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 are themselves the greatest threat to Alpha Complex.(Irrational) General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: One or more laws of nature has been altered or revoked. It's magnetism, electricity or other energy.
(Someone) Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A senior CPU efficiency consultant, who overreacted in imprudent ways in an effort to get proper paperwork filled out. (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 major malfunction has rendered an entire sector uninhabitable; the local environment kills an unprotected citizen in minutes if not seconds. 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: Surplus Armed Forces weaponry floods the IR market. Citizens (INFRARED algae pizza delivery person (indifferent bystander, amicable, self-interested, ordinary); RED R&D weapons beta tester (bureaucratic obstacle, quietly delusional); RED Power Services wire spooler (sadistic hindrance, paranoid with plasma generator (V1V energy) and specialized armor suited to circumstances (environment suit, Faraday suit, asbestos clothing, if no specialty is useful, substitute kevlar))) happily demonstrate their new armaments in many locations (INFRARED (Tension 1) abandoned hangar (or other large room); ORANGE (Tension 7) crowded living quarters (IR: barracks; R-Y: dormitory; G-B: apartment; I-U: mansion); VIOLET (Tension 18) empty hangar (or other large room)).
Mission Alert: Via Psychbot Sanity Restoration Unit (see rulebook, page 204) functional. Briefing time is wrong. The information is replaced by extortion threat from anonymous hacker: "Send 100cr to this Gray Subnet account and I'll send you the data."
Briefing: Briefing is in inside Alpha Complex dome . Bureaucratic snafu assigns briefing officer to the room above the PCs; won't join PCs for fear of violating orders; shouts at the top of his voice to be heard, or conveys briefing information by notes, courier, Morse code, etc..
This Mission: Investigate mysterious disappearances of citizens in ORANGE (Tension 8) ULTRAVIOLET Gallery of Perversities. If they're being captured by Commies, save them. If they're trying to escape Alpha Complex, shoot them.
Outfitting: C-Bay or other online auction site: Price: 30% off. Delivery: drop point 30 minutes away (INDIGO (Tension 16) crowded dispatch in Troubleshooter HQ). Items the PCs want are listed against a red-tinted background. No other items are. What's up? (Nothing. But keep the players nervous about it.)
Debriefing: The debriefing room is locked when the PCs arrive, and no debriefing officer ever arrives no matter how long they wait.
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.