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Just looking at the cover of this book makes me snicker sadistically. The central figure is a Red who appears to be in the middle of an interrupted electrocution. Everyone around him, including a couple of Armed Forces goons, a doctor, a Clone Of No Obvious Purpose, and someone's leg, appears to be in a state of craven rabbit-like terror. That, incidentally, is my favorite Paranoia phrase. I get the impression that this is Friend Computer's Perspective on things - hence why everyone is so terrified. I'm annoyed that I don't get to reduce more people to that state by running Paranoia.

Anyway, this is the ramped-up character generation system for Paranoia XP. It's still XP to me because I'm not getting paid anything to say that. This isn't going to be a very long review because all things considered there's not much material that can really be reviewed - there are lots of jokes, though. If used it replaces wholesale the character generation section from the core Red book and incorporates the extra charts and bitz in The Mutant Experience, Extreme Paranoia, and Service, Service!.

Apart from the obligatory Paranoia-special What We Would Like You To Do With This Book But Feel Free To Do What You Like Anyway section, Criminal Histories starts with a collection of character generation terms. What the secret societies are, what a mutation is, etc. Then there is a long list of template characters usually summed up by their one- or two-word titles, some of which are illustrated. "Pillhead" has an amusingly frenetic picture.

Then it dives into the Prehistory Pachinko. This is how your Troubleshooter acquires a backstory. In Non-Fun role-playing games, this is where you would find out that your character is actually a mystical and strange creature, the fire-fearing reincarnated ancient Egyptian priestess Imkha-Sur who is unaware of the terrible ancestral curse set down by the god Sobek in retribution for the Pharaonic Bulldozer Incident back during the XVIth Dynasty. In Paranoia, this is where you find out that your Troubleshooter knows how to do a Movie Villain Laugh, is terrified of hammers due to having his nose broken too many times, once misplaced a vial of bubonic plague, disposed of used nuclear fuel rods down an elevator shaft, and owns a pet rock.

The only hitch to the Prehistory Pachinko is that it's very confusingly laid-out. This is to be expected with 30-some-odd charts, but despite the chart index occurs anyway. Strictly speaking it's also a renewable resource - once you've exhausted all the jokes in a given chart, the GM can easily write up some new jokes and use a Post-It note to put them in. The Prehistory Pachinko also elevates Paranoia into the same tier of games where you can die before you get out of character generation. Fortunately, unlike those other non-Fun games, you have spares.

There are also tables for what your character did prior to being dragooned into the Troubleshooters. These aren't quite as funny as the Pachinko Charts, but it's hard to beat the Pachinko Charts for concentrated humor. The end of the book includes a list of possible Tics and a new character sheet.

The only hitch to this book is that if you don't have the other Paranoia books mentioned above, the only new thing is the Prehistory Pachinko. This isn't necessarily bad, but it renders a bunch of pages relatively useless otherwise. Addicts like me already have all the books, so it's not a big deal for us. I refrain from comment on the exhortations to buy other Paranoia books contained in Criminal Histories because they don't fall into the scope of this review.

I don't rate this book as high stylistically as I have other Paranoia books because there aren't as many illustrations in this one, and there aren't as many of the quotation sidebars. I'm probably one of the very few people who actually like those. The lack of illustrations is probably because most of the book is cramped enough already with the 30-odd charts, but even so. My eyes cross if I look at the chart pages for too long.