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Service, Service! is the sourcebook that deals with the Service Groups, the eight business units that provide the day-to-day activities that make life in Alpha Complex possible, and occasionally impossible. The book cover is illustrated by Paranoia-artist Jim Holloway and shows a typical inter-service group argument. The INFRARED (black) border is misleading, as the contents of the book are security clearance ULTRAVIOLET, i.e. meant for the eyes of game masters only. A ‘Thank You’ to players who purchased this book, and so kindly made a donation to promote their favorite game. You can still show off the great cover illustration to your friends, of course (or you can treasonously read the contents anyway).
The book starts with a brief self-justification in the form of Q&A. Service Groups rarely figured an important role in Troubleshooter Missions, so there seems little reason to devote an entire book to them. This is where the current edition shows that it can do more than previous ones. With the introduction of the new Service Firms, Service Services, etc., Paranoia offers GMs a whole new box of tools to develop their missions and manipulate their players.
Chapter One offers an explanation of how Service Groups work. Or rather, it makes clear why things in Service Groups often do not work, or at least not as they should. The main reason lies in the conflict of authority (based on security clearance), responsibility (the duty domains of the Service Firms) and competence (as reflected by skills). While managers can assign duties and responsibilities to their staff, someone’s position on the organization chart does not necessarily provide him with the authority to give orders to citizens who happen to be lower on that chart. Authority exclusively comes from security clearance, which is a measure of how much The Computer trusts you, and only that. This conflict within Service Firms is the first new tool you can use in your Missions to have (N)PCs manipulate your players. The chapter ends with an entertaining survey of how each Service Group stereotypically thinks of all other Service Groups. To add a personal observation: remind yourself that similar views are held between various Service Firms within a Service Group and you have yet another tension builder. Letting players read the table of their Service Group may help them to get a better feeling for their niche within Alpha Complex. Don’t let them read the rest! They will find out soon enough.
Chapter Two introduces another new tool, which gives a player specific authorities in the form of Mandates. Troubleshooters are used to get Mandatory Bonus Duties, and the Extreme Paranoia sourcebook provided a new set of MBDs to try out. Mandates serve a similar function, but from a different perspective. Because Troubleshooters boldly go where no other clones have wanted to go before, the Service Groups decided it would be a Good Thing if they could check that everything works according to specification while the Troubleshooters are there anyway. A mandate allows a player to make a roll for a very specific task. For example: “Technical Services mandate - Test camera rotation arc. Ensure that cameras in any room can rotate at an arc of at least 60 degrees. Benefit: you are given a tool to disable the motor that controls the movement of a camera. Make a Hardware roll to test its freedom of movement, then reconnect it to the motor again.” Just think of all the treasonous opportunities being allowed to manipulate a camera brings. Because Mandates are much more flexible than MBDs, and GMs are encouraged to toy around with them during a mission. As a bonus, Mandates come with funny badges for the players to wear.
Chapter Three makes up most of the book and is divided into sections that each deal with one of the Service Groups. Each Service Group section is organised in the same way: The first page has a side bar with typical hangouts and rumors, and the rest of the page is filled with up to a dozen sample Service Services. Then comes the Service Group logo, followed by several pages describing new Service Firms. A few typical NPC employees are described next, leading up to a full blown mission for RED clearance Troubleshooters to end the section about that Service Group with. Scattered throughout the chapter are a series of example Mandates for each Service Group.
The hangouts and rumors are not particularly funny or useful, but sufficiently so to deserve a place in a sidebar. Rumors have been used in published missions before. I think they are terrific tools to get your players in the right mood quickly, but they work best if made to fit a specific mission. These generic rumors may help you get inspiration. The hangouts are a new idea and provide location ideas for where to meet people from a given Service Group when they are off-duty. Can’t find that PLC clerk who is supposed to give you your mission equipment? Check the Worker Lounge (if the lookouts don’t spot you first and clear the room, or the diversionists send you into the boss’s office).
Service Services were already introduced in the Paranoia rulebook as a more generic alternative for the default visit to R&D. Testing experimental equipment is now just one of many possible tasks a Troubleshooter team can perform for a Service Group. The rulebook gives only a few examples of Service Services, while this book shows the wide range of fun tasks you can set your players. This is one of those tools that can really change your gaming experience. No more worries of which experimental gadgets will explode in your face this time. Now you can infiltrate the INFRARED Market for Internal Security instead. Those salesclones down there won’t mind selling you stuff later, when you badly need it for your mission. Honestly. The only weak point of the examples in the book is that quite many are group tasks that leave little room for individual action (unlike with R&D, where each player got his own item to test and use in his own scheming) or can be accomplished, or foiled, by a single player. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have group assignments, but depending on your player group it might require some extra GM effort to get the most out of it. Then again, there are some real gems among the Service Services presented in the book too.
