Games Masters Screen (Paranoia) [Hardcover]

Mongoose Publishing's Paranoia RPG Game Master's Screen offers great quality, but severely lacks in content.

The first thing you will notice about this screen in that it's made of a heavy material as seen on hardcover books. This is fantastic! This screen is surely to last for years to come. It's also important to note that the screen is formatted in portait orientation as opposed to landscape as seen in the D&D 4.0 DM screen. This was a big plus.

Next thing to note is what's on the player's side. Three of the four panels features the classic Jim Holloway art from the new Paranoia books beatifully Photoshopped together with PARANOIA spanning the length. It's great to see that the text isn't just set on top of everything, but that it blends in with the artwork with some of the art overlapping the text. So what's on the fourth panel? The fourth panel first of all is jaringly white in contrast to the dark art on the latter panels. It features the words PARANOIA Games Masters Screen along with the price, barcode, and MONGOOSE PUBLISHING. In the background is art from the second panel with the white 'eye' of the computer acting as a filter. It looks NOTHING like the picture on any site I found it on. Why couldn't just add a piece of paper with all the ugly info? I don't know.

Lastly the meat of the screen. The tables. This is were the title "Troubleshooters Beware" comes in. I will give a list of the tables.
'*' marks tables useless to troubleshooters.

- Gaining Treason Points
- Tension levels by location
- Armour chart
- Weapon chart *
- Commendation Points
- Assigned Access *
- Quick Damage Lookup *
- Troubleshooter Complication Table *
- Skills *

The weapons chart takes up 2 panels. That's right, over half of the screen. In them only 5 weapons are clearance "R". Also noticeably missing is the Damage Steps chart which would be very handy. So out of nine tables (which is measily for a GM screen) only 4 or 5 are usefull to a troubleshooter. Apparently the other tables are for their other versions of Paranoia "Internal Security" and "High Programmers". This was unbeknownst to me and was not said in the description.

It should be noted that I bought this screen and the Troubleshooters "Black Missions" book at the same time. I was unaware that the other books were "core". I just figured they were supplements that offered a new setting and campaigns. If Mongoose were to offer a Troubleshooters errata of sorts for this screen that certainly would mend a lot of the problems.

So if your just getting into this game as a Troubleshooter DON'T BUY THIS. It is useless. If you've been playing this for a while and have gone onto "Int Sec" then DON'T BUY THIS, since it's useless to you too. I really don't know who this was made for. Paranoia is a really rules light game, so anyone who has played for years doesn't need charts for, well, anything. They should have geared this twords new players (and GMs) and included MANY more charts that dealt with the fluff and not the mechanics. I.E. Secret Societies, Mutant Powers, Punishments, a Straight or Zap conversion chart, Information Withholding/ Equipment Denial, Boost Chart, hell even the Random Crate/Vat/Barrel Contents chart would be more usefull than two pages of guns that Troubleshoooters can't use, and most importantly SKILLS THAT TROUBLESHOOTERS USE.

Let me start of my giving my bias: DM/GM screens are 50% about aesthetics and 50% table content.

So you can image how very disappointed I was to find that it had been bent. Sadly, it was obvious that it had been bent BEFORE it was put into the shipping box. Must have been some commie scum in QA. However, kudos to Amazon for sending me a replacement (w/out such a bend) with one day shipping. Well done Amazon - happy customer here.

The second thing I notice upon opening this product as the awful smell of the glue used to bind this together. Yuck! Smells like something an Infrared brought up from one of the glue vats. It will takes weeks for the smell to completely effuse from this screen.

The next thing that struck me was that the high gloss quality of the Pathfinder and Hackmaster GM screens is most definitely not part of this product. The binding is flat, especially the raw paper that the tables are printed on. The artwork for the front is "OK"; however, I would have preferred artwork by Jim Holloway. That being said, with the exception of Pathfinder and Hackmaster screens, the aesthetics of this product outshine the rest of the DM/GM screen pack. The strudy cardboard is certainly is an improvement to my beloved Paranoia GM screen that came with my 1985 copy of The Yellow Clearance BlackBox Blues.

The Tables are a mixed bag:
* Gaining Treason Points - useful reminder of just what is treasonous behavior
* Tension levels by location - useful if you use tension levels (I certainly don't). Pulling out my glue gun....
* Armour chart - useful for combat
* Weapon chart - useful for combat but........ covers two pages instead of one like in the book! (I plan to fix that with some better smelling glue)
* Commendation Points - Useful for debriefing
* Assigned Access - Hum...... Really? Hum.... Zap! With my glue gun!
* Quick Damage Lookup - somewhat useful for combat
* Troubleshooter Complication Table - A more useless table than Assigned Access! I have no CLUE what this is here. ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!
* Skills - Hum... This skill list does not match up with my nice Paranioa XP source book. I can only assume that there are changes in later products. Looks like my glue gun will have to some to the rescue again! I notice that Bootlicking is missing. Let's be clear: ANY GAME THAT DOES NOT HAVE THE BOOKLICKING SKILL IS NOT PARANOIA. Mega ZAP with my trusty glue gun.

What's missing:
* NPC names (always good when improvising)
* As mentioned by a previous reviewer, random event and/or container contents, misc flavor text, etc. will have helped in creating flavor.
* Sample Perversity Modifiers
* IR market goods and services

The "good news" is that because the tables are literally raw paper glued onto the cardboard, I should be able to clue on my table changes without much trouble and it will look nice when I'm done.

I am happy I bought this product and will be able to easily fix its short comings (though I do resent having to) and I appreciate Amazon fixing their mistake.

UPDATE: I have since found through various searches that there existed (exists?) a previous Paranoia Game Masters Screen by Mongoose Publishing. If you perform a search on Amazon you will see that it is misslinked as a Drow book (Commie Mutant Plot!!!). And I must say that I strongly would have prefered this other screen. The tables are exactly what I wanted when I had bought the screen I reviewed - plus it comes with a random event booklet. Yummy. Now I just need to find a way to buy it... Maybe someone at Amazon will read this review and fix the link... and someone will sell me their used... Hum...