The Player Section has no rule information beyond a brief explanation of the base die mechanic. (Paranoia XP uses a 20-sided die. When you roll the die in Paranoia XP, you’re rolling equal to or under your skill level in order to succeed.) Instead, it focuses on establishing tone, with a basic citizen-eye-view of Alpha Complex, The Computer and the Troubleshooters. The fact that it’s only forty-four pages of two hundred and fifty six merely reinforces Paranoia’s recommended atmosphere of fear and ignorance.

Character creation an option for players if the gamemaster doesn’t have or prefers not to use pre-generated characters. It’s quite similar to Second Edition. Attributes (except Power) have been renamed Skills and reduced from nine to six; derived attributes (like macho and damage bonuses) no longer exist. (The players do have two Attributes – Access and Power – but they don’t know what their values are or precisely how they’re used.) Players can determine their Skills by random d20 roll, using a point-buy system or taking them all at 7.

Below Skills are Common Specialties, such as Chutzpah, Energy Weapons, Moxie, Bot Operation & Maintenance and Nuclear Engineering, and XP exchanges Second Edition’s skill points for an interesting trade-off system: you can boost up to six common specialties above their base Skills by four (as long as you don’t go over 14), but for each one you boost, you have to drop another Common Specialty down to 1. You can also pick one Narrow Specialty per Skill, which you boost above its base Skill by six, but its scope and result are very narrowly defined (like “Hit It Hard Enough To Make It Work Once More Before Falling Apart”). They can be defined at creation or kept open for in game definition.

Each character also rolls their Service Group and Firm (a company that sub-contracts a particular function of its parent Group, which allows you to push the point maximum for Common Specialties), mutant power (with a separate power list per each play style) and secret society (which, in another interesting twist, is now based on service group, and gives a selection of treasonous skills). Each of these is used both as a form of character differentiation and a source of plot-hooks for the GM; in any given Troubleshooter mission, each character should have a personal mission from their secret society (which usually, but not always, amounts to “Player Character X is a traitor/Internal Security/interfering with our operations/just downright annoying; bump him/her off for us.”).

All this detail can easily confuse new players. My players, none of whom had played Paranoia before (I believe), used the six pre-generated characters, and I only noticed two, maybe three of my players actively pursuing their secret society agendas (I’m almost positive not one of them used his character’s mutant power). The Mandatory Bonus Duties (more on these below) got more attention.

Each player can create up to two tics for his or her character. Tics are a personality-based character differentiator. Essentially, they’re annoying and noticeable character habits.

Again, tics got lost in the noise. I distinctly remember one player using Hunter-R’s tic (which earned him a Perversity Point) but that was about it.

If having a Service Firm, mutation and secret society wasn’t enough detail, each player can be assigned one of six Mandatory Bonus Duties, which correspond to the duties within a Troubleshooter team, such as the obvious Team Leader (whose insignia is a bullseye), the Loyalty Officer (think commissar) and the only-in-Paranoia Hygiene and Happiness Officers.

I think handing out the MBD badges to new players with the character sheets was a mistake; while they’re a cool prop and give a bit more detail on the world of Paranoia, they’re not really necessary in the included adventure and give new players too much to do. As noted above, the players gave their MBDs more attention than their tics or secret society missions. I’d recommend saving the MBDs until your players have at least one mission under their belts and have got used to the basics (i.e. secret societies and mutant powers).

The chapter also includes a solo adventure (almost unchanged from Second Edition), Tips for Traitors (tactical hints for effective treason, which also serves as more Alpha Complex flavour), and Paranoia XP’s biggest innovation (in Paranoia terms, at least): Perversity Points.

One gripe I have about some RPGs is that they recommend play styles in their descriptive text, but don’t encourage them in their rules. Feng Shui is guilty of this; the text constantly recommends players jazz their fights up with wild stunts, but the rules impose a penalty whenever the players actually try to do so. Paranoia’s main theme is backstabbing and betrayal, and while previous editions’ rules didn’t discourage the idea (aside from perhaps low character skill limiting the reliability of any given attempt), none really encouraged it either.

The Perversity Point is a combination drama and experience point (emphasis on the former) with a twist that makes it utterly Paranoia. Players start with twenty-five Points at character creation (plus five per each personality tic they include in their characters, up to ten points) and earn more at the beginning of each Scene and by entertaining the GM.

The twist is that each Point spent provides either a +1 or –1 (player’s choice) to any skill roll – even those made by another player. This means any given roll (at the GM’s discretion, of course) can become a bidding war as players actively sabotage or improve (if they’re setting up one of those unions of convenience common to games of Axis & Allies and Diplomacy) each other’s rolls.

