Brainstorming Paranoia
There’s a new edition of the classic RPG coming and hoo boy are the schoolmarms out in force.
For those that don’t know, the Paranoia RPG was a dystopian sci-fi game with pretty thin rules designed to provide just enough game framework for a dark comedy RPG that satirized our modern world. They poked fun at commies and the red scare alike. Nothing was sacred and everyone could have a good time.
But we don’t live in that high-trust world anymore. The forces of suck have dragged us down into a new moral panic that presages the years that tragically tend to lead up massive bloodshed, and this new edition is part of the overall cultural fight to make sure everybody knows what side deserves to win and what side deserves to die.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a clip from the free sample, to make sure you know who is and isn’t allowed to feel the sting of satire.
Eh heh. Yeah, I’m not buying this drek. It’s going to be as funny as an SNL skit and last forty times as long.
You can already tell that every joke will be theme and variation on “Orange Man Blues”, and all of them put together won’t be as funny as this one image:
Which was crafted by a disgruntled supporter of the Great Failed Hope, it should be said. The great news for us old-school gamer types, the old games still exist. Th
ey can still be played, and even this new game can be used how you want, as I am repeatedly told by low-teir gamers on a daily basis.
Luckily for you, your old pal Mr. Wargaming is here to offer up a plethora of suitable satirical takes that you
can use at your homage to the fallen angel of comedy RPGs:
- Friend Computer offers Citizens a choice between Red and Blue flavored Bouncy Bubble Beverage, but they keep voting for Red the jerks. So the Troubleshooters are called in to manufacture trunk loads of new votes for the right color Bouncy Bubble , and to submit them in as high-profile – yet plausibly deniable – way as possible.
- Friend Computer demotes the characters from High Programmers to Troubleshooters because it’s cheaper to use High Programmers working remotely from Calphacutta Complex.
- Friend Computer orders Troubleshooters to shut down all 24 security cams watching a High Programmer’s living unit so an IntSec operative can hammer fight the Programmer’s drunken husband.
- Friend Computer orders Troubleshooters to provide security for a Yellow Sector pizza party held in Comet Creche.
- Friend Computer orders Troubleshooters to find and arm deranged Citizens and send them into Junior Creches to meet the quota for terrorisms.
- Friend Computer charges Troubleshooters eight Fun Bucks a month to check thier blue uniforms.
- Friend Computer orders Troubleshooters to gin up fake flu panics to push Mandatory Volunteer shots that give Citizens a Fun Case of Happycarditis.
- Friend Computer ordering Troubleshooters to blow up Planned Clonehood Clinics run by Friend Computer so that it can crack down on the Citizens who it knows wants to blow them up but refuse to do so.
- The Troubleshooters have to quash all reports of a dataslate that contains evidence of a High Programmer’s treasonous activities, and then launch a campaign to convince Citizens that exposing evidence of Treason is itself Treasonous and suddenly I’m not sure Paranoia is even fiction any more.
I’m sure you can think of a host of others.
There is a great deal of material out there in the real world begging to be taken down a peg, and if the entertainment industry isn’t willing to do it, we’ll just have to do it ourselves.
Which is fine. We’re better at it anyway.