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On Sunday evening, the Paranoia session I've been trying to get off the ground for months finally happened. There was supposed to be me and five players, but one of the players got sick and had to cancel. So we ended up with four very trigger-happy Troubleshooters.

The only other time I ran Paranoia via tabletop was back when I was still in the Freak Show. At that time, I ran the Into The Outdoors With Gun And Camera adventure that's found in the back of the Paranoia 2E core book. Well, I chose that adventure this time. It has some good hose jobs and some pretty funny predicaments. Additionally, it lets the PCs get all crazy without having to worry about The Computer gunning them down for treason every five minutes (of course, they have to worry about each other still).

The game kicked off, and the first thing they discovered was they had to get a Briefing Room IOGC. However, the map provided by The Computer was nothing but a scrawl. They wandered aimlessly, and eventually Rawl's character said something that convinced the others he was a traitor. Calls of "Commie mutant traitor!" went out, but nobody yet had a laser pistol or rifle to fire. Rich's character had a big, heavy wrench, though. As he started to beat on Rawl's character, Rawl (a registered mutant) tried to use his pyrokinesis. It didn't work and Rawl ended up getting splattered.

However, the Troubleshooters weren't done. More charges of treason, and the next thing they know, The Computer had decided to terminate them all. Lasers dropped from the ceiling and vaporized them all. It was their second clones that made it to the briefing room.

The briefing went a bit better for the Troubleshooters (but was probably less fun for the players). They were being sent into the Outdoors on a recon mission. I grilled them a bit, but because of time constraints, I opted not to get into the long interrogation the adventure had planned. I also moved the next few bits quickly (ignoring the autoshuttle incident entirely).

R&D was where things got out of hand again. I chose only to offer the PCs the rocket boots rather than going through the long list of insane R&D devices. I seem to recall only the NPC, Grund-G-GUY-3, turning down the rocket boots. And Xavier's character took two sets. He put one set on, and then Rawl decided to get all pyrokinetic again.

Just for fun, Rawl's character's set Xavier's character's shoes on fire. So we had fire ... mixed with rocket fuel. Everyone ducked for cover. Boom! It wiped out the jackobot and the docbot the Troubleshooters had been assigned, as well as all three Infrared labourers, Rich's character's recording device, both of Xavier's sets of rocket boots and all his gear.

I can't remember how Rawl lost his second clone, but I'm pretty sure it happened by the time they got to the Multi-Terrtain Vehicle (MTV) (piloted by the all-too-happy autopilot, Lucky). Everyone loaded themselves into the MTV, and Lucky started walking (with his six legs) across the landscape. Eventually, Lucky came to the water and then dove down a couple dozen feet.

Leaks in the canopy worried the Troubleshooters. More worrisome was when Lucky flipped out and went into a slow, whirling dive towards the bottom of the body of water. They started pushing buttons, pulling knobs, etc. That's when Xavier decided he was going to get the hell out of there. He made a check, found the knob that opened the canopy, pulled it and fired his rocket boots. He held his breath and soon found himself above the water.

The others were all in spacesuits (in place of environmental suits) they'd been assigned at PLC & Outfitting. They all got their oxygen working, and then they found the knob to close the canopy. Unfortunately, they also then found the dive button. The MTV dove quickly towards the bottom of the body of water, and they figured the only safe thing to do was to find the canopy open knob again.

Meanwhile, Rawl had decided to blame their mission leader for the mess and pulled his weapon. He fired at Grund-G, who fired back (stunning Rawl's character). He ordered the other Troubleshooters to kill the traitor, but they failed to comply (they were too busy trying to save their own asses). Grund-G eliminated Rawl's character, and then the others found the knob to open the canopy. They jumped out ... and found their spacesuits didn't float. As they all started sinking, they all started opening fire on each other.

In this adventure, clones are replaced by what is essentially a cannon. And it fires replacement clones towards the body of the previous clones. Clones are encases in shells and fired -- and in this case, they were fired directly into the body of water. More dead clones.

At this point, Xavier's clone had started swimming back to shore (no more rocket fuel). When he got to the shore, The Computer aborted his mission and Xavier's character (the sole survivor -- lucky him) was debriefed. He told his superiors all about the Commie traitors on his team and how they'd killed each other while sinking towards oblivion. End of adventure.

Technically speaking, we only got about halfway through the adventure, so I could easily run this again with the same group at some point in the future. They didn't get to all of the neat stuff.

Even with the mission a complete failure, I think everybody had fun (Xavier still isn't convinced that Paranoia is for him, though; but I think he got some entertainment out of it). Everyone got into the spirit of declaring someone a traitor and then opening fire, so I have to say I was impressed and entertained by the players.

In two weeks, we'll have another one-shot. It'll either be Call of Cthulhu or Ironclaw.