When PARANOIA was first published almost 20 years ago, amid fears of nuclear war and job loss to those newfangled desktop PCs, it was instantly popular for its vision of a high-tech, post-holocaust, totalitarian future ruled by a deranged Computer. It won attention too for turning the basic paradigm of RPGs - players cooperate - on its head, making all players traitors who can only advance by uncovering treason. Happily, today those fears are obsolete, well almost…
Alpha Complex Nights are three adventures set in the world of Paranoia.
The first, Spin Control, features the deadly world of sporks, public relations management and the plots of deranged and evil secret societies. The really dangerous part of all this is the public relations part, of course. The brain eating zombies are nothing to worry about at all.
In My First Treason five pregenerated young citizens get to experience their immensely fun childhood in a crèche that specialises in young citizens that have had... problems. As junior citizens they are expected to learn and grow into their future roles as proud foot vat technicians or bot repairmen. However this group of five famously resourceful junior citizens (and their petbot Timmy) are drawn into a series of increasingly jolly adventures.
The final adventure is the Sweep of Unhistory. Due to a series of improbable coincidences the troubleshooters find themselves as the last, final, terminal line of defence for Alpha Complex. Fate has caused them to be the saviours of the computer not once or twice but on many separate occasions. Is not Friend Computer lucky to have such diligent and heroic citizens protecting Alpha Complex.
So grab your laser barrel, citizen, and go forth and gladly serve Friend Computer by defeating the enemies of Alpha Complex!
ALPHA COMPLEX NIGHTS 2 - A HARD DAY’S NIGHTCYCLE
Presenting two new missions for your intrepid Troubleshooters!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
The unthinkable has happened - The Computer has been overthrown, and everything in Alpha Complex is upside down! Treason is loyalty! Heroes are traitors! (Everyone’s still out to get you, though). The Troubleshooters are given a cushy new assignment as the People’s Glorious Firing Squad, a subcommittee of the People’s Glorious Revolution! They now hold the power of life and death (mostly death) over the Enemies of the People. What will they do with this power? And is The Computer really out for the count? Still, as long as the Troubleshooters are the ones with the guns, everyone will be shouting VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
THE COMMUNIST CAFETERIA CONSPIRACY
Commies!
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Mind control lasers!
Nightmarish five-way bureaucratic tangles!
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Putting the Troubleshooters in charge of the most prestigious, expensive and fragile cafeteria in the whole sector. Catch the Commies and stop their devilish mind control experiment before the food vats overflow! Deal with cafeteria staff who are traitorous, disobedient, mutated or blatantly French!
ALPHA COMPLEX NIGHTS 2 - BECAUSE WHEN YOU’RE GIVEN ENOUGH ROPE TO HANG YOURSELF, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE A NOOSE.
Bots are fun. Bots are great. Bots are invaluable. Friend Computer says so. The Big Book of Bots details these tireless servants of Alpha Complex. Now you too can have these marvellous, mechanical marvels with their often completely inappropriate programming more heavily involved in your campaign. And remember that they are valuable Computer property - just because the assigned warbot has gone dangerously beserk does not mean it can be just blasted to pieces as someone will responsible for the damage caused. Remember: Bots are fun!
Criminal Histories is a 64-page PARANOIA supplement for players and Gamemasters alike, specially designed to improve games for smaller groups of players. Using scads of 'Prehistory Pachinko' tables, Criminal Histories lets you create a detailed background for your Troubleshooter. Learn bonus specialties! Earn perks and equipment! Die multiple times!
PARANOIA Gamemaster! Your friend The Computer requires you procure the major new rules supplement Extreme PARANOIA. No longer must your players toil as Troubleshooters of lowly RED Security Clearance.
Extreme PARANOIA offers new rules for creating player characters of any clearance from ORANGE all the way up to the illustrious VIOLET! Players can now become Alpha Complex TV stars, secret agents, service firm executives and the high-power, heavily armed celebrities of The Computer's Emergency Disaster Response Teams! You can even make your players Internal Security troopers, using newly updated rules from the classic 1987 PARANOIA supplement 'HIL Sector Blues'. With new Mandatory Bonus Duties to round out its 128 pages, Extreme PARANOIA is a mandatory purchase for all right-thinking PARANOIA Gamemasters.
