Author: Lester W. Smith
Category: game
Company/Publisher: Dynasty Presentations, Inc.
Line: Dark Conspiracy
Cost: $25.00
Page count: 400
ISBN: 1-892886-00-6
SKU: DPI 1000
Capsule Review by Dan Davenport on 10/25/99.
Genre tags: Science_fiction Horror Conspiracy

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction

The book opens with a short bit of creepy fiction that's definitely above average as game fiction goes. Unfortunately, it really doesn't offer much specific to Dark Conspiracy - it could just as easily be an intro to Conspiracy X or Delta Green, for example.

The actual intro to the setting that follows adds a bit more detail. We're told that the setting is a dystopian near-future, near-cyberpunk Earth in which economic and natural disasters are only the symptoms of an ancient evil that's been unleashed. This evil's Dark Minions take the form of beings that seem to be shadowy reflections of the horrors from humanity's darkest legends.

And that's pretty much it for background in the Player's Handbook. I really don't think this does the setting justice, especially considering its omission of its film noir aspects. Of course, the GM ("Referee") can fill in the gaps with the complete background in the Referee's Guide, but this lack of information hampers the book's value as a stand-alone book.

This chapter also contains an overview of the book, some definitions of terms, and the obligatory "What is Roleplay?" bit.

Chapter 2: Character Generation

This is one of the more well designed aspects of the system.

Characters have seven attributes: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Education, Charisma, and Empathy. Scores for these attributes range from 1-10 for normal humans and may be either assigned from a pool of 36 points (Empathy costing double) or rolled on 2D6-2 (1D6-1 for Empathy). In either case, only Empathy may be 0. (Since the game makes use of D10s as well as D6s and D20s, I can't help wondering why they didn't go with a simple D10 roll for the random method.)

Players familiar with the first edition of DC may be dismayed to discover that character hit points have dropped and that Initiative is now limited to a starting score of 1 for civilians and 2 for members of the military.

Characters start a career path at age 17 and proceed through a series of 4-year "terms" in different jobs. Characters' social classes may affect their choice of careers in a given term, and, in turn, their careers may change their social classes. The career path may continue for as long as the players wish to risk age taking its toll on their characters or else until they roll less than their character's current number of terms on a D10.

As they progress, the characters pick up various personal interest skills and contacts. The game handles the latter very well. Contacts may be either "generic" or "solid". When digging for information, all the characters in a group pool the number of generic contacts they posses in a given walk of life, such as entertainment or government, and treat the resulting total as a skill. Players may choose to convert generic contacts to solid contacts, who are specific people the character knows and might call on for help.

When the career path ends through choice or die roll, the player selects a "mustering out" option for the character: Agent (they're contacted by some organization for recruitment), Empathy (they gain a psychic revelation of the danger to mankind), Encounter (they have an actual run-in with the supernatural), or Xeno (they're… well… aliens). Each option has its own perks: greater resources, a bonus to Empathy, a bonus to Initiative, and a hand-held death ray, respectively. Of the four, the last is a bit unbalancing in my humble opinion, even given a limited amount of ammunition - such a weapon has a damage rating of 20, higher than anything short of heavy artillery and enough to drop most Dark Minions in one blast.

Chapter 3: Careers

Here's where the real fun is in the character creation process.

Careers are written up as entry requirements, first- and subsequent-term skills and contacts gained, and any special perks offered.

For the most part, the characters will be similar to those found in Call of Cthulhu: ordinary people (with possibly extraordinary careers) who discover themselves in extraordinary circumstances. However, there are a few notable exceptions.

For example, some characters may be able to use Empathy, a Force-like ability to tap into the living energies of the universe. In addition, a character may be an escaped alien abductee who's been transformed into a cyborg.

Also incorporated into the second edition are rules for creating humanoid extraterrestrial or alien android PCs. And here I have a bit of a problem. While I'm all for giving players a maximum amount of choice, it seems to me that in a conspiracy game such as this that the very presence of such PCs gives away too much of the setting, not to mention the knowledge they would be expected to possess. However, such characters might work well if introduced later in a campaign.

They might, that is, if there were enough information provided about what it means to be a humanoid E.T. No such luck. This could be forgivable if the Referee's guide went into more detail about the E.T.s, but it doesn't. To make matters worse, the illustrations of the E.T. careers just confuse matters further: all are supposed to be humanoid E.T.s, yet each looks different from both the other career examples and the pictures of the humanoid E.T.s in the Ref's Guide.

