PARANOIA

Hitler had Brown Shirts; the Empire had Stormtroopers; Internal Security has GREEN goons.

In the new PARANOIA due this August from Mongoose Publishing, Alpha Complex society defines an unspoken but vast gap between the lower clearances (INFRARED through YELLOW) and the higher clearances (GREEN and above). Below the line, you are at best middle-management; above the line, you have reached the upper classes, with a noticeable jump in status and perks. Only a small fraction of the population ever ascends to GREEN, let alone to the higher reaches of service to The Computer. GREEN citizens have diligently courted The Computer's trust, through a combination of bootlicking, backstabbing, blackmail, extortion, secret society connections, and in some cases even ability.

This helps explain why, in a setting where expressing dissatisfaction over a broken vending machine can get you brainscrubbed, citizens manage to secretly, stealthily loathe the GREEN goons. They are Internal Security's muscle, its shock troops. IntSec scours the INFRARED barracks for the most thuggish thugs, the unusually brutish brutes -- stoopbrows who obey authority mindlessly even by Alpha Complex standards, and that's saying a lot. IntSec found these unwashed proletariat nobodies and persuaded The Computer to promote them, willy-nilly, to Clearance GREEN.

The goons had no ambition, no schemes, and certainly no talent beyond brutality. Now, thanks to their unexpected jump, they can push around nearly everybody who, until days or weeks ago, pushed them around. They loooove it. They love it so much, they do it all the time, even without orders.

GREEN goons are not only stupid but corrupt. (The Computer despises corruption -- but it despises treason too, and you see how well that works.) Still acclimating to these dizzying heights -- still locked in the INFRARED mentality of a credit here, a credit there -- the goons can be bought, even cheaply. But they never stay bought. Their IntSec superiors don't object to minor corruption, as long as the superiors get a cut of the take.

You're thinking, "They sound like orcs." Nope -- these are orcs you're not allowed to kill. Complain to The Computer? You certainly can, and it will then summarily execute the individual goon you fingered. And then the "green wall" of all other IntSec goons will close in around you, making what's left of your brief life very hard. So people don't complain. The goons rake in the cash. Some may die -- they are muscle, after all -- but there's always more in the IR barracks.

The goons originated in the observation that real-world totalitarian secret police are unfailingly corrupt. To longtime PARANOIA fans the idea of a corrupt Internal Security may seem wrong -- it may lend an unwelcome human element, an air of seamy commerce, that detracts from the implacable Orwellian facelessness of The Computer's enforcers. But the point of the game is fear and ignorance. All the faceless senior officers can keep on doing their Orwellian thing, but now, in addition, the players must worry about these totally unqualified gorillas who can order them around and will sell them out for a nickel. They, too, are scary -- maybe even scarier in their way than the senior officers.

All previous editions of PARANOIA have mentioned, in passing, that Alpha Complex has a thriving black market. The new PARANOIA, due this August, develops the idea as the illegal IR market (IR = INFRARED).

Free Enterprise has set up IR markets in many, perhaps even most sectors. They make payoffs to buy protected space: sewers, burned-out corridors, abandoned warehouses. Local Internal Security administrators have never heard of these places, and continue to diligently not hear of them. Security cameras never get repaired there. Radio and video transmission frequencies are jammed. Spies with recording devices always seem to accidentally fall down eight flights of stairs. Or they get heart attacks, the kind of heart attack where your brain explodes out the back of your head.

At a typical IR market, dozens or hundreds of shouting, beseeching, urgent hard-case salesmen stand beside flimsy cardtables and sell you absolutely everything you want, at every possible quality range from lousy to terrific. But the prices are steep. Furthermore, IR hawkers sell all kinds of utterly weird stuff that plays on the credulity of an uneducated populace: lucky charms, supposed high-tech protections like reflective anti-laser goop, and Alpha Complex equivalents of deeds to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nothing has a warranty, the legality of the purchase is your own problem, all payment must be in hard-currency plasticreds and trust me, I’m not making a half-credit on the whole deal.

This Paranoia-Live.net thread provides lots of examples of IR trinkets you can buy. The new edition is full to bursting with these, but we can always use more for supplements. If you have suitable items to sell to Alpha Complex citizens who aren't picky about treason, advertise them in the comments.

