holy crap i'm tired. game went great. 82 players signed up; giant robot finale was amazing. pics and more info to follow after the weekend, once i've had some sleep.
don't forget, however, that we are also running a live-action call of cthulhu game sunday! "professor oddlove, or, how i learned to stop worrying and love the great old ones" still has some spaces open. game is from 2pm to 6pm, room 221e, only $3. sign up at games/anime information booth!
our first ever paranoia live! panel was a rousing success. here's some shots of the room as it began filling up.
and here's a nice shot of our ticket line after said panel's conclusion.
it was a great friday and a great start to our weekend. at the end of the day we had sold 53 tickets--more than halfway to our goal of a sold out game.
i'm too tired to write much more, and we have a long day to look forward to tomorrow, so i'll leave you with this picture of some of the guns from fellow larp friends and airsoft enthusiasts terrorwerks.
James and I got in to Orlando around 6pm, and after a delightful dinner with his parents, we caught up with the (which i like to call) the "o-town terror crew"... the lesser mentioned, yet highly effective craftwerks that make most of the paranoia magic come alive.
Bots, Mutants, and an entire city's worth of buildings have finally taken shape through the magic of spraypaint, duct tape, zip ties and cardboard. These creations that can only be described as "typical paranoia style" aka "effing craptacular" will be revealed during the game and the climaxing feature to the entire event... the Kaiju Super Budget Brawl.
We're all super-stoked about the game and the great people we end up meeting every year. Of course we will have destructive weapons, bot and mutant upgrades and a fantastic team of GMs that will delight and amaze even the seasoned paranoia larper.
We also wanted to mention that the "pre-party" aka "The Paranoia Live Pannel" will be happening tomorrow. The members of the panel (your superstar GMs) will be describing the game and taking questions from players. We're putting this panel together in the hopes that players will get a stronger grasp of the game rules and give the players an idea of how Paranoia Live is run. we encourage everyone to attend even if you're not playing... it's sure to be a fun time.
IMPORTANT PARANOIA LIVE PANEL INFORMATION:
4PM in room 223 at the Orange County Convention Center Hall D1-D2
Everyone that attends the panel and signs up to play will be receiving a special weapon! This weapon will be unique to the players that attend the panel and will not be issued during the game.
we have about $1000 in prizes that we are giving away for this year's game, courtesy of mongoose publishing. first up, every single player will receive with their ticket a copy of the little red book, a player manual for tabletop paranoia.
first and second place medals will be given to the two teams that score the most points. each mission a team completes is worth up to 5 points.
winning secret society will be determined by which secsoc completed its goals best. this is determined largely by number of widget pairs collected. winning secsoc members get an attractive, suitable-for-framing award.
finally, superlatives such as best player, best traitor, or best kill or death will be awarded to individual players. these players will receive more mongoose paranoia schwag! we have two copies of paranoia's main rulebook to give away, along with three copies each of stuff and stuff 2.
here's a nice shot of 2007 winner (and 2009 GM!) channing ogswala enjoying the spoils of victory.
this year--i believe for the first time in any of our games--the anti-mutants are one of our available secret societies. what sets them apart from the other secsocs (other than their hatred of dirty, dirty mutants) is that instead of receiving mutant powers during the course of the game, anti-mutants get special legal alternatives, such as combat drugs or other helpful items.
anti-mutant's cards work the same as mutant power cards, but they have the added benefit of not getting you termintated for using them.
Here's an overview of the way our game functions. After the initial large-scale rules briefing, players break off into Secret Society cohorts for a SecSoc briefing. To make things easier, each Service Group is a front for one of the SecSocs. During this briefing, they are explicitly told who their enemy SecSoc is, what the secret handshake is, and what the SecSoc's objective is for the game.
In our game, we have things called "Widgets." Widgets are 16 different junk item cards. When teams complete missions, they are paid out in a mix of Widgets and creds. Each SecSoc is looking for a different pair of these Widgets. For example, perhaps the Commies need "Sonic Screwdrivers" so they can dismantle the Reactor Core. Commie players would want to seek out the Widgets marked "Sonic" and "Screwdriver." Since there are 16 different Widgets, players will have to trade these cards amongst themselves, and with other teams they come across.
After the SecSoc briefing players form into their specified teams, marked A-L. Teams can then travel to any of the eight Service Group stations and perform that station's unique mission. Missions must be completed in 30 minutes or less for the team to receive the full five points for the mission. Completing missions is how they earn credits and Widgets.
When players have one of the Widget pairs their SecSoc needs, they can turn it in to their SecSoc rep and receive a Mutant Power. What's great about this is that it marries team objectives and SecSoc objectives. In order to fulfill the SecSoc objective they must complete missions. When they do, they are rewarded with a cool power.
Inspired by Fallout 3 weapons like the railway rifle, this year we are also experimenting with player craftable weapons. After collecting together certain Widgets, players can trade them in at C-Bay for one of four interesting and powerful weapons. Here's one of my favorites.
Finally, a weapon that's based off the Chutzpah stat!
