unity and the man with a gun in his hand

[marycatelli]

Having a man come through the door with a gun in his hand (or genre appropriate equivalent) can certainly jump start the story if it's stymied.

And one thing that works marvels to make the story more complex is to have factions.  Lots of factions, with different motives and different purposes.  Even if a faction consists of one person, being at cross-purposes with all the other characters ups the conflict.

And the man with the gun in his hand makes an excellent new faction.  He may have to be one, if nothing already in the story would intervene then to shake things up.

BUT -- it does raise a little difficulty in pulling the story together and making it work.  If a wandering monster strikes, it is a random episode in the manner condemned as far back as Aristotle.  And I notice that in Order of the Stick, after the story got going, there was a wandering monster gag in which some displacer beasts escaped the party by secrecy, and no other wandering monsters appeared.  They did not fit into the story.   Any story involving a lot of travel faces the danger a lot, too.

All factions have to be resolved one way or another.  It can be dangerous to have all twelve or so collide at the climax.  Too much clutter.  You need to have some vanish or be subsumed in another faction before the end.  But the man with a gun in his hand has to be disposed of with enough pomp and circumstance that he doesn't turn into an episode that makes the story episodic, the worst of all plots.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

That's what made the “black comedy” role-playing game Paranoia so much fun:

> The player characters frequently receive mission instructions from the Computer that are
> incomprehensible, self-contradictory, or obviously fatal if adhered to, and side-missions
> which conflict the main mission. They are issued equipment that is uniformly dangerous,
> faulty or "experimental" (i.e. almost certainly dangerous and faulty). Additionally, each
> player character is generally an unregistered mutant and a secret society member, and has
> a hidden agenda separate from the group's goals, often involving stealing from or killing
> teammates. Thus, missions often turn into a comedy of errors, as everyone on the team seeks
> to double-cross everyone else while keeping their own secrets. The game's manual encourages
> suspicion between players, offering several tips on how to make the gameplay as paranoid as
> possible…

[marycatelli]

I played a game of Paranoia once. A corridor was accidentally painted a too high security color. Telling the Computer this meant you were a Commie mutant traitor. All my clones died. So did most other players'. But someone succeeded because some events had resulted in smoke damage, so you could ask for a paint job without mentioning the wrong color.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

That works!

I like the one secret society that Troubleshooters were sent to infiltrate, but they reported truthfully that it didn't exist - and were executed for treason. Ditto the next group. So the third team started the society themselves, “infiltrated” it successfully! - and so did everyone else. Yes, the “society” consists entirely of plants, spies and informers, all of whom assiduously “maintain their cover” as loyal members…

[marycatelli]

See, this is why some of us don't find Paranoia fun. It's too much like real life to be good escapism.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, mine are the 1st edition rules (which might be worth something today!) so the rest of the editions and developments that Wikipedia article mentions I didn't see at the time, but I'm pleased that it rode out the heavy weather and emerged in healthy condition, with its original authors, artists and contributors rejoining it. The new version hearkens back to my 1st edition in its choice of styles, 'Zap,' 'Classic' (meaning the 2nd edition) and 'Straight,' which “represents a relatively new style for Paranoia, although it is not entirely without precedent in the darker portions of the original 1st edition rules…” That is to say, Okay, take it as given. What would more mature players do with that Alpha Complex setting?

[Another way of seeing that is, “What if the 1976 film version of Logan's Run had been made as a serious, realistic story?” Despite enormous sentimental value, I've often wished it had been - where the City is basically running down, a point made in the original book. Call it “Soylent Run” - not a glittering Dallas shopping mall but 1970s New York, with equipment failures, gangs, graffiti, the recycled environment going sour - and the lid is getting harder to keep on, especially with rumors that the catastrophe-blasted Outside is clean now… But I digress. ]

This is all leaving your original post behind, so I'm glad you knew what I was talking about. Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!

[marycatelli]

I suspect my one game was under the first edition -- perhaps we just didn't have a good DM.

(Telling your players that they are supposed to try to stay alive means you've failed.)

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I liked also a piece of “experimental” equipment that would fit better into a magical/fantasy story, but it was fun: It was a locator droid, a baseball-sized find-it gizmo that you could send out to locate whatever you wanted to find. It actually worked! Too well, it worked - it went flying off too fast to follow and contained no transponder or tracking element, so it just disappeared. If the players later found the sought-for item themselves, they'd also find the locator sitting happily next to it, its mission accomplished!

[marycatelli]

Commie mutant traitor! To maintain that the wonder-working droid has any faults!