Paranoia setting for Pony Tales - Supplement included

That's a thought, but I wouldn't pick the talents themselves at random; there's just too many, and quite a few have prerequisites. An alternative is pick the headings at random, and you get to pick so many talents from those headings. For example: I might get, in order:

1. Skull Duggery
2. Spellcraft
3. Woodsman
4. Spellcraft

So I would get one Skull Duggery talent, two Spellcraft talents, and one Woodsman talent. Or I could end up with two Flight talents and two Psionics talents. Or four Everypony talents. This allows a fair amount of randomness, while still allowing some design and working around prerequisites.

ohh, nice idea.
The random thing was mostly so that the player would have no control over whether they got legal or illegal utilities, should they be divided in that way.

I altered the cutie marks to be "invisible without special imaging/scanning equipment", and have every race have one, kept secret from other players. I also added ruling on magic points - they can work a bit like perversity points.

The thing with utilities is that a whole lot of them make no sense to be "traitorous" (e.g. nimble hooves), while others are useless/pointless/broken in paranoia. In the same way, a lot of the racials would count as mutant powers. I was also kinda planning to put in some of the paranoia mutations.

There's also the actual scientific areas of expertise - a lot of them are highly specialized and require a technologically advanced world, which the utilities lack. Those will probably have to stay in some fashion (otherwise characters with high mechanics become super-competent).

One compromise could be:

- Everypony gets 4x expertise areas, which is four choices of the paranoia "highly specialized" sciences (from the list), getting a +5 bonus in each.
- Four headings are rolled out of the utilities, some of the racials, and the original paranoia mutations, from each of which, a single one is taken by choice or randomly.
- Two of the ultimately picked utilities are designated as "mutant", at DM discretion. Nonsense utilities can be re-picked if needed.
- Mutant utilities are secret and can backfire.

End result: Everyone gets the equivalent of 2x freaky knowledge, two random utilities that aren't traitorous, and two mutant ability that are.

Alternately, the mutations could be decided to only encompass the original paranoia ones and whatever utilities can be modified to match.

For now, I'll have to look over the "mutations" and list them before a decision is made.

Update!

I added the paranoia handbook mutations into the doc, as part of the list of mutations. I noted the powers that are similar to the utility talents/racials of Pony Tales, and added the closest "comparison" to each (for instance, invisibility mutation is pretty much stealth mode).

I'm thinking of having the mutations be just "vaguely described abilities" that need a d100 roll when activating (allowing for crit fails, crit successes, successes, and failures, as with normal ones). The rest would be entirely up to DM discretion and player creativity as to how they get used, or what they do.

Zarhon wrote:Fashion Police
"Ugh, this armor clashes with my pants..."
This particular society has somewhat... skewed... priorities. Their members are generally recognizable by either garish, outlandish colored clothing and accessories, or uniform, sleek and fashionable wear, befitting their security status. Some members go as far as to avoid getting promoted, lest the enforced color-coded dress code ruins the rest of their ensemble. They have a strong distaste for the color-coded security system in general (particularly GREEN clearance citizens, whom they bludgeon with fancied-up batons), and thus go out of their ways to nullify or sabotage it. They also have an interest and use in "historical" clothing", which is now contraband, due to its use as "fashion statement" sowing treason.

I see what you did there.

Also:

Cutie Mark Crusaders
These guys just KNOW there's supposed to be something on that one spot on their butt. Members of this society are constantly trying to make their cutie marks appear, usually by attempting to do as many different activities as quickly as possible until something shows up. Special Talents are Mandatory, and according to these guys so are Cutie Marks.

Another update up! I added the utilities, some DM/player tips, a "session flow" example, sample items/equipment.

I think the doc is pretty much done at this point! Anyone else got some feedback? I'm considering testing this thing out as a skype session thing.

Edit: Added the CMC secret society.

If anyone is interested in playing a test session of Pony Tales Paranoia over Skype, PM me a character sheet (use the doc to make one) / Skype details / when you can play, roughly. Have one person's sheet so far, need at least three or four more players. It would be probably be in this or the following week, once I get enough players to try it out.

putting a character together, will post later today

Alright, I PMed a character, I'll help TEST at least.

Cool beans. Now I just need Kaji's sheet.

How open are people for playing next friday?

I can handle this upcoming Friday, or the one after.

Friday's fine by me

Friday is ok.