For the new edition of PARANOIA due this August, I'm editing and expanding the much-loved second edition's chapter "The Mission Stereotype," the outline of a typical mission. It's quite fine, a very clear and amusing explication by (I would guess) West End's first and best PARANOIA line editor, Ken Rolston.

The mission stereotype first summarizes what goes on in a briefing, then outlines a typical PLC outfitting ordeal. Then it moves on to the traditional next step of the mission, the trip to R&D. The R&D section famously begins as follows:

In PLC Outfitting the Troubleshooters routinely requisition inoperative, inappropriate or perversely intelligent equipment from surly, uncooperative clerks.

In R&D the Troubleshooters routinely get assigned exceptionally dangerous inoperative, inappropriate, or perversely intelligent equipment by inspired psychotics.

You probably know by now the new edition retains and expands on the traditional R&D trip, recasting it as one of many possible "service services" for different service groups. Troubleshooters may still go to R&D on a mission, but they may instead do something for one of the other groups. The rulebook will offer many sample service service duties.

Here I'm not asking for sample service services, though I won't turn those away. Instead, I need a brilliant one-sentence description of each service group, in the style of the PLC and R&D descriptions above -- one terse elevator-pitch sentence that immediately conveys what kind of unique, comedic gameplay happens when the Troubleshooters perform services for that particular service group.

I've got PLC and R&D. Any ideas for more "group sentences"?

My deadline approaches, so I'll be terse: I need new monitor slogans. These slogans were space-fillers in old PARANOIA adventures. In the new edition, due this August, I'm putting them in the footers of each right-hand page. It's 256 pages, so I need lots of fresh new slogans.

View samples at the PARANOIA Lexicon game's "Fortune Cookies" page.

Keep each slogan short, please.

In all these months I've never gotten around to mentioning Tension levels. In the upcoming edition of PARANOIA due this August from Mongoose Publishing, each scene of a mission has a Tension level from 0 (low) to 20 (high), usually 3-7 or thereabouts. The Tension level indicates how closely The Computer or its agents are observing your actions. Ideally The Computer wants to observe all areas all the time, but resources don't permit this. No one discusses this publicly, but every citizen has a fairly good idea of how likely he is to be observed in any given spot.

A scene's location determines its Tension level. The chart below shows Tension levels for typical locations.

When a player tries something treasonous or sneaky that involves a die roll, the Tension level is the range of that roll that implies whether anyone witnessed the action. So if a PC has a 15 or less to shoot his team leader, and the Tension level is 5, any roll of 15 or less hits the commander -- but if that roll was 5 or less, somebody somewhere may have seen the shot.
Maybe it was another PC, maybe The Computer, or maybe some faceless bureaucrat watching a security camera and already writing his blackmail note. As GM, you don't need to get specific nor even rush to tell the player. Still, that act, having been detected, is now admissible as evidence against the PC.

Some players dislike this implementation of the idea because it means an action performed exceptionally well (that is, a low number rolled on the success roll) is spotted more easily than an action that just barely succeeds. True, but the best alternative is a little worse: Figure out how much the roll was made by (its "margin," in rulespeak), and if the margin is the Tension level or less, the act was spotted. This adds an extra step of the procedure for, as far as I can tell, no change in probability. It's strictly cosmetic. If you have better ideas, I'm listening.

TENSION LEVELS BY LOCATION
These are just suggestions. The GM can adjust the Tension level freely.
Entries such as "RED areas" means all Clearance RED areas not otherwise listed in specific entries. When an area could have more than one Tension level, use the highest.

Tension 0: Sewers; reactor cores; Outdoors; conferences with the GM
1 : IntSec interrogation chambers
2: Infrared areas
3: Supply closets; garages; bot stations; HPD&MC
4: RED areas
5: Briefing rooms; food vats; sickbays; clone tanks; PLC warehouses
6: ORANGE areas
7: Mess halls; waiting rooms; grooming stations; elevators and stairwells
8: YELLOW areas
9: R&D labs; anyplace with Junior Citizens
10: GREEN areas
11: Troubleshooter HQ; Armed Forces bases; armories
12: BLUE areas
13: Termination centers; re-education centers; IntSec stations
14: INDIGO areas
15: Power and Tech Services control rooms; IntSec headquarters
16: VIOLET areas
17: Confession booths
18: ULTRAVIOLET areas
19: Central Compnodes
20: Bathrooms

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, the new PARANOIA rulebook due this August supports not only the fondly remembered Classic and the frenetic Zap play styles, but also a more darkly satiric Straight style. The default style is Classic (changed from Straight in response to player feedback), but we'd like to convey useful tips for all the styles.

