Paranoia (game)
25th Anniversary Troubleshooters Edition
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| Designer(s) | Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, Eric Goldberg, Allen Varney |
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| Publisher(s) | West End Games, Mongoose Publishing |
| Publication date | 1984 (1st edition) 1987 (2nd edition) 1995 (Fifth edition) 2004 (Paranoia XP) 2009 (25th Anniversary edition) 2017 (Mongoose Kickstarter edition) |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Science fiction |
| System(s) | Custom |
Paranoia is a dystopian science-fiction tabletop role-playing game originally designed and written by Greg Costikyan, Dan Gelber, and Eric Goldberg, and first published in 1984 by West End Games. Since 2004 the game has been published under license by Mongoose Publishing. The game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984 and was inducted into the Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2007.Paranoia is notable among tabletop games for being more competitive than co-operative, with players encouraged to betray one another for their own interests, as well as for keeping a light-hearted, tongue in cheek tone despite its dystopian setting.
The game is set in a dystopian future city which is controlled by an artificial intelligence construct called The Computer (also known as 'Friend Computer'), and where information (including the game rules) are restricted by color-coded security clearance. Players are initially enforcers of The Computer's authority (known as 'Troubleshooters', mainly for the fact that they shoot trouble), and will be given missions to seek out and eliminate threats to The Computer's control. The players are also part of prohibited underground movements (which means that the players' characters are usually included among the aforementioned 'security threats'), and will have secret objectives including theft from and murder of other players.
Several editions of the game have been published since the original version, and the franchise has spawned several spin-offs, novels and comic books based on the game.
A crowdfunding at Kickstarter for a new edition was successfully funded. Delivery to backers began in March 2017.
Paranoia is a humorous role-playing game set in a dystopian future similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Logan's Run and THX 1138 among others; however, the tone of the game is rife with black humor, frequently tongue-in-cheek rather than dark and heavy. Most of the game's humor is derived from the players' (usually futile) attempts to complete their assignment while simultaneously adhering to The Computer's arbitrary, contradictory and often nonsensical security directives.
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