Alpha Complex - The Map

[PrinceYyrkoon]

You know what I'd like citizens? I'd like an eight by six page map of a portion of Alpha Complex at a good and useful reduced scale. It wouldn't need to be all of it, just a portion where I could place my adventures. It wouldn't need to be keyed, or have a compass direction on it or anything. It could even be modular, every page fitting to every other page, or whatever. Or just some pages fitting together.

I know what FGDs say, they say that it would detract from the fear and suspicion, but I think thats tosh. I think its too easy to say that, and a bit lazy. Don't you agree comrade, da?

Ive thought about drawing one myself. Its a natural thing for a GM to want to do. It gives the game or your (short-lived) campaign some kind of context, and, actually, is beneficial to running a 'straight' game, like these Mongoose chaps are attempting to introduce. Of course, it being Alpha Complex, it could be that areas have been cordoned off overnight, changed or otherwise blown up, but you could communally see what areas have been blown up, lending an air of straight realism to the setting.

I have the Mandatory Mission Pack. I want to place that public shower in a particular area for instance. So then, the players could just play in a sandbox. There would be even less structure, leading to more fear, suspicion and anxiety. No need even for structured mission briefings! Players could stumble into briefing rooms! How cool would that be? Or, they could be briefed to go to a specific location, and you, as the GM, would know that they would have to encounter various predetermined situations, because youve cordoned off any alternate routes. You would know, in advance, where various computer terminals were, or weren't. Where the blindspots are, where the hidden corridors of the Underplex were for the players to stumble into.

I think it would improve play. And Im thinking of playing it in that way to see if it works.

What do you think?

 

[broken serenity]

maybe for certain adventures and significant parts of alpha complex but other than that i say leave that stuff to the individual gm to decide.

 

[PaulB]

You might want to track down a copy of 'The DOA Sector Travelogue', written by, amongst others, Steve Gilbert (Me and My Shadow Mark IV, PARANOIA: The Mandatory Card Game) and Allen Varney (too many PARANOIA books to mention), which includes a large poster map of DOA Sector.

Copies of 'The DOA Sector Travelogue' often appear in online auctions or can be found sitting in boxes of secondhand games at Local Game Stores - you should make sure the book actually still contains the map when buying!

Paul

 

[Arkku]

You might want to track down a copy of 'The DOA Sector Travelogue', written by, amongst others, Steve Gilbert (Me and My Shadow Mark IV, PARANOIA: The Mandatory Card Game) and Allen Varney (too many PARANOIA books to mention), which includes a large poster map of DOA Sector.

I have the DOA Sector Travelogue, and while I consider it an interesting sourcebook for Paranoia, I think the map itself is absolutely useless. It's basically a circle with security clearance colours red through blue thrown about randomly, and “funny shapes” scattered randomly all over as buildings. For example, there are buildings the shape of asterisks (*), hash marks (#), radioactivity symbols, and even a Pac-Man chasing some ghosts (coloured accordingly).

It seems the map is intended only as a joke. The only remotely useful part of it is the list of 33 buildings (the only ones with their purpose annotated, out of hundreds on the map), with a short chapter on each in the book itself. In my opinion, anyone can draw up a more useful map by themselves. Even taking the street map of a real city and colouring randomly for security clearances would be more useful and more sensible than this. However, the other contents of the DOA Sector Travelogue are not nearly as bad, and I think it's a decent sourcebook if the map is ignored. (I do actually have an extra copy of the Travelogue, complete with map, that I could part with if someone really wants it.)

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

You might want to track down a copy of 'The DOA Sector Travelogue', written by, amongst others, Steve Gilbert (Me and My Shadow Mark IV, PARANOIA: The Mandatory Card Game) and Allen Varney (too many PARANOIA books to mention), which includes a large poster map of DOA Sector.

I have the DOA Sector Travelogue, and while I consider it an interesting sourcebook for Paranoia, I think the map itself is absolutely useless. It's basically a circle with security clearance colours red through blue thrown about randomly, and “funny shapes” scattered randomly all over as buildings. For example, there are buildings the shape of asterisks (*), hash marks (#), radioactivity symbols, and even a Pac-Man chasing some ghosts (coloured accordingly).

It seems the map is intended only as a joke. The only remotely useful part of it is the list of 33 buildings (the only ones with their purpose annotated, out of hundreds on the map), with a short chapter on each in the book itself. In my opinion, anyone can draw up a more useful map by themselves. Even taking the street map of a real city and colouring randomly for security clearances would be more useful and more sensible than this. However, the other contents of the DOA Sector Travelogue are not nearly as bad, and I think it's a decent sourcebook if the map is ignored. (I do actually have an extra copy of the Travelogue, complete with map, that I could part with if someone really wants it.)

:lol: You aint sold it to me, Arkku! :lol:

 

[Arkku]

:lol: You aint sold it to me, Arkku! :lol:

Heh, I guess that was not the best sales-pitch. =)

 

[broken serenity]

i'll take it off your hands if you feel a need to offload it that badly

pm me the details so we can work out the proper forms and file em with friend computer so that the transfer can commence

 

[Danforth]

Naturally enough my first thought on reading this thread was "Maps? Consistency? In Paranoia?!" but of course, as PrinceYyrkoon says it could work well for a Straight campaign, if suitably designed... sure, you can tear up Alpha Complex and move stuff around on a whim, but I can see that in a Straight game or a Classic campaign, a physical yet mutable map could be used to *reinforce* Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Use the map to hammer home consistencies within the setting - then change them without explanation (or at least without explanation at your security clearance, citizen.) A modular map could do that.

I think an online version would work best, with some kind of Sim City esque tile-placement interface, that GMs could make changes to, then run paper copies off of, each time a play session was about to begin.

No, I'm not coding it. I'm married with two young children.

 

[the_gioy]

I would say that no I would not like a alpha complex map. sure maybe a nice mini map of s certain room or even sector. Some examples come to mind. The transtube map from Stealth train or even the map of the junior crece's in Bubble gum run and the excellent maps from the classic Orcbussters mission. these worked well i think because like i said they show the important areas in a particular scene but to actually map out Alpha Complex would go against what the spirit of the game is about.

 

[Silent]

1st Edition has a map of CBI sector, which was used in the pre-generated mission creatively titled Destination: CBI Sector. I like the idea of using this map as a template of all Alpha Complex sectors.

The map doesn't really add a whole lot of detail, allowing you, the GM, to invent stuff up within the "buildings" that this map has.

Top View: The squiggles right next to Transtube reads "Passenger Terminal".

 

[locarno24]

Individual mission maps, very useful. So even though I voted no...it's possibly a good idea.

It's probably more use for a High Programmers game - where players can be reasonably expected to (a) have enough clearance to get a map and (b) survive (or at least have enough clones) to make it to a subsequent mission, so are likely to see the same sector multiple times (provided they avoid nuking it)...