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Acute Paranoia
Welcome to Acute Paranoia! This massive upgrade to Paranoia gives you new ways to play and enjoy the darkly humorous Paranoia experience. You know, the one where everyone accuses each other of treason and characters die repeatedly but everybody laughs and has a great time?
196 pages, Perfect Paperback
Published July 22, 2019
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July 7, 2020
The Acute Paranoia box is the second box set for the latest incarnation of Paranoia. It contains an expanded Player's Guide, an expanded GM guide and a mission book with three new missions to dispose of your troublesome troubleshooters.
Acute Paranoia takes it namesake from a first edition supplement that introduced playable bot characters and true to form playable bots is the primary draw for this box set. In addition, the "Troubleshooters Survival Handbook" gives some tips on ways to be secretively treasonous and also gives more player options like playing characters afflicted with cartoonish Alpha Complex psychological disorders and playing 'codgers' which are troubleshooters who have somehow managed to survive to old age. I think the best piece in the book is the propaganda comic contrasting the conduct of loyal citizen Teela-O-MLY and her traitorous counterpart Lenny-R. I also like the 'blank pages' section which includes a lot of good roleplay information and tips in the form of secret treasonous documents. The bad is that there are lengthy sections for purchasable health plans for troubleshooters and medication they might be able to take. While I appreciate the bit of extrapolation on the otherwise nebulous 'happy pills' Friend Computer gives to its citizens, these sections are long and not all that funny. Health insurance is dystopian enough in the real world, I honestly doubt it would be in Alpha Complex. One of the conceits of Paranoia is that Friend Computer demonizes communists but, because it doesn't actually know what communism IS, it has turned Alpha Complex into what is essentially a communist system albeit with capitalistic hierarchies. So, basically, Alpha Complex is no dissimilar to soviet russia.
The GM guide is really well done. It takes some notes from XP's slottable encounter releases and gives many tables for locations, encounters, problems, NPCs, etc. You could probably do a pretty decent mission just rolling on these tables. Particularly since the fun of Paranoia lies in the players backstabbing each other. This book also has a back section on how to be a better Paranoia GM. Rather than disguise it as in-universe stuff the writers level with you which is your privilege as a ultraviolet clearance citizen. These tips are really necessary if you want to gear Paranoia toward campaign play. Executing your PCs in droves is really funny for one-shots but campaign play does open up other opportunities and sometimes disintegration isn't the best option.
The last book in the set a mission book. The missions are all pretty ok. The first mission, Censored for Your Protection, is the best featuring some almost mini-game options as the PCs must make their mission pay for itself. And they must safeguard a device that they cannot perceive in any way because doing so would be a security risk. It has a lot of moving parts to it but it looks like amazingly good fun. The second and third missions in the book rate a solid 'not bad.' The weakest link in the book is that in many places the art is noticeably worse than other places in the set. I don't know if the budget got tight or what but it just seems off. Of note are two full-page pieces in the third mission, one a portrait of an NPC where the head image used looks like it was copy-and-pasted from somewhere else. The NPC seems to have been altered or changed to be a visual reference to Jack Nicklaus which is a very.. odd and dated choice. Or Boris Johnson. Could be either. And the other image is a full-page shot overlooking a bunker door. It just doesn't quite fit with the art given the rest of the pieces in the box set. I may be overstating it but it just seemed odd.
The feelies that come with it are nice. You get a full set of dry-erase bot character sheets. There's some bingo cards for the psychological disorders. And you get a much needed second computer dice. It's a pretty good set overall and a welcome addition to the Paranoia legacy. While the Mongoose team isn't releasing as much material as they did in the XP days they are definitely making sure that what DOES get released is done so with care and of quality.
Acute Paranoia takes it namesake from a first edition supplement that introduced playable bot characters and true to form playable bots is the primary draw for this box set. In addition, the "Troubleshooters Survival Handbook" gives some tips on ways to be secretively treasonous and also gives more player options like playing characters afflicted with cartoonish Alpha Complex psychological disorders and playing 'codgers' which are troubleshooters who have somehow managed to survive to old age. I think the best piece in the book is the propaganda comic contrasting the conduct of loyal citizen Teela-O-MLY and her traitorous counterpart Lenny-R. I also like the 'blank pages' section which includes a lot of good roleplay information and tips in the form of secret treasonous documents. The bad is that there are lengthy sections for purchasable health plans for troubleshooters and medication they might be able to take. While I appreciate the bit of extrapolation on the otherwise nebulous 'happy pills' Friend Computer gives to its citizens, these sections are long and not all that funny. Health insurance is dystopian enough in the real world, I honestly doubt it would be in Alpha Complex. One of the conceits of Paranoia is that Friend Computer demonizes communists but, because it doesn't actually know what communism IS, it has turned Alpha Complex into what is essentially a communist system albeit with capitalistic hierarchies. So, basically, Alpha Complex is no dissimilar to soviet russia.
The GM guide is really well done. It takes some notes from XP's slottable encounter releases and gives many tables for locations, encounters, problems, NPCs, etc. You could probably do a pretty decent mission just rolling on these tables. Particularly since the fun of Paranoia lies in the players backstabbing each other. This book also has a back section on how to be a better Paranoia GM. Rather than disguise it as in-universe stuff the writers level with you which is your privilege as a ultraviolet clearance citizen. These tips are really necessary if you want to gear Paranoia toward campaign play. Executing your PCs in droves is really funny for one-shots but campaign play does open up other opportunities and sometimes disintegration isn't the best option.
The last book in the set a mission book. The missions are all pretty ok. The first mission, Censored for Your Protection, is the best featuring some almost mini-game options as the PCs must make their mission pay for itself. And they must safeguard a device that they cannot perceive in any way because doing so would be a security risk. It has a lot of moving parts to it but it looks like amazingly good fun. The second and third missions in the book rate a solid 'not bad.' The weakest link in the book is that in many places the art is noticeably worse than other places in the set. I don't know if the budget got tight or what but it just seems off. Of note are two full-page pieces in the third mission, one a portrait of an NPC where the head image used looks like it was copy-and-pasted from somewhere else. The NPC seems to have been altered or changed to be a visual reference to Jack Nicklaus which is a very.. odd and dated choice. Or Boris Johnson. Could be either. And the other image is a full-page shot overlooking a bunker door. It just doesn't quite fit with the art given the rest of the pieces in the box set. I may be overstating it but it just seemed odd.
The feelies that come with it are nice. You get a full set of dry-erase bot character sheets. There's some bingo cards for the psychological disorders. And you get a much needed second computer dice. It's a pretty good set overall and a welcome addition to the Paranoia legacy. While the Mongoose team isn't releasing as much material as they did in the XP days they are definitely making sure that what DOES get released is done so with care and of quality.
Displaying 1 of 1 review