At long last, all Service Groups have a graphical logo. I think they are a bit unimaginative, but that’s a matter of personal taste, I suppose. But it’s fun to have them and the Mandate badges make good use of them. Your players should be proud to work for a particular Service Group. Even if their boss does his best to make their working life miserable.
Service Firms too are a new GM tool in this Paranoia edition, as described in the rulebook. Service Firms are what the Service Groups needed to become just as useful for building mission goals and motives upon as the secret societies. About 80 new Firms are given in this book. Combined with the rulebook, there are now 19 Service Firms for each Service Group, totalling an impressive 152 Firms. A handy new chart for rolling your Service Firm during character generation is presented at the end of the book. The Firms alone make the book worth its money in my opinion, for two reasons. First, most of them contain one or more plot hooks you can use in your missions, often usable even if you ignore the Service Firm itself. That’s one treasure chest full of fun, creative ideas! Second, the complete list of Service Firms gives a good view of the wide range of activities that are being covered by the Service Group. Of most interest for Straight style games, this provides a solid framework of how Alpha Complex could be run, thus giving reasons for why things happen on a Troubleshooter mission (Service Firm competition, forced cooperation, conflicting duty domains, reorganizations, management rivalry, etc.) Whether you like -or even believe in- a Straight style for roleplaying Paranoia, selecting your PCs' Service Firms and Service Firm assignmnents to 'fit' the background story and mission goals does make the game different. And no, this doesn’t make Paranoia anything like any of those non-fun games at all. Note that a Service Firm entry is actually a description of a duty domain, not a firm. Each entry provides several names for firms. This allows for giving a personal touch to your character’s background, but it can also be used to generate a lot of tension on a very narrow subject if you have players from Service Firms operating in the same duty domain, for example.
Next, there are several NPC employees given for each Service Group. They add some extra flavor and may be useful if you need an NPC off the shelf in one of your games. Overall, I didn’t think they added all that much to the book.
Each Service Group section ends with a complete Troubleshooter mission focussed on that Service Group, written by various members of the Traitor Recycling Studio. Some missions are better than others, but in general they are all well done and the inclusion of eight missions certainly gives you a lot of extra value for your Credit. Much attention has been given to the layout of the mission titles. I don’t have any other mission books for comparison, but it’s quite different from what I’ve seen before, and the change of style fits well in a book that is about changing styles.
As a bonus there is an appendix dealing with AlphaNet, Alpha Complex’s internet, and how it’s used by Service Groups. Other aspects of AlphaNet are described in other sourcebooks. AlphaNet brings Paranoia up to date with aspects of technology and society that we were unfamiliar with in the late 1980s and now allows you to present Ignorance and Fear in a digital way too.
In conclusion, I like Service, Service! a lot (Substance 5) because it expands on new ways to experience Paranoia gameplay. This doesn’t make it another game, but it does give GMs many tools to play a familiar game in a different way. There are now so many ways to manipulate your players, that it has become impossible to use them all in a single mission. This book is of most value to GMs who prefer to write their own missions, although the eight missions in the book will keep you and your players occupied for quite some time. I disagree with people who say this book is mostly for Straight style games. Substitute MBDs with Mandates, experimental equipment with a Service Service, and perhaps select a set of Service Firms with inherent conflicts of interest and you can play that Classic game just as well as with the original rules. The authors could have done a bit more to illustrate that, but it’s not enough to cost them a point. For Style I rate it a 4. In general, a lot of attention has been paid to layout and writing. As long as you don’t read a book with so many entries from front to back in one go, it’s easy and fun to read. Jim Holloway's art is great, except at several places images are missing, which is plain weird. The inside of the back cover gives the credits and short biographies of the authors, which is fun and the inside of the front cover advertises the other Paranoia books, which is less so. You have to search a bit to find all the mandates, but in a book like this, reading them a few at a time is more fun than having them all presented together on a few pages for photocopying and cutting out. The Service Group logos lack a certain style, but it’s good to have them. The funny quotes on bars at the bottom of the pages and on the Computer monitors make for a nice finishing touch.
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