I’ve been running Paranoia games at local conventions ever since XP was released.  Running games in a convention setting can really be a crapshoot.  You don’t know what kind of players you’re going to get, if they are going to follow what you’re trying to do, or if they are coming in with set expectations.

My experience running Paranoia told me that people expect ZAP style games, with heavy clone deaths.  And to that end, that’s what I delivered (there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here).  If players didn’t end the session having to deal with deep debt and genetic drift, I believed I had done something wrong.  A typical scenario averaged 32 player deaths.

Over time, I’d read a few statements from various people indicating that Straight style Paranoia was heavily underutilized, if not outright ignored.  I knew there was a lot of Grim to be had in that setting, but I hadn’t ever actually tried it.  This past weekend at Kublacon, I decided to give straight Paranoia a chance.

I started with 30 or so auto-generated characters, and I skimmed them looking for characters with both interesting mutant powers, and at least one competent skill.  From these, I created extensive character backgrounds that led them to where they were now.  I was attempting to paint a more Brazil-like Alpha Complex – I wanted things to be absurd, and funny at times, but with an overarching sense of danger and forboding.  Eight characters came out the other side of this process, each with a wide range of fears, plot hooks and subtexts.  I felt like I had some very interesting characters, though I hadn’t figured out quite what to do with them yet.

In the end, I sent them on a fairly straight-forward escort mission.  The Troubleshooters had to accompany a highly-visible entertainer to his debut performance.  When they arrived at his dressing room, he and his assistant had been assassinated with weapons assigned to the Troubleshooters.  Oh, and a squad of Vulture Squadron Troopers were en route to assist in the escort.  It was a fairly basic ‘Get away, find out who did it, clear your name’ plot.

Before the session started, I made it clear that this was going to be a different kind of Paranoia game than what people may be used to, and I set the stage.  In this Alpha Complex, you don’t kill people.  You never have.  Violence is something visited upon other citizens by IntSec goons in riot gear.  Sometimes things get blown up but, those were treasonous acts done by terrorists.  You’re an accountant, who for some unknown reason got assigned the task of escorting this famous guy someplace.

Looking at the players who showed up, I had eight people.  Four had gotten into the game officially, four were hoping to crash.  I knew four of them pretty well from other game groups (three of them were crashing).  Of the rest, I only recognized one.  I had been in a game with him earlier in the weekend (a Paranoia game, as it turns out).  I had a feeling that if anyone there would ignore the preface and buck the Straight setting, it would be him.

Seven hours later (at 3:00am) one player had dropped out because he couldn’t stay awake.  Everyone was drowsy, but there was still a lot of plot left to go.  However, in the interest of saving people’s internal organs, we wrapped up with narrative.  The game had a suitable level of tension, as the players really were intent on keeping their clone alive, and as they immersed themselves in the plot points and seriousness of the setup.

Player Deaths : 1

Only one player had gotten to his second clone, and it was the player I expected (the one I recognized from earlier in the weekend).  Rather than get into the Straight plot, he set about playing as he was no doubt accustomed to playing Paranoia – with no regard for his own life or the lives of his teammates.  The other players realized he was a jeopardy to their ability to lay low and clear their names, and so his second clone spent most of its life gagged and bound in a trash processing facility in a subsector.  As frustrating as this was for the player personally (it clearly was), I was disinclined to throw him a bone when everyone else had so clearly laid the smack down.  It also bothered me personally that his previous clone died from lethal radiation exposure (R&D Equipment), and his response to this was to clothe himself in a dead man’s bloody suit, and attempt to drag his dying body (that was losing hair, teeth, fingernails and more) to the stage so he could, as near as I could tell, attempt to lecture people to sleep.

I digress.  Let’s talk about the other players, the ones who stuck around.  When queried for feedback, they all indicated they’d had a great time, and that it was a very different kind of Paranoia.  As a GM and game designer, the experience taught me many things, but most of all it taught me that Straight Paranoia Can Work.  I intend to try it again, with one caveat : Next time, the game description will be more explicit about the fact that the game is straight.  I may even list it as a straight horror game, depending on the scenario I put together.

If you’ve gamed at a convention before, you know that the people who show up to play range from all over the map.  I have met some amazing gamers at conventions, but for every one of them I’ve met a lousy player with whom I would not share the table again.  Everyone has been in a game with That Guy – and sometimes I’m sure I’ve been That Guy in someone else’s game.  People expect Paranoia to be absurd – and as Paranoia GMs, we’ve enforced if not built that expectation.  But there is a whole lot of potential in running Straight Paranoia.  Just make sure the players know what to expect.