John Heron Project

Greg Costikyan is one of the original designers of Paranoia, which is a massively entertaining RPG that a lot of people like, and he has been in this game designing game for more than twenty years. Anyway, he reviewed MSG™ a couple of days ago. on playthisthing.com, which is a site that looks at all sorts of games. It was a very positive review. Which is nice.

In a traditional RPG, players are expected to cooperate with each other with the GM as a neutral arbiter; Paranoia turns that on its head by encouraging players to betray and backstab each other. MSG does something similar, but subtly different; it pits the “gamemaster” at the players’ throats, balancing things by having each of the players act as GM in turn. That’s an interesting and novel approach, as are several other elements of the game — the fact that it comes to a definitive ending in a single session, and that there are winners and losers. In short, it defies many of the characteristics we normally ascribe to a tabletop RPG — in the context of a very cynical, and very cool, cyberpunky future where even the minimal constraints on corporate action that currently apply are removed, and any residual ethical norms for businessmen are considered the domain of chumps.

Excellent, in a word.

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