Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET WARNING: Knowledge Or Possession of This Information by Any Citizen of Security Clearance VIOLET Or Lower Is Treason

Sample file ™

Service, Service! PBY THE TRAITORA RECYCLINGR STUDIOAN (www.traitorrecycling.com)OIA PAUL BALDOWSKI ERIC MINTON CONTENTS JEFF GROVES Proofreading/Technical Services Introduction 2 GREG INGBER 1. Life in a service fi rm 3 DAN CURTIS JOHNSON DAN GELBER 2. Mandates 8 GREG COSTIKYAN HUMZA KAZMI Service groups ERIC GOLDBERG KARL LOW Armed Forces 11 Original game design & development ERIC MINTON Central Processing Unit 25 BILL O’DEA HPD & Mind Control 40 ALLEN VARNEY IAN BELCHER Internal Security 54 ERIC ZAWADZKI Mongoose Publishing roleplaying Prod Logistics & Commissary 68 Design/R&D manager/Internal Security Power Services 81 BETH FISCHI ALEXANDER FENNELL Research & Design 95 ALLEN VARNEY Mongoose Publishing production director/ Technical Services 109 Editing, layout/CPU Armed Forces Appendix 1: AlphaNet 123 JIM HOLLOWAY Appendix 2: Service fi rm tables 126 THE COMPUTER Cover and interior illustrations/HPD&MC Service fi rm index 128 At your service, citizen! BETH FISCHI ANDY ‘JAZZER’ FITZPATRICK Graphics/Also HPD&MC

Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET WARNING: Knowledge or possession of this information by any citizen of Security Clearance VIOLET or lower is treason. If you’re caught, just wait for your next service fi rm worker evaluation, bub.

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. SampleOn the World Wide Web: www.mongoosepublishing.com. file Published by Mongoose Publishing, Ltd. Publication MGP 6639. Published October 2005. First printing October 2005. SERVICE, SERVICE! CLEARANCE ULTRAVIOLET Hey! How about a little service?

