Conspiracy of Shadows postulates a world with medieval technology and society, a common setting for RPGs. It then adds a demonic conspiracy and thrusts the characters into the opposition. Think "X-Files meets D&D" for the movie pitch.
The Look
This review comes from a playtest PDF, a low-resolution version. Allowing for that, the book looks very nice. There's an unobtrusive border on the top and bottom of each page. The text is in one column, broken up by artwork and the occasional table. I printed it to get a better feel, and found it reads very easily on paper.
Allowing for the low image quality, the artwork is all very nice. Except for the cover, which is a middling-quality color picture, it's all black and white. A full-page piece sets off every chapter.
It's also quite pretty art, and evocative of the setting. The medieval feel of the setting shines through, as do the demonic conspirators. For some reason, I find the portrait on page 103 -- which also serves as the background of the character sheet -- particularly unsettling. And if I hadn't already seen the movie The Home Teachers, the man-deer might have seemed creepy.
Unfortunately, the editing isn't as good as the art. Punctuation errors abound, and occasional spelling and grammar errors pop up. The infrequent incorrect use of "effect" instead of "affect" particularly bothers me.
The Bob Goat Press website already has a chapter-by-chapter list of errata. Assuming my PDF is print-equivalent (something I haven't been able to confirm at submission time), the errata are nowhere near complete.
The Content
For such a short book, CoS is loaded! There's a three-page bit of introductory fiction, then it dives straight into the setting. 50 pages of setting, and the book is only 120 pages long.
The first chapter is all about ethnicity. There are dozens of races and tribes described here. Their individual histories, legends, cultures and even clothing all get at least cursory description. And there's a pronunciation guide.
The ethnic groups listed are well thought out for the most part. The names scan well, and each group has a distinctive feel. Sure, they're largely based in this planet's history, but that's no crime. However, when I found listings for the Norderin and Soderin peoples, I was relieved and yet a bit disappointed that there were no Easderin or Wesderin groups.
Following the ethnic chapter comes one on politics and religion. There's a large history of each country, all of which are interrelated, as they should be. And there are two primary religions, Albinicanism and Amdatism. The Albinican religion is a very clear Christian analog, and Amdatism is basically the Albigensian heresy. There are a couple of other religions mentioned, but they get nowhere near the same detail.
Each of these two chapters has a two-page map of the continent of Polian. The underlying artwork for both is identical. The first shows the relative locations of the different tribes, and the second shows the nations. A third half-page map places Polian in relation to the other continents on the planet.
None of the maps shows any actual borders. Given the difficulty of precise mapping with the available technology, and the absolute impossibility of saying for sure where one ethnic group ends and another begins, it's a nice touch. Characters can believe they're in one country, only to find themselves afoul of a different country's law. Or they might run across a border skirmish.
Following the two chapters of setting are 50 pages of rules in three chapters. Character creation comes first. It's a straightforward point-buy system, with one pool of points for attributes and another for skills. You also choose your character's Passion, Drive and Ethnicity. Passion defines the character's strongest motivation. Drive explains how and why the character got involved in fighting the conspiracy.
Each character also has a Cover and a Social Status. Social Status determines your available resources, what you can afford as starting gear, etc.
As written, there's no reason not to take a high Social Status. The higher you go, the more you have to work with. Only the GM stands between you and untold wealth.
Cover describes how you hide your demonic conspiracy hunting from the world at large. It also decides which skills the character has. There are 14 skills listed. Choose six that fit your cover. You only get to spend skill points on those.
The 14 listed skills cover a wide range of ground, but they aren't enough. The biggest hole is perception. No skill covers general senses. When a PC in playtest wanted or needed to see or hear something, I had them make a knowledge attribute test. It was inadequate.
The general system sums up as 2d6 + attribute + skill, a familiar mechanic. Unopposed checks are vs. a GM-set difficulty. High roll wins an opposed check.
Here's the cool bit. Each attribute and skill carries a "descriptor," as does ethnicity. Descriptors are positive or negative. Positive descriptors provide a one-die bonus to rolls where they apply. Negative descriptors give a one-die penalty, but add one point to the character's Destiny pool.
The character may spend destiny points on a one-to-one basis to increase a roll. The pool refreshes at the end of a scene, which usually means at a valid break in the story. Adding to the description of the world can gain a character temporary bonus destiny points. These go away when the pool refreshes.
There are two calculated stats, Vitality (hit points) and Endurance. Both are calculated from the character's attributes. Fill those in, choose appropriate known languages, and your character sheet is done.
I don't like the character sheet. It has dots for all the numeric values. But as noted, the system is additive. The attribute used with a given skill may change depending on the situation. In some cases two attributes add to the die roll. Simple numbers make much more sense. You can write the numbers on the sheet in the space provided for the descriptors, but the basic layout doesn't work.
Once everyone has created characters, the group creates the cell, the opposition group the characters all belong to. Add up everyone's Relationships and Resources. Buy cell resources from the total: land, library, retainers, etc. These cell resources give the characters things to fall back on when they need help.
