Pandemonium (role-playing game)

Pandemonium
	Pandemonium! Adventures in Tabloid World
Designer(s)	Stephan Michael Sechi
Publisher(s)	MIB Productions, Inc.
Publication date	1993
Genre(s)	Comedy
System(s)	custom

Last updated April 30, 2019

Pandemonium is a comedy role-playing game designed by Stephan Michael Sechi and published by MIB Productions, Inc. It is inspired by the fictional "news" that appears in tabloid publications such as the Weekly World News .

In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

Stephan Michael Sechi is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Setting

Pandemonium's campaign setting is a fictionalized version of Earth that the game refers to as Tabloid World. In Tabloid World, all of the unlikely events described in tabloids are true, although most of the public does not believe so. (For example, Elvis Presley is alive, aliens abduct people on a regular basis, and the Bermuda Triangle hides the lost continent of Atlantis.) People who know the truth about Tabloid World are referred to as Enlightened.

A campaign setting is usually a fictional world which serves as a setting for a role-playing game or wargame campaign. A campaign is a series of individual adventures, and a campaign setting is the world in which such adventures and campaigns take place. Usually a campaign setting is designed for a specific game or a specific genre of game. There are numerous campaign settings available both in print and online. In addition to published campaign settings available for purchase, many game masters create their own settings, often referred to as "homebrew" settings or worlds.

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in 365.26 days, a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times.

Elvis Aaron Presley, commonly known as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

Player characters in Pandemonium are Paranormal Investigators (P.I.s), Enlightened individuals who have left their regular jobs (or Mundane Professions) to research unusual phenomena for the fictional newspaper Weekly Weird News. Their adventures typically involve investigating sightings of tabloid staples like Elvis and Bigfoot in order to uncover larger mysteries and conspiracies.

A player character is a fictional character in a role-playing game or video game whose actions are directly controlled by a player of the game rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not controlled by a player are called non-player characters (NPCs). The actions of non-player characters are typically handled by the game itself in video games, or according to rules followed by a gamemaster refereeing tabletop role-playing games. The player character functions as a fictional, alternate body for the player controlling the character.

An adventure is either a published or otherwise written collection of plot, character, and location details used by a gamemaster to manage the plot or story in a role-playing game. Each adventure is based upon a particular gaming genre and is normally designed for use with a specific game or gaming system. However, skilled gamemasters can often convert an adventure to different game systems, and many adventures are designed with such conversions in mind.

In North American folklore, Bigfoot or Sasquatch are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness and leave footprints. Depictions often portray them as a missing link between humans and human ancestors or other great apes. They are strongly associated with the Pacific Northwest, and individuals claim to see the creatures across North America. Over the years, these creatures have inspired numerous commercial ventures and hoaxes. The plural nouns 'Bigfoots' and 'Bigfeet' are both acceptable.

System

Pandemonium's rules are divided into two groups. The E-Z Rules are a minimal ruleset intended for beginning players, and assume players use pregenerated characters included in the rulebook. The Very Complicated Rules allow player-generated customized characters and include more detailed rules for combat and other tasks.

Pandemonium characters have three Attributes (Body, Mind, and Spirit), which are described as bonuses to action rolls. For example, a Body score of "+1" gives the character a one point bonus to die rolls involving physical activities. Characters also have skills which provide adjustments to action rolls. Skills may derive from characters' Mundane Professions, Hobbies, or Paranormal Talents.

An attribute is a piece of data that describes to what extent a fictional character in a role-playing game possesses a specific natural, in-born characteristic common to all characters in the game. That piece of data is usually an abstract number or, in some cases, a set of dice. Some games use different terms to refer to an attribute, such as statistic, (primary) characteristic or ability. A number of role-playing games like Fate do not use attributes at all.

Character actions in Pandemonium are resolved by rolling a ten-sided die, adding the relevant Attribute or skill bonus, and subtracting situational modifiers (if the Very Complicated Rules are being used). If the adjusted result (the Action Sum) is six or higher, the character succeeds in the action. The Action Sum is then compared to the Fate Table to determine the degree of success. Players may improve their rolls by spending their characters' Instant Karma Points, which are earned in a manner similar to experience points in other games.

One of Pandemonium's most distinctive rules involves past lives. In keeping with the game's tabloid theme, all P.I.s are reincarnations of historical figures such as Joan of Arc or Albert Einstein, who have skills and abilities far superior to a typical character's (a notable exception is Elvis Presley, who in the game's world is still alive). If a P.I. successfully recalls a past life (through a successful action roll), the P.I. assumes the past life's personality and skills for ten minutes.

Joan of Arc, in French Jeanne d'Arc or Jehanne, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans", is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. She was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in north-east France. Joan claimed to have received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent Joan to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory.

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics. His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He is best known to the general public for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc², which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.

The gamemaster in Pandemonium is called The Editor.

History

The game's core book, Pandemonium! (subtitled Adventures in Tabloid World) is a 176-page softcover manual written by Stephan Michael Sechi, Robin Laws, and Joel Kaye. It was published in 1993 by MIB Productions, Inc. and distributed by Atlas Games. Pandemonium was the first role-playing game inspired by tabloid newspapers, predating the Amazing Engine-based Tabloid! by one year.

MIB Productions and Atlas Games released only one accessory for Pandemonium. Stranger Than Truth (subtitled Further Adventures in Tabloid World) is a 96-page collection of adventures written by Rob Heinsoo, Robin Laws, and John Scott Tynes, published in 1994.

In the summer of 1996, Atlas Games publicly admitted that Pandemonium had "not found a solid market niche", and reduced its overstock by giving away copies of both products (Varney 1996).

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References

Varney, Allen 1996. 'The Current Clack.' Dragon , 232:118-120 (Aug 1996).