Paranoia: The Core Book - New Edition (MGP15100)

I have now run 5 session with this new book. All of which are very successful. My group absolutely loves Paranoia and this edition is easily the best, most accessable. If you've never played Paranoia, or heard of it, its a destopian setting where societ is contained in a giant city wide bubble following a world-wide disaster. A computer has been put in charge of running the complex, and assuring the survival of humankind. Unfortunitely the computer has been running far longer than it was supposed to, and has developed decades of contradictory machine learning and programming. Not only that, the complex is aging, requiring trouble shooters to be deployed to fix the problems. Society itself has broken down due to severe isolation, and no frame of reference for historical and pop culture accuracy, which is still abundant. The computer has developed a cold war mentality that communists and terrorists are abound, based on old data, and has enabled a strict caste system based on trustworthiness. The computer is also afraid of humans developing mutant powers, which ironcially, everyone has now and goes to great lengths to hide. Similarly, everyone belongs to a secret society, each with very opposing agendas. At its core, Paranoia is a competitive TTRPG, where each player must work towards a common goal, and a clear winner is determined at the end of the session. You are expected to screw over your teammates, just don't get caught. Needless to say, this is not a serious game.For the most part, the writers went back to 2000's XP edition, usually considered the best edition and did an update to it. There is a little bit of tongue and cheek reference about how this is basically just XP, but is a totally new edition. They have a sense of humor. The rules are much easier to understand and follow. Combat makes since. There are a lot of changes from the RED box. First the cards are no longer used. Rules are much more clear and easy to understand. The "make it up as you go" mentality from the Red box is gone. The game is also fully compatible with adventures from earlier games, minus some of the secret societies are no longer featured in this edition. The jobs players are assigned are also different in this edition. The art is especially good. While I typically don't care about art, the art in this book doubles for player reference. So when I tell people they got a new gadget, or they meet a crazy NPC, like FunBot, I can show them a picture in the book, which usually gets a good laugh.The starting adventure in the book is exceptionally good at teaching people the rules and style of play. Paranoia is a game that has to be GMed a very certain way, and players need to understand the Computer is not a dictator, or enemy, but rather an ignorant parent that has no idea what their children are up too and if it punishes you, its for your own good. The book does a good job at explaining this, and the adventure is very good at setting this expectation.Basically, the party is given a small problem of talking down a suicidal clone with a portable nuclear bomb. Regardless of how this plays out, the party is then sent to an interrigation room to decide the ultimate fate of clones accused of treason. Each clone has already been sentenced by the computer, but the players are expected to hear out their crimes and then send them through the appropriate door for processessing. Why the players have to do this, if there fate is already determined is not explained, but lets not dwell on the details. The problem, Red Clearance citizens aren't permitted to sentence higher clearance citizens. To solve this problem, the handler has changed the names of the doors so the party has no idea exacty what fate awaits the accused, short of the screams of agony coming from the doors. Not only this, each player has a secret society that wants certain results for each accused. Over all, its a great introduction for new players to the world of Paranoia. However, it can be difficult for new GMs, as you have to track each citizen's fate. For instance, one of my players flipped all the signs on the door again, which made it even harder for me to track who went where. Make sure you have some sort of graph paper with you when running this adventure.The next set of adventures i ran was straight from the Red box edition. Even without the cards, the games ran perfectly fine with no issues. Each adventure is about 3 hours long, and the game seems to be intentially designed these sort of one-shots. While a campaign is certainly possible, the game does not lend itself well to this sort of game play. Its best in small doses. If your looking for something between other TTRPGS, or something to cleanse the DnD palete between adventures, Paranoia is the perfect game.If your going to play Paranoia, and you totally should, this is the best edition.

Last edition was better, so far, but this edition is new, so we'll see what happens.