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 Friend Computer by michaelk42 on DeviantArt GREETINGS CITIZENS. Your Friend, The Computer here with a brand new Complex-wide initiative. Welcome to PARANOIA THREAD: Alpha Complex's Favorite (And Only) Thread! Before you can begin posting in this thread, we have a few basic questions for you! Compliance is not only mandatory, but also fun and educational. Question 1: Are you now or have you ever been a fan of PARANOIA: Alpha Complex's Favorite (And Only) Tabletop Roleplaying Game? Question 2: Please rate the joy levels that PARANOIA: Alpha Complex's Favorite (And Only) Tabletop Roleplaying Game gives you on a scale of 10 (Maximum Possible Enjoyment) to 110 (Treasonous Levels Of Enjoyment). Question 3: What are the access codes for the compromised defense grid in Sector AHG, currently held by Communist Forces? How do you know this information? PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK BEFORE PROCEEDING TO QUESTION 4. COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY. FAILURE TO CLICK THIS LINK IS PUNISHABLE BY TERMINATION VIA THE MAXIMUM VELOCITY FUN-CENTRIFUGE. Okay, Question 4! Did you survive the memetic kill agent proceeding Question 4? If so, how? Please explain in detail. If not, please explain, in detail, the exact processes your clone-mind went through as the new R&D Memetic Kill Agent 18K HD Edition: Now With Flavor! worked its way through your cortex/nerve endings. Did you complete the questionnaire? Congratulations! You are cleared to proceed through the rest of the thread. Did you fail to complete the questionnaire? If so, please report to Funbot for a wholesome education in good, clean Complex-approved fun! CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PROMOTION. Your security clearance is now RED, granting you exclusive access to PARANOIA THREAD: Alpha Complex's Favorite (And Only) Thread. Please give your security clearance up to 35 minutes to reflect on your account. Not you? Click this link to correct any changes on your account. WHAT IS PARANOIA? PARANOIA is an RPG of conspiracy, betrayal, and the righteous hunt for commie mutant traitors throughout the proud domed city of Alpha Complex. Players should be honored to take on the role of RED Clearance TROUBLESHOOTERS in service to the glorious Computer who rules all of Alpha Complex with tender, loving care and patriotic spirit that exceeds even the most loyal of Loyalty Officers. Think you're more loyal than the Computer? If so, please report your loyalty levels to Internal Security immediately. WHERE CAN I BUY PARANOIA? A wise investment! Citizens can spend their hard-earned credits to purchase PARANOIA in a variety of perfect, flawless editions over on DriveThruRPG. Spending on DriveThruRPG is approved by the Alpha Complex Department of Finance and Economic Research (Name Change Pending Subject To Termination Of Previous Team Responsible For Name Change). WHY SHOULD I PLAY PARANOIA? It's mandator---jhhhsssssnnnNNKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK w04h. i didnt think this 0ld axxess code workd. whaddup gang. complex icon ILLuminatus420 here. you know what secsoc im in. if u dont? frag off. the real reason 2 play paranoia isnt mandatory or loyalty or wat tf ever. the real reason to play paranoia is u wanna be BAD. u wanna be a commie. a mutant. a traitor. u and your friends wanna wreck stuff up. hav sum laffs. cause sum chaos. paranoia is for clones who wanna have a good time, not a long time. doesnt sound good to u? then u never got this message. put your vr loyalty visor back on and slip back into training sims from loser sectorz like DND or WOD or wat tf ever. this is a game 4 PUNKZ!!!----kjkkjkkjJJJKKKKKKKKKK and it's fun, too, citizens! So sign up, join now, and get ready to see THE BEST ALPHA COMPLEX HAS TO OFFER!  Friend Computer by Krormwrorm on Twitter HAPPINESS AND LOYALTY FOR FRIEND COMPUTER! By the way, think fast.
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Jul 13, 2023 06:57
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I have always loved Friend Computer.
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Jul 13, 2023 09:40
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I saw it in the chat thread but not only is XP probably the best edition overall, it has an absolutely awesome Mission included with it.
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Jul 13, 2023 13:06
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The one with the scrubbing bubbles droids? Them things can skin a clone in 30 seconds flat. Straight to the bones.
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Jul 13, 2023 13:23
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dwarf74 posted:I saw it in the chat thread but not only is XP probably the best edition overall, it has an absolutely awesome Mission included with it. I consider XP and the Anniversary edition to basically be the same thing, so that's correct.
