Previously on our Paranoia readthrough:
- First edition core
- Gamemaster Screen Adventures
- Vapors Don’t Shoot Back
- The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues
- Send in the Clones
- Acute Paranoia
Moving along through the first edition of Paranoia, we reach the point where Alpha Complex was officially not large enough (or at least, not diverse enough) anymore, and the game felt the need to explore brave new horizons. Specifically, it ventured into Earth orbit. Funny thing, that was the first place Cyberpunk went off to, too, when it came around a few years later… Anyway, there will, naturally, be bug-eyed monsters and evil computers (well, more evil than usual). And explosive decompression. A lot of that.
Before anything else, we get one of those choose-your-own-adventure portions that have sadly gone out of fashion. Awww, that’s nice.
The adventure proper starts with the players needing to escort a traitor to his execution while he spouts cryptic-yet-ominous phrases. The book cheerfully tells you that this has nothing to do with anything that will follow, but it’ll drive the players crazy trying to figure out how it all factored in. Heh.
The players then get sent after traitorous High Programmer Bette-U-LYF, who is actually a recurring character – she was one of the shadowy figures screwing with the players back in The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues, though none of that has any relevance here (especially since that one likely ended with Alpha Complex blowing up, and is thus even less canon than anything else in Paranoia). She’s escaped to orbit, where a bunch of old space stations are still floating around.
Since the players won’t have access to the CRUD system introduced in Send in the Clones up there, they get their full clone families sent along with them, which is kind of like trying to herd along a class of hyperactive children. The GM is instructed to act out each player’s most annoying habits, though that sounds to me like it might breed genuine and non-fun ill-will… Still, it’s an interesting variation, and like the game points out, it does put the players to the choice of whether to execute some of their clones to restore order when needed, even though that uses up their “extra lives.”
So up the players go, into the first space station. It’s a relatively harmless one, where most of the dangers are in the form of schmuck bait – the players, after all, don’t even know that the Earth revolves around the sun, or indeed that the sun exists, so they have approximately zero knowledge of how to safely navigate a space station without accidentally blowing themselves out an airlock. In the course of their explorations, they’ll encounter a hatched alien egg and accidentally trigger a very life-like (as in: they will have no way of knowing that it’s not real until it ends and they realise that they’re not dead) simulation of the station crashing to the ground.
They eventually manage to catch a shuttle to the next station. There are two unhatched alien eggs in the shuttle. They actually won’t hatch while on route, but they’re located in the dark behind the passenger seats, and they keep pulsating and making creepy noises. Muahahaha.
The second station is a bit more dangerous. It’s populated by bots who have set up their own society, complete with different backbiting factions – one who wants to bring their broken-down controlling Computer back online, one that wants to prevent that from happening, and one that just hates humans on general principle. The latter isn’t quite as much of a problem as it seems, since the bots are under the impression that the players are “androids,” but of course that means that they might try to perform “maintenance” on them, which will include replacing some of those highly obsolete arms and legs with the latest model…
Also, the Computer-loyal bots have gotten it into their heads that the players are the Chosen Ones who will awaken their master from its “slumber” (it’s in pieces all over the floor, so that’s unlikely to happen, but that’s why you call it faith). Which, as it turns out, is less of a cushy job than it sounds, since they’re meant to awaken it by being ritually sacrificed before it. And then the other factions attack. And the alien who hatched from the egg back at the first station. So mayhem, basically.
The players hopefully manage to limp along to a third station, which is run by a functioning Computer that is even more of a hardass than the Alpha Complex Computer. It’s got a problem, though it won’t admit to it – it keeps getting boarded by these annoyingly bulletproof aliens called the Shmegegi. Those eggs that keep turning up aren’t theirs, incidentally, but they are laid by a species they use as servants and attack dogs. Anyway, the station Computer decide that the players can probably fix the whole thing somehow and throws them at the alien ship.
The players stumble through a weird alien menagerie of bizarre creatures (galactic travelers who have bought passage on the Shmegegi ship) before finally encountering the Shmegegi themselves. Who are stuffy British stereotypes, only with lots of tentacles. They are here to steal Earth’s women, their own having gone extinct, but they are too uptight and proper to do anything as uncouth as force themselves on them, so their plan is more about awkwardly courting them in old-fashioned ways. They’re keeping Bette-U-LYF captive for this purpose (she originally hoped to broker some sort of deal with them to get back in the Computer’s good graces, but it hasn’t worked out).
The Shmegegi “torture” the players by subjecting them to tacky and low-brow subjects, which the Shmegegi consider the most painful thing imaginable. When that doesn’t work, they are brought before their leader, the McShmegegus, who rants at them about how they will take over the world and how the players have a chance to be first among their servants. The players can accept, but then they’re fitted with brain implants that blow up their skulls if they so much as think about being disloyal to the Shmegegi, and sent back to Alpha Complex, where they’ll somehow need to convince the Computer that they’re still its loyal citizens. It probably won’t work, is the uptake.
The alternative is to follow Bette-U-LYF’s lead and escape to commandeer some “pie fighters” from the last platform, in which they can engage the alien ship in battle and eventually drive it off. Having done that, they have saved the Earth, at least until the aliens invariably return… but of course, they have no way to get back down there, and will inevitably starve to death unless they think of something really brilliant. If they do think of something really brilliant and get back to Alpha Complex, of course, the Computer rewards them with an even more fatally dangerous mission.
I got to admit, I love this one. It really manages to hit every single space-adventure cliche in the book while still being fun and surprising. It probably does herald the game’s drift away from Alpha Complex in the later half of the second edition, but honestly, I’m not sure I care enough about Alpha Complex to be overly bothered by that. We’ll see if I end up eating my words.
The next one is Orcbusters, where… the players are magically transported to a fantasy dungeon crawl. Okay, wasting no time there, I see…