Paranoia XP has gone from just talking the talk to actually walking the walk, and it works. All the GM needs to do to encourage backstabbing is provide is regular infusions of Perversity Points. They’re a perfect mood-setting tool, as overt shafting in the metagame encourages covert shafting in-game (as well as more metagame shafting).

When the players decided to spend Perversity, I found myself besieged on all sides by stacks of Perversity Points and losing track of how many positive and negative points have been dumped into a given roll. Next time, I’d enforce taking turns, ideally going around the table from the first bidder; I’d also enforce the maximum-bid-of-five-points rule. It’s another one of those things that mightn’t have been a problem if the players had had a chance to read the Player Section.

Beyond that, there are the usual sidebars on Paranoia XP’s unique form of inter-player and player-GM etiquette (with plenty of encouragement to butter up the wise and benevolent gamemaster). It’s worthwhile pointing out that in these sections, players are heartily encouraged to gloat in full-on “Before I kill you, Mister Bond, let me explain precisely how I’m going to get away with it.” megalomania whenever they have a fellow player character at their mercy. It’s an interesting twist that encourages players to entertain each other instead of just whipping out their lasers and shooting.

Again, because my players didn’t get a chance to read the Player Section, gloating didn’t happen in my game, sadly.

The Gamemaster Section is where those most closely-guarded of Paranoia GM secrets – The Rules – reside, and warnings line the Player Section that the Gamemaster Section is not to be read – or, at least, the players should not admit to reading it, nor revel they’ve read it through demonstrating knowledge of its contents. Actually, there’s not too much in the way of rules; the first and most important is “You Are Always Right!” The die mechanic (a single d20, rolling low is good) is explained, the Access (calling in favours and protection from treason accusations) and Power (the battery of the PC’s mutant power) attributes are detailed, and combat and treason procedure is introduced. Both work off a single Universal Hostility Formula, and use a nifty mechanic based on the margin of success of the attack/accusation roll to calculate severity of damage/punishment without having to roll another die and consult a chart.

The combat mechanic works well; dividing the margin of success by the weapon’s boost value to determine how many steps up the scale that damage is shifted was easier to do .

The Perversity Point concept is expanded upon not only as a player reward, but also as a method of controlling the session’s pace. The GM is encouraged to distribute Perversity Points not only when a player does something in tune with the Paranoia atmosphere, but also as a method of pace control. Give out fewer points and the players will be more restrained; give out more and they’ll get flamboyant and creative.

Giving out Perversity Points is fun, especially when you’re rewarding a player for something. I heartily agree with the book’s suggestion of using poker chips to track Perversity.

Another new rule is the Tension level: Surveillance is everywhere in Alpha Complex, and if a given roll succeeds particularly well, there’s a chance the result may wind up on record somewhere and used against the rolling player in debriefing. Other methods are suggested if you don’t like the idea of combining brilliant success and getting caught.

I largely ignored the Tension levels of scenes as I had enough to keep track of, and we never made it as far as debriefing anyway, so it was a moot point.

Also included are notes on in-game slaps and bennies (which suggests – get this – training players like puppies) and two pages on playing The Computer (the game’s ultimate tool for controlling characters). Speaking of notes, with all the sneaky, underhanded goings-on, the players will need to communicate with the GM privately and regularly. To avoid players buttonholing the GM every five minutes, the book recommends note-passing as an alternative.

I managed to get my hands on three red-coloured notepads for the game, which helped with the atmosphere, as all the players had a RED Security Clearance. Managing the notes as they came in got rather overwhelming at times; like Perversity, you need to set some ground rules with your players before you get started.

There’s also a nice overall shift in tone away from killing player characters off or making their lives hard; GMs are instead encouraged to give players opportunities to commit their own treason and carry out their own executions. Where Second Edition gleefully encouraged gamemasters to “Kill the bastards!”, XP instead sagely recommends to its GMs, “Let them die. Let them all die.” It takes half the weight of sustaining the mood off the GM’s shoulders; as a result I felt more confident in my ability to run a game of Paranoia.

There’s less emphasis on freewheeling improvisation than there was in Second Edition, but I’m pretty sure that an improv-happy GM would only need to read this section and the Player Section in order to run a Zap game or pre-generated adventure.

The Sourcebook Section contains information on Alpha Complex and its organisations. It goes into deeper detail than previous editions, not just on new areas like the Service Firms but on the existing service groups, secret societies and elements of daily Alpha Complex life. Emphasis is given to the sheer magnitude of conflicting bureaucracies in Alpha Complex, and facts of modern life, like spam and identity theft, are given the Paranoia treatment (i.e. made both potentially lethal and utterly unavoidable).

A note: Second Edition made significant reference to the Outdoors, the untamed regions outside Alpha Complex. Paranoia XP is written with its focus firmly on life within Alpha Complex, and benefits greatly from it.