Chapter 4: Task Resolution & Skills

The basic mechanic is a simple, workmanlike attribute + skill roll-under system on a D20. This is a change from the first edition, in which rolls were on a D10 against only attributes or skills. (Buying skills beyond the level of the controlling attributes doubled their cost in the first edition, and this rule carries over into this edition.) This is a definite improvement, offering a wider range of difficulty levels. These difficulties range from 4 times the ability score for easy tasks to ¼ the score for well nigh impossible ones, with 2 times the score being average. Succeeding or failing by 10 or more results in an extraordinary success or failure, respectively. One is an automatic success and 20 is an automatic failure.

While I'm a big fan of attribute + skill systems and was glad to see DC adopt one, the controlling attributes are carry-overs from the first system and are, in large part, completely ridiculous. For example, according to DC, if you want to be a natural archer, marksman, martial artist, and mechanic, better head to the gym - they're all based on Strength. And you say you want to be a top-notch ship's captain, parachutist, or horseback rider? Take your vitamins - all those skills are based on Constitution. Of course, it's a simple matter to move skills to more appropriate attributes, so this isn't a damning flaw.

The only other permutation of the basic system is the power level system for Empathy. On a successful task check with an Empathic skill, the player rolls 1D10 and adds the result to the character's Empathy attribute and skill. If the target has the Willpower skill, the result is subtracted from the target's Willpower + Intelligence. The total is the effect's power level, which is doubled if the original task check was an outstanding success. Power levels are then divided into six stages of success, the effects of which vary according to the Empathic skill in question. It's not a bad system, really, although it seems to me that just making the entire DC system target number-based rather than roll-under would have make the extra mechanic unnecessary. Also, I find the six-stage limit to all Empathic powers to be a bit too restrictive.

The remainder of the chapter is a list of skills. The skills are fairly broad - for example, Horsemanship covers caring for horses as well as riding them. Some skills include "cascades", meaning that the character specializes in one aspect of the skill and attempts other aspects of the skill at ½ of his ability; e.g., Melee Combat covers Armed and Unarmed Combat, and the player chooses one as the character's primary skill at character creation.

Chapter Five: Empathy

This chapter, drawn from the first edition Empathic Sourcebook, is easily the book's best. It divides Empathic abilities into four paths: Neuropathy, Psionics, Sorcery, and Mysticism. Each path has its own strengths, weaknesses, and, most importantly, its own flavor. I can recommend the Master's Edition of the Player's Handbook for this chapter alone, since the reprinted first-edition Empathic abilities in the retail printing are both weak and rather bland.

Neuropathy is basically an expansion of the "default" Empathic abilities covered in the skills section, adding the ability of Neuropaths to combine their efforts and to "push" their abilities at the risk of mental damage. Psionics are quick, direct, methodical powers that incorporate certain abilities limited to Dark Minions in the first edition, such as Telekinesis and Pyrokinesis. Sorcery is, to me, the most interesting of the four, blurring the lines between magical and psychic powers with the ability to open dimensional gates for a variety of effects. (For example, a sorcerer wishing to blast a foe with fire would open a small gate to a fiery proto-dimension, while a sorcerer wishing to fly would open a gate to a lower-gravity dimension.) Finally, Mysticism is a bit like Psionic's polar opposite, focusing on feelings rather than thoughts and granting the ability to enter the astral proto-dimension.

I only had two minor disappointments in this chapter. First, while certain skills are available to multiple paths, the scope of these skills varies for each path; however, the book isn't clear on what happens if an empath who learned such a skill under one path later learns another path. And second, while the Referee's Guide makes reference to such traditional magical abilities as summonings and curses, this chapter gives no hint as to how such things might be accomplished. True, such abilities can be left as story elements, but some game mechanics would be nice.

Chapter Six: Combat & Damage

Here's where things start getting a bit dicey. Literally. Dark Conspiracy may be a horror game, but its combat mechanics rival military simulations in complexity - a direct result, no doubt, of the system's origins in Twilight: 2000.

Unarmed combat, armed combat, normal fire, automatic fire, indirect fire, and explosives all get their own subsections, and mechanics for damage and armor vary for each. Skill is in determining unarmed combat damage - which is a flat, generally very low number - but irrelevant to combat with melee weapons, which is based on 1D6 plus a modifier. Gun damage, meanwhile, is based on pools of D6s. Armor points block points of damage on a one-for-one basis against unarmed combat, two-for one against armed melee combat, and reduce the number of damage dice from firearm combat based upon the weapon's penetration rating, if any. (None of this accounts for non-ballistic armor, by the way.) Even a hit with a .44 Magnum is unlikely to take down a normal human except in cases of a critical hit, in which case all weapons have an equal chance of a "Quick Kill".