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Jul 13, 2023 14:46
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I've been running a weekly Paranoia game for three years. It started in 2020 as a "let's find a game we can play online during the pandemic" kind of thing, with a series of extremely goofy one-shots. A weird thing that has happened, though, is that the player group has gravitated toward a less silly, more straight playstyle that has turned the one-offs into a campaign structured around Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues as a framing device for a power struggle between high programmers. It's still a funny, lethal game, but the longer persistence of the characters has shifted the focus more towards maintaining a facade under a totalitarian society; juggling alliances, snitches, and incompetent allies; and the limitations of intelligent machines.
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Jul 13, 2023 17:09
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I've never understood how people get clones to survive long enough to get through a whole adventure, much less a campaign. Do your players just not find the most thinly veiled excuses to justifiably execute each other for treason every couple of minutes? Maybe that's why despite really loving Paranoia, I've never been in a game that lasted more than one session.
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Jul 13, 2023 17:37
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I've only ever run one shots.
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Jul 13, 2023 17:41
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You learn. And that makes you dangerous. Good thing you love the Computer so much. All hail our Friend!
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Jul 13, 2023 18:15
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I gotta be honest that’s a very well written OP. Good job Sasha.
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Jul 13, 2023 20:51
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It would be nice to have a little writeup about the editions and their cons/pros.
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Jul 13, 2023 21:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8yQhXDquII
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Jul 13, 2023 22:15
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Leperflesh posted:I've never understood how people get clones to survive long enough to get through a whole adventure, much less a campaign. Do your players just not find the most thinly veiled excuses to justifiably execute each other for treason every couple of minutes? For my group, the pattern was: highly slapstick & highly lethal > realize my players were more into the social roleplay > high intrigue & highly lethal > start having one-shots deal with the fallout of the prior one-shot > realize the players cared about their characters > start giving them ways to buy new clones and scapegoat third parties more effectively.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:06
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Megazver posted:It would be nice to have a little writeup about the editions and their cons/pros.  Are you implying any edition of PARANOIA: Alpha Complex's Favorite (And Only) Tabletop Roleplaying Game has cons, citizen?
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Jul 13, 2023 23:08
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There’s a single joke you need to know about the current (“red clearance”) edition. It’s basically the only thing you need to know about it as far as I’m concerned. The game comes in a white box. On top of the box there is embossed text. It is also white, rendering it virtually impossible to read.
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Jul 14, 2023 00:23
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Anyway, one of my terrible plans that never saw fruition, was to make a pita version of paranoia. The basic moves would be, “Stay alert” “Trust no one” and “Keep your laser handy”. Then each player would get a move based on their mandatory bonus duty, one for their service group, and a couple of additional moves gained under mysterious circumstances that I can’t get into right now.
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Jul 14, 2023 00:38
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I love Friend Computer! I love Friend Computer! I'm so happy! I'm so much happier than you are I bet, because I love Paranoia! It was the first game I ever game mastered by myself and boy did it teach me a lot about how to run a tabletop game!
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Jul 14, 2023 01:01
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DalaranJ posted:Anyway, one of my terrible plans that never saw fruition, was to make a pita version of paranoia. The basic moves would be, “Stay alert” “Trust no one” and “Keep your laser handy”. Then each player would get a move based on their mandatory bonus duty, one for their service group, and a couple of additional moves gained under mysterious circumstances that I can’t get into right now. I'm currently working on a FIST hack for it. It's becoming more elaborate as I proceed, and yet I'm not sure I can turn back.
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Jul 14, 2023 01:09
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sasha_d3ath posted:I'm currently working on a FIST hack for it. It's becoming more elaborate as I proceed, and yet I'm not sure I can turn back.
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Jul 14, 2023 01:36
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For folks who GM Paranoia, what's your favorite persona to use for Friend Computer? I'm a fan of a bubbly customer service voice followed by an immediate drop into cross-examining prosecutor as soon as anything interesting comes up.
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Jul 14, 2023 16:20
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Lately I've been using a bubbly-but-sinister impersonation of Christian radio personality John Tesh, which is the tone I wrote OP in
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Jul 14, 2023 18:27
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Friend Computer as Clippy.
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Jul 14, 2023 19:06
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If I ever run Paranoia in the near future I'm probably gonna use the algorithm lady TikTok voice and inflect every sentence as if it's a question.
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Jul 14, 2023 19:09
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When I've done Friend Computer voice it's come out like a 1950s film narrator written by Charles Addams.
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Jul 14, 2023 19:12
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HAL 9000 But my players are all olds who understand the implication of that. Hostile V posted:If I ever run Paranoia in the near future I'm probably gonna use the algorithm lady TikTok voice and inflect every sentence as if it's a question. This is the way to go for a modern audience.
