I began Sunday of Gamex with a 9am game of Arkham Horror, a cooperative boardgame. Unfortunately, the person running the game was not terribly familiar with it and only one of the eight players had actually played it before. We ended up winning (and I got the second place ribbon for it), but it wasn't entirely clear if we were playing correctly.

After Arkham, I had a game of Paranoia XP. Our troubleshooter team was assigned to join a newly formed organizational group. Due to some strange incident, a new organization--the DCOD--had formed and our team had been sent to staff it. Apparently, they were assigning new clearances based on the order that teams arrived in, and due to my quick action, I ended up being assigned to Green clearance (the highest I've ever been assigned in any game) with the rest of my group being assigned to level Yellow. We then had to go get outfitted for a mission at an armory that had recently changed from army to DCOD hands, but were waylaid by a low level army officer who didn't seem to appreciate the new change in power structure. After trying negotiation and one of our troublemakers getting a foot-wide hole blown from his chest, I chose to hit him in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher. Of course, this being Paranoia, he came back rather quickly to visit us again and ended up in another firefight and getting his body scarred by one of our team shooting him with a laser weapon which was used to permanently burn the logo of the DCOD into things. Apparently things include bodies.

The second firefight with the army officer ended up causing enough damage to the armory that we were forced to flee with whatever equipment we could carry. A few moments after fleeing, the building promptly exploded after we directed a nearby Red/Infrared unit to secure it (I put in a commendation for their team).

We then headed off to the Multilevel Transit Hub and Shopping Funsperience which was where our assigned mission was to take place. At about that time, I was subjected to an impromptu attack from several of my fellow troubleshooters. One of them had stabbed me in the shoulder with a truth serum syringe while and then they began asking me if I was a mutant, when I (of course) denied it and had my nose grow Pinocchio-style, two began attacking me. One eventually injured himself with a piece of issued equipment (rocket boots breaking both legs and the hip) and blew himself up with a grenade. The one who had actually injected me with truth serum teleported away--proving that it was he, not I, who was a Commie Mutant Traitor--when I ordered the nearby Red/Infrared squad to capture him. I somehow managed to survive the attack and ended up with the non-traitorous members of the party. Unfortunately, due to a database synchronization error (probably resulting from traitor sabotage) we were temporarily detained on suspect of having fraudulent identification. Luckily, the misunderstanding was cleared up without bloodshed and we were soon called off to deal with a biochemical contamination on the lowest level of the building.

At the bottom of the level, we found our Red/Infrared team having an argument with a group of Reds. Our team was attempting to convince the Reds that they needed to get into a room so that they could deal with the contamination. After comparing the readings our Red/Infrared team was getting with the apparent status as given by the group of Reds, I asked Friend Computer to send an additional set of scanning equipment to clarify the error. Friend Computer decided to resolve the situation by destroying all faulty equipment. By using the camera-mounted laser, it destroyed our scanning bot and also killed the opposing group of Reds. Problem solved.

Not long after this, we breached the room releasing a flow of some sort of contaminant that had apparently been building up underneath the Multilevel Transit Hub and Shopping Funsperience. The release unfortunately flooded a nearby reactor, setting off a sizable explosion, but most of our team managed to survive.

Incidentally, this was the first Paranoia game in which I survived from beginning to end without losing a single clone. Of course, I was assigned to reactor shield duty afterwords due to a computer glitch caused by one of my teammates blowing up a large section of the Multilevel Transit Hub and Shopping Funsperience. Apparently, they had been an agent of Purge--the secret society bent on destroying the Computer.


I next had signed up for another RPGA game. This game was actually one of the best that I played due to the player mix. Everyone playing was very familiar with the system and with their characters, so the game went quite quickly. In fact, despite starting late (a chronic problem with the RPGA games due to disorganization), we managed to finish in under 3 hours.

Incidentally, one of the people at the game apparently runs a podcast which has recordings of games that he plays in. He recorded our game, so I expect it to show up online eventually. This game also had the GM from the Friday night game that I thought was so good in it as a player.


Since my RPGA game finished early, I wandered over to see what was going on in the board gaming room. I arrived just in time to play in the Race for the Galaxy tournament. I ended up being mostly crushed in the first round, so I joined a sponsored game of The Stars are Right.

The Stars are Right is a tile pushing game with a Lovecraftian theme. I ended up coming in second, but that got me little more than a ribbon.

Published by XPost^curses