(I should probably mention that all of our Widget art is blatantly stolen from the wonderful American Science & Surplus website. Please don't sue us! You are totally rad, and a great source for stuff Paranoia LARP GMs might need!)
here are the GM basics baggies, with colored dots, termination vouchers, weapons, widgets, mutant powers. oh, and a pen. musn't forget the pen. hard to write term vouchers without one.
and here are the completed GM packs!
kind of amazing that our game essentially fits into two little shipper boxes. i still need to print out armor stickers and secret society awards, but i'll need to borrow someone's color printer to finish up those tasks.
after that, i think i might just be done. go team gainesville!
A little mood music to set the pace of things. Assuming everyone doesn't kill each other in the first half hour, it should be a pretty damn entertaining game. If I've done my job right, people will be too busy to beat each other to death.
On a game note, Oddlove can offset sanity losses by making reference to his old "leader" and saluting appropriately.
some lucky troubleshooters will no doubt be pressed into service to install them.
also, let no one say that i don't love and respect our players.
well, at least not to my face.
game continues to build, and things should get finished with time to spare. next project for me is finishing the GM packs. hopefully i can work on that a little more after work tonight.
check out this blast from the past. while looking through my many boxes of game materials, i stumbled upon these artifacts from our 2004 game.
we used to use a deck of playing cards for resolution, and the item cards were modified by whatever card you pulled out of the deck. yeeks. that was back when players had HP, too. the fact we could never get anyone to actually track their HP was the chief reason we finally ditched it.
the other slip is an amusing piece of business from our secret society GM (yes, we used to only have one, to serve every player) from 04, alex. to keep from getting bored, he would send non-playing convention goers--infrareds--to suicide bomb our players.
no! just kidding. in all seriousness, however, i've been meaning to edit the weapons we have for some time now. some are too powerful or too cheap, but the biggest problem is that many are not powerful enough, or are too expensive. that was a huge problem in the melee weapons department.
i'm making some changes for this year. here's a few so far.
grenades, or "team wipers" as we affectionately think of them, are going up to 2 creds this year. in their place as the go-to 1 cred thrown weapon i've made vibroknives dual usable as melee or thrown. i think this is fair.
anyhow, paraLARP09 is on track to completion and i am grateful and glad to have the time to edit the weapons. they've needed it for a while, but it was always one of those back-burner projects.
also started working on character packs. ironing 100 headbands and laminating 100 character sheets is tedious. after work, more tedium as i begin stuffing character packs!
excitement!
looking forward to friday--team gainesville is finishing up kaiju costumes at glyph's!
glyph, dave, and myself got together yesterday to work on our giant robots for the game's finale. it's a work in progress, but we're hoping to finish 'em up friday.
here's glyph paper mache-ing the hell out of his bot's helmet.
here are some plasticreds, drying. gotta keep sector CON's economy going!
i'm building a giant mutated blender monster for the kaiju showdown. here i am working on the tentacle arms.
PARANOIA Live! Saturday 2/28, 2pm-6p Main Showroom Floor $5, Sign up at the Games Registration Booth, 13+ only
It's fiscal budget time in Sector CON! After last yearcycle's budget meeting resulted in casualties numbering in the thousands, Friend Computer has decided it's time to allocate resources to the Service Groups in a new way. How, you ask? By making them fight for their creds with giant robots! Will the Service Groups get their robots built on time? Will the Troubleshooters be sent scrambling for parts and materials? Wasn't this the plot to Robot Jox? Come for the killing, stay for the Kaiju-style Giant Robot finale!
PARANOIA Live! is the Massively Multiplayer Offline Live Action RPG of a darkly humorous future. In Paranoia, a well meaning but deranged computer protects its citizens in an underground warren from all sorts of real and imagined enemies. The players are part of a team of elite agents, tasked with searching out and destroying these enemies. PARANOIA Live! is based on Mongoose Publishing's PARANOIA. This year, Mongoose has donated nearly $1000 in prize support! Every player will receive a genuine PARANOIA prize! Please visit www.mongoosepublishing.com
Game starts at 2pm SHARP, but all players are advised to show up early. Players wishing to receive 'Officer Training' are advised to show up at 1:30pm, and will receive early rules explanations and extra starting rank or equipment. Players may also attend our Friday panel. Register at the MegaCon Games Registration Booth, and get there early--this year's game is limited to 100 players!
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PARANOIA Live! Panel Friday, 4pm-5pm Room 223
Curious about PARANOIA Live? Never played a LARP before? Learn the rules early and have all your questions answered before the game on Saturday! This panel is an opportunity for first time and returning players alike to brush up on our LARP version of Mongoose Publishing's RPG of a darkly humorous future. PARANOIA is a game of backstabbing, mutants, commie plots, high-powered weapons, clones, and an insane Computer. Players attending this panel will also receive additional starting equipment for their character.
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Call of Cthulhu LARP "Professor Oddlove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Great Old Ones" Sunday, 2pm-6pm Room 221 E $3, Sign up at the Games Registration Booth, 13+ only
The President has instituted Defcon 2 and he has gathered together many of the finest minds Washington DC has to offer. US Air Force Brigadier General Jack Springheel has gone rogue with a strategic bomber wing, threatening the world with nuclear annihilation and that's the least of everyone's worries. A newly arisen island in the South Pacific, flying saucer abductions, mass coordinated riots, strange bugs infesting the brains of world leaders... And worst of all, the threat of a mine shaft gap with the Soviets!
