Paranoia: Giving Players enough rope

[DontEatRawHagis]

So this is something that I have been noticing while prepping my next Paranoia One-Shot. I realized that while I give the players the missions to work with, I don't give them actual tools to kill themselves, aside from R&D items and laser guns of course.

Building this new module, I have the feeling that I am making something more akin to a fun house of death. Similar to the game "Evil Genius" and "Dungeon Keeper".

I find myself creating areas meant for players to killing each other. Such as the weapons test area for Warbots, incinerators, assembly lines, and catwalks.

I originally wanted to title this "Paranoia or how I lead to stop worrying and love players killing each other"

Anyone else feel that they are creating areas where players are killing each other rather than just scenarios for the NPCs to kill them?

[Mustard]

I'm not sure what you're asking. The point of most things in a mission should be to allow the PCs to kill each other, or to give them motivation to do that. Treasonous NPCs (Though is there any other kind? Let's say, "openly" treasonous, then) can pretend familiarity with PCs to implicate them. Or, a firefight is a good distraction for a PC to do something in secret. But if an NPC ends up outright killing a PC, then okay, fine.

I like my vehicles to be outright lethal, and I think my players have learned this by now. But that still allows the PCs to fight each other. The mission says to get in the vehicle, but a player knows the vehicle is a deathtrap waiting to happen, so how does the PC argue out of getting in? By the way, that's suspicious behavior. Do they know something the rest of the team doesn't? Interesting.

I have to really coax my players to get their PCs to betray each other, and it can be tough sometimes. In those cases, I fulfill my PC-death-quota through direct means, but I try to use it sparingly.

Admittedly, it's an art that I'm still working on mastering. If you want to share ideas, I'm willing to do that, but I think mine have been mediocre so far. I'll pop back in if I remember anything really cool I came up with.

[Kurald Galain]

Anyone else feel that they are creating areas where players are killing each other rather than just scenarios for the NPCs to kill them?

Of course. Killing characters with PCs, you can do in any RPG. Getting characters to kill each other, that's Paranoia.

And of course lots of things in Alpha Complex are also lethal fun! Such as the subway, with its insta-slam doors and its MegaRapid (tm) Acceleration process, guaranteed to knock you off your feet. Then there was the time when I was hanging from the edge of a chasm, and convinced the clone hanging from my feet to sing the "Happy And You Know It" loyalty song.

Sorry citizen, "rope" is above your security clearance.

[Bagelson]

I've only been in one Paranoia game, and that was a con one-shot. In that case the paranoia was built into the characters. We all secretly worked for different subversive organizations with secret agendas. All our secret tasks where at cross purposes. We had all been warned that one of the others may be after us, but we did not know who.

The tone was set within the first ten minutes when I detonated my suitcase bomb on the middle of our squad to avoid capture.

[Diskhotep]

If they are properly motivated, Troubleshooters will happily backstab and betray each other. It isn't so much about the equipment or the locations as it is the reasons.

Give each Troubleshooter multiple missions - their main mission, their secret society mission, and possibly a service group assignment. Bonus points if those missions are at odds with each other. Have one player assigned to guard something two others are assigned to destroy. Give someone a task to guard an NPC several others are gunning for.

It would help to know what style of campaign you are going for: ZAP, Straight, or Classic. While ZAP works great for one-shots, I find Classic or Straight to be more rewarding over the long term. Force your players to justify assassinations (or better yet, accomplish them without tipping their hands). Assess massive fines over outright terminations. You'll find your players will be more creative if they have to think their way around their goals rather than wantonly blow things up (unless they are secret members of PURGE or Death Leopard, of course).

[houlio]

If they are properly motivated, Troubleshooters will happily backstab and betray each other.

I gotta say this too. Allow the Troubleshooters to come up with new and exciting ways to accuse each other of treason. If they aren't, my personal favorite is to foster an extremely unfair alliance with a player or two, adding in just the right amount of animosity needed to get things going.

Also, never let the players figure out the rules. If suddenly they realize what the application of a power or what numbers on the dice are good, then switch it up on them. It helps to make all the normal, mundane tasks the players do much more lethal.

[Telok]

If you want efficient (fun/dangerous) vehicles you can just have R&D issue all vehicles to all Troubleshooter groups. Be sure to issue two vehicles, one that works normally and another that functions dangerously and better. Watch the players agonize between getting somewhere first or being sure they survive the trip.

