Mine has held together pretty well, but I know what you mean, as my SLA Industries book and sourcebooks are basically loose leaf by now. It was a fun game, but with some silly rules here and there.

I love Dark Conspiracy, for all it's flaws (and it has a bunch) it's got a great tone and feel to the game, sad it's kind of forgotten now.

You would like Secret World Legends.

Good job. Nice to see the older games getting shown off again. Do you normally have a problem with PC, Woke and SJW's in your games, as none of that has ever come up at my game table. We just play and have fun. That said, we do have a member of the clergy in our gaming group, so we do tend to be overly polite and respectful of him and his beliefs.

@@RPGGamer ao so sorry foe rhe delay in writing back. I referred to a section of a town as a kinda "elventown" aka Chinatown and there was a GASP from the table that I would use such a racist term. I was told by a polysexual player I HAD to run lesbian and polysexual NPCs for her character to interact with. I was told my campaign was TOO dark when followers of St Cuthbert fought with followers of Moradin and NPC deaths were involved. I was told "our characters could have stopped it" I said no sometimes bad things happen and there is nothing you can do. The next week two male players quit in protest. I have been told the player should all get a vote for "player autonomy" and can shut down any plot elements or events the players do not like. After all of this over about two months I said "No I can pick up my books and go home." and I did. I did find them another DM but I wish I didn't they ride him constantly and a rude and demanding. He had a TPK and they told him you cannot us if we (the players) do not allow it. So he had a side quest for the only player not there who lived and he did "something" to bring them all back. So his players simply refused to die "cause" they did not want to. It took me about 18 months to find three people that were not spoiled demanding crybabies. I was told to leave a game store by the owner because I used the terms SJWs and Snowflakes to describe these types of players "get out of my store!" I have found it is almost exclusively 30 year Olds or less. Also 40+ year Olds and "Grognards" Old gamers from Basic D&D, 1st Edition, AD&D, are nothing like this and do not tolerate it. So yeah I think there are two gaming societies now 30 years old or less that are SJWs, PC, Snowflakes offended at everything and will do NOTHING they do not like and will DEMAND the DM change. Then 40+ year old gamers. Old school gamers. That accept death is part of the game, that players lose, and, a lot of the time the game is challenging and hard. So I went on and on. This is a HUGE issue with me. I basically now just do not even consider players for my group any more below 40 yrs old. I wish I clergyman was all I had to be careful about. If you wanna write more let me hear from you. Take care God Bless Charles

@@charles1890 Wow, sounds to me that those players were assholes, not SJW's. I totally get what you're saying, and I would hate to play with those people. While it's everyone's responsibility to play together to have fun, and you have to respect peoples limits (for example one female gamer I played with explained how her character in someone else's game had been held down and raped, so she'd left that group, which I don't see as SJW or woke, just decency), players can't dictate exactly what goes on, or the game is just boring. No risk, no reward = no fun.

@charles1890 I feel you man, I can’t stand playing with this younger generation. I too set a minimum age limit of 40+ at my table and my games are all the better for it.

Classic games all.

The joke was always about the skills which were based on the wrong attributes, so Mechanics was Strength based, so strong characters were good at fixing things (give it a good smack and it'll work fine).

Cheer mate, much appreciated. This was the 1st Ediiton, but there was a 3rd edition as recently as 2012, and I'm pretty sure there's a 4th edition that was being kickstarted. While the setting shares a number of features with Monte Cooks World of Darkness, Dark Conspiracy is just a bit more light hearted and fun.

Sadly you're right, as it was one of the most fun elements of Traveller character creation. "It's not really Traveller unless you can die in character creation." as one of my friends has commented.

@@RPGGamer It certainly added another layer to character generation - after going through everything for hours & hours (slight exaggeration... maybe!) to make your character and then to have them die and you have to restart the process all over again, it definitely added an element of dread/relief to the process!

According to the rulebook, you can't use any weapon you're not trained with, so one of those starting characters can't use a gun! At all!

It always felt a bit like they threw everything at the game to see what stuck, Dark Elves, Aliens, Demons, etc. It didn't make a lot of sense, but we had a lot of fun with it anyway.

As a guy over the half-century mark, I can tell you Agility starts to go in your late 30s, Your Strength starts to wane in your late 40s, and your Constitution begins to wane in your late 50s (mine has just started).

