Got another piece of sample art for Shambles.  Couldn’t wait to share.

I continue to be excited and jazzed.  SO JAZZED!

From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department, this morning Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely deleted copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle devices.

I’d have LOVED to be in the room when that one was pushed through.

UPDATE : Engadget has reported that the copies where in fact removed by Amazon because the company that put the volumes up for download did not own the rights to do so.  So, removing the volumes was probably the right thing to do.  But Amazon still made the decision to pull the books from the Kindle devices without somehow notifying the people who had bought them. I’ve downgraded the offense to Second Degree Irony.  Someone should have realized that, especially given the books in question, this would raise some eyebrows.

The Computer has taken time out of a very busy schedule to do an interview in a great post on the Official Paranoia Blog. This interview provides some information about the new edition of Paranoia, set to be released in the very near future (The Black Missions Limited Edition is supposed to ship next month.  Can’t wait to see it.)

Excerpt follows :

Friend Computer!
At your service, citizen. How may I help you?

I feel uneasy about the rumoured new editions of PARANOIA.
Fear and apprehension are not permitted. Joy is mandatory. If you not experiencing mandatory joy, report for chemical joy enhancement therapy.

Would you mind answering a few questions about the new edition?
Not at all.

I’ve heard there are going to be three books.
There will now be three core rulebooks in the PARANOIA line. These are the TROUBLESHOOTERS book, the INTSEC book, and the HIGH PROGRAMMER’s book. Each of these books is self-contained and focusses on a different way to play PARANOIA.

Personally, I’m pretty intrigued and excited by the prospect of delving deeper into the world of Paranoia.  But I’m a little apprehensive as well.  Perhaps I need to be medicated.

In my own microcosmic set of experiences (largely limited to my own gaming groups, local game conventions, and what I read on the dirt sheets), it seems to me like what people expect when they sit down to play a Paranoia game is crazy mayhem, nonsensical plotlines, a lot of doubletalk and, of course, an opportunity to shoot Team Leader in the back.  I argued earlier that this could be considered the collective fault of Paranoia GMs, myself included, who have run these kinds of games for years.  One might counterpoint that this style of play is so popular because it’s fun, that gaming should be fun, and that these insane games are Paranoia’s greatest strength.  I think there’s a great deal of merit in that position.  One of the things that made Paranoia so popular was that is was (and still is) such an antithesis to the other games on the market.  If players want deeper, serious or more meaningful games, there is no shortage other systems in which to play.

So in a way, I’m concerned that some of what makes Paranoia so popular may be lost in an effort to make Paranoia into something ‘more.’  My concern isn’t that people won’t be able to play Paranoia the way they want – the GMs can handle that on their own, and it’s not like all our old books will catch fire when the new ones come out.  I think there is a great wealth of material in playing Paranoia as IntSec or High Programmers, I just hope there’s a big enough market for those flavors of Paranoia.   In order to keep the line rolling, popular and profitable, I’m sure a new edition and some new material was necessary.  And there has been a LOT of material written for Paranoia, certainly no shortage of material int he last 5 years.  So something fresh was necessary, and these new core books do sound like they will be something new, even if the IntSec books draws heavy on Hil Sector Blues.  I just hope that the concepts play well to Paranoia’s core audience.

I know that I’ll buy the books, and I know many loyal citizens will.  And I know I’ll run at least one game in each style.  And I genuinely hope that the new core books are wildly successful and that people explore new ways to play Paranoia and that it all goes stunningly and that some High Programmer will come back here in a year just to post an “Oh ye of little faith” comment.  Anything else would make me treasonously sad.

I’ve had this idea for a bit, but tonight I finally decided to give it a try.

I think Twitter is a fairly odd beast.  I’ve seen some neat stuff, and some dumb stuff come through Twitter.  I don’t really use it, other than for fun things.

Like This. I couldn’t believe the name was available, but I’m glad to have it.  I’ve taken some of the code I wrote when I put together the E:Ching manual, combined it with a couple other things, and set up an automated Twitter feed through which Friend Computer can post helpful updates to all interested Citizens.

Following AlphaComplex On Twitter Is Mandatory

I made a few changes to the site layout today, the most significant of which was to add the comments links on the front page.  You could always comment on a post by clicking on the title of the post and viewing the whole thing, but since I wasn’t excerpting posts, there was never really a need to do this.  I also changed the way the comment-related links and forms are displayed, to make the layout a little more consistent.

This will make it easier for all my nonexistent readers to leave nonexistant comments.

Making this change was sorta a big deal for me.  If you flip through the archives, you’ll find that last year, I posted less than once a month.  The year before, I posted less than once a quarter.  In 2006, I posted less than once a year.  One might infer from this that I’m not an avid poster.  Which isn’t really the case.