My personal twist was introducing a more "reliable" engine. R&D had noticed that conventional hydrocarbon fuel engines had air pressure, hydraulic, and mechanical systems. They decided that the system had "too many possible points of failure." So R&D developed a purely mechanical engine based around nitroglycerine pellets. As a bonus rationalization, nitroglycerine has a higher energy potential than gasoline so the vehicle can go faster.

In the end my players get two cars, both are three person runabouts (I have five players). The Exploda-Go simply reaches the destination in half the time, as long as the players can make the rolls for safely starting and driving it.

[MickJay]

Also, never let the players figure out the rules. If suddenly they realize what the application of a power or what numbers on the dice are good, then switch it up on them. It helps to make all the normal, mundane tasks the players do much more lethal.

Or, by all means, allow players to learn the rules. Whenever they display any knowledge thereof, execute them for treason (showing knowledge of the rules IS treason, after all).

[Mustard]

Some random thoughts on the matter I decided to put into a post:

Issue some Smoke Grenades. Inevitably, one will detonate at point blank range. If that doesn't happen, have an opposing NPC throw one. If there is a cloud of smoke, the PCs will attempt to execute each other, or plant evidence. Or do something sneaky.

When a PC wants to plant evidence, sabotage, or steal, allow it to succeed, regardless of the roll. I've relied on the dice too many times, and luck means sabotage has never worked. A clever player can argue out of it, and that's half the fun, but I've realized I need to override more die rolls.

If you let your players roll the dice because you're above such a menial task (it's a perfectly valid reason, you have UV clearance and get to enjoy the finer things in life), say they get a bonus because nobody's looking. Or, let the obviously passed/failed roll mean the opposite, and they can't argue. The are ramifications to that, so think that through, though. It may be a bad thing to come off as arbitrary.

Make sure your players know the full scope of the MBDs. I previously gave brief summaries of what the jobs entail, but I recently printed out the little badges from the book and I think that helped quite a bit with respect to giving them ideas on how to exploit their power. I might consider giving them access to the player's section of the book to get their creativity going.

Idea for an R&D test item: mind-reading helmet. Nice ambiguous name, does it allow you to read minds, or does it read your mind? The latter, actually. At random intervals. And really, all it does is say random things that are likely for anyone to say, not related to the current context, except for the one time out of a dozen where it says something treasonous.

A recent mission I ran with decent success to encourage a free-for-all (which my group seems to lack sometimes), was basically a copy of Clue (both the movie and the board game). The PCs have goals to kill some important INDIGO NPCs, and the INDIGO NPCs also have goals to kill other important INDIGO NPCs. A UV host is there at the beginning, but mysteriously vanishes. One murder in the dark later (a random RED servant), and this is a good setup for the PCs to try to get alone with their targets, who are also trying to get alone with their targets. Worked pretty well, and I think it helped my group get comfortable with doing what it takes to meet their SecSoc objectives.

[BRC]

I've only been in one Paranoia game, and that was a con one-shot. In that case the paranoia was built into the characters. We all secretly worked for different subversive organizations with secret agendas. All our secret tasks where at cross purposes. We had all been warned that one of the others may be after us, but we did not know who.

That's every game of paranoia.

That said, if your players are properly motivated, all they need is an empty hallway and a teammate's back.
And a third teammate to pin the crime on.

Also, one thing I did was I gave each player, along with their Secret Society Mission, some twitchtalk phrases they could drop into conversation to try to identify other members of their secret society.

Also, set up triangles, for example.

Have one of the players be an undercover Internal Security officer trying to identify and eliminate the Communist in the team.
Have the Communist be sent to identify and eliminate the Free Enterprise member.
The Free Enterprise member is trying to identify and eliminate the undercover communist.


One of my dream missions is to have every single player be an undercover Intsec agent, each of them given communist twitchtalk (with which to "Lure out the traitor), and told that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least two of the team were Communist.

[Kurald Galain]

One of my dream missions is to have every single player be an undercover Intsec agent, each of them given communist twitchtalk (with which to "Lure out the traitor), and told that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least two of the team were Communist.

I did that once, kind of. I had a group of players who were unfamiliar with Paranoia, so I told them the basics of Alpha Complex, and said that one of them was probably a mutant. This turned it into a game of "who's the mole". Of course, then I gave them their pregen character sheets and they all were mutants, but being first time players, they didn't know that.

Some of them clued in partly through the session, but some didn't until the debriefing. The look on one player's face when he finally realized it was priceles :smallbiggrin:

Oh yeah, and one of the R&D toys was a Mutant Detector Helmet, so they all had a strong incentive to keep it out of everybody else's hands!