Paranoia XP Players Book by Mongoose Publishing
Congratulations Citizen! You have been promoted to join the ranks of the Troubleshooters. You can now aid The Computer in its fight against the evil forces of Commies, Mutants and Traitors. You will work with other Troubleshooters who are also dedicated to this great and noble cause. You are also a mutant and a member of a secret society, if your fellow Troubleshooters find this out you will be executed for this treasonous activity. If you can prove that they are traitors first then they will not get the opportunity to do this. This will be fun! The Computer says so.
The Little RED Book contains the rules and background for creating and running a character in the PARANOIA game, where you will explore Alpha Complex, run by the utterly deranged logic of The Computer, being sent on missions to further the cause against the commie mutant peril by the Game Master.
Mongoose proudly revives the adventures that made Paranoia great!
From the mid-1980s (Old Reckoning) comes Paranoia Flashbacks, a 256-page hardcover compendium of the best Troubleshooter death-trap missions from the game’s original publisher, West End Games. ‘Me and My Shadow Mark 4’, ‘The YELLOW Clearance Black Box Blues’, ‘Send in the Clones’, ‘Vapours Don’t Shoot Back’, ‘Alpha Complexities’, ‘Whitewash’ and other classic scenarios are lightly and lovingly updated for Mongoose’s new Paranoia XP rules.
Wizards? Lizardmen? A dungeon? In PARANOIA? Sure. Not only can your players get blown up, back-stabbed, betrayed, hosed, incinerated, crushed and repeatedly executed, but in this mission they can also get turned into a collie, devoured by a dragon, munched by a tiger, chopped in half by a gargoyle, soul-sucked by a spectre, drowned, then ripped apart by killer penguins.
PARANOIA is a reincarnation of the Good Old Days. PARANOIA has lots of action and mayhem, lots of bizarre and implausible oddities, lots of unconventional problems requiring unconventional solutions, ample opportunities for improvisation and humor, and a freewheeling and irresponsible attitude toward rules. We Famous Game Designers trace the game’s humble beginnings back to stupid, cheerful dungeon crawls where we gathered loot and vorpal swords as we tumbled into pit traps, swapped riddles with sphinxes and hewed the heads from many an orc. It is with a deep nostalgia and heart-felt pride that we return to plunder the rich resources of our primitive origins and transform them into a dream PARANOIA mission.
Evil wizards. Loathsome servitors. Torchlit subterranean corridors. Fireballs. Wandering Monster Tables. And Our Heroes, caught between The Computer and the Forces of the Unknown.
Just as ‘Code 7’ is Troubleshooter dispatchers’ jargon for a mission that promises certain death, so ‘Sector Zero’ is Alpha Complex slang for punishment duty. Troubleshooters ‘sent to Sector Zero’ face a dispiriting assignment nobody else wanted. Maybe they must supervise Armed Forces latrine scrubots, or administer experimental R&D medications to insane super-powered mutants. Or maybe those benighted Troubleshooters get in so much trouble they’re assigned the missions in this PARANOIA collection, Sector Zero.
The three missions in this collection will entertain your players while making their Troubleshooters wish they’d called in sick.
‘Bubblegum Run’ sends the PCs on a couple of annoying errands into Junior Creches corrupted by Communist propaganda slipped into chewing-gum wrappers.
In ‘The Dinner Party’, a BLUE citizen recruits the Troubleshooters for a dire emergency, on which the fate of Alpha Complex itself - uh, doesn’t depend at all. In fact, he wants the PCs to prepare an evening party for several high-clearance citizens. Well, what a relief! What could possibly go wrong?
‘Lightning Rod’ sends the Troubleshooters out onto the immense dome over Alpha Complex to set up an R&D experiment. And then another experiment. And another. Hey, what’s all that ominous-looking grey stuff gathering overhead?
Are you being served? The 128-page PARANOIA supplement 'Service, Service!' enlivens your game with detailed depictions of the eight sprawling service groups in Alpha Complex. Actually, 'enlivens' is the wrong word for these stultifying bureaucracies -- how about 'complicates' or even 'utterly disarranges'?
'Service, Service!' gives you new service firms, interesting personnel to torment players, new 'mandates' duties to make service groups more important and EIGHT Classic-style missions, one for each group. Send your Troubleshooters into a Power Services generator facility that accidentally duplicates them. Have them teach sensitivity therapy to hardened Vulture Warriors. Make them train their own mechanical replacements, R&D's advanced 'Troublebots'.
