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: Everyone in Alpha Complex behaves in an inexplicably suspicious or hateful way toward all PCs.
(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 deadly pathogen is eating through the population. The PCs are infected the moment their clone backups are decanted. Better hurry on the mission! 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 high-clearance official's malfeasance will be exposed, and paranoid with gauss gun (W3K energy) and electromagnetic clothing (Experimental R&D equipment, makes wearer a living magnet; can stick to metal walls, watch out for knives!) wishes to frame the Troubleshooters for the official's crime.
Mission Alert: Text message on PDC. Message is intact and correct.
Briefing: Briefing is in empty postal sorting room. 3 briefing officers behind opaque bulletproof glass, voices electronically filtered.
This Mission: The power in VIOLET (Tension 18) Humanists meeting room (has meeting in progress) has gone out. Determine the cause and bring the power back online.
Outfitting: C-Bay or other online auction site: Price: 30% off. Delivery: agreed drop point nearby (ORANGE (Tension 8) crowded reactor control room), immediate. A rival auction site has insidiously faked the site the PCs intended to use; the transaction goes through the rival site; the delivery is accompanied by a hard-sell pitchman VIOLET Master Programmer Associate (indifferent bystander, believes himself possessed by demons) who drafts the PCs as promoters for the rival site and won't give them their equipment until they commit.
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.