Alpha Complex: Classic vs. Current(Warning: a bit long, but hopefully generates some discussion)
Anyone who has seen my posts on this subreddit may have noticed I've been pretty critical of the new edition (hi
u/wjmacguffin!) and that one of my sticking points has been the way the setting was being handled, even though I've had some trouble putting my finger on exactly why. With the announcement of The Perfect Edition its been on my mind again, so I'm posting about it here in case it might generate some interesting discussion.
The first thought involved the attempts at "updating" the setting to match modern tropes. Commie Mutant Traitors were replaced with more generic terrorists. Cell phone-like Cerebral Coretech with apps, data feeds and heads-up displays replaced the clunky Com Units of old, biometric tracking used to ID citizens instead of the weirder tounge tattoos from older editions. Overt video game style XP and Treason Stars meant to be bluntly displayed in your field of vision rather than a more sinister method of privately tracking various treason/loyalty metrics behind the scenes.
These changes didn't feel very Paranoia to me. Was it just a knee-jerk "change is bad" reaction on my part? Maybe a tiny bit, but as I think about it it runs a lot deeper than that to what really appealed to me about the setting: it was never a reflection of "modern" sensibilities, even back in 1984 when the first edition was released. The current Alpha Complex seems to take on a vision of the future where the modern world evolves into setting of the game, carrying along some modern baggage and tropes. The original Alpha Complex did not.
When inspiration for the setting in media comes up one of the top suggestions every time is Logan's Run, and rightly so. Say what you will about the film, it hits the right tone in how it presents the world as a scary dystopia masquerading as a idyllic utopia at gunpoint. It was also born of a very specific mindset of a world that spins out of control coming from a uniquely cold war mindset. The technology isn't realistic advancement of science, its crazy retro-tech with laser guns, clunky robots and weird science that can only really occur if you take atomic age movie serials and try to make them real - and thinking that is a normal thing to do. It's not a futuristic setting, it's retro-futuristic, the kind of future that can only make sense when viewed through a seriously out-of-date lens.
In that headspace, massive underground warrens that started as bomb shelters "of the future" but left too long to their own devices makes a weird kind of sense. Applying that same project from a more modern standpoint feels forced though, and trying to apply social media mentalities don't really fit. The idea of an Alpha Complex approached with a 21st century mindset on its own really doesn't make sense, the whole setting starts to creak when applying any internal logic to it. But a setting where you have the far future as imagined by 1950's-era thinking you generate a really specific kind of setting with a very unique flavor, in the same way classic Cyberpunk really only works when you look at it from a 1980's sensibility where Japanese Megacorps and street-level body replacements were the inevitable end result of society. Obviously it didn't work that way, but Street Samurai and Netrunning seem like a really silly concepts by modern standards - yet work in-setting if you embrace that older mindset. Same applies to Paranoia IMHO. At its best Alpha Complex had that very specific anachronistic vibe that was notably apart from modern trends, even when it took steps to satirize those trends. Commie Mutant Traitors carry a more meaningful punch in-setting than a more generic "terrorist" ever will, even if the latter term feels more familiar for people not looking at the game world.
"But modern gamers can't relate to the Cold War!" I hear some of you say. I disagree. If that were true how do you explain a game series like Fallout which leans heavily on many of the same themes. You have a future projected out from a 1950's idea of nuclear war, tons of cold war concepts and literal Communist threats, weird atomic age style tech... even underground science vaults! That franchise sells millions of copies and has had numerous RPG adaptations, including the very recent Fallout RPG. They don't feel a need to update those themes to appeal to modern gamers, and in fact there would be open revolt if they did. Yet the series gets more popular over time even as the core themes are less in line with modern tropes.
That's what I really miss about Alpha Complex when I see how it has been updated. The unique retro-futuristic vibe is being lost while chasing after modernization of ideas that no one seemed to be asking for. Rather than trying to improve what worked before a lot was tossed out to what someone seemed to feel would be more "current", and as a result made it feel weirdly dated as modern trends shot right past those marks. Classic Paranoia didn't worry about that so much as it had staked out its own territory and built out that space rather than trying to relate to who they imagined would be playing the game (while also constructing a gameplay space that encouraged groups to mostly ignore the setting anyway, but that's another rant).
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