A Little Paranoia Goes a Long Way - Intra-Party Antagonism

At Games That Can Not Be Named two weeks ago, we played a session of Tunnels & Trolls. I wrote a bit about this last week. I'm not sure if I mentioned that almost right from the start of the session, we had some inter-party antagonism going on. A failed casting of Oh Go Away on another player led to one hell of a beat down of the wizzie in question. Did I mention the players are a couple in real life? heh

I've noticed recently that pick-up games don't instill the same party loyalty that a ongoing campaign does, but that's not a surprise. What is a bit surprising is the players' desire (in some cases) to do something that is totally out of place in the game because they can - there are no long term consequences.

My idea? I wan't to break out my 1st Edition Paranoia rules for one of these game days, give everyone a pre-gen with lots of treasonous secrets and let everything take it's course.

Doesn't matter to me if folks say the system is broken - the players won't have the proper security clearance to see the rules.

The character write up will ensure that each player has many reasons to be paranoid of their fellow players. If chaos doesn't ensue within the first 15 minutes of gameplay, I'll be doing something wrong.

My idea is to channel this intra-party aggressiveness with a game that thrives on intra-party aggressiveness. Personally, I think Paranoia was written with pick-up games in mind. (I know we were never able to run more then two sessions with the same characters, as clones got swapped out faster then a newborn babies diapers).