Extreme PARANOIA
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™ PAExtremeRAN PARANOIAOIA Now, at all clearances from ORANGE through VIOLET, players can experience the same gnawing anxiety! BY THE TRAITOR RECYCLING STUDIO (www.traitorrecycling.com) STEVE GILBERT ANDY ‘JAZZER’ FITZPATRICK CONDENSED CONTENTS JEFF GROVES Graphics Introduction / Expanded contents 2 GARETH HANRAHAN JOHN SPANN 1. New MBDs (Eric Minton) 3 GREG INGBER 2. The roller coaster(Allen Varney) 16 DAN CURTIS JOHNSON Emergency Response Typist 3. Real estate (Bill O’Dea) 24 KARL LOW RON BEDISON 4. Happy Fun Job Placement Center ERIC MINTON Proofreading JOSHUA MORETTO (Steve Gilbert) 28 BILL O’DEA DAN GELBER 5. EAP clubs ALLEN VARNEY GREG COSTIKYAN (Gareth Hanrahan) 33 ERIC GOLDBERG Design Insecurity clearances Original game design & development KEN ROLSTON ORANGE 39 Wrote the original HIL Sector Blues IAN BELCHER YELLOW 50 Mongoose Publishing roleplaying (1987), rehashed in this book GREEN 59 manager BETH FISCHI BLUE 70 ALLEN VARNEY ALEXANDER FENNELL INDIGO 107 Mongoose Publishing production director Editing, layout VIOLET 118 JIM HOLLOWAY THE COMPUTER Appendix: AlphaNet (Bill O’Dea) 128 Cover and interior illustrations ‘Extreme’ doesn’t begin to describe it Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET WARNING: Knowledge or possession of this information by any citizen of Security Clearance VIOLET or below is treason punishable by some grisly fate we’ll determine later, when we get around to it. TM & Copyright © 1983, 1987, 2005 by Eric Goldberg & Greg Costikyan. All Rights Reserved. Mongoose Publishing Ltd., Authorized User. Based on material published in previous editions of PARANOIA. ILLUMINATI is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and is used by permission. The reproduction of material from this book for personal or corporate profi t, by photographic, electronic, or other means of storage and retrieval, is prohibited. You may copy character sheets, record sheets, checklists and tables for personal use. E-mail questions and comments to Mongoose Publishing at [email protected], or write to PO Box 1018, Swindon, Wiltshire SN3 1DG, UNITED KINGDOM. On the World Wide Web: www.mongoosepublishing.com. Published by Mongoose Publishing, Ltd. Publication MGP 6638. Published August 2005. First printing August 2005. EXTREME Introduction EXPANDED CONTENTS Introduction 2 Famous Game Designers talk about a roleplaying game’s 1. New MBDs 3 core story—a summary of a stereotypical play session of Advertising & branding offi cer 4 Agent provocateur 6 that game. Alertness offi cer 8 Financial offi cer 10 For instance, the ‘core story’ of the leading (non-fun) fantasy Medical offi cer 12 RPG: ‘A party of adventurers assembles to seek fame and Public relations guy 14 fortune. They leave civilization for a location of extreme 2. The roller coaster: Rising (and falling) in clearance 16 danger. They fi ght monsters, overcome obstacles and Creating high-clearance PCs 22 acquire new abilities and items of power. Afterward they About Access 23 return to civilization and sell the loot. Next week, they do it 3. Real estate 24 4. Job Placement Center 28 all over again.’ 5. EAP clubs 33 Insecurity clearances The core story of any comic-book superhero RPG: ‘The ORANGE 39 characters, a team of superheroes, learn of a plot that puts IntSec dossier 40 them or innocent people in danger. They use their special Mission dispatchers 41 Secret society life 41 powers to defeat the villain or agency responsible for the ORANGE oppotunities 42 plot. The heroes then return to their secret lives as normal Vidshow stars 43 people, waiting to be alerted to the next crisis.’ YELLOW 50 IntSec dossier 51 Everyone knows, or thinks he knows, the core story of Internal Affairs agents 52 Secret society life 53 PARANOIA: ‘Lowly RED Clearance Troubleshooters seek and YELLOW yummies 54 destroy traitors. They struggle with all-pervading secrecy, Asst. retail sales managers 55 lethal equipment they’re not cleared to know how to operate, GREEN 59 IntSec dossier 60 offi cious bureaucrats who outrank them, better-equipped Civic Pride Detail 61 enemies and the occasional crazed scrubot. They all die Secret society life 61 multiple times before the fi nal hose-job debriefi ng.’ GREEN goodies 62 EDR Teams 63 This supplement proves none of that is essential to BLUE 70 IntSec dossier 71 PARANOIA’s core story. (Well, yes, the multiple deaths....) Outdoors Duty 72 Unlike these non-fun RPGs, the psychological exercise that Secret society life 72 is PARANOIA focuses not on characters or setting, but on the BLUE bonuses 73 IntSec BLUE Troopers players, sitting around your table with their character sheets (‘HIL Sector Blues’) 74 and munchies. The real core story: INDIGO 107 IntSec dossier 108 ‘PARANOIA players, pretending to be various characters in INDIGO improvements 109 Alpha Complex, experience comedic fear, ignorance, tense Secret agents 110 Secret society life 110 suspicion that other players will soon betray them and the R&D mad scientists 114 overwhelming urge to betray others fi rst.’ VIOLET 118 IntSec dossier 119 Welcome to Extreme PARANOIA. Personal assistants 120 VIOLET variety 121 We actually have a lot more to say, but it won’t fi t on this Secret society life 122 page. To keep pontifi cating, we’ve stolen the fi rst part of the Executives 122 VIOLETs: The UV view 127 Chapter 1 introduction on the facing page. We’ll lick this Appendix: AlphaNet 128 whole layout issue one of these days.... 1. NEW MBDS INTRODUCTION 1. New Mandatory Bonus Duties All these new (or recycled) ways to play Opening out the game show PARANOIA’s versatility. More than a game of hysterical Zap-style mayhem, it is New MBDs (fi nally...) The original PARANOIA rulebook let your the roleplaying fi eld’s defi ning embodiment of by Eric Minton players create and play Troubleshooters of RED paranoid tension. It works well for single game Clearance, just one step above the faceless sessions, miniseries and now, with the material Oh yeah— Mandatory Bonus Duties! INFRARED masses of Alpha Complex. Now, in this book, extended campaigns. Over their It was cheesy of us, we know, to slip in all Extreme PARANOIA lets players create and characters’ lengthy and varied careers, players that introductory material in this chapter. Sorry, play characters across the security clearance will experience new fears and new kinds of we couldn’t fi t it all on the previous page. But spectrum, from unimpressive ORANGE (one ignorance, including some kinds otherwise now we’re back on track! step above RED) to powerful VIOLET. unknown in gaming. Before getting to all the high-clearance Troubleshooters at these higher clearances But through it all, the core story holds. The excitement that composes most of the book, can become mission dispatchers or Internal players’ greatest enemy remains the same: Extreme PARANOIA offers six new Mandatory Affairs investigators—undertake Civic Pride themselves. Bonus Duty (MBD) assignments. Like the Duty or Outdoors Duty—infiltrate secret Perfection is a magical point where the original six duties described in Chapter 43 of societies—eventually even become personal players have stopped looking at their characters the rulebook, these are jobs a Troubleshooter assistants to the most illustrious and powerful and saying ‘Haha, this is messed up’. Instead, is required to volunteer for, perform and enjoy psychopaths in Alpha Complex. And now they’re looking at you and saying, ‘How could as a reward for continued service. there’s plenty more to do than just shoot trouble. you let us do this to ourselves?’ They thought Like the original six duties, these are optional, Characters can become actors in vidshow their eyes were wide open; they knew the and they work best with players (and GMs!) dramas, Emergency Disaster Response Team PARANOIA routine; but somehow they still already familiar with PARANOIA—and, in this celebrities, VIOLET executives and—yes, at feel betrayed—extra-special betrayed—darkly, case, also with the original six MBDs. Unlike the last—assistant sales managers. And we’ve humorously betrayed. original duties, there is no MBD Determination resurrected and updated Ken Rolston’s 1987 Yet who can they really blame but Test to determine who gets which of these new supplement for fi rst-edition PARANOIA, HIL themselves? Oh, that’s right—they can blame duties, so have your players draw straws or Sector Blues, to once more let players become each other. arm-wrestle or something. Internal Security BLUE Troopers. I KNOW WHEN YOU’VE BEEN SLEEPING, I KNOW WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE... 3 CLEARANCE ULTRAVIOLET Advertising & branding offi cer The advertising & branding offi cer works to maintain your team’s service fi rm endorsements, keeping you well supplied with service fi rm merchandise. He negotiates with your service fi rm sponsor, supplying you with free equipment bearing your sponsor’s logo. Naturally, you’ll play a role in making sure this beloved logo is clearly seen on each and every member of your team. Don’t be shy about showing off your brand! Likewise, it’s his job to make sure no one on the team waters down the brand with disloyal use of competing brands. Violating the terms of your endorsement isn’t just bad manners—it’s treason! You can help your A&B offi cer by keeping an eye on your teammates. Don’t let them hurt the team with ill-advised or infringing use of competing brands and merchandise! Your success depends on brand loyalty, because a strong brand makes a strong team. logo, along with an assortment of their won’t get you off the hook when they cancel merchandise. By wearing the logo and using their endorsement because you used a regular The advertising & the merchandise in public areas and on the laser pistol instead of a FunBeam. branding offi cer: All about news vids, the Troubleshooters improve the And it’s not just the competing products intellectual property service fi rm’s sales.