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So my guess at the solution to the mystery: there is no U-235 going missing. The final weigh in scales are busted slightly, probably by Holland when he last tinkered by accident.
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Jul 26, 2020 16:46
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My guess is it's a combination of gridlocked's theory and the complex settling just slightly enough to be detectable via scale thanks to the ground underneath being literally undermined constantly.
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Jul 27, 2020 04:54
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Love to know your theories! More importantly, I can't tell my players most of the things that people say in the thread, but I can [and have] relayed your predictions to the players, since they contain nothing they wouldn't already know, and since this mission was long-since concluded. Amusingly, THEY know how close or far you are from the truth you are. So although you're watching them for amusement: through me, now they are watching you for amusement. Isn't that nice?
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Jul 27, 2020 07:37
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Gosts posted:Love to know your theories! More importantly, I can't tell my players most of the things that people say in the thread, but I can [and have] relayed your predictions to the players, since they contain nothing they wouldn't already know, and since this mission was long-since concluded. Thank you FRIEND COMGOSTER
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Jul 27, 2020 08:11
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Thank you for padding out the episode to get closer to the hour mark! I genuinely appreciate it. I fully expect a second group of trouble shooters to be dispatched (or this one again) once a life days have passed and the elevator being stuck ferrying that incompetent guy shows up in the statistics. Then the dilemma will be either shooting a green guy or hunting down an apparently super dangerous communist.
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Jul 27, 2020 11:12
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Since these missions will have long been done, and you have two versions of the podcast, it would be interesting to get a little retrospective from each player at the end of the mission. Maybe we can find out why they did certain things or what they thought the others were doing.
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Jul 27, 2020 18:50
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Damanation posted:Since these missions will have long been done, and you have two versions of the podcast, it would be interesting to get a little retrospective from each player at the end of the mission. Maybe we can find out why they did certain things or what they thought the others were doing. That is a very good idea; however, after every mission, there will be a debriefing, AND every player will do a secret debriefing to talk about secret activities. So that might be a little redundant. Still, perhaps every once in a while I could do some kind of 'hindsight is 20/20' episode, if there's enough reason to. I'll keep that idea on my shelf.
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Jul 27, 2020 19:40
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Think I cracked it, or stumbled upon a rather neat coincidence: we were told the real missing difference is around 0.13%. 1-(235/238) is 0.013. The bars used to calibrate were U235 but a U238 bar was used this time. I can't really sketch out how much grift, if any, that allows for right now but I think that means someone has been siphoning off small amounts (1/1000 bars?) of U235 and only the accidental miscalibration unveils it.
Sighence fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jul 27, 2020 |
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Jul 27, 2020 20:54
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Needed another podcast to liven up my morning commute, looking forward to the treasonous antics!
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Jul 30, 2020 23:53
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My players keep asking me if the next episode is gonna be "the thing" yet. Probably in the top 10 most immensely terrible paranoia moments we've had in our careers. I haven't been looking ahead in the recordings more than I need to in order to work so I wasn't sure, but I can gleefully tell you that episode 4 will have "the thing". Sadly you'll have to wait until saturday to know what it is. Happily I will probably have the first bonus text post ready by tomorrow at the latest.
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Jul 31, 2020 03:42
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On episode 2, and you're already making me miss running Paranoia. 