Q. The PARANOIA line hasn’t done Bonus Duties, but narrower and more fl eeting. drift. Fast-moving, hyper-competitive service much with the eight service groups Mandates make a PC’s service group more fi rms often create new positions on the fl y, of Alpha Complex—Armed Forces, important, without all the baggage mentioned minus appropriately defi ned domains. Such CPU, Internal Security and that lot. above. an unregulated, unauthorized position is A character’s service group doesn’t Most of the book presents eight complete colloquially called a ‘loose domain’, and the matter as much as his secret society missions, one for each service group. These service group bureaucracies regard it with or mutant power. Why not? are written for Troubleshooters of Security universal and unmitigated loathing. A PC has Clearance RED, but if you have the Extreme no way of knowing whether he occupies such A. PARANOIA intentionally depicts the service PARANOIA supplement (with rules for a domain, but ignorance of arcane regulations groups in vague, incidental terms. Unlike other characters of all clearances from ORANGE has never been a defense in Alpha Complex. (non-fun) roleplaying games, PARANOIA through VIOLET), several of these missions is not about well-understood duties nor work better for higher clearances. Q. What happens if a group bureaucrat professionally executed procedures, and discovers a worker occupying a loose certanly not about organizations that foster Q. Is your importance in a service group domain? solidarity and high purpose. PARANOIA is related to your security clearance? about creating reasons for the players to A. He might impose a hefty fi ne, just enough mistrust and betray each other. A. Not necessarily. Security clearance does to put the PC in dire fi nancial straits. He mght A player character’s (PC’s) group isn’t not measure competence or training, but sell his silence for a bribe equal to a month of supposed to defi ne his whole life purpose, nor strictly how much The Computer trusts you. the PC’s income, or two months. He might ask really even his role on a mission team. Just The Computer assigns those it trusts most not a ‘favor’ for his secret society. Alternately, you because a PC works in Technical Services, only to positions of high authority, but also to can use the loose-domain excuse to transfer that doesn’t reliably make him a savant of all less-skilled positions that have little authority the PC to a new service fi rm from this book, or things mechanical. No, he’s a generic PC, but require enormous discretion. assign him a mandate as punishment for his with the same general competence as his So, for instance, a janitorial worker in unauthorized loose-domain-ing activities. fellow PCs (and thus little reason to depend on R&D could be INDIGO Clearance, which In other words, this is just one more useful them). It works best to treat him as a vehicle means The Computer trusts him to go into player coercion device, joining the many others for the player’s own experience of fear and INDIGO laboratories. He cleans up goo from in PARANOIA. Service groups are becoming ignorance. experiments lower-clearance folks don’t even more useful all the time! The most important function of service know exist. He collects an INDIGO’s high groups is to provide ready-made rivalries. salary, and he can lord it over the GREEN and Armed Forces and Internal Security butt BLUE technicians in the outer offi ces. Yet he’s heads all the time. Likewise Power Services still a janitor, with a good Hygiene rating but no The service group sections vs. Tech Services and sometimes PLC. CPU scientifi c training to speak of. Aside from the fi rst two chapters, this book bureaucrats are incredibly annoying. Nobody has eight sections, one for each service group. trusts HPD&MC, a bunch of marketing types Q. Then how do service groups sort Each section offers the following stuff: weak on ideological purity. As for R&D, just out who’s capable of what job? Hangouts: Typical locations around Alpha ask experienced players what they expect from Complex where you can fi nd members of this an R&D guy; for recreation, count the seconds A. To us Famous Game Designers, this service group. until you fi rst hear the words ‘malfunction’ question is trying to make sense of Alpha Rumors: What they talk about at the and/or ‘explode’. That shorthand, that instant Complex, a quest that leads to frustration and hangouts. Take these as examples for creating mistrust, is the service groups’ ideal purpose. heartbreak. Alpha Complex makes no sense. your own rumors. As a mission begins, mention But maybe we’re missing a bet. Do you It exists as a molecule-thin backdrop designed one or two rumors at random to a player whose want the groups better defi ned? If you’d buy a to foster paranoid tension. Troubleshooter has heard them at his regular sprawling full-length supplement that plumbs day job. the innermost workings of PLC warehouses, Q. Would you please not weasel out of Service services: As described in Chapter let us know! Hey, if White Wolf can do all those a perfectly reasonable question? 38 of the PARANOIA rulebook, these are splatbooks about vampire clans.... hazardous little side-jobs The Computer A. Okay, okay.... Service group bureaucracies assigns to Troubleshooter teams in addition Q. Well then, what’s in this book about establish ‘duty domains’ for each category of to their regular mission. service groups? service fi rm under their aegis. Duty domains Service fi rms: Types of fi rms in this group specify a requisite level of competence and where a PC might work, like those in Chapter A. Service, Service! gives you new service responsibility—without, please note, defi ning 38 of the rulebook. fi rms for each group, NPC personnel to torment a corresponding authority to actually get the Personnel: NPC professions whose your players, typical rumors and hangouts, and job done. members can help or torment the PCs. a new kind of duty: mandates. Mandates are Unfortunately, the bureaucratic processes Mission: A complete Troubleshooter special temporary abilities and responsibilities that define new duty domains proceed at mission (RED Clearance) involving this service assignedSample to one or another PC—like Mandatory a pace otherwise seen only in continental group. file 2 PARANOIA Service, Service! 1. SERVICE FIRM LIFE SERVICE FIRM IOUS

Then it’s code in the data, give the keyboard a punch, Then cross-correlate and break for some lunch. Correlate, tabulate, process and screen— Program, printout, regress to the mean. And it’s ho, boys, can’t you code it (hunh!) and program it right. Nothing ever happens in this life of mine. I’m hauling out the data on the Xerox line.