The current rules already include plenty of dialogue, quotations, and monitor slogans that conjure Classic attitudes. ("Citizen! Would you like to volunteer for reactor shielding?") Presumably a Zap attitude doesn't need much of that kind of armature. ("You're a traitor!" ZAPZAPZAP!) But in the Sourcebook section we'd also like to present a few quotations that evoke a Straight flavor. Maybe they won't be as funny, maybe more sinister, more... paranoid.

For instance, the rulebook will include this quotation from Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, a quintessentially PARANOIA novel that actually predates the game by over a decade:

"[T]he Building had familiarized me, to some degree at least, with its methods -- confusing at times, but not without certain salient features. There were departments, sections, archives, offices, receptionists, regulations, ranks, phones, all cemented by an absolute obedience into one monolithic, hierarchic structure. It was rigid, well-regulated, ever vigilant, like the white corridors with their symmetrical rows of doors, like the offices with their scrupulously kept files; the communication systems were its entrails, the steel safes its hearts, and its veins and arteries were the pneumatic mail tubes that maintained a constant flow of secrecy. Nothing was overlooked, even the plumbing played a vital part. But underneath that surface of clockwork precision lay a hive of intrigue, skullduggery, deception. What exactly was that wild confusion? A game? Or perhaps a camouflage to prevent the uninitiated from seeing some deeper plan, some higher order..."

Philip K. Dick, Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller... Do you know any good quotations from the paranoid literature?

Did that headline make you shout for joy? Then you're probably a longtime PARANOIA fan who fondly recalls Jim Holloway as the ideal, the quintessential PARANOIA artist. His hilarious art adorned most of the classic releases in the early West End line.

PARANOIA XP line editor Richard Neale at Mongoose Publishing confirms Jim Holloway is now painting the cover for the new edition. After I finish roughing out the interior page layouts, he will draw new interior art. And the new edition, due this August, will reprint a generous selection of Holloway art from the first and second editions of PARANOIA.

Welcome back, Jim!

The Computer wisely guides the expansion of Alpha Complex according to CPU Municipal Zoning Preference Schedule 43 (rev 212a), "Subterranean Construction Priority Objectives Directive." Emphasizing underground habitation, The Computer not only improves protection from Communist WMDs but also frees its fortunate citizens from the shackles of the Old Reckoning clock and calendar.

Today, in Year 214 of The Computer, uncontrolled environmental influences (description available at Clearance INDIGO) no longer dictate the succession of hours, days, months, years, and Multi-Year Initiatives. These now proceed in regularized increments. In sharp contrast to cumbersome and obsolete Old Reckoning arrangements, Alpha Complex now operates efficiently using The Computer's innovative system of 60 seconds in each minute, 60 minutes in each hour, and 24 hours in each day.

Old Reckoning cultures confusingly named days and months for a welter of fictitious deities, ancient rulers, and licensed cartoon characters. The Computer has dispensed with these irrelevant names. Each year has 12 numbered months, each with 30 numbered days. Dates are written Year.Month.Day, as for instance 214.05.16. Certain institutions and regulations make use of "weeks," a term of convenience designating arbitrary seven-day periods. Individual institutions and regulations define their weeks on an ad-hoc basis.

The terms "yearcycle," "monthcycle," and "daycycle" are permissible but no longer recommended. (See CPU Directive AB942K 199.10.12 rev 482a, "Correct Date-Related Syntax and Terms of Use.") The use of the "cycle" suffix for shorter units is now officially discouraged.