We had a session of Pony Tales Paranoia yesterday! Here's a summary of what happened:

(Zarhon) The almighty DM
(Kajisora) Trigger the Unicorn - Magic Monitor
(Eightscape/Doc Pseudopolis) Jim-R-Peg the Pegasus - Equipment Officer
(Z2) Anne the Zebra Pegasus - QL Engineer & Team Leader
(Bronymous) Pleasant Mist the Earth Pony - Task-Bucker

- The party starts in a vid-game arcade, chilling.
- FC appears on all screens, orders them to report to briefing zone. They have no idea where it is.
- A pair of nat20 rolls later, they find themselves in the briefing zone, where FC greets them, commending them on their speed.
- The get their mission: Investigating meteorological disturbances in sector DRP-3. Due to not all of them being able to fly/weathercraft, they are promised equipment to help with that issue.
- Their mission is given the codname "NOH" and they are all ordered to keep it a secret.
- Jim promptly gets vaporized for saying "no", breaking the above order.
- They are sent to a wall-eyed equipment officer, who gives them their equipment. Most of it ends up being unused: A biohazard mask (unused), 40 stryofoam cups, a crate of apple (they didn't figure out how to open it though), a utility belt (unused), goggles (unused), a metal stick device, rubber gloves, a multicorder, a bot (unused), and a rope (unused).
- They were then assigned their research equipment:
Gravitational Amplification Device (weight on a chain)
Experimental drug 0W13
Docbot-in-a-box
Cranium-mounted discordian ability detection device (promptly killed Pleasant Mist)
Nuclear Grenade
HyperAnswer orb
Super Absorber (sponge, with a requirement of 50 uses to be found for it)
Inert Gas Discharge Tube (a lamp, but they didn't know this)
Hyper-realistic no-fail traitor infiltration kit (transformed its wearer into a changeling, who prompty got shot for treason)
Hyper-hacker drive
Hyper-hacking drive

- They also get Hoof-mounted moisture stabilizers, which let them fly and walk on clouds. Pleasant Mist only gets two, leaving her wobbling in the air.
- They're then sent to mission. They immediately see the area is a bit flooded, weird clouds are in the air, a few bots are on the fritz, and a citizen is rolling in the water.
- They all sneak off and get their secret society missions
- The rolling citizen is found to be euphoric and mentally damaged from a happiness drug, found in one of the clouds
- A metallic cloud, on interaction, does nothing
- Anne fixes a Jack-o-bot who yields little useful information
- A scrub-bot is equally annoying/uncooperative
- Pleasant mist touches a blue, wobbling cloud, which makes it smear her in blue.
- Everyone tries to shoot her. They fail, as their lasers mysteriously stopped working. Pleasant Mist's stabilizers also malfunction, causing her to fall and break all her legs.
- Decisively, Jim attacks her with his stabilizers. They accidentally activate, metling Mist's face with a rocket-jet blast, and sending Jim flying uncontrollably.
- Jim crashes into a seemingly ordinary cloud that devours him. It then sinks from the weight of the gravity amplifier, and starts hopping towards the team.
- Anne sics the scrub-bot at the cloud, who annihilates it.
- The destroyed clouds quickly get replaced by a cloud-bot on a nearby weather facility. Anne tries to negotiate to make it stop, but it refuses.
- Trigger uses his gas discharge device and it hums ominously. He quickly throws it at another cloud, causing it to start leaking water at a immense rate, flooding everything below. The device lands, breaks, and electrocutes the water, and Trigger with it.
- Mist shoots the water-leaking cloud, causing it to explode water all around. Everyone but Anne and Mist are electrocuted, and fall into the electric water.
- Anne attempts a rescue mission, but almost succumbs to death herself as the gravity amplifier pulls Jim deeper into the water.
- The cloud bot breaks from the water damage.
- The party fiddles around with more clouds. Trigger tries to fix a artificial moon (which shouldn't be up), but fails. He then inspects a artificial sun, which appears to have too low a light. Within it's casing, a fusion rod is located.
- The metallic cloud from before somehow reached a nearby antenna on another building, causing a big storm that starts sucking in the clouds.
- Anne tests her hyperanswer orb, gets a number of useless answers, one of which gets her accused of treason, another gets her an intelligence test that forces her a brainscrubbing later.
- Anne then tests her Docbot - it quickly murders her as it attempts to remove her molars with a spinning sawblade, removing her upper skull in the process.
- Storm eventually mixes all the clouds and covers the sector, and would have killed everyone within it, had Trigger not wisely dropped his nuclear grenade into the artificial sun and shot it with his laser, causing it to become a less-artificial sun.
- Clones are brought to debriefing to a reasonably peeved Friend Computer.
- Jim offs himself with his laser, Anne gets executed for treason by Mist. Computer takes Anne's reports and the teams research experimentation as a "partial success". Survivors are carted off back to their usual citizen duties.

Zarhon wrote:(Z2) Anne the Earth Pony - QL Engineer & Team Leader
(Bronymous) Pleasant Mist the Zebra Pegasus - Task-Bucker

Races are backwards. I would never play a Zebra pretending to be a Pegasus.

Bronymous wrote:

Zarhon wrote:(Z2) Anne the Earth Pony - QL Engineer & Team Leader
(Bronymous) Pleasant Mist the Zebra Pegasus - Task-Bucker

Races are backwards. I would never play a Zebra pretending to be a Pegasus.

Fixed.

Although, you never know in Paranoia...

You're right, you caught me. I was a Zebra, pretending to be a Pegasus, but was disguised as an Earth Pony the whole time.

Started recruiting for more players for our paranoia group.