Before there was a word for such a thing, I used to keep an online journal pretty regularly.  A convergence of various factors caused me to give it up.  One of those factors (though not the most significant factor) was that there was a tremendous explosion of people doing more or less the same thing, only rather than writing meaningful entries, most of them wrote about their sandwiches, sexual escapades or how they didn’t like that person they used to like.  Of those three topics, only the sandwiches were really interesting.  I got hives just hearing about what other people were writing, and stopped keeping a journal out of a desire to keep my medical expenses down.  My allergies only got worse when people starting using the word Blog

One might infer from this that I’m a bit of a pretentious snob.  That may really be the case.

As time has gone on, I think I’ve finally admitted that my attitude about the whole thing was, and still is, pretty damn silly, and that the reason I gave up keeping an online journal probably had more to do with a few specific people, and much less to do with anything else.

There was one other governing factor: I guess I didn’t really feel like I had much to say.  As I’ve started posting updates here, I’ve discovered that I have more to say than I thought.

So, I’ve made it easier to comment.  I know that might not seem like it follows naturally, but having more to say has meant I’m more interested in hearing what you think.  Let’s see how that goes.

I got these in over the weekend, and I wanted to share them with you as soon as I could.

These four pictures are used in the book to demonstrate what a person might look like while going through various stages of decay.  This should give you an idea for what to expect stylistically in the book.

Sorry for the lack of high-res images and such, but this should be enough to get the idea across.  Also HOLY CRAP!  It’s 4 pieces of art for the book?  That’s a 400% increase over last year alone!

By way of the official Paranoia blog Allen Varney has posted information about a benefit auction being held for Aaron Allston, a novelist and game designer with some serious medical bills to pay.

I do not know any of the parties involved, nor will I pretend to, but I know how burdensome the bills from this kind of surgery can be.  I know there’s only a few of you who read this here bl!g, but if you can participate in the auction, please do so.  Or if you have some free funds, you can donate directly.

This post is scant on details, please click through the links and read up on the situation and how you can help.

In the context of running a one-off Zap game, it can be cumbersome and time consuming to generate a Paranoia charcter according to the standard rules.  I usually run around with a couple dozen pre-generated characters for such an occasion, but I’ve used the following process for creating characters on the fly.

It’s worth pointing out that this really only works in a Zap game, as some of the character generation winds up in the hands of your teammates.  A lot gets left out, but I’ve used this a few times to great effect. Give it a try sometime.

1. Your base Management, Stealth, Violence, Hardware, Software and Wetware skills are 10.  This gives you effectively a 50/50 chance at doing most things.
2. Your Energy Weapons skill is a 12.
3. You get three skills that you are Good at, and get them at a 14.  You pick these skills when you need them.  For example, if you are trying to deal with a malfunctioning bot, you can say “I am good at Bot Ops and Maintenance” and take that skill at a 14.
4. You get three skills that you are Bad at, and get these skills at a 4.  Any one of your teammates may pick this skill when you are trying to use it.  For example, if you a bot is malfunctioning, and you say “Can I try and disable it?” one of your teammates can say “You are bad at Bot Ops and Maintenance.”  No one player can define more than three Bad skills in a single gaming session (this keeps one persom from really hosing the other players).
5. You get one thing you are Very Good at.  This is a narrow specialty, that you get at a 17.  You define this skill when you need it, and it must be ruled sufficiently narrow by the GM.
6. Once a skill has been defined (including the Energy Weapons skill), it cannot be changed.  In other words, once you’re good at something, you cannot be made Bad at it.
7. The first person to define the skill wins.  For example, if the GM says “You need to roll Habitat Engineering to stop this elevator from plummeting,” and you say “I’m Good at that” while someone tries to say “You’re Bad at that,” whoever spoke first has defined the skill.
8. You may or may not have a mutant power.  You decide what it is when you try to use it.  Describe the desired effect to the GM, and roll.  The GM will describe what happens, along with any consequences.

This system leaves out Secret Societies, but something I learned about running convention games is that, for the most part, about 1 in 3 players will try to use their mutant power, and 1 in 12 people may try to use their Secret Society contacts.

I typically ask players to think of three items of ‘color’ to help define thier characters, but using this system, what I’ve noticed is that players tend to evolve characters fairly quickly, and these characters fit naturally with the player’s natural tendencies.

Obviously, when you can define bad skills for other players, things can get Interesting.  This is one of the main reasons that this approach really only works for Zap games.

If you do decide to give this a try, let me know how it works out.

You know how sometimes the airplane loses people’s luggage?  It’s never happened to me directly, but I know it happens.

