Paranoia: LARP Possibilities

[privateer]

I've never LARPed. Watched one for about 10 minutes at a convention (Vampire-setting) and thought it looked interesting. Recently got Paranoia XP and after reading a lot of the comments here, wonder if this game would work well as a LARP.

I'm thinking very small room would be required (briefing room and perhaps one or two other rooms to carry out actions). Anybody have experience with LARP and Paranoia enough to comment?

:D

[salamanca]

With XP specifically, no but I have done a lot with Paranoia as a LARP.

Couple of things exist in the Paranoia setting that make it really good for this sort of play.

1- Clones: You can kill players all session long and just keep bringing them back in. The players don't mind and it leads toa bit of competition to see who can go out in a really cool manner.

2- The security clearance system: This creates an automatic hierarchy among the players and allows you to control some aspects of the game though the leadership.

3- TheComputer: This not only gives your Game Masters a identity in the game but allows you to arbitrate everything you want witout having to employ any actual mechanics. Players can't complain about fairness as te computer will deem what is fair. (the trick being the GM must strive to fairly kill everyone and make an effort to cause the big explosions to backfire if possible)

A guy named Roger Bechtel and his wife have been running a live Paranoia gam at Origins for about a decade now and they let me have the priveledge of helping them out. Basically, you create a mission, create an objective for each sciety you use and service group that is as counter productive as possible, issue the orders and turn them loose. Your GM staff handles any questions and issues tat arrive as normal and you can resort to a straight up Rock,paper issue to resolve any mundane gunfights that break out between players. The real job of the GM is to stop play when something really explosive or eventful happens that would draw attention and describe it for the rest of the room. The more silly you make the explosions and damage the better the game gets.

I recommend a team of GMs to cver the room, a coupl of runners to keep them apprised of what each other are doing and some whistles to stop play and get everyone's attention.

As far as fun goes, this game can be a blast in groups of around 60-100.

[Graham W]

Yeah, everything salamanca said. Especially the bit about the clones: the wonderful thing about Paranoia LARPs is that, if you get killed, you come straight back as a clone.

I ran a Paranoia / Cthulhu LARP last year and it went very well. The nice thing is that, if you get the right set of players, they spend all the time screwing each other over, and you hardly have to do anything with plot.

The one problem is that it's heavily GM-oriented. Because everything in Paranoia depends on the Computer watching, and because the GM plays the Computer, you need to have a GM watching the players all the time. Which means a high GM-to-player ratio.

By the way, in contrast to salamanca's game, the game I ran had eight to ten players. So small-scale LARPs work too, in my opinion.

Graham

[salamanca]

just popping back in with a couple more thoughts:

this is a really easy game to start LARPing with because you can get by without any rules if you want. Let's face it, the idea that the players will ever get even a fair break is really a foriegn concept to the system and as such you can do what you want to them and they will love you for it.

We also like to use te clone death situation to allow the player to take a little retroom break or run and grab a soda or even just sit down and catch their breath for a second. Generally, we have enough chaos going on that we can refresh everyone who has died every 7-10 minutes if not faster.

A specific note on mutant powers: this is where you can get tripped up. You have to makesure you skip certain powers fom the game in order to keep thins running. One smart player with Machine Empathy can dominate a game and precognition will be totally useless.

A note on codewords: We love these. We love playing tem off oneanother with similar phrases as well. (one year, I think we gave half the societies we used a variation of the same phrase) let the players work to find each other and let the int sec teamtry to catch them all.

A note on bots: Bots should be the deadliest thing in the LARP. calling a doc bot should result in clone deaths, scrubbots should wipe out a large portion of the players. Something weas GMs love is to see our brand new players do is request assistance from a docbot or a clean up to the sector. (Mostly because the veteran players all get the same look of dread.)

Note on ranks: Give the least experienced players (as in those that know nothing about Paranoia) the command ranks. the experienced players get to fly under the radar and spend the night framing the higher ups.

A note on ZAP style: evey paranoia game will have a certain level of Zap in it. Th biggest hassle you have in a LARP setting is keeping the players from turning it into a mass suicide shoot out every 37 seconds. The trick to this is pretty simple. Let the first few go to get it out of their system. then take thefirst firefight that involves a low rank sooting ahigh rank and freeze play so everyone witnesses the ricochet of thelaser killing the shooter. next player after that gets to do his shooting but is immediately called up by the computer (again in front of eveyone) and stripped of his weapon for destruction of computer property. (until his next clone) That normally handles it. It's realy no problem until it starts getting boring for the players .

[AlwaysToast]

I ran (or helped run) Paranoia one shot LARPs at a con for roughly 9 years in a row. With between 25 and 50 players each year.

How I dealt with One Shots:
Form Trouble shooting teams (roughly equal size), then have a GM for each team. Then use this simple rule: If you get too far from your team, a small bomb goes off inside your head (Explain this to one member of the team). The range at which people’s heads explode is entirely up to the GM. But it basically keeps team members physically close to each other at all time. But it allows for the groups to wander around a lot (the GM can herd them by declaring areas radiated or whatever).

I’ve run them in just two rooms, and all over a college campus. Limiting the area tends to work better, since then teams run into each other more often. But it’s really based on the size of the game.

Use lots of props for stuff (multi colored plastic junk from a dollar store, stuffed animals that talk are also great fun. Citizen Fur-B-Eey was a main character in many of a number of my games). Give them very few useful weapons. No more then two useful lasers for a team (5-8 players). Most teams end up with one or more Area-of-effect weapons (which will kill them too), so you end up with Cold War style stand offs, which encourage players trying to trick each other.

I used a “Traitor Point” system, were they could report people for traitorous activity (and the computer could just assign arbitrarily). Which gave people a feel for how soon they were going to be terminated. (usually 10 traitor points and it was termination time.)

Once the Game Starts Everything is In Character: Including the color of everything (which is fun for getting people into trouble for wearing blue jeans to the game). Including people who are passing (shirt color = security clearance). This allows people who are not playing to really mess with your players. Also going outside is GOING OUTSIDE. Which makes things exciting.

I always ran all Red security clearance games. Means you don’t have to worry about as much.

You only need 3-5 different character sheets. Then just change the names, mutant powers, and Secret Societies. Saves you a lot of time.

Name Tags really help.

Make sure all teams/societies have goals that are mutually exclusive. You wouldn’t want people working together.

Don’t worry about making mistakes. Players have to deal with your mistakes, you don’t. I accidentally handed out a character for a Team we were not using (it was in case we had more players). When everyone was told to get into their teams, he realized he was alone, and faked his way into leading a different team.

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Someday I’ll be foolish and try to run an actual Paranoia LARP campaign.