—Nigel Russell, ‘The White Collar Holler’ (1979)

1. Life in a service fi rm

■ Understandings It’s all ‘understood’. Snitching on a Landing the job coworker— for offenses committed in the line Junior Citizens arriving at their new INFRARED of duty, anyway— is just wrong, almost as At an early age, Junior Citizens take a assignment learn within days— perhaps bad as betraying your secret society. (Internal battery of tests. The Computer quantifies hours— the fundamental dilemma of Alpha Security investigations are like grenades; if their strengths and weaknesses and adds Complex life: Every day, you have to bend you’re close to the target, you don’t want to them to a giant database with thousands the rules. set one off.) of other JC exam results. Following long- The management’s goals are unreachable So Troubleshooters usually have a hard standing parameters set by the eight service through legal means; therefore workers must time turning worker vs. worker. Compared groups and taking into account the groups’ commit treason to reach them. But if you to the PCs, service fi rm teams are tight-knit Semi-Annual Staffi ng Need Projections, The report a fellow worker, what’s the best that can brotherhoods of mischief. Computer assigns each Junior Citizen to a happen? Maybe The Computer will promote specialized secondary school. There specially you and make you a Troubleshooter, so you ■ fi programmed teachbots, and the occasional can die six or eight times in rapid succession. Service rm IOUs visiting service-group bureaucrat, teach the Or maybe you’ll just get an apple or banana, go So everybody lives happily together in service- kids how to be proper members of their service back to work, and all your other coworkers will fi rm land, right? No—this is PARANOIA. group. By the time they graduate at the ripe age take revenge on you, the fi nk. Meanwhile, the Your coworkers don’t fi nk on you for doing of 14, their skills make them optimal Food Vat traitor you reported was the only one who knew what it takes to get the job done. They look or warehouse workers or whatever. how to do the job, so you have to take up the the other way... but they make sure you know Do you remember your interests when you slack while he’s off getting brainscrubbed. they’re looking away. In the unspoken code were eight? How many of them were the Workers instinctively cover up coworkers’ of most service firms, you now owe your same when you turned 18? How many people illegal actions committed— note this important coworkers for their silence. You have incurred determine their life’s work before they hit condition!— committed in the line of duty. an IOU. puberty? Why should Alpha Complex citizens Distributing Commie propaganda? That’s fair Chapters 8 and 40 of the PARANOIA be any different? game for tattling to IntSec. But making up for rulebook describe secret society IOUs— Service group heads often wonder why all missing offi ce supplies (that PLC just won’t informal but serious favors a society may owe the bright, talented youngsters they chose a replenish! no matter how many requisitions you you in return for a great service. Service fi rm decade ago always turn into bitter unskilled fi ll out! in septuplicate!) by stealing some from IOUs work somewhat the same way, except rejects once they graduate and join the work the offi ce next door? Pfft! Bribing a technician they’re considerably less reliable and, relatively force. The answer is obvious: Rival service to repair the offi ce vendobot? Well, how else speaking, more secret. groups subverted the good ones! will anyone get a cup of CoffeeLyke? Filing a How could a favor in a legal, public service form that presents a mere parking violation as fi rm be more secret than a secret society IOU? autocar theft? How else can they expect this It’s a matter of context. The secret society Sampleoffi ce to make its unrealistically high quota? leaders admit youfile did them a service, and they ARE YOU INTERNAL SECURITY, OR JUST A SMUG BASTARD NATURALLY? 3 SERVICE, SERVICE! CLEARANCE ULTRAVIOLET admit their debt to you. In the service fi rm, no If that was it, everyone would quickly stabilize RED manager: Do what I say. one dares admit he owes a favor to anyone at their level of incompetence. However, ORANGE underling: No, do what I say. else, because that prompts the unwelcome the offi ce duty hierarchy confl icts with The [RED manager develops nervous twitch.] question, ‘Why do you owe him a favor?’ Computer’s security clearance hierarchy, Similarly, a secret society IOU lasts as long which is subject to spontaneous, unpredictable Example: PLC warehouse manager Tommy- as the society exists. The service fi rm IOU, in changes. This leads to rushed, brutal changes Y really needs to put Joe-R in charge of forkbot contrast, expires as soon as the benefactor in duty assignments. diagnostic services, because Joe-R is the only leaves the company—or the benefactor himself worker in the warehouse who the forkbots let expires. Not that you’d ever consider bumping ■ near them without attacking. (Corpore Metal off a coworker just because you owe him a big Promotions and sabotage— long story.) In the service fi rm’s favor... just because he kept quiet about your duty domains worker duty manual, a forkbot diagnostic terrible treason... just because he has all that Security clearance in Alpha Complex strictly tech should be at least YELLOW Clearance, dirt on you.... measures how much The Computer trusts supervising ORANGE quality-assurance you, and nothing else. As explained at length techs. in the Extreme PARANOIA rules supplement, But it happens Joe-R has run foul of Internal ‘You are a complete and security clearance isn’t competence, or Security on numerous occasions, mouths off to seniority, or (as it turns out) importance in a superiors, and he’s had so many brainscrubs, utter idiot. I’ve assigned service group. If The Computer really really his eyes can’t focus. No way does The you to my rival’s team.’ trusts (say) a particular janitor, it may promote Computer want Joe-R at YELLOW Clearance; the janitor to INDIGO, and assign him to clean it’s all Tommy-Y can do to keep him from