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Jul 31, 2020 20:29
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SECRET FILES 1: THE GOOD The Secret Files are text posts I have put together with fun and cool facts and information, and also featuring some of the scraps of content that was too long, not funny enough or otherwise just didn't fit into the podcast. -- GOOD CITIZENS  Illustration of Alpha Complex by the amazing Jim Holloway, who did the vast majority of the art for the third edition of Paranoia. (Sadly, Holloway passed away just a short time ago, on June 28th 2020.) Alpha Complex is full of good citizens. But although lots of citizens are good, not everyone has what it takes to be a Good Guy (or Gal). All citizens are good and loyal, especially you. But the Good Gals (and Guys) who work in [YOUR SERVICE GROUP HERE] are among the Goodliest of Good Citizens. They have to be: [ACTIVITY DONE BY SERVICE GROUP] is too important to leave to anyone but the most loyal and good and skilled and efficient and dependable citizens. Perhaps we should briefly go over WHAT all these 'service groups' are, to help you understand [YOUR SERVICE GROUP] is the most important. There are eight service groups, in Alpha Complex, as follows: Armed Forces: The massive standing armies of Alpha Complex. In fact, they are the army, airforce, and navy. (Yes, they have an airforce and navy in their underground bunker. Alpha Complex is REALLY big.) The Armed Forces are the most loyal and important service group, since without them we would be instantly overwhelmed by external enemies and destroyed. Notably: The extremely important and loyal BLUE clearance Vulture Squads are the greatest and most important, piloting their vulture-craft into battle and vaporizing the enemy instantly and with no hesitation, especially not hesitating to check which person is the enemy. Central Processing Unit: Also known as CPU, they are the management group for every other service group, and as a result they are Housing, Preservation and Development & Mind Control: HPD&MC is the Media, the Education, and for many citizens, their entire view of what happens in the wide world of Alpha Complex. They control every aspect of what you think and feel. Obviously they are quite loyal, since they need to make content to inspire loyalty in others! Without them we would have free-thinkers and philosophers who sow disarray and distrust! Internal Security: Interral Security is the faction least Production, Logistics & Commissary: PLC are the hard-workers who produce and refine all material goods, be it metal, plastics, biological waste, food, dirt, or whatever the stuff is they serve in the canteens. PLC is almost entirely full of INFRARED citizens, but is this something to look down on? Power Services: Industrial sectors, life support, complex-wide entertainment systems, tens of millions of vehicles, hundreds of millions of robots, energy shields, and more. Where does all that energy come from? ANYWHERE WE CAN GET IT! That's the slogan down in Power Services. Power Services look out for their own. They are loyal. Diligent. And they absolutely hate your guts if you're using more electricity than needed. If a sector is taking too much and outputting too little, bands of PLC workers have been known to stop re-routing cables and start smashing people's lightbulbs, radios, funbots, and other non-essential devices until things are back to normal. Due to the fact that power is so important, they can get away with it. Research & Design: During the old eras of [THIS INFORMATION IS ABOVE YOUR CLEARANCE LEVEL], R&D was in a desperate race to stabilize Alpha Complex from the loss of many of its natural resources. But those days are long past, and now we all live in blessed, perfect utopia. But... What if utopia could be even more perfect? Yes, nothing is *wrong* with our machines, but couldn't we have *more things* that are *right*? R&D is restless to outdo itself in every way, on every day, regardless of what other people say. Being assigned to test new R&D tech is a Tech Services: Tech Service jobs range from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. NOBODY can question the importance and authority of clone-tank inspectors, or the legendary technicians who maintain The Computer's own systems! (The loyalest of all! The brightest, most brilliant minds! The most careful and well-manicured hands!) and NOBODY cares about the unfortunate citizens with the duty of Slime-Identification, or even worse, Paint Control. The job where you spend a thousand hours re-coating a skyscraper with grey paint, before being told that it just got upgraded to a RED-clearance tower, and that you have to re-paint it, and that you are also being fined 50 credits for trespassing in a RED-clearance area. Still, without Tech Services, all of the cars, trains, elevators, scrub-bots, bot-brains, toilets, tractors, terraformers and titanoscopes would all eventually break down, making it easy to understand why it is the [MOST/Nth-MOST] important Service Group. What's that? You say you don't work in a Service Group? Oh, well, don't worry about that, Citizen! That doesn't mean you aren't important, brave and loyal! There's lots of jobs that are just a bit smaller, and don't fit into the eight main groups due to their unusual nature. That doesn't mean they're any less importa- Eh? You're a Troubleshooter? AH! Get this bot-licker out of my establishment! -- GOOD ROLLS The following is a text-transcript that took place shortly after Character Creation. Sometimes I forget minor details and we need to rectify them post-recording... code: code:END OF SECRET FILES 1 Gosts fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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Aug 1, 2020 01:36
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quote:Internal Security: External Security is the faction least able to take a joke susceptible to treason. What enemies does Alpha Complex have? I thought there was only Alpha Complex, so why need a military? Also I’m glad to see even the most good citizens are afraid of Xcom rolls.
