Before the review can begin, a little background.

A tale of 3 CORPS. Once upon a time there was Greg Porter, and he founded BTRC, the Blacksburg Tactical Research Center, an indie gaming company before indie game companies were cool and ubiquitous.

BTRC published a universal RPG system called CORPS. The Complete Omniversal Role Playing System. Thus began CORPS v1. CORPS was a small market game that nonetheless had and has a hardcore following and spawned several RPG products that have become fairly popular, such as the “Guns! Guns! Guns!” supplement and the vehicle design system. In time Greg moved on from CORPS v1 to a new universal RPG system known as EABA and now another company is keeping CORPS v1 in print.

Later Greg did the second version of CORPS, this time the “Conspiracy Oriented Role Playing System” that he claims as possibly the first 'Conspiracy theory” RPG product. No one has refuted this to date.

Now, Greg has brought forth the third incarnation of the CORPS title, a setting/supplement for his EABA system that stands for “Conspiracy Oriented Role Playing Supplement”. That's what this review will focus on.

CORPS v3, hereinafter referred to simply as C3, is a supplement/world book for the EABA v2 system, but the concepts in it can be used in any RPG system. It focuses squarely on conspiracy themes. Interestingly enough C3 starts off on a slightly schizophrenic note for a conspiracy themed product, it begins by attacking the concept of conspiracy theories.

Early on in C3 the author makes some very effective attacks against the “Conspiracy theory” meme. He points out that there are a number of people who suffer from “compulsive hording” syndrome. There has even been at least one TV show dedicated to the victims of this issue, and how people horde useless items until their lives are destroyed, family members desert them and sometimes they even die as a direct or indirect result of their compulsive hording when their houses burn down or are crushed under a stack of old newspapers that falls over on them.

Then he posits that perhaps some people have a compulsive hording disorder that associates itself with money, and these people, if they happen to be in an advantageous position, use their wealth simply to horde more wealth with no regard for what it does to anyone else or themselves. Are these people actually a 'conspiracy” to control the world's wealth or are they simply a bunch of sad sociopaths all working towards the same goal without actively cooperating, let alone conspiring?

Likewise, he points out that in many ways what appears to be a conspiracy may be simply the ultimate example of people working towards success under a so called 'free market capitalist” system. In many ways successful free market capitalist business practices resemble a conspiracy: Monopolizing a market by any means necessary, using advertising to convince people they must have something they really don't need, destroying potential competition, etc. In sum the author described the De Beers diamond monopoly without actually naming it and asks if it's conspiring to control the world's diamond market or just being 'good capitalists”?

Once he takes a wrecking ball to the notion of conspiracy theories the author then goes on to create a setting book based on all the major conspiracy theories and a few of the smaller ones as well. If there's a significant conspiracy theory, it gets mentioned or referenced in C3.

You may well ask yourself how so many conspiracy theories, many or which are completely contradictory can all fit in one world. Well, that's a good question. The answer, according to C3, is simple: There are in fact many worlds and each one has a conspiracy or set of conspiracies of its own.

In C3 Earth exists with an unknown number of alternate earths, each one different in some way, sometimes a minor way, sometimes a major way. The myriad earths are connected thru a series of discontinuities that allow passage, under certain and variable conditions, between earths. The discontinuities are not well understood and no one knows if they are natural or artificially created. Not all alternate earths are accessible from any one earth, but sometimes one reality can “leak” into another one, and have an effect on it, especially if the two worlds are very close parallels of one another.

Picture if you will two earths that are accessible to each other thru a discontinuity. Now imagine the earths are almost identical, except on one earth the moon landing was faked and on the other it was real. If the same people exist in both worlds, it's possible that they may somehow subconsciously share knowledge in some way thru the discontinuity. Thus on the world where the moon landing was real many people, especially those with a high latent psychic or psionic sensitivity, (A high fate score, in EABA terms) may be picking up memories or impressions from their counterparts on the earth where the moon landing was fake and therefore develop an unreasonable but rock hard certain belief that the moon landings were faked despite the logical absurdities and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (Likewise on the earth where the moon landings were proven to be fake millions of people may in fact be certain they they were in fact real.)

So in essence every conspiracy theory is true on some earth somewhere. People who seem to have an unshakable belief in a ridiculous conspiracy theory in their world are often picking up memories from a version of themselves that exists in a word where that conspiracy theory is in fact quite true.

There are numerous earths set up in C3 with room for any number or type or other earths someone might want. Generally one earth will serve as the earth-core setting and it will be 'our' earth, which is the default setting. On earth-core things are as they are now, at least on the surface. There are indeed aliens on earth-core, little grey big eyed ones that seem friendly and benevolent. There are nazis on the moon but they come from an alternate earth. The Illuminati doesn't really exist on earth-core, but agents from alternate earths ruled by the Illuminati may be here, or people may call themselves the Illuminati just for it's theatrical value.

The conspiracies are rated in terms or their earth of origin, their membership, their resources, etc. They are also divided into 3 categories: Mundane, Outsider and Discontinuity.

