Rulebook cover art

(2) PARANOIA (1984 – PRESENT)

Commie mutant traitor!

“The Computer is your friend. The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Are you happy, citizen? Have a nice daycycle”

Welcome to Alpha Complex in the SF role-playing game of Paranoia – “a world designed by Kafka, Stalin, Orwell, Huxley, Sartre, the Marx Brothers and that crazy old man at the airport bar at 2 am”. A dystopian fusion to the point where everything would be monstrously overwhelming but for its own dysfunctionality and the game’s absurdist dark humor.

It’s also a post-apocalyptic dystopia – although what apocalypse (if any?) forced the last survivors (or are they?) of humanity into the last underground or domed city (or is it?) run by the supercomputer known simply as the Computer or Friend Computer is now mysterious, as no one is sure what happened any more, if anyone ever did. Not even the Computer, when it tried to figure out what went wrong – “unfortunately, the Computer’s databases had been corrupted, and after finding some old Cold War propaganda, it concluded that the Communists did it”.

And now, the Computer is the equivalent of a barely functional paranoid schizophrenic – that probably would have wiped out Alpha Complex but for its inefficiency, its ability to simultaneously pursue wildly inconsistent goals at odds with each other, and its genuine but abstract benevolence towards Alpha Complex (or whatever remains of either that benevolence or Alpha Complex).

It may be teetering on complete breakdown (or outright psychosis) after decades of subversion or reprogramming by conflicting groups, but the Computer still rules Alpha Complex – “its dystopian society organized in a hierarchy of “security clearances based on the electromagnetic spectrum (specifically Isaac Newton’s version), from lowly Infrared worker drones, through Red grunts and Yellow managers, all the way up the rainbow to the Violet and Ultraviolet elite”, the High Programmers.

This society is supported by “swarms of robots” – which if anything, tend to be crazier and more dangerous to humans than the Computer – as well as “spies, omnipresent surveillance, and a bureaucracy so huge and convoluted no one’s quite sure who’s in charge of what any more”.

“Problems in Alpha Complex are solved by teams of Troubleshooters, whose job is to find trouble and shoot it”. (Stay alert. Trust nobody! Keep your laser handy!).

Those problems including traitors – where virtually everything is treason, and even the knowledge of what is or isn’t treason is usually above your security clearance – as well as Communists or other secret societies, and mutants. Or a combination of all of these – the trifecta of “commie mutant traitor”, which is what players yell as they shoot each other in the back. Indeed, I’m known to be fond of using that phrase in real life.

Of course, “thanks to years of clone breeding” (everyone is a clone in Alpha Complex), “overexposure to radiation, and other snafus”, everyone is a mutant. Everyone is also a member of one or more secret societies, mostly plotting to overthrow the order of Alpha Complex. Ironically, the secret societies were started by the Computer, as an outlet to the natural human impulse to conspire together, but as usual in Alpha Complex, got out of control.

(You seem a little too informed of matters above your security clearance, citizen – please report for termination! Have a nice daycycle!)

The players “are (usually) Red-level Troubleshooters working for Friend Computer, grudgingly assigned useless, backfiring equipment and weapons, and dispatched on (often impossible) Suicide Missions, all while navigating the endless deathtrap which is Alpha Complex, keeping their mutant powers a secret, advancing the cause of their secret society, and trying to earn promotion to higher color grades”. Not to mention in-fighting among players – if you’re not shooting each other in the back, it’s because you’re shooting each other in the face.

You’ll go through a few clones, if not all of them, by the end, if you make it to the end – which is the truly dangerous part, the mission de-briefing, when you accuse each of treason. If you’re lucky, your fabricated accusations of treason might just overlap with their genuine treason.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)