Paranoia readthrough: Gamemaster Screen Adventures

I don’t feel up for anything ambitious this week, so let’s read a fairly short little booklet, namely the Gamemaster Screen Adventures for the first edition of Paranoia. As the name implies, they’re really just an add-on to the, well, Gamemaster screen. Still, it’s the first supplement released for the game, so it might be interesting to see what direction it set off in.

So trust no one and keep your laser handy, because we’re going back to Alpha Complex!

There are three different adventures. In the first one, Robot Imana-665-C, the players get sent to repair an ailing robot. Precisely what is wrong with the robot and what it’s supposed to do when it’s functioning properly is, of course, beyond their security clearance, but it is heavily implied to them that it’s some sort of super-dangerous combat bat. It’s actually a sort of ambulatory fridge, but a series of mishaps and accidents have led to that information getting lost along the way, so now the people in charge of the robot have no idea and can’t afford to admit that they have no idea, so they’ve called in some Troubleshooters to either fix it or take the blame for having irrevocably broken it.

The actual problem with the bot is that its visual sensors have broken down, and it’s under strict orders to not cooperate with anyone without verifying their clearance level (which in Alpha Complex means, check which colour their clothes are), and it can’t verify anyone’s clearance levels because its visual sensors aren’t working. It can, however, be broadly reasoned with if some tact and patience is employed, and then all that remains is to replace the visual sensors. Which means first requisitioning a replacement, and getting the wrong parts, and arguing with requisitions about whose fault it was, and then getting the right parts but with the wrong installation instructions, and arguing with requisions about that. Alpha Complex!

Anyway, if the players manage to persevere and try ridiculous plans for long enough, and none of them succeeds at sabotaging the mission for their secret society, they might actually get through the whole thing alive. Oh, and anytime someone acts suspiciously, they get strabbed into a “Debriefing Station,” which is to say a human-sized enclose pod that measures their vital signs to check for duplicity while the Computer very gently and cheerfully questions them.

The second adventure is called The Trouble with Cockroaches. In it, the players are scrambled to deal with a fiendish act of sabotage in the form of some secret societies unleash cockroaches in Alpha Complex before the saboteurs try to shoot their way clear and escape to Outside. They get outfitted with some ridiculous experimental weaponry, including a few that places the operator well within the area of effect (as well as one weird… thing that fires one bullet straight up and another straight down, then pulls them both back again before being rendered useless), and sent to hold the line against the traitors.

This is basically a combat scenario with much shooting going on, but it’s got a Paranoia flavour through people shouting silly slogans, seeming allies turning on the players at the least opportune moment, and the Computer broadcasting helpful encouragements like, “with modern medical care many of you may once again lead at least marginally productive lives!” Cockroaches aren’t actually involved, but there are drawings of them peppered all over the pages, including an especially thick bunch right over a section titled, “WARNING! READ THIS CAREFULLY!” Heh.

The final adventure is called Das Bot: Nearly a Dozen Meters Beneath the Sea. The players get sent in a leaky old “u-bot” to investigate suspicious underwater activity just off the coast. They have to bring along an entitled, high-strung arteeest of a filmmaker as part of their cover story, and the u-bot’s brain shortcircuits at the worst possible time, forcing them to have to figure out the controls for it by trial and error before they all drown. There’s supposed to be a chart for the u-bot control panel included, but it’s not part of my PDFs. And I actually bought these off drivethroughrpg like a good boy and everything! Shameful.

Anyway, should the players survive that, they arrive at an undersea lab occupied by a bunch of explorers from a race of acquatic mutants who have built a civilised, pacifistic, enlightened, and all-around un-Alpha-Complex-like society on the ocean floor. The players might try to capture one of them for interrogation, or might even find common cause with them if they belong to the right secret societies.

All in all, these are all fun and set the tone for Paranoia. I note that they’re already rather less serious than the adventure in the core rules were, with ridiculous gadgets and clueless rebels rather than stone-cold killer combat vets and grimdark cyborg overlords. Also, apparently amphibious underwater civilisations are canon, insofar as Paranoia has anything as structured as canon.