| |
|
If anyone is still out there on this one...Paranoia is immense fun if you are just looking for a swift evening's silliness. I have to admit I am still on the first editions of this so the only way I think of a 'campaign' is Hil Sector Blues, not necessarily the most recognised source material these days...
I am lucky as I still have contact with my old group from school, and have added a member recently, which given the close knit nature of a group that has been rping for about 20 years together is impressive.
We are mainly WFRP and WofD people. Old school WFRP, of course, before GW lost the cosmic horror Lovecraft obsession that hid behind all their games (Dark Future - post apocolyptic car wars with eldritch abominations). We like the rag-tag group of heroes who don't get on and don't agree but come together to save the world. The first half of any game is getting everyone on the same page and stopping them killing each other, the second half is them taking it to the foe. Suprisingly fun, but our characters became too huge so we have taken it back to starters rolled totally straight. They still turn into our normal types though.
WofD is when we want to be sneaky and backstabbing. Half the game is through notes passed to the GM and no one is ever quite sure what anyone else is because of the number of sourcebooks we all own individually. One particular restaraunt encounter is remembered with joy. The dinner was a seemingly pleasant chat between a ghouled FBI agent, the Sabbat vampire whose power he had escaped, an Order of Hermes mage and an out of his depth Inquisitor being manipulated by the vampire. Outside there was a running gun battle between the police, acolytes and Satanist assassins. We sat inside trading telling quips whilst cars exploded and a building caught fire. That still stands as one of the best rps I was ever part of, and is legendary in our group. I liked the allies, backers, contacts and influence backgrounds.
Otherwise, if we wanted to screw with ourselves we played Kult, and we played some really scary games of that. We had a tendency to make slightly exaggerated versions of ourselves and since the gms knew people's hang-ups...We played Paranoia for occasional fun, but kind of grew out of it. We tried Judge Dredd but they could never get the hang of law enforcement not breaking. We did enjoy Deadlands, we got into character and got very silly. and then got attacked by monstrosities. Good times. We played Star Wars but it never really caught on. We do still play Feng Shui (and Shadowfist, and I:NWO of course on CCGs) we will watch HK films and then act out what we are doing as adjuncts to the dice. The rules are a little annoying but the game is fun,and that is what matters at the end of the day.
The other game I played with real regularity was with my other group - Shadowrun. We loved the magic tech combo and got heavily into the background. I did like the huge scope but it got bogged down with all the later developments and I haven't played it in years unfortunately.
And of course we played CoC but Kult superseded it in the end.
I have just picked up UA as I was taken by the background and want to to try it out. I think the moving away from rules is something that happens to older groups, you find the rules become more and more something you throw in occasionally to see if you succeed rather than something you rely on for everything. It always shows, we have been playing WFRP together for 20 years as I said and we still have to search the rulebook at points. Which is a bit annoying at moments of tension. At times like that we often wing it to avoid breaking tension, as long as the gm and group all trust each other it doesn't seem to matter. The games, we find, are about the background and the rules are just a useful framework to hang that upon. Except Deadlands, I agree about that. The rules are an integral part of the setting and part of the roleplaying experience. |
|
|