Normal fire combat uses the standard task check mechanic with varying levels of difficulty, while automatic fire uses pools of dice with a fixed high difficulty and varying numbers of dice. Normal shotguns use a variation on the autofire mechanic, while automatic shotguns use pools of pools of dice.

I don't own enough dice for this game.

And it gets worse. Want to know the concussion value of a demolition charge? Divide the demolition points by two, extract the square root of the result, and multiply by 5. No, I'm not kidding, and yes, my head hurts, too. (And this comes before a description of explosion damage, which is vital to understanding this mess.)

Chapter Seven: Wounds & Healing

I'm not at all sure why this chapter isn't part of the previous one.

At any rate, the wound system is a nice merging of hit point and hit location systems. As each hit location takes damage, it moves up the scale from Scratched (less than half its HP total) to Critical (more than twice its HP total). Each stage has its own penalties, and only the penalties of the highest current wound on a body count.

As befits such a grim setting, healing isn't easy. First aid is difficult to perform and can only lower a Critical wound to Serious or prevent infection, so actual medical attention will be a must for getting characters back on their feet quickly.

Chapter Eight: Equipment

Here there be toys.

This massive chapter includes everything from flintlock pistols to robot nannies, fax machines to space shuttles, all with detail text and most with illustrations.

One drawback is the lack of "RetroTek" devices - the 1940s-50s era technology used by the poor that gives the setting much of its film noir appeal. Sure, such items might not require lots of technical specs, but some prices would have been nice. A more serious problem are the vehicle and robot statistics: the former appear after this chapter, and the latter don't show up until the Referee's Guide.

Otherwise, this is an excellent selection of goodies.

Chapter Nine: Vehicle Travel & Combat

The nightmare resumes.

Vehicles use an entirely different system for damage consisting of no less than 15 different charts of hit locations and effects. All vehicles are equally maneuverable, and a vehicle's size has no effect on its ability to soak damage. All vehicles are completely invulnerable to melee weapons, and a mortar round dropped on a Yugo only has a 50-50 chance of having any effect. (My calculations might be off on the latter, but the very fact that such calculations are required is a sure sign of an overly complex system. And, at any rate, no one on the DC list corrected me when I asked about this.)

Chapter Ten: Space Travel

More combinations of bizarre abstractions and complex mathematics. Spacecraft, it seems, all have the same flat chance of crashing upon takeoff and landing with the exception of really old or really advanced craft. Spacecraft have the maneuverability statistic that other craft lack but have no combat statistics whatsoever. The former is used for orbital intercepts; the latter means that you'd better hope no form of combat ensues once an intercept is achieved.

STYLE

The first noteworthy aspect of this book it its size: 6" x 9" - about the size of a trade paperback - and 400 pages (including the index). It's a hefty book, yet it's a nice size to carry around - as someone at RPGnet mentioned about a game book of the same size, it looks like a novel to the casual observer, thus avoiding any gamer stigma. (If you care about such things.) Unfortunately, line spacing was squeezed at the bottom of several pages in an apparent attempt to fit the smaller page size, and the result looks rather sloppy. Also sloppy are the frequently missing or misaligned statistics in the weapons write-ups.

As far as I can tell, all of the artwork is reproduced from the first edition rulebook and supplements. While most of it is competent and some of it rather good, the styles vary wildly from surreal sketches to 70s comic book to ultra-realistic, keeping the book from maintaining a coherent visual style. This is forgivable, however; the fact some of the illustrations repeat and others appear bitmapped is not. I was especially annoyed by the picture supposedly of a laser pistol that was, in fact, a reduced illustration of a heavy laser with bipod.

The book could use some serious editing as well. There are far too many typos, especially for a second edition, and too many instances of rules being applied before they are described, such as the stats for vehicles and robots.

To the book's credit, however, are the detailed table of contents and index, as well as the handy character generation worksheet that makes the already enjoyable character generation process even more clear-cut.

SUMMARY

This really isn't, as the title claims, a player's handbook. There's far too much information that the GM needs and that players shouldn't know. It is, instead, merely half of the rulebook, mostly game mechanics. And, unfortunately, the game mechanics are a nightmare. On the other hand, this book, when combined with the Referee's Guide, gives you the entire text of the first edition rulebook and all of the first edition supplements, so there's a lot for your money. That, plus the fun character creation system, interesting empathic rules, and generous equipment section almost serve to balance the terrible mechanics, making me wish very strongly for a 3.5 rating. As it stands, though, I can't bring myself to give such a flawed book anything more than a 3.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 3 (Average)