Reading Paranoia XP: Sector Zero

This is a review of a Paranoia XP supplement titled Sector Zero. If you’re interested, read on. 

“Sector Zero” is Alpha Complex slang for “punishment duty”—as in, the missions that Troubleshooters are assigned when they’re being punished for past screw-ups. In other words, Sector Zero is a collection of three short “screwjob” adventures where Troubleshooters are set up to fail. In some game systems, those would be damning words, but of course, this is Paranoia and it’s to be expected. 

For  my money, the first two adventures are good, while the latter one left me a little confused.

• The first adventure, Gareth [Ryder-]Hanrahan’s “Bubblegum Run,” involves Troubleshooters being send down to a creche to deal with some Commie-tainted propaganda and drugged gum that apparently is shipped to kids in the creche by a secret society. It’s a series of set-up gags and awkward revelations. Not that I feel I should worry about spoilers for a book from 2006, but without divulging too much, I’ll say that I think it has a logical structure, good humor, and the usual clever trickiness one expects from a Paranoia mission. It also drove home for me that Paranoia missions can, fruitfully, be represented as pointcrawls, though rather than points in space, the points are in stages of systemic breakdown within Alpha Complex or parts of it. 
• The second mission is Saul Resnikoff’s “The Dinner Party,” and it feels a little more loosey-goosey (in a good way) with its own structure: characters are sent to prepare a dinner party at  some high-ranking citizen’s house. This, of course, is impossible for them to do without help, and help is not very forthcoming. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading it, and I think it’d make for a hilarious session. 
• The third and last mission is “Lightning Rod” by Jeff Groves. It worked less well in my opinion: for some reason, the humor fell a little more flat for me, though it includes some handy (abstracted, puzzle-like) procedures for dealing with unfamiliar technology. That said, I’m not sure exactly why I feel that way, and maybe it’s just that it feels a bit more like a typical Paranoia mission, where the other two take “mission” in a direction I’d never quite imagined before. (Troubleshooters struggling to rig up a device that collects power from lightning strikes feels much more familiar than Troubleshooters struggling with how to set a table or deal with actual food, or trying to confiscate Commie-propaganda smuggled into a creche inside bubble gum wrappers. 

In any case, I don’t think Sector Zero is an indispensable book in the Paranoia XP line, but it is a fun set of missions that, at least with a little note-taking, would likely run smoothly and result in the kind of hilarity that any group willing to play Paranoia will enjoy.