Timekeeping issues arise occasionally through use of legacy software applications dating to Old Reckoning times. An individual application's internal time clock may "turn over" and begin using dates from several centuries in the past. This is a perfectly understood and easily correctable problem. Citizens should understand and appreciate CPU's diligence in detecting and ameliorating the consequent temporary disruptions in transport, power generation, food preparation, medical functions, bot behavior, air and water recycling, and reactor coolant systems.

How excited you were, newly drafted Troubleshooter, to learn The Computer would generously provide you a set of RED Clearance overalls made of that wonderful anti-laser armor, reflec.

How disappointed you were -- no, not "disappointed," which connotes insubordinate unhappiness -- how much more aware of The Computer's generosity you were, when you received that flimsy reflec suit. It felt like foil-covered denim. It protected only against lasers, not other energy weapons, let alone projectiles or hand weapons or even thrown bricks. And it reflected only laser blasts colored red -- not lasers of higher clearance.

No wonder you soon investigated the illegal but booming aftermarket of reflec upgrades. The Computer has criminalized these upgrades on the grounds they just don't work. But you've heard so many stories.... Just yesterday, your co-worker's bunkmate's docbot's repairman said he once met a guy who knows a Troubleshooter who smeared sparkly goo on his reflec and got total immunity to the next laser blast that hit the goo!

You soon located many competing brands of upgrade goo on the INFRARED market. They smelled bad, though, and looked too conspicuous. Plus, if you got any on your skin, you'd sort of... you know... mutate. So you looked around for other covert ways to improve your reflec's protection.

Tell us, anxious Troubleshooter. What did you find?

In the new edition of PARANOIA appearing this August, your Troubleshooter's contacts in Alpha Complex secret societies teach things The Computer’s teacherbots never mentioned. These areas of knowledge or practice, not covered by the Action and Knowledge skills, are Secret skills.

A previous post discussed Secret skills. Some of these skills are useful, but many are likely to be totally useless in play. Secret skills aren't primarily tools; they're meant to be liabilities. You earn Perversity points for playing them well, but they can get you into trouble for nonconformity and even treason.

During character creation you select your Troubleshooter's Secret skills based on his secret society. Unless the GM informs you otherwise, you are required to choose exactly one Secret skill in each of these three categories:

• Uncommon in Alpha Complex but not necessarily treasonous: Swimming, Rock Climbing, and other Outdoors skills; craft skills such as cooking or glassblowing; conceivably (among citizens whose hormone suppressants have worn off) even seduction. Knowing how to drive a non-automated vehicle is Uncommon; each vehicle type is a different skill. To justify your character’s Uncommon skill, offer the GM a convincing rationale. (‘I became a bookbinder to repair a High Programmer’s treasonous Old Reckoning book collection.’)


• Unlikely to figure significantly in a mission: Knitting and other hobby skills, Whistling, Teela O’Malley Trivia, Video Games, etc.


• Unhealthy: Treasonous skills such as Communist Propaganda, Digital Image Manipulation, Filesharing, foreign languages, etc.; knowledge of Old Reckoning Cultures; criminal skills (Twitchtalk, Fraudulent Accounting, Gambling); also skills legally available only at a higher clearance than yours (Operating Systems, highly advanced science or mathematics, etc.).

Some secret societies mandate that you learn certain Secret skills. Other societies couldn’t give a used algae chip which skills you learn. If a skill appears in bold print, you must learn that skill. If the skill name isn’t in bold, or no skill is listed, you may learn any Secret skill you wish in that category. Pick one from another society, or invent your own skill and submit it to the GM for approval.

• Anti-Mutant: Twitchtalk (Unc); Comic Book Trivia (source of mutant lore; Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Computer Phreaks: Cryptography (Unc); Jargon (Unlikely); Cash Hacking (Unhealthy)


• Communists: Demolitions, Twitchtalk (Unc); Tractor Maintenance (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Corpore Metal: Cyborging (Unc); Botspotting (Unlikely); Bioweapons (Unhealthy)


• Death Leopard: Demolitions (Unc); Action Movies, Partying (Unlikely); Gambling (Unhealthy)


• FCCC-P: Alpha Complex History (Unc); priestly skills (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Frankenstein Destroyers: Demolitions (Unc); toolmaking skills (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Free Enterprise: Haggling (Unc); Advertising & Marketing (Unlikely); Bribery, Forgery (Unhealthy)


