nology and progress which often characterises futuristic settings is entirely absent here: humanity has entered a new dark age, where progress is illegal, and the superstitious pray to the machines of yesteryear so that they’ll keep working. Rather than the focus on corporations and financial bureaucracy, 40k’s social oppression takes on an almost religious tone: citizens worship the divine emperor, who is dead and yet still lives (sort of), worship of anyone or anything else is illegal, the Imperial Inquisition can burn planets on command for heresy, and spaceships all look like intergalactic cathedrals. 40k presents us with a dystopia that is less science fiction and more dark ages fantasy in space, depending of course, on which corebook you’re playing. Deathwatch is a corebook focusing on alienhunting spec-ops warrior knights (Games Workshop’s divisive space marines), while Dark Heresy is the first, and as a result crudest, incarnation of the rules thus far, but is more well-rounded, focusing on investigation, combat, and social situations than Deathwatch’s more martial theme.
2. Paranoia
Paranoia has been knocking around since the 1980s in one form or another, and has built up quite a
cult following. Set primarily in a megacity known as Alpha Complex, Paranoia is rife with dystopian trappings; an all-powerful central computer who represents absolute authority, a tiered society where some have more rights than others, secret societies rebelling against the totalitarian state almost like a checklist of dystopian tropes. Paranoia is a little different from the other games on this list in terms of its tone: the rulebook is written in an accessible, conversational tone, and the ‘rules’ (which players are forbidden to show knowledge of) are deliberately kept as simple and streamlined as possible. Paranoia, you see, is designed to make players laugh.
“
Of course, each item on this list is purely personal preference, my opinion of what each game offers in terms of richness of setting and storytelling opportunity.”
It’s a very black kind of humour: players are issued seemingly nonsensical or impossible commands by the Computer (which of course may not be questioned), and the game’s various secret societies are all humorous pastiches of modern pop-cultural references and philosophies, such as the Seal Club -militant nature enthusiasts who have never actually encountered wild nature and whose understanding of it could generally be described as dubious at best. The players are issued equipment which routinely malfunctions and kills them, and
to top it all off, rather than working together to achieve a goal, Paranoia games routinely pitch the players against each other, as everyone seeks to curry favour with the Computer and further their own private agenda at the expense of the other players. Of course, all of these player machinations are further complicated by the feature that allows players to be killed and still continue the session (standard procedure gives every player a ‘six pack’ of expendable clones to burn through in an amusingly violent fashion), making betrayal a very complex process.
1. Eclipse Phase
Eclipse Phase is a very flexible game in that it need not actually be dystopian when you run it: the default setting provides a bunch of directions for games to go in, from space-station based survival horror scenarios to socially motivated political and journalistic wrangling. Set (mostly) within our solar system after World War III renders the earth completely uninhabitable, Eclipse Phase sees humanity scattered and fractious. Various societies exist, from loosely policed communes, to military autocracies. The game has various political factions, with their own differing philosophies, and options for creating some of the most interesting and diverse characters of any game I’ve seen that makes even a passing stab at ‘realism’. I’m including it in this list though, because it lends itself quite well to dystopian settings, with the game’s well fleshed out systems for surveillance, currency, and reputation allowing your GM to find all kinds of methods to ensure you feel suitably oppressed and kept in