Conspiracy of Shadows

The horror role-playing game genre has long been dominated by one game, Call of Cthulhu. (Okay, you could also throw in Vampire, but that's more angst than horror.) But while CoC is a very good game, it perhaps hasn't aged well, and suffers from perhaps the biggest flaw of all - the Cthulhu mythos is too familiar to be scary. You damn near expect Cthulhu to show up on a box of breakfast cereal along with Count Chockula and Frankenberry and Michael Jackson.

Conspiracy of Shadows from Bob Goat Press (available through the good folks at Indie Press Revolution) is a horror RPG that makes a strong attempt at fixing the Crunchthulhu cereal problem, making the horror truly unknown, and thus, truly scary. Or at least leave your players guessing.

It's essentially a complete role-playing game in one 120 page book. About half rules (the game is rules-light, obviously, for that to work), and about half the book is devoted to the background setting.

It's a "fantasy" game, that is, it's not set on Earth, but a different, more magical world (but not overly magical). Basically, it's dark ages Eastern Europe, except it's not. I think the best comparison would be how Robert Howard based his world on various real world cultures, but just changed names around a little.

There are pluses and minuses involved with this. On the one hand, you do get a gist from the name what sort of place it is. On the other, it can drive people crazy, because parallel cultural evolution probably wouldn't really happen. I mean, it's really close to Eastern Europe, with Poles, Russians, Slavs, and even Huns. The Western most part of the world in this seems to essentially be France (or the French). So I guess really, it's centered on Eastern Europe.

It's really a matter of taste when it comes to settings. Some like this, because it's easy to jump into, while others prefer a more alien setting. But in this case, whatever you like, the setting is very intricately laid out and noticeably different than the typical fantasy setting.

The downside to the detail is that while the gist of the world is indeed easy to pick up, players will probably need to read the setting section a few times to learn the details.

Characters...

Characters are fairly simple, in terms of stats, with 4 attributes and 14 very broadly defined skills. Each has a value of 1 to 6. But they are fairly complex in terms of character development, which each skill and attribute also requiring a special "Descriptor" or little note about that. I found this to a clever little way of making characters stand out and to help breathe life into them. They also provide a bonus (or penalty) to that skill/attribute in certain circumstances. If a character takes a penalty, they get a bonus to what is called the Destiny Pool (which they can spend to improve rolls, sort of like action points or karma, etc)

The attributes are Fortitude, Reflex, Knowledge, and Temperament. Fortitude and Knowledge are obvious enough, but Reflex also includes "Perception" and such in addition to reflexes/dexterity. Which makes sense - part of reacting to something is noticing it in the first place. Temperament encompasses the character's personality and things like strength of will. One of the example Descriptors for it is "Knows how to talk to sailors", which gave me a bit of a chuckle.

There are also two minor attributes related to what the character does for a living (or what social class he was born into), Resources and Relationships. This is rated from 1 to 6 like everything else, and also depends on culture.

The non-crunchy character development extends beyond Descriptors, each character is required to have a "Drive" and "Passion". Passion is basically what motivates a character in life. Drive is basically what motivates the character to investigate and fight the forces of evil.

Also, beyond just individual character creation, each character is part of a secret "cell". This has to be designed as well, essentially by a point based system based on the characters combined resource and relationship ranks. Pretty simple, it's rated on the same 1 to 6 scale in different categories like "Allies", "Real Estate", "Library", "Contacts". The design of it is a cooperative venture between the players and the GM.

Game Mechanics

The game mechanics are 2d6 based, and remind me a lot of Classic Traveller (a good thing). The core mechanic consists of rolling 2d6, adding the skill level and associated attribute (both range from 1 to 6) and comparing to a target number - if it's higher than the target number, it succeeds.

The target numbers start at 12, described as "Mundane" and go up in stages of 3 all the way up to 30, "Supernatural". These seem a bit high to me - the skill levels are actually very close to the D6 system, but they make sense there, since you roll a whole bunch of d6s, not just 2D6. I generally like a higher chance of success, but that's perhaps just me. It's easy to tweak, anyway, so no big deal.


While characters are fairly simple stat-wise, combat is actually somewhat complex. Not super-complex, but somewhat more complicated than I'm used to. (Yes, I run d20 a lot, but I tend to ignore most of the rules for that)

It still uses the same basic skill rolls, but instead of characters being able to do one action or so around, they can do as many as they want, as long as they have enough "endurance points" to do them. Endurance points refresh somewhat each round, but only somewhat, so there is a lot of strategy here in how to best use them.

Besides the basic attack maneuver, there are several special moves (most games probably have special cases for some of these, so in a way it's nice how CoS standardizes them). Charge, attack the person's weapon (in a few different ways),Grapple, Counter. There's only about 12 of them, so not a lot to remember, but the character sheet summarizes them and their Endurance Point cost.

The summary on the character sheet could be a bit better, it really needs to also give the mechanical effects in addition to just a description. For instance, "Charge" just says on the summary "Charge into the Foe to Deal More Damage". But a more helpful sentence would be "Charge (-4 to defense roll) into the Foe To Deal More Damage (+4 to damage roll/+ Mount's Fortitude if Mounted)". Obviously, that's longer, but would still fit and save some looking up into the book.

It's actually quite a clever system, but seems a bit out of place. Feels more suited for a swashbuckling or martial arts game. But as it is meant to be a fantasy game, not just horror, so this is probably a good thing, overall.

