DC in the Rearview

This post is mainly for those remaining Dark Conspiracy RPG fans, many of whom have recently encouraged me to purchase the IP and resurrect it.

I did my best, folks. Made an offer, had it approved, negotiated for some final wording about the state of previous licenses, and learned last week that the IP was being sold to someone else.

Given the property’s history over the past few years, I truly wish the new owners the best of luck in bringing it back to life. You fans of DC deserve it. I can’t count the number of people over the years who have shared memories of playing the game with friends, often at a school lunch table, which always makes me feel honored (and old).

If you’re one of those people who have shared those stories with me in person, you know how grateful I am to have shared an invisible seat at your table. Nothing makes me happier than to learn I played some small part in other people’s joy, especially their memories with friends. I’m grateful that so much of what I’ve worked on in my career has been taken to heart that way.

Sadly, I now have to put Dark Conspiracy well and truly in my rearview mirror. It’s a bittersweet moment, because the game was my first role-playing design from scratch.

The year was 1990. I had left GDW temporarily for grad school. That summer between semesters, Marc Miller asked if I’d be interested in writing a horror RPG with “an ecological conscience.” As a lover of horror I jumped at the chance, grateful that GDW’s staff were buffs of historical battles and sci-fi instead.

My own goal was to create a setting into which any horror tale could be fit. To accommodate a range of things from 1950’s sci-fi and horror to the contemporary, from near-future cyberpunk cityscapes to nostalgic rural locales. To give a rationale for why ETs in early films and stories were largely benevolent, and four decades later were almost universally malevolent. And in the process, the game’s mythology began to take on a life of its own.

That mythology was also affected by GDW’s own history, of course. Originally I set out to design the game, “from scratch,” including unique dice mechanics. But though I’d been kit-bashing RPG rules as a hobbyist for a solid decade, it was too tall an order for those fledgling skills within the course of a summer. So when Marc later asked me to use the Twilight: 2000 “house system,” I was relieved.

It meant, however, that Dark Conspiracy incorporated nearly the full weapons catalog from T2k, and that had its own effect on DC’s milieu, nudging it from pure horror to heroic horror, in what I came to describe as, “Encounter a mystery; get your ass kicked; rearm to suit; go kick its ass in return.”

That fall I returned to a full-time position at GDW, where for the next couple of years I had the pleasure of managing the Dark Conspiracy line alongside 2300 AD and contributing to other properties. The Minion Hunter board game was a happy accident resulting from the Darlene File’s discovery of a boxcar of blank game boards needing a home. If you’ve played, you’ll understand why I described it as “a full Dark Conspiracy campaign playable in just one evening.”

I think it’s obvious that I poured heart and soul into the Dark Conspiracy line, as with everything I do, and it has always felt like my first baby. A mostly work-for-hire baby that I had to give up for adoption when GDW sold the IP to an outside investor upon my leaving for TSR. My Ishmael, if you’ll forgive the simile.

The point is labor of love.

The thing tugged at my heartstrings for decades, until I retired and started self-publishing a bucket list of other ideas. One of which has been the D13 RPG, to which I’ll return in a moment if you’ll bear with me.

But fans kept asking about DC, even more often over the past couple of years while it sat in limbo between various licenses. When I ran into Marc in the dealer’s room at Gamehole Con 2024, someone had asked me literally minutes before, just outside the door.

I had come to tell Marc his significance as one of the three most influential professionals in my game career, for giving me a chance way back when. (I recently told Frank Chadwick the same, in his case for having demonstrated how to manage one’s creative nature in the face of publication deadlines.)

And as I rose to leave, I mentioned that fan outside, and asked Marc the status of the IP. Which led to a discussion of terms, and a return home to enthusiastic promises of support from several people.

My plan had been to give Dark Conspiracy an open game license (OGL), to give it longevity through community publishing. For the same reason, I’d have mapped its stats to the more robust D13 RPG system, a d4+d10 flat curve that matches GDW’s house system between 4-10, but with the useful twist of doubles at the low end, and a steep curve at each end, making the dreaded 13 just 1 in 40 odds.

One more word about the D13 RPG. Whereas Dark Conspiracy’s goal was to allow any horror tale to be imported as heroic horror, D13 fulfills my goal of allowing any horror tale to be run as is, however dark and deadly that may be. Some films and books are TPK by nature; D13 allows for that while retaining a campaign thread behind the scenes.

So, with DC in my rearview mirror, not by choice, but by circumstances, what’s next on my desktop? More material for my existing game lines: Specifically, a standalone D13 setting called The Leek; finishing the D6xD6 Dungeons Solo zine; noir and steampunk settings for the Bookmark No HP RPG (and an overdue BNHP adventure deck); the first d4ce rpg pamphlet genres; and nurturing several other people’s games using those engines. It’s a full plate, for sure.

Again, thank you for your longlasting love for the Dark Conspiracy RPG. I wish its new owners the best.

But I hope you’ll also do this old designer the favor of keeping him busy in retirement, saying hi at conventions, joining him at game tables, and giving his creator-owned bucket list a look. Even the newest, just four days old as I write this, is well on its way to joining the others with DriveThruRPG Best-Seller status. You’ll find links in the sidebar.

I appreciate every bit of love you’ve shown me over the past 35+ years, and your continued goodwill nowadays.

Thanks!