I happened to be looking on the Modiphius website for pdf resources for the various Five Parsecs From Home games... and I discovered that they publish Paranoia: 5 Clones from Alpha Complex - The Uncooperative Miniatures Game! A game based on the Paranoia role-playing game using the Five Parsecs From Home game engine...
Paranoia has always looked fun. I did make a character for the game once, way back in high school - in the late 80s (yes, the role-playing game has been around THAT LONG!).
In Paranoia everyone lives in the Alpha Complex, a utopian environment where the Computer controls everything. Society is stratified into different security levels Infrared citizens, at the bottom, wear only black clothing. Then there are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet security levels and citizens at each level wear clothing of the matching colour (I seem to recall security troops - cops - were all Blue level...). At the very top are the Ultraviolet Level High Programmers - who wear white.
Characters in Paranoia are all citizens that have been newly promoted to Red Level as Troubleshooters. Their job is to find trouble, and shoot it. Now, one could think "WHY WOULD THERE BE ANY TROUBLE AT ALL in a utopia run by and all-knowing supercomputer and served by a wide array of helpful robots?!" Well... there are apparently malcontents that aren't happy serving the computer... they have mutant powers... and join secret societies... (both of which are TREASON and punishable by DEATH)!
So, obviously, ALL characters start with a mutant ability and are a member of a Secret Society...
The character I made was named Ifo from the GET sector. The standard pattern of naming citizens was Name-Security Clearance Level-Sector of Origin. Thus his designation was Ifo-R-GET. I do not remember what his mutant power was, but he was a First Church of Christ Computer Programmer!
Somehow I never actually PLAYED the game, however!?
Despite not having ever played it, I've been interested in the concept enough that I have acquired some miniatures over the years - most of them were from Grenadier miniatures, produced (and purchased and painted by me!) back in the 80s. I also have a few made by Games Workshop (probably also back in the 80s/90s), but I'm not sure exactly when I picked them up...
Five Red Clearance Level Troubleshooters - all with original paint jobs from the 80s/90s (maybe? or perhaps I've touched them up since then...?) - perfect for starting a game of Paranoia: 5 Clones from Alpha Complex - The Uncooperative Miniatures Game! The two on the flanks are the Grenadier models and the three in the middle are the Games Workshop models.
Four Blue Clearance Security Troopers! original paint jobs from the 80s...
Maybe they were called IntSec Goons...?
The fellow in white is a High Programmer from Grenadier Models. The two models flanking him are from Games Workshop. I thought they were Orange Level Trouble Shooters...? Because they looked like the Orange level Trouble Shooters from Grenadier miniatures... but based on the miniatures from Modiphius, they are perhaps Vultures - an elite unit of Trouble Shooters... I'm not sure what clearance.
The rest in the back are Grenadier models. Two are Briefing Officers that came with the High Programmer. One is a Happy Bot and the other is an Infrared Drone/Citizen. I'm sure I had a Clean Bot, a Doc Bot and Nurse Bot at some point... and... may STILL have them... somewhere (I'm sure I've seen the Clean Bot - It's vacuum nozzle/hose broke off, but it looked fixable...
The three unpainted miniatures were painted at one point, and when I figured out how to strip miniatures, I stripped them and just haven't gotten around to repainting them.
Oh! I found them! The Doc Bot is in white. The Nurse Bot is in red (or PART of the Nurse Bot anyway... I wonder if I have the rest of it in a box of bits somewhere?!)...? I'm not sure why I painted it red. There is a strong possibility that I bought it and never got around to painting it and then forgot what it was and just decided to. The other two are the remaining Infrared Drones. One I stripped, but then broke trying to remove it from it's previous base.
Also, that troubleshooter in red is a plastic model. At one point west end games sold a hug bag full of plastic miniatures that, I think, were based on the Red Clearance Trouble Shooter models from Grenadier, but cast in five or six different colours of plastic (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, maybe Blue... I don't recall if there were Indigo/Violet ones...?). I'm SURE I still have the bad somewhere... but it's squirrelled away in one of the many dozens of not-so-accessible storage room boxes... I AM SUPPOSED to go through those boxes this fall/winter... so... maybe I'll find them then. Despite painting it red, I used the miniature in a GURPS Traveller game!
So... I checked to see if Dragon's Den Games had a copy of Paranoia: 5 Clones from Alpha Complex - The Uncooperative Miniatures Game!...
and they did...
AND the Anniversary Sale was still going on...
So....
Obviously I biked over there and picked one up this afternoon...
Now to figure out how to make some appropriate Alpha Complex terrain!!
(and figure out some hostile opposition forces... like... OTHER THAN the other Trouble Shooters!?)
Side-Quest
While I was at Dragon's Den Games and the sale was on I made a little impulse buy...
(as if EVERYTHING I buy isn't a bit of an impulse buy...)