up goop in high-clearance R&D labs. But he’s being busted down to INFRARED. Tommy-Y still a janitor, with janitorial skills. gives Joe-R the diagnostic duty assignment, If service group duty areas corresponded putting him nominally ‘in charge’ of resentful Management closely to security clearances, it wouldn’t be ORANGEs who needn’t give him the time of necessary to repeat this. But they don’t. In day. Things are about to get even tougher for To understand how a service firm works, fact, the unpredictable relationship, or lack of Joe-R.... imagine a business where you can’t hire or it, between a citizen’s duty and his clearance Psychiatric help is costly, so fi rms usually fi re anyone, merely rearrange them to cause is among the most confusing features of Alpha try to rearrange citizens so duties match minimal damage. ‘Minimal damage’ is relative. Complex life. clearance. They promote the new ORANGE A boss wants lackeys who are competent We Famous Game Designers like it that citizen to assistant manager so he can learn but don’t threaten his job. Each boss’s ideal way, and we think you, the Gamemaster, will the ropes before the next reorganization. The hierarchy places those less competent one like it too. YELLOW manager doesn’t want to teach step down, and safely sequesters the really Only The Computer and its trusted high- anything to his future replacement . The competent ones two steps down. clearance citizens can promote and demote assistant manager is too busy enjoying his However, the bumbling managers one step people to a new security clearance. Rank- new ORANGE clearance to care. Everyone down don’t want the workers directly below and-fi le service fi rm managers can’t change else at the fi rm just hopes he’ll screw up, get them to be more competent than they are, so their workers’ clearance. Managers don’t busted back to RED and everything will return these managers try to push them still further give ‘promotions’ and ‘demotions’; in Alpha to normal. down. And so on, ad nauseum. Every worker is Complex, these terms specifi cally designate Sometimes, though, another manager caught in a tug-of-war between his current boss changes in security clearance). Rather, vacates a position and the assistant takes it. and everyone above him, with both the truly managers assign duty domains. Or the manager gets demoted (or his assistant competent and incompetent shoved to where If a worker becomes a manager or a soldier gets promoted again) and the former assistant they can do the least damage to the superiors’ becomes quartermaster, these are new ends up bossing around his former boss. Either careers. For the competent, this means menial duty assignments. They may or may not be way, the former boss realizes he must topple labor; for the incompetent, management. associated with a change in security clearance; his idiot protege before he crashes and takes that’s up to The Computer. everyone below with him. Smart bosses gather A new duty assignment may make you blackmail material, just in case. Former bosses responsible for workers supervised by that can be vicious. YOUR FORM position— but you don’t necessarily have the If all else fails and the service fi rm realizes LACKS THE authority to order them around. That authority its BLUE worker isn’t fi t to run a food vat, it SALMON-COLORED comes solely from security clearance. If transfers the troublesome citizen to a sinecure clearance promotions are ‘authority without off the org chart. ‘Here’s a nice offi ce. Make SHEET. GO TO responsibility’, then duty assignments are sure everything in the offi ce stays neat and THE BACK OF THE ‘responsibility without authority’.When the two the walls don’t collapse. We’ll check back in match up, everything’s fi ne, but when they a few months.’ LINE. don’t things get bumpy. If a RED team leader leads an ORANGE Troubleshooter, they butt heads for a few hours. If a RED manager leads an ORANGE worker, weeks stretch Sampleinto eternity. file 4 PARANOIA Service, Service! 1. SERVICE FIRM LIFE REORGANIZATIONS ‘I know you did a perfect job, but if I give you a bonus now you Mr. Twimble [head of the company mailroom for 25 years]: won’t have anything to When I joined this fi rm / As a brash young man, Well, I said to myself, / ‘Now brash young man, shoot for next year!’ Don’t get any ideas.’ Well, I stuck to that, / And I haven’t had one in years. Performance reviews J. Pierpont Finch: You play it safe. Twimble: I play it the company way; A manager is required to review periodically the performance of each worker he manages. Wherever the company puts me / There I stay. The time between reviews varies by service Finch: But what is your point of view? firm. A typical worker can expect reviews twice a year, as well as surprise inspections Twimble: I have no point of view. now and then. Finch: Supposing the company thinks—? Performance reviews seldom correspond to citizen’s actual performance. Why not? Twimble: I think so too. [...] Worker’s boss: He’s better than I am. I’ll tell my manager he’s incompetent so Finch: When they want brilliant thinking he doesn’t threaten my position. From employees— Boss’s executive supervisor: The boss doesn’t want any competition, so Twimble: That is no concern of mine. he’ll try to dress up the idiots and Finch: Suppose a man of genius / Makes suggestions? hide the good workers. I won’t believe a thing he says. Twimble: Watch that genius get suggested to resign. Boss: But my executive supervisor expects Finch: So you play it the company way? me to lie about their performance. I’ll tell him the truth so he won’t Twimble: All company policy is by me okay. believe me. Finch: You’ll never rise up to the top— Supervisor: But he’ll expect that and tell the truth, hoping I expect him to lie. Twimble: But there’s one thing clear: Well, then I’ll believe him! Whoever the company fi res, / I will still be here. Boss: But if he fi gures that out, he’ll believe what I say. I’ll just lie. Supervisor: But he’ll know I’m too smart —Frank Loesser, ‘The Company Way’, How to for that and lie, hoping I— screw it. Someone get me a coin. Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962)

