New to Paranoia Help?!

[shilts]

Hi All

I'm after a bit of help please....and a bit of honesty too

I've been meaning to buy Paranoia for years just never actually done so, but now is the time and need some advice about which version to get...

Sooo, which do you think is best? I think I could get hold of the Second Edition (Games Workshop - that's not swearing on this site is it? :lol: ), Paranoia XP (proving difficult to find actually), Paranoia Service Pack 1 (also not the easiest to find) or the new incarnation (Mongoose's 3 different core rulebooks)

I'll be perfectly honest (no disrespect intended to Mongoose here as I genuinely like your work), the idea of 3 core rulebooks for running different character classes seems a little cheeky to me - just put them all in the one book.....but not knowing their content I'm open to being corrected.

Anyway, any help you can give would be appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Allen Varney]

The best introductory rulebook is Troubleshooters. You can find plenty of advice on getting started with PARANOIA, as well as reviews of the entire Mongoose PARANOIA support line, in the right sidebar of the official PARANOIA development blog. Then you may want to introduce yourself in the forums of the leading fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, where newcomers are always welcome.

 

[shilts]

Great, thanks Allen.

Did you have a hand in the writing of the Troubleshooter rulebook? I ask because I read somewhere online that your version is the best!! Didn't you write XP? surely that makes it the best? :lol:

 

[Allen Varney]

I wrote or edited the 2004 (XP) edition of PARANOIA, aided by Aaron Allston, Paul Baldowski, Dan Curtis Johnson, Beth Fischi, and well over two dozen loyal citizens on Paranoia-Live.net and the development blog. I described the process in a 2005 article for the online gaming magazine The Escapist: "Player-Prompted PARANOIA."

For the 25th Anniversary Troubleshooters rulebook, Mongoose staff writer Gareth Hanrahan largely adapted the 2004 edition's text, replacing the Treason system with one modeled on the 1984 and 1987 West End Games editions of PARANOIA. Gareth also wrote a new mission, "The Quantum Traitor."

The other 25th Anniversary rulebooks are much more Gareth's own work, especially High Programmers, which uses an entirely different system to represent ULTRAVIOLET-level play.