Having covered the original Paranoia box and the adventures that came with the Gamemaster’s Screen, it’s time for the first full-length adventure. Mind you, when I say “full-length,” I still only mean like 30 pages long, brevity still being a virtue back in the eighties.
Vapors Don’t Shoot Back has the hapless player get stuck in a “tournament” between two High Programmers, Nevo-U-MYN-6 and Black-U-BRD-5. The contest is as bitter as it pointless, being fought to the death (preferably that of the High Programmers’ various pawns, but possibly their own as well) over what amounts to secret bragging rights among the select group of ULTRAVIOLET citizens who know or care what’s going on. The players, of course, have no way of knowing this except maybe at the very end; their master, Nevo-U, is perfectly capable of masking his self-serving agenda as official, Computer-sanctioned missions, including by having Computer terminals give the orders. It’s pointed out that similar tournaments can be used to justify the GM’s own adventures, or just to explain oddities and bizarreness around Alpha Complex. Heh.
In Mission One: Standard Tournament Elimination Round, the players are sent on a mission to kill a bunch of traitors (who are actually another Troubleshooter team who have been told that they’re on a mission to kill a bunch of traitors). I note with some regret that there doesn’t seem to be any outrageous malfunctioning equipment issued for this mission. Ah well. The players have to survive a ride with driver who has a serious need for speed before being sent down an extremely elderly elevator to a warehouse where they’re on a collision course with the enemy team. Unbeknownst to both of them, some actual secret society traitors are at work in the warehouse, looking to blow up the roof so that the algae vats on the next floor collapse into the warehouse, covering everything in nutritious goo. Also, the warehouse has a bunch of stubborn sorting robots who might try to pick players up and put them on shelves at inopportune moments. All in all, though, it’s not terribly interesting, just an opportunity to shoot things.
In Mission Two: The Cheating Begins, Nevo-U finds out that Black-U has located one of Nevo-U’s most valued assets, a miniature computer core that he uses to test programs before uploading them into the Computer proper (which is terribly treacherous – the Computer doesn’t like competition, even miniaturised competition!). It’s hidden in an old weather station Outside, and Black-U has a bunch of security troops heading that way. Nevo-U hastily sends the players to fetch the computer core first – on the pretext of an official Computer mission, of course. This chapter is a bit more interesting and includes things like the players (who, let’s remember, have probably never even been Outside before) having to figure out skydiving from watching a single vague education video before being flung out of a plane, possibly even with their parachute strapped on the right way.
This one is a little more funny, and it does give us our first canonical view of what Outside is actually like. Which is, honestly, fairly idyllic, all things considered – the players can run into a lot of hostile predators, but none of them are horrifically mutated. Also, there are savage survivalists with bows and arrows, so at least some parts of humanity have only been reduced to the Stone Age, not the depressing state of Alpha Complex. Heartening to know!
Anyway, if they can nab the computer core and get it back to Alpha Complex, they promptly get arrested because the Computer (or at least the parts of the Computer that they’re dealing with at that particular time) has no recollection of sending them on a mission. A hint that things are Not What They Seem… though in all honesty, it’s probably not that unexpected that the left hand does not know what he right one does in Alpha Complex…
Still, with some invisible help from Nevo-U the Computer suddenly “remembers” the very important mission it sent the players on, and dispatches them on Mission Three: The Finals. Nevo-U has found Black-U’s hidden headquarters, which is… on a facsimile of a pirate ship floating in an underground reservoir. Crewed by robot pirates, and commanded by Black-U himself with a parrot-bot on his shoulder. The players, who have never been near enough water to swim in before, are forced to make their attack on jetskis, all while artificial underwater geysers erupt to indicate where a cannon ball has supposedly dropped (which can still knock one of those non-swim-enabled players off their jetski if they get hit by one).
Okay… yeah… this is the good stuff. This is what I come to Paranoia for.
Anyway, if the players win the day, they can search the ship and find evidence of the illicit tournament. The module ends on a cheerful note that if they do anything as silly as try to present that evidence to the Computer, the best thing that can happen is that they get ignored, and the worst thing is that they get executed after a lengthy show trial – because clearly, anyone making absurd accusations against above-all-suspicion ULTRAVIOLET High Programmers must be a traitor!
All in all, fun enough, though maybe lacking a bit of the punch I remember from reading these modules as a wee lad… the spectacular finish aside, of course. Still, it’s early days yet. I definitely recall things getting a lot freakier.