@@RPGGamer They did. Lester Smith said that the overall idea was that you could incorporate any genre, any playstyle, add elements you liked and remove elements you didn't. The big problem with that approach was that it was not well suited to inexperienced GMs, there was no particular guide to how to play the game. The GM was expected to be experienced enough to know what they wanted from the game and run it to suit. That left a lot of people floundering as they couldn't figure what the aim of the game was, they didn't know that they were supposed to create the aim of the game themselves but the book never really made that clear. It's probably the games greatest strength and greatest weakness

I know there were later editions, but I've never actually looked at them, so don't know if they're direct reprints, or almost completely unrelated. Making characters in GDW games, was always a load of fun.

Can we start a kickstarter? some improvements.....search for fans to work on this? Let me know the character development is great, mechanics needs a little work.

There was a 2nd edition that updated the rules to the GDW D20 system. Both 1st and 2nd editions can be found as PDFs on DriveThruRPG or on CD-ROM from Far Future Enterprises. Far Future Enterprises owns the IP and has licenced it to other publishers. There was a 3rd edition that updated various aspects again but it is no longer available. A 4th edition was successfully crowdfunded but the German publisher had financial troubles and had to give up the rights to the IP The licence rights to the 4th edition are now in the hands of Amargosa Press who are sitting on it while they try to clear their backlog of work. They will probably do some sort of crowdfunding to finance it

@@Thugmun1 It was already done, both in the 3rd edition and a 4th edition that was cancelled due to the publishing company having financial problems and having to surrender the licence rights. A number of fans of DarkCon were contracted to write for the 4th edition The licence rights to a 4th edition are now in the hands of Amargosa Press who are currently trying to work through a backlog before working on the 4th edition. They will probably do some crowdfunding to finance the project The IP belongs to Far Future Enterprises and the 1st and 2nd editions are available as PDFs from either DriveThruRPG or on CD-ROM from Far Future

Right, I admit to googling for how the rules worked before I shot the video, as there are NO examples of play in the rulebook to let you know how it works, so I can't quote a page which supports my version of the rules. But adding the attribute makes a lot more sense to me, as the first of the two sample characters is a "Secret Agent", who has no combat skill over 2. Which means if the skill is used alone, then they stand only a 20% chance to hit, and called shots are -2 to your roll, so they can never perform a called shot. Also in Unarmed they have only 1 skill point, so only 10% chance of hitting with a punch. However, strangling someone uses the Agility Attribute instead of a skill, so she uses her agility of 6, so she's far better in Hand to Hand of Strangling opponents. If the rules are as you state then most characters are definitely better being serial stranglers. I'll also comment that Parrying Melee attacks is Formidable difficulty, so any parry is a quarter of your skill.

I was curious if I was remembering right so I googled and found a review with a relevant bit here: www.castaliahouse.com/review-dark-conspiracy-by-lester-w-smithgdw/ "An average task is against your skill; an easy one is vs double your skill, and a hard one is half your skill, but for very long-range combat (as an example) rolls vs. quarter-skill can be called for. You drop fractions, so if your skill is 3, quartering it is 0.75, so you can’t roll (or rather, you can’t succeed). If you succeed by four or more, you get a referee-defined outstanding success. If you fail by four or more, you re-roll, and if you fail again, you suffer catastrophic failure. "So, let’s take a look at Dara Schwartz’s skill levels . . . 18 skills, with a median of 2. With a 2, she has a 20% chance on an average task, 10% for a difficult one, and 40% for an easy task. She has zero chance of an outstanding success even on an easy task, because no matter what she can’t succeed by 4 or more. For failure, on an average task she’ll have a chance of a catastrophic failure 50% of the time (roll 6-10 vs 2), and confirm that 80% of the time - that is, on an Average task, her success breakdown is: "Outstanding Success: 0% Success: 20% Failure: 30% + 10% =40% Catastrophic Failure: 40% "The whiff-factor here is huge. And this is one of the examples of character generation - an archetype, so to speak." So, yep, the system is that dysfunctional. It's in a similar category to other systems like Warhammer FRP (1st ed) and the original Fading Suns that have terrible success chances for tasks unless you house-rule.

Twas here I got my information, which is a Dark Conspiracy site, so I'd hope they know what they're talking about. www.darkconspiracytherpg.info/forums/viewtopic.php?p=7078

The Twilight2000 V2.2 Skill system was "grafted onto" Dark Conspiracy when you bought the Game Screen with the expanded rules in it.

@@RPGGamer The person who runs that site was one of the fans contracted to write for the 4th edition so yeah, he has a pretty good grasp of the game in its entirety but he has stated that he prefers other rules systems and plays more Call of Cthulhu, Deltra Green, Gumshoe and so on, so his knowledge of the rules may be in need of a little refreshing here and there