Combat gets quite a bit of detail in the system chapter. Endurance powers actions. Run out of endurance, and you run out of options. And boy are there a lot of options: basic attack and defense, multiple attack moves, a few defense moves. Three different ranges: brawling, melee and archery, each with its own governing skill. Weapons affect your roll depending on the situation and your opponent's armor. The more successes you roll in a row, the more bonuses you get to subsequent actions. The combat subsystem rewards taking risks.
If you count the weapon and armor lists, the combat section is 15 of the 50 system pages. And three of the 14 available skills. CoS has a heavy emphasis on deadly, but highly action-oriented combat.
Here comes another complaint about the character sheet. The second page lists all the optional combat maneuvers, their endurance costs and effects. But the effects aren't complete. One of my players decided to use the charge option. The character sheet doesn't note the hefty -4 defense penalty for charging. Once that was pointed out, she changed her tactics.
Granted, more familiarity with the rules would help. But like skills, there are 14 available combat maneuvers. (Almost all are offensive, by the way. Defense gets very little mention.) Memorizing them all shouldn't be required, not when the character sheet has plenty of space to give a summary of effects in addition to the existing brief descriptions.
In contrast to the detailed nature of combat, only 11 pages go to the chapter on magic. There are two pieces to that, Witchblood and ritual.
Anyone can perform a ritual. Learning the correct ritual for the situation requires extensive research. Once you learn a ritual, gather the required ingredients. Successful skill rolls make up the rest.
Only the types of rituals are listed. Any given ritual only applies one action to one demon. In other words, ritual magic gives the GM one more option for screwing with the players.
In contrast are the Witchblooded. These are characters with mystical heritage, who gain a lone supernatural power from it. That may be healing, telekinesis, flame projection, etc.
There's no special cost for being a Witchblood. Instead, the powers have costs to use. There might be a simple Endurance cost, or a very hefty price to pay in Fortitude. Choosing to be Witchblood, or to use a Witchblood power, is all cost/benefit analysis.
Character advancement only happens from dramatic moments. The players and GM decide together if a character had a dramatic moment. If so, the character may earn a skill or attribute increase. Everyone has a voice in the other players' advancement, so it's both very democratic and very open to abuse.
The GM section takes up most of the final 20 pages. There's no set conspiracy in CoS, just a sample. The GM must create the actual conspiracy and the opposition. Most of the GM section is guidelines for just that, along with a couple of examples. So the players can buy and memorize the entire book without spoiling a single thing.
I find this odd, but welcome. The world details are so specific, so fleshed out. Then the actual conspiracy is left wide open. Is this good or bad? The answer is a matter of group dynamics and GM style. But I like it.
(I used the sample conspiracy and one of the sample demons for playtest. But I kept those printed pages to myself, so the players had no chance to spoil it for themselves.)
I also like the mook rules a lot. Each mook has only two stats (not one as the book claims): the number of dice the mook rolls for any action, and the number of hits it takes to put the mook down. Weak mooks will have two dice and one hit. Particularly dangerous mooks might have four or more dice three hits. If the characters end up somewhere unexpected, the opposition takes mere seconds to generate.
The GM section also includes rules on environmental hazards, poison, disease and Taint -- the effects of horror on the soul. Each gets short shrift, just a page or so. Another few pages here would definitely help. The book is capped off with an adequate two-page index.
Summary
Conspiracy of Shadows has a great concept. I already have one player very interested in an ongoing campaign, and he didn't have a chance to read the book before playing.That's also a testament to the simplicity of the system. It takes very little time to teach. One mechanic covers everything, so the only question is which attribute and skill apply to a particular roll.
The only complex points in the system are the descriptors and combat. And the descriptors' complexity stems entirely from deciding what to apply to each attribute and skill, not in the actual mechanics.
The world background is stellar. It earns the game an extra point for substance by itself. It's system-free, so very portable. In fact, it reminds me strongly of Witchcraft with a different setting. It also has a lot in common with Cthulhu Dark Ages.
On the down side, I wish the emphasis on combat weren't so strong. The system and worldbook both support characters without a single combat skill, a priest of Albin for example. But the bias toward fighting is all too obvious. The missing perception trait would actually help the combat system, and would apply in plenty of non-combat situations.
And by now it should be obvious I don't like the character sheet. Do you want a really petty complaint about it? When you choose your Social Status from the supplied table, it lists Resources and Relationships left to right. But when you fill in the dots, Relationships is to the left of Resources. I'd created three sample characters, getting each one wrong, before I noticed.
All in all, though, Conspiracy of Shadows delivers on its promises. For the most part it's a fast, lean system with plenty of room to customize characters. There's plenty of help for the GM in creating the recommended environment of paranoia and horror. And the concepts are so very easily ported into other games that CoS can also serve as a sourcebook for just about anything. So if the subject matter interests you, buy it.