And you know how most of the time the luggage gets lost it shows up at the doorstep the next day, with an apology and an explanation?  Again, never happened to me, but did happen to someone I know (I can’t remember who now… weird).

And you know how sometimes, it shows up and the person goes through it and says “Those jackasses stole my camera/laptop/ipod/panties!”  Yet again, I’ve not had any of those problems.

And you know how occasionally, the bag gets lost and the airline isn’t helpful and the bag just never shows up and the person who owned the bag spends the next week upset about losing those really good shoes, and lamenting over the loss of that artwork they just spent two weeks working on?

That one has never happened to me.  But it did just happen to the person who is working on the art.  I’d hoped to have something to tease you with by today.

So it goes.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been trying to think about the expansion materials.  I have some very particular ideas, but nothing really solid and formulated yet.  I believe the current plan is to do one mega-pack of materials for purchase, and offering individual parts of the expansion as stand-alone PDFs.  It’s all very nebulous and unformed.  I’m trying not to put any thought into it until I get further along with the main book.

I haven’t had time lately to work on the Straight Paranoia writeup I’m putting together, but I wanted to give a couple samples from the character backgrounds I wrote.

I don’t tend to actually create characters the normal way.  I usually go into this cool Paranoia Character Generator I found online and generate a stack of characters.  Then I sort through them all until I get 6-8 characters that I find interesting in some sense.

In this case, I was looking for interesting skill combinations, a decent distribution of skills across the party, and a reasonably unique distribution of Mutant Powers and Secret Society links.  Once I had the candidate characters, I created backgrounds for them.

As is my wont, I bent the Paranoia universe to my own will.  In this particular case, I made fundamental changes to the nature of the character’s Secret Society (PURGE).  But more than anything, I wanted to try and establish backgrounds that showed how an ordinary citizen gets caught up in treasonous activity, while having only the best intentions.

And so we meet Aly:

Aly-R-LDL

10 Word Description : Nerdy Glasses. Louis From Ghostbusters.  Terror Has A New Accountant.

You have been working as an Accounts Administrator in Psyche Ward 33 of Housing, Preservation & Development and Mind Control (HPD&MC).  Ward 33 holds 12 beds, enough for two whole Troubleshooter teams.  It is very small by comparison, and would be considered of little consequence to most.  But you’re pretty proud of the work you’ve done there.

Your duties have largely involved managing the books of Ward 33.  Budgetary constraints, a rising influx of patients and occasional breakdowns in the supply chain have made your job increasingly difficult.  You have had to get creative to keep the books in balance, and you repeatedly have to turn to the auction site C-Bay to purchase discounted supplies for Ward 33.

It’s difficult to hold the purse strings for long without realizing how much waste there is in the System.  Given how little you are compensated for your efforts, compared to how much there was to be made by acting as the middleman, you set up a shadow-company called Rally DL.  You’ve used Rally DL to purchase supplies from C-Bay and other sources (legitimate and illegitimate), selling them back to Ward 33 at a small profit.  You’re still saving the ward money, and the books are still balanced.  But sometimes patients might be eating food supplements that are recently expired or of questionable origin.  While there’s nothing technically illegal about your activities, you’ve kept it very much to yourself.  It’s always bothered you that you had to do this, and that you were able to do this.  The Computer, you thought, should be doing a better job of managing its supply chain.  it’s failure to do so is, in your eyes, criminal and treasonous.

Eventually someone caught on to what you were doing.  His name was Henry-B-TUE-3, and he approached you with a proposition.  He wanted you to smuggle propaganda into the ward for distribution by agents within the ward itself.  You don’t know who the agents were, but you know some posed as patients, others as technicians.  In exchange for smuggling in this propaganda, you would be compensated financially and offered a ranking position their organization.  If you refused, a lengthy investigation was threatened, one which you were certain would result in the cancellation of your clone series.  You were not eager to participate in such a scheme, but the propaganda made a great deal of sense to you.  You accepted the position.

When you went to your first organizational meeting, you were shocked to discover that the entire organization consisted almost exclusively of like-minded accountants, all of them angry with The Computer over its wasteful spending, mismanagement and lack of internal consistency.  They proposed that The Computer must be brought down before any meaningful process could be implemented.  The propaganda that you help smuggle into the ward follows many different themes and topics, but all of it has one unifying purpose : to encourage fellow citizens to rise up and overthrow The Computer.  Some of the propaganda is especially violent in nature, but you’ve come to accept that some citizens may have to die in order to bring about reasonable logistic and accounting practices in the Alpha Complex.

That’s not Aly’s whole background, but it should give a sense for the flavor I was trying to get across in the scenario.