May. 11th, 2018

davidgillon: Text: I really don't think you should put your hand inside the manticore, you don't know where it's been. (Don't put your hand inside the manticore)

I was just over at Bundle of Holding, as I should really buy their Clement Sector Bundle, which expires in three days, and I noticed that they also have an offer on the Paranoia RPG, which is widely regarded as one of the funniest RPGs ever and probably has wider appeal. Characters are troubleshooters in a post holocaust society run by a paranoid computer - the Computer is your friend, Citizen - dedicated to hunting down secret society members. They are also, without exception, members of competing secret societies. Characters come with seven backup clones IIRC, and they need them.$17.95 gets you first edition, with 3 adventures and a couple of support items (vs $35 retail), but $27 (vs $80 total) gets you second edition as well, with the rules, five adventures, including the legendary Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues written by John M Ford, and a couple of supplements. If you've ever wanted to grab original Paranoia, this looks like a really good offer.

Clement Sector probably doesn't have quite as wide an appeal, but it's a spin-off from the Mongoose edition of classic Traveller, now completely separate and using the Cepheus Engine rules (which are basically an expanded classic Traveller with the name filed off).  Clement Sector is a region colonised from Earth via a wormhole which collapsed about a decade ago, leaving the colonies isolated. Technology is at the low end of the Traveller scale, there's no psionics, and (probably) no starfaring aliens. And there's no overall superpower, like Traveller's Imperium; the regional strongman is the Hub Federation, which is basically the half-dozen ex-British and German colonies, everything else is essentially single systems. As a setting for a campaign it's one of the strongest Traveller has ever had, but I'm mostly a fan of their starship books, which are really good at taking a ship and fitting it into a political-economic-social context. $10 (vs $43) gets you the rules, setting and the ship book for the local workhorse, the 300dT Rucker. $20.75 (vs $111 total) also gets you two of the subsector settings books, the detailed starship construction rules, and two adventure books, one a compilation of several individual adventures, the other 21 of Traveller's brief D6 adventures (roll a D6 to get the precise variant of the plot you've run into). If you were ever a Traveller fan, or like low technology, grittier SF, it's well worth a look. (I've got the setting, rules and construction rules, but not the rest so it's still worth me buying the bundle).

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davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
David Gillon

March 2025

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