• Humanists: Marital Arts [sic] (Unc); hobbies, languages (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Illuminati: skills taught by your cover society


• Mystics: Drug Procurement (Unc); Meditation, Partying (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Pro Tech: Experimental Equipmt Repair/Maintenance (Unc); Video Games (Unlikely); WMD (Unhealthy)


• Psion: Power Studies (Unc); Comic Book Trivia (history of past persecutions; Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• PURGE: Demolitions, Twitchtalk (Unc); Gloating (Unlikely); Bioweapons, Propaganda* (Unhealthy)


• Romantics: Archival Studies (Unc); Cooking, Knitting, music (Unlikely); Old Reckoning Cultures (Unhealthy)


• Sierra Club: Outdoors Survival, Wild Lore, Travel (Unc); Birdwatching, Botany, Spoor Recognition, etc. (Unlikely); Propaganda* (Unhealthy)

* Each society’s specific Propaganda is unique and differs from all other societies’ versions of the skill.
What's that, citizen? What do all these skills do? I'm sorry, that information is unavailable at this time.

A previous blog post offered sample General Perversity Modifiers for combat situations. These will appear in the upcoming PARANOIA rulebook due this August. To repeat, the list of modifiers is intended only as inspiration for the Gamemaster, who will create his own modifiers on the fly to account for players' Perversity point spending.

In the comment thread to that earlier post, many loyal citizens offered new combat modifiers, which I promptly stole for the combat chart. A few foresighted types also offered modifiers suited for other circumstances, such as accusations of treason. (In the new rules, accusations use the same rules procedure as combat, and they do "treason damage" the same way weapons do physical damage. A player's Access attribute rating is his "treason armor"; it works like physical armor, except against accusations.)

This reminded me to include a chart of sample Perversity modifiers for treason proceedings, similar to the existing chart for combat. I haven't filled in any of this new chart yet, and owing to deadline pressure I'm inclined to see how little work I can get away with.

Will more loyal citizens surge forward now to create treason-related circumstances for the accuser, the accused, The Computer, and the environment? Please?

Will these generous citizens understand clearly that we can rip off anything they post here without offering any financial compensation in return, nor any free copies of anything, nor in fact any reward whatever save credit in the PARANOIA rulebook?

I hope so. We'll see.

Previous editions of PARANOIA encouraged the Gamemaster to be openly malevolent toward the players. The new PARANOIA XP, appearing this August from Mongoose Publishing, establishes the GM role on a more civilized footing. He trains the players using techniques of operant conditioning -- reinforcement and punishment. He dances the players like puppets, to amuse himself and, as a side effect, amusing the players as well. The text draws occasional comparisons between players and puppies.

For positive reinforcement we have Perversity points, which the GM awards to players (not to characters, but to players) for entertaining behavior. Players can spend Perversity points on General Perversity Modifiers, new skills for their characters and improvements to existing skills, and other cool stuff. If a player's character dies, the player keeps his current Perversity points and can spend them on his next character. Players can spend points on Perversity modifiers even when their characters aren't present in the scene.

(Given the number of times I'm discussing "perversity," I shudder to think where this blog page will end up in Google rankings of the term, and what kind of visitors we'll get....)

I'm still seeking an equivalent tool for negative reinforcement -- that is, punishment of unwelcome behavior such as rules arguments. You're saying, "Come on, this is PARANOIA. Reprimands from The Computer, fines, termination, yadda yadda." True, but those are punishments for the character, not the player. I'd like something more player-specific along the line of Perversity points.

It would be bad form, and psychologically dangerous, to just take away a player's honestly earned Perversity. And giving points to the player's enemies (that is, other players) doesn't communicate immediate negative reinforcement. After all, who knows whether or when the enemies will spend those points against the erring player?

It's trickier than you may think. You don't want to take players out of the game, or discourage them from doing fun things. That just damages the game for everyone. Ideally you want to punish the misbehavior immediately, then keep playing on the same footing as before.

My wife suggested having each player give the GM a list of shameful admissions about himself before play begins. For punishment the GM could publicly read some embarrassing confession about the erring player. I do love my wife's evil imagination, at least when it's not directed at me, but no. Just no.

