A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Any and all discussion about Dark Conspiracy, the RPG of modern conspiracy horror
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Marcus Bone
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A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by Marcus Bone »

Hi All,

Time for Question of the Day number 2! as we all know Dark Conspiracy has a long, if spotted history, that has seen many a official and unofficial products produced for it; our question today is what ones really stand out to you, and others might not know about? Is there a Website out there that we've all missed or a fan article on this publication or that which everyone might be interested in reading?

Go on, do tell!
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Re: A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by Marcus Bone »

So my answer for this is Mike Marchi's website - 42 North - and specifically his Dark Conspiracy/Traveller cross-over campaign (you can find it here - http://www.42north.org/mjm/rpg/trav/Crossover/).

Not only is this an interesting narrative, it is probably the only actual play Dark Conspiracy material out there (in fact I read this stuff before I even met Mike). Well worth a read...

So, what else am I missing out there?
Owner of http://www.darkconspiracytherpg.info and other great RPG websites -
- Stormbringer! - Supporting the Eternal Champion RPGs at http://www.stormbringerrpg.com
- Unbound Publishing - Bringing back the fear - http://www.unboundbook.org
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Re: A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by scottm »

So while they no longer exist, I'd like to shine a spotlight on the Dark Conspiracy news group frequented by Norm Fenlason and others while Demonground was still being supported in the mid to late 90s.

That was my first exposure to Dark Conspiracy's supporting online community.

Most if not all stuff we ran for Dark Conspiracy was home-brewed and that newsgroup was a good source of inspiration.
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the less I care about how much further away I get..."

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Re: A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by ReHerakhte »

The mention of various websites brings back some memories and sadly, the vast majority of those sites don't exist anymore.
In the early 2000s I spent many an hour looking for DarkCon websites, some of those sites featured adventure scenarios, some even had play diaries, most offered new equipment, careers, enemies and even Empathic skills.

The following site is now only available from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (or similar services) and is notable because it included a section on cybernetics (this was the direct inspiration for an article I wrote for Protodimensions - Cybernetic Implants, Protodimensions Issue No8)
The creator was Ron McClung and his page was an eye-opener for me at the time because it reinforced the idea of taking similar sorts of material from other games and converting it for DarkCon. He also included new Careers, a new Empathic discipline and started to flesh out the locations of Boston and New York City and it had a really great list of other minions converted from TORG.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050207043 ... /dc/dc.htm
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Re: A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by Morthrai »

A Brief History Of Time
(time spent with Dark Conspiracy to be precise) 8)

Having spent the time after the demise of GDW creating my own DC material, I eventually got a computer and web access at home. One of the first things I did was search for Dark Conspiracy on Alta Vista, and the top three results were Mike Marchi's 42North site, DPI and DEMONGROUND. You can probably work out the approximate date from that! I also joined the mailing list and started attending the Sunday chatrooms, so I guess my whole involvement started through these support channels.

So after that overly wordy intro, here are my thoughts! The mailing list was great and only started to fall away after the rise of Facebook and the other social networks. I really miss the old Sunday chats despite all the wonky IRC connections and terrible lag, because that was my first opportunity to interact in real time with Norm and Lester and everybody who was around back then. It is a damn shame that most of the old DC web ring sites are long gone but I guess we can't go back, more's the pity. :?

Another thing, the mention of Ron McClung reminds me that he's still around as a member of the various social media groups. He did very well to convert those TORG beings as effectively as they turned out.
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Re: A Question a Day #2 - Notable Supporting Products

Post by ReHerakhte »

I have memories of Ron from some other site/forum/website/whatever but I just can't recall from where (or even when!) All I can really remember was that he contributed to DarkCon in some other ways than just his website.
Alas I was too late to the party for many of the DC webchats no matter what website they were hosted on - the Australian time zone meant it was typically going to be some atrocious hour of the morning my time when the chats were hosted :(
I was also too late to the party for the DPI website, I didn't have interenet access back then and by the time I did get regular access DC II was in it's death throes - which really burnt because I really, really, really wanted the full editions of the DC II Players and Referees manuals but I couldn't get them (so I was very, very happy when Far Future got the material and made it available on CD-ROM).
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