Thanks to an expanded setting that caters for any particular taste of Paranoia you may have, a satirical take on modern woes and new mechanics that encourage Paranoia’s brand of backstabbing and betrayal without sacrificing speed and playability, Paranoia XP manages to successfully modernise the game whilst keeping the best of what old-time players love about previous editions. Worthy of a place on the bookshelves of all self-respecting gamers.
Post originally by Allen Varney at 2005-01-07 09:03:07
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Fine work, Robert! As PARANOIA XP designer, I appreciate your clear summary of the rules and the all-important playtest feedback. I'm interested in hearing about your future game experiences once the players actually get to read the player section of the rulebook.
A couple of glosses on incidental points from your review: "One minor fan-boy gripe: the “i” in “it” is rarely capitalised when referring to The Computer."
PARANOIA XP retains the style established in the first and second editions of referring to The Computer as "it," lower-case. Referring to The Computer as "It," capitalized, would imply treatment of The Computer as a deity, which is incorrect unless you belong to the First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer secret society. The Computer doesn't want to be your god; it wants to be your friend.
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"the Secret Society logos are not only obvious scans of those from Second Edition, but also the images weren’t cleaned up prior to going into the book"
Jim Holloway did a new set of secret society logos that will appear in the rulebook's second printing, "Service Pack One."
Post originally by Rob Farquhar (IMAGinES) at 2005-01-07 13:07:46
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Well, Allen, you had to go and write a damned good product, so it's not as though I had much choice.
As to the It/it bit: I thought 2nd Edition used "It" quite a lot... of course, as I sold it on eBay last year, I don't have it around to check. Ah, well. Thanks for the correction!
Post originally by Alexander Case at 2005-01-07 13:50:00
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Don't you mean you sold "It", citizen?
Rob Farquhar (IMAGinES) wrote:
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Well, Allen, you had to go and write a damned good product, so it's not as though I had much choice.
As to the It/it bit: I thought 2nd Edition used "It" quite a lot... of course, as I sold it on eBay last year, I don't have it around to check. Ah, well. Thanks for the correction!
Post originally by The Metallian at 2005-01-08 12:10:36
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Sorry to get off topic, but I just had to clear up some things about Feng Shui, as I'm a Feng Shui geek and have seen variations on the following many times:
"One gripe I have about some RPGs is that they recommend play styles in their descriptive text, but don’t encourage them in their rules. Feng Shui is guilty of this; the text constantly recommends players jazz their fights up with wild stunts, but the rules impose a penalty whenever the players actually try to do so."
That's partially true, but I don't think it tells the whole story. Here's a condensed version of Feng Shui's approach to stunts:
- If a combat stunt does not do any extra damage, it is not penalized. This is to encourage players to describe outrageous combat maneuvers. This works particularly well against unnamed characters (i.e., faceless hordes of mooks) because they don't have hit points per se...any particular attack either removes them from combat or doesn't. This means that you can try to toss an unnamed character into a conveniently-placed volcano or just punch him out and the modifiers are the same. So if your intent is just to "jazz fights up with wild stunts," the rules will not stand in your way. However, if your intent is to "dominate the battlefield with wild stunts," then see below...
- If a combat stunt has an extra damage effect (the benchmark for this is "hit two guys with one attack") it is indeed penalized. However, I think that this is just common sense to prevent arbitrarily effective attacks. ("I kill the whole world with one bullet!") Even most diceless games have some method for differentiating between more or less difficult actions...it's just that Feng Shui doesn't consider simple "coolness" to make an action more difficult.
- Some non-combat stunts are harder to do than others, just like some opponents are harder to hit than others. Again, otherwise there'd be no meaningful difference in character ability. The difficulties aren't all that high, either. The kind of things that go on in a typical Jackie Chan movie are difficulty 15 (walking around on the wing of a plane, safely leaping from a moving car) or 18 (running up a vertical surface). Most physically-oriented starting characters from in the main book *can* get a 15 on a Martial Arts roll even without spending a Fortune Die or using a schitck...though admittedly it's not easy. However, it's a pretty average roll for the primary Martial Arts types. Really crazy stuff (running along a stream of bullets) is at 25, which is very difficult...but not utterly beyond the reach of starting characters if you take Fortune Dice and open rolls (reroll sixes and add the result) into account.
- Spellcasting difficulty modifiers are actually REDUCED when the effect is "especially entertaining" and again if it is "obvious and flashy." The difficulty is increased if the effect if "boring or expected." (I think a lot of people forget that this particular chart is for spellcasting and not for combat and that causes some confusion when people talk about how "Feng Shui gives you bonuses for cool stunts." On the other hand, I don't see why you COULDN'T apply these modifiers to all actions, as it would certainly be in the spirit of the game...)
So, on the whole, I would say that Feng Shui makes spellcasting EASIER when you do crazy stunts, and does not make combat harder when you do crazy stunts unless you are trying to gain an actual advantage. Some non-combat stunts are harder than others, but IMO outrageous tasks are not as difficult as they are in most games.
The Metallian
ps - All of the above applies to the original Daedauls edition...but I don't believe that much was changed for the Atlas Games edition.
Post originally by Rob Farquhar (IMAGinES) at 2005-01-08 17:47:51
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Good points, Metallian. I think the only changes between the Daedalus edition and the Atlas edition are the formatting, a sidebar on playing in 1996 and the inclusion of the character templates from Back For Seconds.
Post originally by Dan Davenport at 2005-01-08 18:46:13
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Agreed! Excellent review, Rob. The only thing lacking, I think, are some examples of the mutant powers. (Unless I just missed them. Which is possible. I'm sleepy. )
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