The best solution I have so far is thwacking the player across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. This idea may have problems. Any better suggestions?

Mongoose Publishing is putting together a full-page ad for DRAGON Magazine to promote the upcoming edition of PARANOIA due this August. Any suggestions for a funny ad that doesn't require art?

To wind up this series of posts about service firms available during PARANOIA character creation, here are the firm types for the last three service groups. As always, the short list given to beginning Troubleshooters is only a smattering, a pittance, a mere gloss on the many firm types seen in Alpha Complex.

Beginning Troubleshooters from Tech Services may have been assigned to one of these firm types:

Bedding Inspectors
Clone Tank Support Services
Dept. of Motorized Transport (DMT)
Fuel Cell Replenishment
MemoMax Quality Assurance
Medical Services
Paint Control
Slime Identification
Tech Support

"Fuel Cell Replenishment" appears in both the Tech Services and Power Services lists. This is one more way to foment the long-standing rivalry between these groups. A firm that replenishes fuel cell power for one service group could never hope to secure a contract from the other, at least not without skullduggery or payoffs. (Now that I think on it, this is actually no different from any other service firm's procurement process.)

I wondered about setting up service firms for Internal Security and the Armed Forces. Greg Costikyan asked me what the Vultures would do when they want to invade somewhere; do they float a contract for bids? But the army and the police always outsource the mundane administrative duties and tasks they'd prefer not to be associated with. (Viz. the US military's "contract employees" now attracting attention in Iraq.) So here's what Internal Security offloads:

Crowd Control
Forensic Analysis
Glee Quota Adjutants
Re-Education Client Procurement
Surveillance Operatives
Termination Center Janitorial
Thought Surveyors
Threat Assessors
Treason Scene Cleanup

Workers for Armed Forces service firms are civilian contractors, but often got assigned to their firms after an early stint as an Armed Forces grunt.

Ammunition Fresheners
Armed Forces Friends Network
Bodyguard Communications Liaisons
Blast Shield Maintenance
Crowd Control
Sensitivity Trainers
Threat Assessors
Tool & Die Works
Vulture Squadron Recruiters

IntSec and Armed Forces share two pairs of duplicates. Crowd Control and Threat Assessor firms, like the Fuel Cell Replenishers above, are pawns in the inscrutable maneuverings of these peevish rivals.

All the service firm tables allow the possibility (when you roll a 20) that your character is a spy for a firm infiltrating a competitor. Your lucky character collects salaries from both his real and cover firms, assuming he lives long enough to collect his pay. If you roll enough 20s, you could be spying on half the Complex. Good luck keeping your cover stories straight.

Despite the storm of apathy greeting the two previous posts here, with stubborn resolve we present more of the service firm types to be included in the PARANOIA rulebook due this August from Mongoose Publishing. Again, the rulebook presents only a fraction of all the firm types in Alpha Complex. Future supplements may detail many more.

Some of these service roles are interesting; others intentionally sound quite dull. We want each Troubleshooter's service firm to provide, not necessarily a source of adventure ideas, but mainly a pretext for the character to get into places he ordinarily couldn't. Or it may instead offer unusual bargaining leverage with NPCs in certain narrow situations.

This sounds empowering for player, which is of course anathema in PARANOIA. It isn't, ideally. Rather, it gives the GM one more source of rope to play out with which the characters may hang themselves. To switch metaphors, a Troubleshooter's improper use of his service firm privileges adds one more note to the rich symphony of his mission debriefing.

Here are the PLC service firm types:

Armored Autocar Escorts
BLUE Room Caterers
Equipment Assembly Control
Field Logistics Advisors
Food Vat Control
Inventory System Updaters
Printing Office Field Checkers
Storage Media Integrity Assessors
Warehouse System Inspectors

And here's R&D, which works remarkably well as a collection of independent companies rather than a monolithic service group:

Biological Niceness Indexers
Bot Processing
Drug Interaction Testers
Field Data Collectors
Goo Cleanup
RoboPsych Auditing
Scientist Sanity Checkers
Vehicle Therapists
Weapon Effectiveness Assessors
Other (see Gamemaster for details)

