Your Mission
The Computer has generated the following mission for your team. It has been carefully designed to ensure the maximum safety and satisfaction for your team.
Paranoia is the Irrational Fear Someone is Out To Get You
(Fear) Dominant type of fear to install in the PCs: The PCs' service firms or secret societies are endangered.(Irrational) General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: Mysterious duplicates or analogues of the PCs or other YELLOW service firm staff supervisor (information source, amicable, self-interested, ordinary)s are active in Alpha Complex.
(Someone) Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A powerful mutant who wishes to see his own kind of mutants dominate, and normal humans and all other kinds of mutants subservient. (The identity of the Someone need not be obvious at the mission's outset, and in fact things may play out more appropriately if the Someone is not discovered until late in the proceedings.)
(Out To Get You) General apparent threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: A mysterious command makes all autopilot vehicles home in on YELLOW (Tension 9) abandoned bathroom (change Tension level to 20), threatening terrible harm en route; the "Someone" wants a traffic jam there. The threat is a lie.
(Out To Get You) General real threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: A major malfunction has rendered an entire sector uninhabitable; the local environment kills an unprotected citizen in minutes if not seconds.
Mission Alert: Scrawled across a GREEN (Tension 11) Sewer tunnel wall in half-meter-high letters written in blood. Briefing time is wrong. The information is obscured by advertising (pop-up ad, jingle, viral marketing, etc.). Sponsoring advertiser may possibly have record of unaltered alert.
Briefing: Briefing is in Armed Forces dome defense turret (defense position on the outer dome). Briefing occurs in a pitch black room, where the only source of light is from the corridor outside the briefing room filtering in under the door. 2 officers present.
This Mission: The surveillance system at BLUE (Tension 14) crowded grooming and hygiene station has gone down. Repair it and determine the cause.
Outfitting: Infrared Market: A "Broke" market. Troubleshooters always leave broke, with stuff that's broke. Bad deals all around.
Debriefing: Room is fitted with seesaws, with a PC sitting on one side of each and a Blue Trooper with blaster on the other. In the lower position, the PCs are obscured by a charred blast shield. The debriefing officer reads mission details, raising each PC on a note of treason, lowering them on a point of commendation. (This is an experimental HPD&MC psychological exercise intended to encourage loyalty.)
Find weird phrasing, clearly erroneous output, or other signs of filthy commie mutant traitor sabotage? Copy the offending passages and email them to the High Programmer for investigation.