Mundane conspiracies are completely the result of humans on earth acting from human motivations, like greed, paranoia, megalomania, etc.

Outsider conspiracies are all based on one world, but perhaps with influences from outside humanity involved. These involve Grey aliens, Lizard people, etc.

Discontinuity themed conspiracies may involve elements of the first two but also involve influences from a parallel earth. The sky's the limit on these. (Sometimes not even then.)

Every conspiracy has it's strengths and weaknesses, and each one has it's resources and assets too. The Grey aliens have a hell of a technological edge but are limited in numbers and are incapable of even recognizing the existence of parallel earths or discontinuities, for example.

Also all conspiracies and NPCs have goals and motivations, and these can very in intensity. The goals, and most conspiracies have more than one, are divided into multiple types. Some goals are for the group as a whole, while others are more the goals of the individual members of that conspiracy.

For an example, one group has a goal of subjugating humanity as it's ultimate goal, but most of it's members have sadism as a personal goal/motivation. Thus they will always work towards the subjugation of humanity, but they will always, given a choice of options to achieve this goal, take the one that causes the most pain, suffering and misery to humanity.

The complex layers of conflicting goals and drives you can create in an organization help create plot lines all by themselves.

Just as the conspiracies have their liabilities and assets, so to do player characters. In C3 you are required to have some....issues whenever you create a character. First, you must have some sort of background that is odd in a way and that has helped make your character the unusual person he is at the start of play. Your background must be reflected in some way by your skills and traits. Don't worry, there is a lot of advice on creating a background so you won't have any problems with it.

Then you must have a motivation, this is something that drives your character in some way. It can be simple and small, like 'revenge on the Men In Black who murdered your parents” or something more grand, like finding out whether or not aliens landed at Roswell in 1948. Your motivation is in some small ways like an “alignment” in other games, you can and should be penalized in some way for ignoring/violating it.

Lastly you must have a crazy belief that makes you just barely able to operate in the day to day world. You must have an obsession with one crazy belief that is just at the edge of a debilitating condition. In game mechanic terms, an obsession level of 6 is worth 3 points and makes you just a little too weird for most people to be comfortable around. It also makes it hard to hold a job or get by in the day to day world. You character starts out with a belief that is at level 4 and worth 2 points, so you are able to hold a job, have friends, etc, but you're close to the edge of starting to lose those things. Your crazy belief must be crazy in the world you start in but will likely be true on some world.

It's also suggested that you take some enemies and friends, but these are just recommended, not mandatory. The C3 rules have a lot of information about various forms of personality disorders and insanities, and notes on how player characters can acquire them in play. Asides from death, gradually going from eccentric to obsessed to outright insane is a real danger to C3characters.

C3 is loaded with useful tips on creating a world and characters to operate within it. Suffice it to say it's a conspiracy setting toolbox that is very well stocked in it's 187 information packed pages.. In addition to a lot of game material there are plenty of interesting and little known facts about the real world we live in that will intrigue and fascinate you. As if that wasn't worth it's 15$ price (and it is!) there's also an equipment list compatible with other EABA settings and a introductory adventure. You also get a pretty nice character sheet that has a character creation assistance function that calculates a lot of your secondary stats for you. It even comes preloaded with some archetypes you can load and modify to suit yourself or to create a quick NPC.

All in all I can say that C3 is a bargain at it's asking price. Please don't pirate it.

If I had to pick out one thing to bitch about in regards to C3, I guess it would be the fact that the ultimate conspiracy game, Deus EX, was not mentioned in it or cited as a reference or inspiration. Seriously, how can you do a conspiracy game and not make at least one reference to Deus Ex?

There are some odd typos that appear thruout the text, and these may appear to be errors on the author's part, but in fact if you study them carefully, noting their locations and such, you'll find they follow a pattern that can be used to produce a mathematical code which can be translated into a web address. If you enter it into your browser's address bar nothing will appear to happen except a 404 error, but shortly afterwards you'll get an email with a link to the truth about one randomly selected conspiracy theory. All I'll say is there was no second gunman on the grassy knoll.

No, really the typos are just random and there's no hidden code. That was just a joke.

Or was it? Maybe C3 is part of a conspiracy and the typo code is a way of finding people intelligent enough to get it so they can be identified by....someone, for....some purpose.

Or maybe I'm just trying to see if I can get anyone to believe that in order to get a few more sales for C3 because I'm part of conspiracy to increase sales of C3 to increase awareness about The Truth which we're covertly revealing in it as part of our effort to defeat competing conspiracies. .

Or am I part of another conspiracy that C3 has blown the whistle on, so I'm trying to distract people from actually reading it by sending them on a snipe hunt for a non existent code hoping that when they realize it's not there they'll think the rest is bogus too?

Welcome to CORPS for EABA. When you read it, you swallow the red pill. You'll never see the world the same way again.

(And no, there is not a hidden IP address code in the typos. Trust me.)