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Aug 1, 2020 02:11
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Damanation posted:Seems like a typo a commie must have snuck in to discredit Friend Computer. That was indeed a typo. Fixed that just now. Enemies of Alpha Complex include: Communists, Mutants, and other Traitors! Yes, they exist in amounts large enough to be a threat to Alpha Complex! No, we are not under threat! We are totally secure, and on the very brink of victory! But crushing destruction could come at any second if we are not vigilant!
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Aug 1, 2020 02:17
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As you may have noticed, Episode 4: The Road to Sector HEL... is now out! Enjoy.
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Aug 2, 2020 03:12
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 And this is why you don’t send in troubleshooters to account for a 0.13% shortfall in productivity.
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Aug 2, 2020 16:09
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Some plans work better than you could possibly imagine it seems.
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Aug 2, 2020 16:54
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Oh oh. Friend Gostputer, is the answer the miniscule difference in atomic weight between isotopes of uranium? Or is there one Jack-o-bot that is accidentally delivering U-238 into the U-235 pile?
Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 16:56
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I'd LOVE to tell you, but I cannot reveal the answer! That'd be cheating. I'll give you a hint though: In regards to the guesses so far, I will say that Occam's razor definitely applies for this one. If something smells fishy, it's probably fish. Meanwhile: In real life we're doing stuff post mission-3 and it's really phenomenal. I do wish I had experimented more with my recording and editing methods earlier. The audio quality really gets messed up a bit in some of this early stuff, especially on my microphone, and on Kyle's. I thought I had the best settings figured out but I clearly did not. Fortunately, I think it will only get better as we go further. (You can really tell in this most recent episode that my post-production notes sound a lot better than my actual audio during the game! Or at least it sounds that way for me.) And next up: I've thinking about how to slice it up. I'm curious about audience thoughts, especially from anyone who has played paranoia before: Where should debriefing and secret society meetings fit in? It feels like it might be kind of anti-climactic to cut the debriefing out of an episode. And yet... Would it be better to keep the episodes uniform in length, or to make one longer to fit the end of the mission in snugly? How much would it be reasonable to go over/under the hour-time in order to fit things that go together in the same episode? I'll be experimenting with that as I continue editing, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.
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Aug 2, 2020 18:11
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I’d be cool with making the episodes an arbitrary amount longer to fit debriefings in. Especially for this
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Aug 2, 2020 18:57
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If you've got enough material, maybe pad the episode out to double length with a soft cut in the middle to transition to the debriefing. Or, you could keep the episode regular length and release the debriefing stuff as a separate addendum episode of arbitrary length at the same time. I do agree that it'd be best to have the debriefing stuff right on the heels of the last episode, rather than a week later.
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Aug 2, 2020 21:40
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I like the idea of having the secret debriefings be a separate episode, but released with the end of the mission. It also means you wouldn’t have to worry about the editing for the red clearance version of the podcast as well.
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Aug 3, 2020 00:05
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At least we learned something important: the jackbots have nice hands.
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Aug 3, 2020 09:21
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What a glorious clusterfuck holy poo poo.
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Aug 4, 2020 04:25
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I've only ever played/run Paranoia in Zap or Classic style so not having a fixed 6 pack and having character live this long is amazing to me. Though I did once get to a briefing being able to utter the line "I speak without fear of contradiction." The only other members of my team still with clones left weren't back in time for the briefing.