Along the way they'll try to appease surly vending machines, protect a rock star from his not-so-loving fans and learn, at long last, exactly how many Troubleshooters it takes to change a lightbulb.
For all your service group needs (or at least the ones we feel like providing right now), take a number, fill out all appropriate forms in sextuplicate and, when you're called, buy 'Service, Service!'
Bring on more STUFF!
When you're a Troubleshooter on a mission in Alpha Complex, your friend The Computer provides all the equipment it decides you need. Great, yeah, thanks. But to get stuff you actually WANT -- ILLEGAL stuff -- you'd better find the black market. You're already a traitor anyway, so why not live a little? Better yet, order your illegal equipment online, through the exciting and incredibly treasonous private data networks called the GRAY SUBNETS.
STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets is a breathtakingly treasonous PARANOIA equipment book by ERIC MINTON and the TRAITOR RECYCLING STUDIO. This 96-page hardcover equipment book for PARANOIA players, the long-awaited follow-up to the first STUFF, contains over 100 all-new items and services. Many are illegal for Alpha Complex citizens to buy, own or even know about. So STUFF 2: The Gray Subnets gives you a strong edge against your enemies and other players. Wait, that's redundant....
MORE INFO
Double the adventure, double the fun, double the treason!
Sweep of Unhistory
At the tone, it will be 5.00am on Twosday, Day 128, Yearcycle 214. Your duty cycle begins now. Good morning citizen.
It has always and will always be yearcycle 214 of The Computer’s glorious reign. The first yearcycle 214 was such a good yearcycle, there was no sense in letting it go after only one iteration. 214’s a nice number; it suggests that the current regime is established enough to be secure and bravely forging forward into the future, but that its enemies are still lurking out there, waiting for their chance. 214 means constant vigilance, constant paranoia.
At the tone, it will be 5.00am on Foursday, Day 320, Yearcycle 214. Your duty cycle begins now. Good morning citizen.
...tactical blunders and grotesque equipment failure...leading to 600% casualties. Pinned down by enemy cannons, send more fodder...
FOR THE EVERLASTING GLORY OF ALPHA COMPLEX AND THE ARMED FORCES!
* Join the Armed Forces! (Joining is mandatory, citizen!)
* See the Outdoors! (And the parts of Alpha Complex that other service groups don’t dare enter)
* Meet interesting life-forms (we call them ‘targets’)
* And terminate them (and the rest of your platoon).
!!!NOW 217% MORE PATRIOTIC!!!
The Armed Forces of Alpha Complex are THE THIN GREEN LINE, protecting Friend Computer from the vast hordes of Commie Mutant Traitors, renegade generals, rogue warbots and rabid squirrels. As a member of these elite forces, you will be issued with the latest in absurdly unreliable and destructive weaponry, given the most impressive rank titles that modern semantics can concoct, and sent out to die both horribly and repeatedly. This will not only be fun, but patriotic and heroic.
The most elite of the elite may even be promoted into the elite elite Vulture Squadron Warriors, The Computer’s chosen few!
The slightly less elite will be shot, blown up, stabbed, run over, betrayed, waterboarded, bombed and quite possibly dishonourably disintegrated.
THE THIN GREEN LINE. It’s like Troubleshooting, only with bigger guns.
Attention, Troubleshooter! Your friend The Computer has just discovered a previously unsuspected network of hidden rooms, tunnels and access vents that interpenetrates all inhabited sectors of our beloved Alpha Complex. This is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Do not be alarmed by those sirens.
The Computer politely requests you to explore these dark, treacherous tunnels immediately, and to shoot all mutants and traitors you might bump into. Rejoice, for The Computer has also sent Internal Security and Armed Forces squads into these same tunnels, with clear instructions to shoot everything that moves! Don’t you feel safer now?
PARANOIA Gamemaster, do you want to put your players through entirely new wringers? These four missions -- by Dan Curtis Johnson, Jeff Groves, Bill O'Dea, and Beth Fischi and Allen Varney -- use the Straight play style introduced in the rulebook. That means dark satire, paranoid fear and even a halfway decent chance to (gasp!) survive the mission!