‘Break out the

reorg boots!’ Although they act like independent successful fi rms. Failing fi rms are cannibalized businesses, service firms function entirely as their workers are scattered to the four at the pleasure of their supervising service corners. Cunning VIOLET executives sabotage group bureaucracy. If the fi rm needs different their rivals for the next three months. Everyone Reorganizations people, management must request them else buckles down and tries to escape the from its supervising group. Every quarter, the carnage unnoticed. On average, promotions and demotions service group processes all the requests and For you, the Gamemaster, a reorg gives you balance each other— on average. The closer rearranges workers as needed. an easy excuse to move a given PC willy-nilly you look, the more inconsistencies you spot. The result should be a minor ripple in the org from one service fi rm to another. This lets you Some fi rms end up with more BLUE workers chart. Instead, it’s a tsunami. (a) try out all the neat new fi rm types described than RED, or no one above ORANGE When reorg rolls around, everyone has in this supplement and (b) foster continued clearance due to an IntSec purge. When the an agenda. Bosses shuffl e idiots and other unease and paranoia in the players. Every day, janitors outnumber the productive workers, it’s dangerous workers to other firms. Vice- in every way, they’re getting more and more Sampletime for a reorg— a service-group reorg. presidents transfer themselves to more screwed. Keep upfile the good work, GM! PLEASE PROVIDE CPU WITH A REASON FOR YOU TO CONTINUE EXISTING. 5