In case you still haven't checked the original service firm thread on Paranoia-Live.net, here's an explanatory writeup of one of these firm types, which we stole from service firm pioneer Tom Pierce:

Field Logistics Advisors
GROUP: PLC
EXAMPLE FIRMS: FastNCheepCo, Elite Transit Analysts
PROFIT MOTIVE: Payment for forging new intersector routes for product transit
SECRET SOCIETY TAINT: Romantics (common; Transit Hoppers tend to idolize the hobo lifestyle)

Field Logistics firms deal in information, not in the physical transport of cargo. Need to know the quickest route from sector SHR to sector MDR? Want to know how much it'll cost to ship a Geoscrub Nuclear Sanitation Warhead four sectors over? These are the firms to ask.

Field Logistics Advisors employ Transit Hoppers, masters of cargo transit linking Alpha Complex's many sectors. Transit Hoppers generally live life hopping off the tubetrain onto the autoshuttle expressway, riding cargo MTVs across dangerous ruined sectors, then navigating a labyrinth of corridors with a dozen cargobots in tow. They report their findings (transit rates, times, methods, routes and the service firms that require payoffs) to their firm's central office, which crunches the data into usable routes and sells it.

Transit Hoppers get bonuses according to the amount of usable territory they cover, so their advisories tend to underplay treacherous aspects of the terrain.

FastNCheepCo rep: Happy day, citizen! How many I assist you?
Bub-R-LUM-2: Yeah, I got a defective jackobot I need to ship to R&D in sector PDQ. Guy down at Plodalong Transit said it'd take a month. I'll be traitor bait if I don't get it there by tomorrow.
FastNCheepCo: 800 credits. Your ME card, citizen? [Scans.] Excellent. One moment... ah, here, won't take you any time at all.
Bub-R: Great! I can rent a haulbot and do it myself.
FastNCheepCo: Take the Production Haulway from RTM straight through to UMB, then cut through sector LGD right into PDQ.
Bub-R: Huh? Isn't LGD that forbidden sector, the one swarming with savage Commie mutants?
FastNCheepCo: Hmm. No, says here that got cleared up. I'm sure it's perfectly safe.

The outpouring of passionate response to the first post on service firm examples (comments as of this moment: 0) prompts another list of the firm types presented in the new PARANOIA edition due this August.

During character creation, you roll 1d20 and consult a chart that lists typical service functions specific to your Troubleshooter's assigned service group. Each of the eight charts lists nine types of service firms (plus a tenth line for GM's choice); in each type there may be several competing companies. Many more firm types will be detailed in future PARANOIA supplements.

Here are the types of firms available in the Central Processing Unit service group:

116 Emergency Systems
Credit License Checkers
Facility Surveillance Control
Form Facilitators
Form Inventory Officers
Form Disposal Advisors
Pocket Protector Refurbishers
Security System Installers
Volunteer Collection Agencies

And here are the firm types in Housing, Preservation and Development & Mind Control:

Entertainment Scouting Agencies
History Purifiers
News Services
Public Hating Coordination
Psych Ward Administration
Sector Expansion Surveyors
Semantics Control
Singalong Agents
Subliminals Police

Here's a sample writeup (by Tom Pierce) for one of those firm types:

Semantics Control
GROUP: HPD&MC
EXAMPLE FIRMS: Watch Your Words! Semantics Company, Loyally Picky Proofing Firm
PROFIT MOTIVE: For enforcement (ratting out others): percentage of fine; for protection (proofreading): payment from client
SECRET SOCIETY TAINT: Free Enterprise (frequent)

Though not perhaps as treasonous as poor hygiene, misuse of language can be a fineable offense. Formerly the proofreaders for HPD&MC publications and holovid scripts, the Semantics Controllers (known commonly as Brand Police or Branders) found a way to profitably extend their functions.

Semantics Control firms actively search for semantics offenses (misspellings on submitted forms, typos in communications, syntax, grammar, you name it) and relay the charges through Internal Security agents. As HPD&MC's prestige and position is bolstered by finding treasonous activity, they're willing to pay the firm a percentage of each fine they levy. Some Semantics Control firms also charge various product firms to 'actively protect' their brand identities.