I guess technically it uses "hit points", except they are called "Vitality Levels" and it's more like Shadowrun than D&D. Everyone gets 10 plus a few extra according to their Fortitude attribute (and never go higher. But the closer they get to zero, the more their wounds start affecting them. There is also a simpler system for use with "Goons", aka NPCs that are nothing more than combat fodder. So there's no need for the GM to get bogged down creating NPCs only to see them get killed.

I would have liked an example of combat. I'm a little fuzzy on how some of the things work. I think I ran it right, but I'm not completely sure

The game is fantasy, so there are some rules for magic, but they aren't the typical fantasy sort. Basically, horror or occult based fantasy on the one hand, but characters can also have psychic powers, called "Witchblood" powers. No fireballs or magic carpets or anything. More like the Exorcist or a Stephen King novel.

The Rest

The last section of the book is on GMing. I think if this book has a weakness, this is it. I think the game is probably aimed at people who know what they are doing. There's a very short selection on creating a conspiracy. While well written and useful, only one sample "Conspiracy" is provide, and honestly, it's kind of Cthulhu-ish. Not the Squid God himself, thankfully, but one of the other ones, a Worm God. (Actually, I'm not sure if there is a worm god in Cthulhu, per se. I thought there was one because of Ludwig Prinn's De Vermiis Mysteriis, but I can't seem to remember which one that was about).

While I understand that part of the point of the game is to come up with your own conspiracy, so you players won't know what's going on, for some of us that is hard to do. I mean, when I think horror, I think Barbra Streisand (who I think also released an album called 'De Vermiss Mysteriis'). It's hard for me to come up with anything that doesn't involve her. (I had quite a shock the other day when I saw on yahoo the headline "Meet the Fockers star poses nude in Playboy". That actually could a plot seed for a real world modern day game.).

Same for conspiracies. The only one I'm a part of is one to bring back the '70s, and other than some fashion and hairstyles (and John Travolta in the early 90s), we haven't been too successful.

I think I would have liked a table or something to roll up a conspiracy/evil horror. To at least give the brain a jolt for ideas, if not come up with them outright.

The books is laid out fairly well, if oddly - the section on the setting comes first, with all the rules in the second half. And it explains character creation before it goes into how the core mechanic works.

There are a number of typos in the paragraph headers. And speaking of headers, it would have been nice if they had used a different font or at least a noticeably different size of font for the different types of headers. There are only 6 chapters in the, so each one is broken down into several parts, but it's hard to tell which ones are major breaks and which one are minor, because they all use the same font and size, at least to my eye. There is a 2 page index, but it's a bit sparse. When I tried to look some things up, like "Passion" and "Drive", they weren't in it.

The art is basically be two different artists - one is actually pretty normal looking and is by Pat Loboyko, some of which is very good. The other art (which is most of the art in the book) is somewhat odd looking at first glance, completely two tone (black and white) and was done by the author. I think some people will really like this style of art, while some will really hate it. And most people will probably fall in the "meh" category.

Me, I tend to like photo-realistic stuff, or at least realish, but really don't care much, so I'm in the "meh" category. Some pieces I really liked, like the one on the character sheet. Some I really don't. I think the style is most effective when there is simply a lot of solid contingous black and some few bits of solid white, it makes the image look clean and the contrast makes a big impression on the brain. But some are actually comprised of little bits of black and little bits of white. Like for people in chain mail. That looks somewhat cluttered. And in some cases, some of the designs for coats and such ended up looking like Confederate soldiers (from the US Civil War), which seems very out of place.

But you get a lot of it. And I think everyone would agree that it not only fits the style of the game well, it helps sets the mood in the mind of the reader.


Conclusions

I haven't used the rules enough to make a final verdict (and frankly, after the last Rams game, I'm not in the mood for any more horror for a while), but in a quick test drive, they seem to work very well. Quite frankly, I tend to dislike learning new rules systems, as I mostly either just run d20 or d6 games and convert a new game to one of those (usually D6), but these rules I like a lot.

It's a good game with some rough edges in the presentation. And maybe a bit of an identity crisis. If it wants to be more than just a fantasy version of Call of Cthulhu (and it does, I believe), then I think the example conspiracy should have been less Lovecraftian in style. Some areas are also perhaps a bit on the bare-bones side, though this seems to have been a deliberate design choice, and there is excellent online support over at the official website for it. Apparently there is going to be a companion GM book which will offer more advice and sample stuff, so that should help, but let me stress that this game is pretty much complete as is

Even if it's not your cup of tea, it's also got a lot of nice things you might want to borrow for your other games. The Descriptors, most notably - that's an absolutely brilliant idea, I think.

So, I'm giving it a 5 for substance (really a 4.5 for not having a combat example, but rounded up because I like it), 3 for style (mostly because of the editing quirks and typos, if not for that it would be a 4), or a B+. Definitely worth a look

Sample Character (a write up of me, sorta)

Cover: Bum
Social Class: Peasant Land Owner (Resource Rank 3, Relationship Rank 2)

Fortitude - 2 (Gets sick easily)
Reflex - 3 (Reacts better when he doesn't think)
Knowledge - 4 (Reads quickly)
Temperament - 2 (Good at inadvertently offending people)

Endurance Points: 6
Vitality Levels: 12


Academics - 4 (Has read a lot of books, so knows a little about something)
Archery - 1 (Often hits himself in the foot)
Brawling - 3 (Kicks like an alpaca)
Folklore - 5 (Adept in faerie lore)
Larceny - 3 (Difficult to notice)
Melee - 2 (Handy with a club)
Medicine - 2 (Good at cleaning wounds)