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Or, "The Unofficial X-Files Role-Playing Game." What do you expect? Just about any episode of that show (and Millennium, for that matter) will fit into the Conspiracy X universe as written. The basic premise of both is identical: shadowy, unaccountable conspiracies and government agencies are cooperating with alien forces, while monsters and psychics and magic and other metaphysical phenomena is happening where humanity really should notice it. Thankfully, Conspiracy X is lacking a magnitude of the pretentiousness that makes the X-Files almost pointless to watch: unlike most X-Files episodes, the heroes here will usually see more for their trouble than a bright light or a shadow in a doorway (or whatever else the change under Chris Carter's couch will pay for), or learn more than "Well, that was certainly something alien/supernatural/unaccountable to science" or that there's a vast conspiracy that probably involves everyone else on the planet.

Indeed, the players in Conspiracy X are agents of the one conspiracy that is trying to protect humanity while keeping all this weirdness secret--they already know quite a bit of "the truth," and typically make their own investigations at the same time they abuse over-curious truth-seekers like Mulder and Scully.

Despite (or probably because of) its similarities to the X-Files, this background will easily appease fans of conspiracy/espionage and modern-day horror settings. It has enough possibilities and ideas of its own to make it distinct from the X-Files, and some of them are quite interesting (or could become so, given the right extrapolation). The only real problem with the writing is that there obviously isn't anyone at New Millennium Entertainment who is charged with proofreading.

The game system itself, unfortunately, while containing traces of brilliance, is mostly utter tripe. The player characters are a Cell in the Aegis organization (the "good" conspiracy), and the points they spend during creation determine the quality of their cell's hideout and what equipment and facilities they have access to. The characters have Influence attributes which determine how much leverage they can extend through their connections and resources. They also get special resources, abilities, or connections, depending on what organization or project they were recruited from. There is also a research system for when players need to know learn about the aliens and their technology or come up with new ways of countering them. All very nice touches. The cell creation in particular is something other role-playing games would do well to try out (I'm sure there are many that could do it better than was done here), especially universal games and ones where the players are typically a unified group with common interests.

That aside, the rules of this game--starting right with character creation--would pretty much have to be scrapped to make it playable. Character creation is a point-based system, with things like Attributes, Skills/Training, Luck, Influence, and Backgrounds/ Resources (ads/disads, basically). The options provided are enough to cover most of the bases, except for the character attributes, which are rated on a 1-5 scale: cripple, child, normal, exceptional, and nearly superhuman. Anyone else think there should be more of a range here? Guess my agent can't be merely good or below average at something. This lack of flexibility continues with task resolution, which is similar to CORPS. Like in that game, you get a target number by comparing your trait to the difficulty. The problem is, the difficulty can only be equal or one greater before you succeed or fail automatically. If it's equal, you'll probably succeed (7 or less on 2d6). If it's one greater, you'll probably fail (4 or less). Again, more of a range is needed. On top of that, the designers manage to make it overly complicated--the target numbers can be modified by circumstances (superior equipment, task complications, etc)...except that these circumstances sometimes modify the difficulty level instead, with little indication as to how to tell the difference. At least with this system, a skilled character will likely beat a less skilled character...except that I couldn't find any rules to handed contested skills beyond combat.

Speaking of that, the combat system is where this lack of range ends, and a whole new problem begins. Although Conspiracy X makes a good stab at realism (characters who get shot will likely end up holding their intestines in with one hand and crawling with the other), few players will enjoy the procedure to get there. Combat can run pretty slow, since--in addition to attack and defense rolls--there are also rolls for movement, depending on how far you need to move, and fatigue, and just about everything else. If a hit occurs, there are usually also rolls for stunning, knockout, and damage staging (where both the attacker and defender roll to increase/ decrease the total damage). Once we add this to the game's damage system, the final roll might be your own Sanity check, and long before the aliens have shown up, to boot. Now, I don't mean to say that making five or six rolls for each combat action is necessarily a bad thing--some gamers _like_ rolling for everything--but I 'll make this simple: the damage system for Conspiracy X is very likely the single worst damage system I have ever seen (and yes, I'm counting whatever you're thinking of right now, even if it's Rolemaster or a Tri Tac Systems game or some freeware game you found in some dark corner of the Internet). Briefly, it entails characters taking injuries of six different Damage Levels, with each level having six Wound Levels (think FUDGE or Storyteller, except that now the wounds are only sort of cumulative, and it's possible take a Hurt 3 or an Incapacitated 5 injury, and the total action penalty and everything else depends almost more on the "sub-levels" as the actual wound levels themselves). Why? And for all that, we still don't get hit locations. Which will doubtless leave you wondering on those occasions that an injury reads an "unusable" result for the wound penalty.

Yes, the combat system does produce realistic results, but this is tantamount to saying a runner has finished a race, even he crawled the entire thing backwards: there are only about a trillion other candidates who can take a much more effective approach to what you're looking for.

Last up is the Zener card system, which will be familiar to anyone who's been tested for psychic abilities by scientists. Basically, characters who use (and--this is the important part!--actually have)psychic powers get to draw one or more of five cards (star, waves, circle, square, cross) and try to guess what one of them might be--easier feats of psychic ability mean drawing more cards, which makes it more likely the symbol you guess might be among them. The novelty of this wore pretty thin for me, but your mileage might vary, depending on your affinity for tragically screwy things. Had I been in charge of this game's design, I would have disposed of the rest of the system and just used the cards for everything. Sure, I wouldn't have gotten any farther with it, but I would have had more fun.

Despite the fact that I have not seen a system in more desperate need of reworking since the last Tri Tac Systems game, I can't completely condemn Conspiracy X--the setting still works, typos and all, and my players had fun uncovering and trying to ruin the plots of aliens, supernatural beings, and human traitors, at least when I could get them to stop making Mulder and Scully jokes and they could get me to stop swearing, gnashing my teeth, and making ugly faces at the damage chart. If you're a fan of the genre, take a look...but before you do that, get your favorite universal system. Five pages into the combat rules, and you'll want it.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)