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 have enough resources but too little time to win.(Irrational) General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: One kind of technological object (economic object (credit license analyzer, plasticred duplicator, IR market activity scanner); Problem: enrages citizens against user) is misbehaving.
(Someone) Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A senior PLC official, whose division has fallen into strangling bureaucratic torpor and must now be massively overhauled or terminated. (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: A deadly pathogen is eating through the population. The PCs are infected the moment their clone backups are decanted. Better hurry on the mission!
Mission Alert: Text message on PDC. Briefing time is wrong. The alert itself is damaging-text message contains software virus that crashes PDC or vidscreen, physical alert has toxins or is radioactive, etc.
Briefing: Briefing is in ULTRAVIOLET mausoleum. Briefing officer wears power vest (Experimental R&D equipment, charged with high voltage, does S4K energy damage to attackers using bare hands, metal hand weapons or force swords) and fiddles with an exotic-looking stun gun (stuns for one round) (He weapon is more lethal than the standard model. Much more lethal. (Weapon hits for one damage step above its maximum)); expects attack at any moment.
This Mission: The power in INFRARED (Tension 3) Vulture Squadron indoor flybot testing facility has gone out. Determine the cause and bring the power back online.
Outfitting: Infrared Market: Marketeer gives PCs a fair discount if they also take a "bonus" small dangerous creature from Outdoors, on leash; marketeer wants the PCs to leave it in IR market.
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.