Your Mission
The Computer has generated the following mission for your team. It has been carefully designed to ensure the maximum safety and satisfaction for your team.
Paranoia is the Irrational Fear Someone is Out To Get You
(Fear) Dominant type of fear to install in the PCs: One of the service groups is breaking down.(Irrational) General kind of weirdness or irregularity that prompts The Computer to assign a mission to the Troubleshooters: The Computer has decreed a new holiday with odd customs and practices, and everyone knows about it but the PCs.
(Someone) Person, people, organization or agency responsible for the situation: A senior CPU efficiency consultant, who overreacted in imprudent ways in an effort to get proper paperwork filled out. (The identity of the Someone need not be obvious at the mission's outset, and in fact things may play out more appropriately if the Someone is not discovered until late in the proceedings.)
(Out To Get You) General apparent threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: The "Someone" has taken control of crowded outer lobby in Troubleshooter HQ and is slaughtering enemies. The PCs are either trapped there or sent to deal with the problem. The threat is a lie.
(Out To Get You) General real threat posed by the situation, or the consequences if the situation is left unresolved: A major malfunction has rendered an entire sector uninhabitable; the local environment kills an unprotected citizen in minutes if not seconds.
Mission Alert: Stamped onto side of dangerous creature from Outdoors, on leash. Briefing location is wrong. The information is in machine-readable code, missing vowels, encrypted, etc. Computer Phreaks can help. The Computer doesn't see the problem.
Briefing: Briefing is in empty Junior Citizen creche. Officious, schoolmasterly briefing officer sitting at the head of a classroom with blackboard and chalk; tests PCs frequently.
This Mission: We suspect INFRARED mess hall grease trap cleaner (indifferent bystander, buzzing, high on Wakey-Wakey), who's infiltrating a Technical Services firm for Internal Security, of being a double-agent for Computer Phreaks. Infiltrate the firm and see where his allegiance lies.
Outfitting: C-Bay or other online auction site: Price: +25% over list. Delivery: please allow 24 hours for delivery to PCs' specified address. A rival auction site has insidiously faked the site the PCs intended to use; the transaction goes through the rival site; the delivery is accompanied by a hard-sell pitchman YELLOW sector chemical hazard assayer (information source, meticulous, obsessive-compulsive) who drafts the PCs as promoters for the rival site and won't give them their equipment until they commit.
Debriefing: A pitch black room, with dim light filtering in under the entrance door. Unsettling clicking noises, like a trigger being pulled on a jammed gun.
Find weird phrasing, clearly erroneous output, or other signs of filthy commie mutant traitor sabotage? Copy the offending passages and email them to the High Programmer for investigation.