Brander: Tsk tsk. Look here, you've put 'Bouncy Bubbly Beverage' on your request form instead of 'Bouncy Bubble Beverage,' the correct branding term for that particular treat.
Holt-R-FGE-2: Um -- that's bad?
Brander: Does brand dilution sound bad? I certainly think so. And look here. Oh, no. No no no no no. You used 'the' in lowercase in referring to The, capital-T, Computer!
Holt-R: *gulp*
Brander: Right! I'll be glad to notify HPD&MC of your 3,000-credit fine, citizen, and you have a nice daycycle.

This blog's March 6th entry on service firms described the privatized, for-profit companies to which the old Alpha Complex service groups, acting on The Computer's orders, now outsource most municipal functions.

Each of the eight service groups has its own characteristic passel of camp-following specialty firms, which vie for its rich contracts. Even the Armed Forces and Internal Security groups, though they retain their core functions, outsource a host of minor support duties not directly related to security. In the new edition of PARANOIA appearing this August from Mongoose Publishing, you work for one of these firms when you're not on a Troubleshooter mission.

Tom Pierce (aka Coyote-R-PXP) ran with the service firm idea, ran hard and well, in this service firm thread on Paranoia-Live.net. Tom devised the format and general approach we will use in the PARANOIA rulebook; other talented folks in the same thread contributed many excellent service firm ideas. The entries describe, not individual firms, but functional niches in which several firms compete -- for instance, the function of cleaning up treason crime scenes.

In this and the next few blog posts, we'll look at some service firm types described in the rulebook. For each of the eight groups, the character creation tables offer ten firm types, a mere smattering of possibilities. For instance, here's the chart for Power Services:

• Battery Backup


• Burn Radius Assessors


• Circuit Maintenance


• Fuel Cell Replenishment (Power)


• Fuel Rod Disposal Consultants


• Odor Fresheners


• Power Oscillation Professionals


• Safe Atoms Initiative


• Wire Supply Checkers


• Other (see Gamemaster for details)

And here's the rulebook writeup (Clearance ULTRAVIOLET) for one of those types, courtesy of Tom:

Power Oscillation Professionals

EXAMPLE FIRMS: Swingvolt, Citizens Who Love Power

PROFIT MOTIVE: Grants for guaranteeing reliable power

SECRET SOCIETY TAINT: Free Enterprise (common), Pro Tech (common)

Power fluctuation in Alpha Complex is a fact of life. Massive surges are as common as blackouts. R&D has continually lost real estate, equipment and citizens due to power shifts during advanced weapon testing. Every time a high-clearance residential corridor goes dark, heads roll and termination centers hum.

The Computer eventually decided to come down hard on those responsible. Rumors say most of Power Services management walked funny for a month.

Power Services knew they couldn't get things running any better. However, they realized refitting generators, rewiring power conduits and patching the ramshackle grid wasn't really needed. They only needed to stop the complaints. Presto: outsourcing contracts for a new class of service firm.

For reasonable rates, Power Oscillation Professionals guarantee steady power to a designated area, at the time and for the duration of your choice. Under the table the Pros can also arrange a loss of power, if the money's right and complaints will be low.

The trouble is, to provide reliable power to one part of Alpha Complex, Power Oscillation Professionals have to shuffle power from elsewhere. Consumption must balance. Otherwise power output rates would set off alarms; lots of questions would be raised; things might explode; best not to think about it, really.

To minimize complaints, the Pros kill power to offices closed during nightcycle, and to low-complaint-potential areas like INFRARED barracks, treason holding cells, toxin containment units and the like -- theoretically, just enough to provide power to fulfill their contracts. Theoretically.

Jabez-B-QOJ-3: So that's it? You hit my ME card up for 4,000 and my lab's power is consistent through tomorrow morning?

Power Oscillation Pro: Yeah, you got it, citizen.

Jabez-B: Huzzah! I can finally complete my biocontainment suit... Hey, do you hear screaming?

Power Oscillation Pro: Oh, that. I heard somethin' about systems goin' down in the INFRARED infirmary down th' hall.

Jabez-B: Systems? You mean they lost power?

Power Oscillation Pro: I don't know nothin' bout that.

I invite speculation about the other Power Service firm types. I'll include your funny stuff in the writeup and give you credit.