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Jul 14, 2023 19:22
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I like playing FC as 100% cooperative, friendly, and trying really hard to be an actual useful ally to the team, but being so incompetent and paranoid that it sabotages everything the team asks of it. FC really genuinely does care and wants to help everybody, if only those programmers would stop poking around in its brain.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:58
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Friend Computer is a bubbly summer camp councilor on the first day of camp. He's telling everyone how much fun they're going to have, whether it's taking pep pills, going on a troubleshooting mission, or reporting to the termination booth. Even when suspicious, Friend Computer is always happy first and foremost.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:00
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Hostile V posted:If I ever run Paranoia in the near future I'm probably gonna use the algorithm lady TikTok voice and inflect every sentence as if it's a question. It would crank up the dehumanization factor, I'll say that much.
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Jul 15, 2023 04:23
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DalaranJ posted:Anyway, one of my terrible plans that never saw fruition, was to make a pita version of paranoia.
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Jul 15, 2023 05:45
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The only version of Paranoia that comes with tzatziki sauce
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Jul 15, 2023 06:40
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1secondpersecond posted:For folks who GM Paranoia, what's your favorite persona to use for Friend Computer? I'm a fan of a bubbly customer service voice followed by an immediate drop into cross-examining prosecutor as soon as anything interesting comes up. Haven't run it, but when I considered it I practiced my Morgan Freeman impression.
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Jul 15, 2023 08:17
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Megazver posted:Haven't run it, but when I considered it I practiced my Morgan Freeman impression. Because of Jarvis, of course.
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Jul 15, 2023 13:19
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Chakan posted:Because of Jarvis, of course. I had to google that. No, I thought it would be funny if the original creators tried to give the AI the most kindly, benign, paternal persona possible and then it slowly turned into Friend Computer.
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Jul 15, 2023 13:28
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Megazver posted:I had to google that. No, I thought it would be funny if the original creators tried to give the AI the most kindly, benign, paternal persona possible and then it slowly turned into Friend Computer. That makes it even funnier to me, that you didn’t know. So others don’t have to go through the trouble: Mark Zuckerberg does a yearly challenge for himself that’s always some weird rich people thing and in 2016 he programmed an “AI” for his house that he named Jarvis & got Morgan Freeman to record a bunch of voice lines for it. The idea that FC would be descendent from that is just the right level of wonky to me.
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Jul 15, 2023 14:10
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I always played Friend Computer with the smoothest, most annoyingly supercilious voice I could muster. "Yeees, thaaank you for your heeelp, Friend Citizen. Now if you wouldn't miiind, pleeease step into the Disintegration Chamber, I'd appreciate it eeever so muuuch."
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Jul 15, 2023 15:51
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For anyone who's wondering what the good editions of PARANOIA are: XP (listed on DTRPG as "Service Pack 1") and 25th anniversary (Troubleshooters, Internal Security, High Programmers). You can't really go wrong with either. Prior editions kind of got lost in their own bad humor, and later editions got stuck up with gimmicks. XP was a celebration with a lot of new blood from the burgeoning storygames scene at the time, and 25th Anniversary is Gareth Hanrahan.
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Jul 15, 2023 16:13
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Arivia posted:For anyone who's wondering what the good editions of PARANOIA are: XP (listed on DTRPG as "Service Pack 1") and 25th anniversary (Troubleshooters, Internal Security, High Programmers). You can't really go wrong with either. While I agree that's the high point, everything, except the Big Whoops series from WEG, is worth reading, IMO. Paranoia is one of the few games where treating the rules as suggestions is the optimal play experience, so the setting fluff, R&D items, and adventure pitches are all readily transposable from other editions. My hot take is that the new Red Clearance box got such a poor reception because the cards and art just look so cheap, and the actual adventures and content are at least as good as non-Anniversary/Service Pack 1 stuff. It doesn't help that a good number of the SP1 adventures are updates of the best original adventures, so the quality is so much higher through subtraction of the misfires.
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Jul 15, 2023 17:05
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I haven't played any of the editions and I've read RC and XP. This might be heretical, but I didn't mind changing communists to terrorists and the augmented reality thing was interesting. But I only play online and I saw all the card stuff and realized, yep, seems I'm never going to play this edition.
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Jul 15, 2023 17:09
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I just hate any edition of Paranoia that lets you buy new clones. Everything else is OK.
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Jul 15, 2023 17:13
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Capfalcon posted:While I agree that's the high point, everything, except the Big Whoops series from WEG, is worth reading, IMO. Paranoia is one of the few games where treating the rules as suggestions is the optimal play experience, so the setting fluff, R&D items, and adventure pitches are all readily transposable from other editions. That's totally fair, but it was a hanging question about what the "best" edition was for new players and I'd much rather recommend getting new groups to print out MBDs and spam emails to throw at each other instead of worrying about cards for an inventory and some such. Arivia fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 17:47
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