About ten years ago I recall being introduced to an RPG that was set on a space station.
One premise was that the computer systems had taken over long ago. They had been designed purely for the purpose of keeping the inhabitants of the space station happy–but due to some malfunction, they came to misinterpret this protocol. They still act in a way designed to keep everyone happy–namely, they will kill anyone who shows any sign of being in any way unhappy.
Another premise was that every individual belongs to two secret organizations–one secret organization they belong to sort-of publicly, the other they belong to seriously secretly.
It sounds a lot like Paranoia, but everybody lives in a below-ground bunker. Secret societies and mutants are subversive, but everybody is a member of one and everybody is a mutant - but they don’t know that.
Now serving in its current incarnation, Paranoia XP.
I’m with **BraheSilver **on this one – you’re describing Paranoia, originally designed by Greg Costikyan. It’s a great game. No space station, but I’d attribute that a misremembrance.
Stay Alert! Trust No One! The Computer Is Your Friend!
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Wasn’t this the game with a class of people called “troubleshooters”, whose job it was to find trouble, and then shoot it?
I only played the game a few times in HS, and also read a novelization of the game called “Extreme Paranoia” subtitled “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Shot”. After working with computers for the next 15 years of my life, the title (if not the rest of the game) has definitely stuck with me
Funny. When I was reading the description, the name that popped up wasn’t Paranoia, but System Shock, a PC game. Anyone who’s played System Shock (or its sweet, sweet sequel System Shock 2) will know that the settings are very similar.
I’ve always wanted to play Paranoia. It sounds like so much fun.
I GM’d Paranoia only once. We played for three hours and I don’t think we got past page three of the module I had because my players couldn’t figure out how to get a door open (they had to knock). So they kept trying to blast or sneak their way in, and I kept killing them. But we all had fun anyway.
Paranoia! Best RPG game ever! Guaranteed 100% effective against munchkins, power gamers, and players who have stiff rods firmly embedded into their nether regions.
True fans of Paranoia should go out and pick up the new version, Paranoia XP. None of that post-crash nonsense, Friend Computer is back and killing traitors, bay-bee!
I actually bought Paranoia XP myself just a couple of weeks ago. Well worth it for the long time Paranoia fan or even those who want a pen and paper RPG where you get to make the player’s lives miserable.
Paranoia always got the best RPG moments for me. I ran one group through a published scenario where they must go to protect a prototype warbot and as they approached the location I had the area go from metal to a rough stone floor. The way was lit by flickering torches and the room they had to go to was behind a thick wooden door. The troubleshooters openned the door and I said, “Inside the room you see an ogre.” The players paused for a second and then one of them said “Do you mean the monster or the tank?” I was disappointed; I wanted at least one of them to attack it…
Actually the job of troubleshooters was to avoid trouble (as best as they could) and shoot each other…after denouncing their team members, of course, as mutants, traitors, or Communists, or some combination of the three.
The great thing about Paranoia was that you never had to fiddle around with experience points in the end, and if some player started contesting your decisions by bringing up niggling points in the rule book, you simply executed him. (Well, the PC, not the player himself, though it was sometimes tempting.)