Root: The Role-Playing Game
This game is based on the setting of the very popular board game of the same name. I've never played the board game, but I've been interested in trying it out for some time. I knew there was a role-playing game. It happened to be on the same shelf as Paranoia... (or maybe one over..?)... so...
The art for the whole series of games always looks kind of cute and fun and whimsical... so if nothing else, I'll probably thoroughly enjoy looking through the book. Maybe we'll try it out at some point?
Side-Quests of Side-Quests...
When I got home I'd found Amanda had decided to do some yard work and had planted the garlic for next year. She prepared a new bed for it in this space that used to be a sandbox. Most of the sand was dug out some time ago and regular dirt mixed in but there's still a bit of a depression there... And Amanda had covered it all up with grass clippings as a mulch. I laughed and said it looked like she was trying to hide an unsubtle pit trap...
After a moment she admitted that SHE'D fallen into it THREE TIMES already!
Perhaps it wasn't as unsubtle as I originally imagined...?
Posts
Ha! Paranoia! I never got into it. The sculpting of some of those old minis was "interesting". ha ha
ReplyDeleteSo, are you doing 5 Clones or Planetfall now? LOL
Speaking of pitfalls... sorry, about all of the laughter. It's all in good fun. As for me, I've gotten so many minis lately, I'm spending a lot of time prepping and cleaning and getting ready to paint some more, and hoping to find some time for some games (while also trying to get some more reading done, and other stuff as well).
Planetfall!
DeleteLike, it's not even close!
Paranoia looks hilarious, and I do have some miniatures for it - at least for the player-characters and some NPC-types... But I'm not so sure about terrain. Some 40K industrial stuff and maybe some Necromunda stuff...? But I have an idea of a bunch of terrain I'd like to build to fit a general aesthetic I've built up in my head over the years... Something akin to a shabby office structure that, at one point had a very thin veneer of pristine cleanliness - but was made of the absolutely cheapest materials and everything that was once gleaming white is now yellowed and brittle and falling apart...?
There's a lot of terrain I could (and would like to!) build for Five Parsecs From Home... but I feel like I have enough stuff I could get started NOW!
(And I'm just FAR MORE EXCITED about Planetfall and the characters I've been developing in my head!)
I feel like Paranoia needs he right group of people. Like I said, I've never played, but the whole concept seemed like I would be fun to me. However, I did witness a session of the game being played - there was a group that played role-playing games at lunchtime when I was in high school (who I did occasionally play with!) and the decided it would be fun to play Paranoia - but I don't think many of them understood the subtleties of the assignment.
Like, yeah, the CHARACTER has a mutant power and belongs to a secret society... both of which are TREASON and punishable by DEATH and they've just been promoted to a position where they get to HUNT DOWN people like themselves, but they DON'T necessarily know that anyone else in the room is (who are all likewise now employed as Trouble Shooters whose job it is to hunt down traitorous mutants and members of secret societies!)... hence... PARANOIA... Unfortunately the PLAYERS KNOW that all of the other players are mutants and members of secret societies (which their characters absolutely WOULD NOT KNOW - because everyone of them has spent their entire lives HIDING that from each other - and everyone!?) and so... many players think the purpose of the game is figure out what the other players powers are and kill THEM before they kill you... and... to some extent... that IS what the game is about... but I feel like with the right people, playing with the understanding that their characters DON'T necessarily KNOW that EVERYONE else is ALSO a mutant and member of a secret society and they should just go on pretending that they aren't and that they're a normal citizen just like everyone else (NOTHING TO SEE HERE!) and only use those powers of their societies influence when there is no other choice and to try and do it on the D-L... so that maybe their teammates don't find out... but if they do there's an opportunity to ROLE-PLAY some serious moral dilemmas... Their job is to kill anyone that exhibits mutant powers or that they suspect to be members of a secret society... but as a mutant and member of a secret society themselves, do they show compassion, knowing this could easily have been THEM? And maybe in that moment of discovery suddenly feel MORE of a kinship and bond with this team-mate they suddenly discovered they have more in common with than they'd ever imagined before, levering them even MORE conflicted... BUT at the same time, showing mercy or compassion could get them on the wrong side of their OTHER teammates and the wrong side of the law for not carrying out their sworn duty to the computer...!?
DeleteAnyway...
The group I watched playing broke out into a firefight before they even got out of the briefing room hurling accusations (and laser blasts) back and forth... I'm not sure the campaign even got OUT of the briefing room or if the GM just threw in the towel after half of them had most of their clones killed IN THE BRIEFING ROOM!? I do recall him being VERY EXASPERATED!
Honestly, THIS version of Paranoia MIGHT finally be the version I will actually play - because it's a SOLO game, the people I'm playing with WILL have a similar approach to the game and it's possiblities... (though they are horrible cheaters and kind of dicks, sometimes...)!