You don’t really need to read this chapter if you’re running a pre-generated adventure with pre-generated characters, and as mentioned above you can bypass it if you’re planning a Zap game. It’s mandatory for players and GM both if a Straight game is desired or for GMS who are actually creating pre-generated characters themselves, and recommended for Classic games. Some of what you’d think would be rules, like descriptions of mutant powers, is in here, but most of the time, the one-to-two-word power names are descriptive enough for a GM to improvise the results of a Power roll.

Equipment, vehicles, weapons and armour are also covered in the Sourcebook. All your old favourite means of bumping off your fellow Troubleshooters, from six-shot lasers to plasma generators, are here. However, fans of the Second Edition will notice that the Vulture Warrior 920 and Flybot ATV are here no longer. In keeping with the focus of Paranoia XP missions within Alpha Complex, various methods of intra-complex personal and public travel are described instead, including the Segway-like Transition (which makes an appearance in the included mission).

After equipment is covered, the Mandatory Bonus Duties are given a GM-only fleshing out, and a few pages on drugs and insanity, both ways to spice up your game even further, follow.

The Missions Section fleshes out the barebones session outline given in the Gamemaster Section and provides more ways to give your players enough rope to hang themselves (and each other). It also details two variations on the mission structure from previous editions: As alternatives to being outfitted at Production, Logistics and Commisary, players can (try to) get mission gear on C-Bay or turn to the INFRARED market. The traditional trip to Research & Design to pick up experimental equipment for field-testing has been broadened into the service service; while Troubleshooters might still wind up at R&D, they’re equally likely to be doing make-work for any of the other seven service groups.

Also included is the Classic-style adventure “Mister Bubbles”. It’s a pretty thorough introduction to Alpha Complex, with a estimated running time is three to six hours. Six pre-generated characters with interpersonal rivalries, conflicting secret society missions and Mandatory Bonus Duties (and what little the PCs know about them) already established, are provided.

We were rather pressed for time, so there wasn’t really much opportunity to pass the main book around; after everyone arrived and had a chance to settle down and read their chosen pre-gens, we got a little over three hours of gaming in. Even then, we had to finish just before the Climactic Chase Scene (at least half the team was on their last clone, though). Plan for four-and-a-half hours of game time if you want to reach debriefing (or at least, you know, give your players the opportunity).

Interestingly enough, “Mister Bubbles” does things a little differently from the standard mission structure. Rather than giving the players the PLC run-around at outfitting, they’re dumped straight into the middle of an IR market and have to buy their way out.

Again, the players hadn’t read the Player Section’s list of standard prices, so they didn’t realise the IR marketeers were ripping their characters off. Then again I was never comfortable with this section and probably didn’t put enough pressure on them.

Also, the debriefing is abrupt and over quite quickly. It makes sense in the context of the mission, but it deprives the book of a chance to show GMs how debriefing, which is detailed in the Missions Section as a rather complex process of personal debriefings, a group commendation session, then a group treason session, is done by example (not to mention robbing players of the chance to put on a big show for the show trial).

So what Substance score for Paranoia XP? Easy: 5. It does what it does fantastically, with an irreverent tone maintained consistently throughout. I’d go as far as saying that any GM worth his or her salt should have Paranoia XP on the gaming shelf; it has some of the best GM advice ever written.

If there’s one thing I found out about GMing Paranoia XP, it’s that pacing is both all-important and tricky to manage. Also, if you’re hoping to GM something other than Zap style, having each player read the Player Section is almost mandatory. I also discovered that a Zap game can indeed be bags of fun, even if you’re snobbishly hoping for something more refined.

And I must confess that, from the GM perspective, it’s nice that not only are there few rules, but that the players aren’t allowed to know them, so you can prevent rules lawyers correcting you if you do something wrong (which never happens; after all, Paranoia Gamemaster Rule #1 is, “You Are Always Right!”). I’d definitely look forward to running a semi-regular episodic campaign, even if it meant players creating new characters every few sessions.

As to my worries about my ability to run Paranoia, my players told me they enjoyed the game (one of them even told a friend who told me, so they weren’t just bull****ting me to cadge a lift). Paranoia which seems more GM-able than Second Edition to me. Fewer private jokes between author and GM, more suggestions, recommendations and setting info.

Summary: Paranoia XP is still “The Roleplaying Game of A Darkly Humorous Future”. The introduction of Perversity Points takes Paranoia’s brand of backstabbing and betrayal to new heights. Its extended setting has enough grit to allow a group to play in the vein of Nineteen Eighty Four or Brazil, whilst the relaxed mechanics and emphasis on quick play allow for games at the other end of the scale, not to mention in a comfortable middle. Owning Paranoia XP is indeed mandatory.

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