We stan Paranoia here. This is known. We play Paranoia, we create resources for Paranoia, we share resources created by others, and tools to create yet more resources. We enjoy Paranoia. It’s exciting, therefore, to see a big ol’ bundle of Paranoia stuff featured on Humble Bundle at the moment.
The bundle costs just £14.27 and contains a mighty 32 items. These are mostly from the Paranoia XP or SP1 era:
This bundle includes the core rulebook for Paranoia XP/SP1. This isn’t my favoruite edition of Paranoia, as I think that 2nd edition was the best, but this is still a good book that will set you up for a good game. For the uninitiated, Paranoia is a dystopian RPG set in Alpha Complex, where players are ‘Troubleshooters’ working for the ever-present ‘Friend Computer’ who runs this society and enforces a strict social heirarchy. The game is also hilarious. It’s all about seeking out traitors, enforcing nonsensical rules, engaging with secret societies, bootlicking, and just plain surviving. I love it.
So, yeah, the core book is the most important part of the bundle, but what are some other highlights? It’s all very subjective, and I’m not as familiar as the middle era of Paranoia. I’ve mostly dealt with the early stuff and the recent stuff. Some titles that do stand out are:
- Criminal Histories: Character creation has long been a fun part of Paranoia. This supplement changes things up with a new character creation system. It uses a series of tables to plot a lifepath that you might think sounds similar to Traveller. That is because it is similar to traveller, and there are references to this comparison in the book.
- The Traitor’s Manual: Want a bunch more material on secret societies? This is your book! Secret societies are a great feature of Paranoia, giving players some motivation, direction, and more reasons to distrust one another. This book fleshes them out nicely.
- The Underplex: I had to include this one after last week’s musings on abandoned and derelict places. Friend Computer will, in his wisdom, close off certain sections of Alpha Complex and this is the supplement that sees us explore those places.
- Service, Service!: This book explores the dat to do duties or ‘mandates’ carried out by the inhabitants of Alpha Complex. With this information comes a bunch of different missions for each different type. I like supplements that give you a better idea of day-to-day life in Alpha Complex.
There are other great books in here, but these jump out as ones that I see as not only good for this edition but also with ideas that are easily transferrable between editions. That’s a value-add!
I think this is a fantastic bundle with a lot of really good content for one of my favourite RPGs. It might actually be my favourite RPG for one-shot adventures. At the asking price, this seems a no-brainer. Go get it.
Go!
You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Humble Bundle.
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