Mage_Boy fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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Aug 4, 2020 05:58
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When I was first introduced to paranoia I only ever played zap-ish classic. Mostly because I was doing it with relative strangers, so, you know. Meeting back up with them all would have been impossible. I enjoy playing short games and I also enjoy playing long games, but the reason I prefer paranoia to be longer is because I like things to be "fair". Please note that I don't mean the way I run paranoia is remotely fair. (It's not.) But IF, due to some combination of rolls, skill, wisdom, coincidences and so on, the players DON'T get totally destroyed on a mission... That's ok. If the players don't have any chance to live then that's no fun to me, personally. In a one shot, it's customary that virtually everyone will be dead by mission's end. But I find an unknown future to be far more terrifying than certain death. So far, for example, although they haven't done the *best* possible investigation, the players really haven't deserved grievous injury or death (spine crushing aside) so I haven't given it to them. But all it takes is one little mistake...
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Aug 4, 2020 06:13
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Gosts posted:But all it takes is one little mistake... That wording, combined with your forums avatar, is extremely worrying... 
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Aug 4, 2020 06:18
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The nyan-ary game
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Aug 4, 2020 07:45
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Episode 5: The Episode Where Lights Screws Himself I feel like the title speaks for itself.
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Aug 9, 2020 03:15
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That lucky bastard.
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Aug 9, 2020 08:49
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I'd totally make a "That's Paranoia!" logo along the lines of  but I have no idea whose head to use. Friend Computer's, maybe?
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Aug 9, 2020 16:15
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Oh wow, that was so incredibly lucky.
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Aug 9, 2020 17:52
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Oh also, I can post this piece of art safely. This was drawn by our player Bees, who also did the majority of the work for the podcast poster.
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Aug 9, 2020 23:11
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I thought for sure it was just one person filing off a bit on the down low, not full blown like that. I can’t believe how lucky that is. Also I’m sad, because the bots have been my favorite part so far.
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Aug 10, 2020 00:13
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That is some incredible and undeniable luck. holy poo poo. Props to Lights for in trying to gently caress with everyone single-handedly getting the investigation solved.
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Aug 10, 2020 05:20
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God Bees metagames like crazy. Being told the outcome of a roll then asking how good"the roll was is a table top faux pass that grinds my gears badly. "Roll perception." 8? "You see nothing bad, the path ahead is clear." I shoot the bushes because there is surely an ambush ahead. Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 14:14
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While you're right, it isn't very good roleplaying, I should note that as an unspoken house rule, I will personally specify if there's a roll you're NOT allowed to share the results of because it would ruin the game. Otherwise you *can*, although sometimes it'd be more entertaining if you did not.
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Aug 10, 2020 18:41
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Episode 6: Party Boy The thrilling conclusion of mission 1! With this, I think I will probably scale back a teeny bit. Making these episodes is fun but I am out of back-up episodes now and I am making them weekly, so for the secret debriefings, I will probably make them a bit shorter so I can make a stockpile of episodes again. And then if all goes well, I'll probably have a lengthier length for the second-mission-episodes again! I do hope you've been enjoying so far. I'm considering making a discord or something, due to having a few IRL friends, and a few friends of players, who are also listening now. But I don't know if there'd be much to talk about. Perhaps later. The other thing I am working on will be a second text update, sometime in the next week or so, about the 'Bad Guys'; namely, the various secret societies. I think that one will be a lot of fun to make, as well as to read.
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Aug 16, 2020 03:12
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I can’t believe it ended that well. It seems like they aren’t usually so successful in their assigned missions? I’m curious, have you ever had your players end up working together on their secret missions? It seems like the way they handled the self destruction required a good degree of trust. Then again, they were back to sniping at each other during the debriefing. I hope we see that green insec officer, he was great and very off putting. Radbot, will be missed, unless he is reassigned to the team again, which would be interesting given his countdown. I’m really excited to hear the debriefing episode.
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Aug 17, 2020 18:02
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Oooh boy looking forward to listening tonight 
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Aug 18, 2020 07:45
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