Paranoia is a comedy roleplaying game, first published in 1984 by West End Games. It was originally written and designed by Greg Costikyan (who also created the 1987 Star Wars RPG for West End Games), Dan Gelber and Eric Goldberg. It’s been through several editions and revivals, most recently in 2023 with the “Perfect” or “Shiny Edition”, which is published by Mongoose Games. This edition was used by the Dragon Friends for their standalone campaign OK Computer.
Paranoia is set in a retro-futuristic setting called “Alpha Complex”, a huge underground city in which a version of American society has survived a nuclear war with the enemy (“Communists” in the original, riffing on fears of the Cold War era; changed in some modern editions to “terrorists”). Alpha Complex is run by the Computer, known in its own propaganda as “Friend Computer”, a “benevolent” artificial intelligence which seeks to keep its supposed utopia free of the corrupting influence of secret societies and mutants. (Every player character is a member of a secret society and has a mutant power.) The human population is made up of clones grown in vats and assigned a name, job and rank by the Computer at “birth”.
Social status and access to resources and information in Alpha Complex are strictly controlled, with a hierarchy based on the ROYGBIV colour spectrum. Ordinary everyday citizens with no access to any secrets or security gear have “infra-red” clearance, while the elite are the “High Programers” who have “ultra-violet” clearance. Players are usually “troubleshooters” - expendable agents of the Computer who “find trouble and shoot it”. They usually start with red clearance, denoted by the colour of their uniforms and laser weapons, but might earn a promotion. Player characters have a “six pack” of backup clones who are activated in the case of their death. Troubleshooters are often killed by experimental equipment they’re assigned to test, rival player characters (over conflicting secret society agendas, or to keep a mutation a secret) or the Computer’s orders (which are frequently contradictory, nonsensical or suicidal).
Alpha Complex names follow a set pattern: a short personal name (the Computer doesn’t allow duplicates, leading to some weird choices); a middle initial indicating the character’s current security clearance; and a three-letter abbreviation of the sector of Alpha Complex they are from. These are combined with hyphens, and when backup clones are activated, the number of the clone is appended to the end. For example, Stacey-R-FES has red clearance and is from sector FES; Norm-Y-TDK-2 has yellow clearance, is from sector TDK, and is the second backup clone of the original Norm-Y-TDK.