PARANOIA
Experimental Equipment Performance Report Form

(Steve Criddle/Rodrigo Augusto)

Background

    When the Troubleshooters collect their experimental equipment from R&D, they are given a sealed envelope for each item they volunteered for. They are instructed that immediately after testing the item, they (or another clone, if they do not survive) should open the envelope and fill in the form reporting the effectiveness of the equipment.

    (This can be interesting if they are trying to fill in the form while their teammates are involved in a firefight).

    The form is designed in such a way as to trick the players into answering questions about the Outdoors. Note the last 3 questions on the first page, and the first question on the second page.  (This demonstrates the world of Paranoia very nicely - even if a player gets caught by the trick questions, he will keep quiet when somebody else in the team has to fill in this form).

Using the form

    These forms are also useful for designing new R&D equipment. Rather than inventing something new, just use an existing item and "improve" it according to a suggestion from a Troubleshooter. You can either take their suggestion completely literally (as shown in the first example below), or improve an item far too much, thus still making it difficult to use.

    If you want to hose the players a bit, put the wrong form in the envelope.  Alternatively, if you are printing the forms on coloured paper, print the form on a paper colour the citizen isn't cleared to fill in.  The beauty of this particular hose-job is that the citizen in question won't discover the problem until it's too late to do anything about it.

    If you plan to use either of the above suggestions to hose your players, make sure you don't overdo it.  Have the envelopes prepared in advance and only put the wrong form in one or two envelopes.  Distribute the envelopes randomly, so you have no idea who has the bad envelope - unless you particularly want to hose a specific player, of course.

Examples

Download

You can download a blank version of the EEPRF to print off and torment your players with.  The version available for download is slightly different from the version in the examples above.

English

Portugese (Rodrigo Augusto) 
Paranoia and The Computer logo are registered trademarks of West End Games
Authors of submitted items are indicated where appropriate
All other text and graphics by Steve Criddle