Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

[vadersson]

I thought of two more to add. They are maybe not as dark as some of the other suggestions, but the seem similar to some groups of characters I have seen.

Big Trouble in Little China

Buckaroo Banzai

Enjoy,
Duncan

[Fiannaidhe]

DARK CITY
starring Rufus Sewell, and Keifer Sutherland. I used it as a proto-dimension instead of a place on DC earth.

RESIDENT EVIL & RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE
Good example of an evil Megacorporation doing as it pleases

ROBOCOP
Again, a Megacorp taking charge of a city.

MAD MAX / ROAD WARRIOR
Perfect example of the Outlands.

[Morthrai]

Agreed 100% with Dark City, especially the way you used it as a protodimension. The fact that the aliens were abducting people and messing around with their brains makes it a real Dark Conspiracy film.

As for Robocop, well Hell yeah!

[Zvezda]

Yeah Dark City was awsome. I also like 28 Days later and of cause Shaun of the Dead!

[ReHerakhte]

G'Day All,
I joined these forums a few days ago because I wanted to contribute specifically to this thread. I'm pretty much in agreement with the titles listed so far but I'd like to add a few more that I really enjoyed and have used as material for Dark Conspiracy.

Hellraiser all 4 movies, who doesn't love Pinhead!
Body Snatchers any version
Invasion Earth British mini-series about extra-dimensional beings invading the planet with the RAF being the only group in the area to try and stop them.
Ultraviolet Another British mini-series this time about a cop who uncovers a secret organization fighting vampires.
Night Watch Forces for Light work with the forces of Dark in Moscow to maintain the balance of a co-existence pact forged hundreds of years ago... and keep humans ignorant of the truth
In The Mouth Of Madness An investigator is hired to track down a missing author but starts losing his grip on his sanity as he delves deeper into the case.
and a couple of oldies from the 1960s-70s
Soylent Green Poor people living in overcrowded slums, rich people living in 5 star hotel luxury, cops stealing food from the crimescenes they investigate, it's pretty much how I picture some DC cities to be
The Boys From Brazil A Nazi hunter discovers a cloning facility in South America for the purpose of resurrecting the Third Reich, a good ol' conspiracy story.

Cheers,
Kevin

[anthraxus]

Soylent Green is a great DC flick. Good recommendation there ReHe.

I would also recommend:
American Cyborg: Steel Warrior - Post nuclear war, but might make an interesting proto-dimension
Supernatural - This WB series focuses on two brothers quest for their lost father, along the way they fight ghosts, monsters, and human collaborators of dark forces from outside this dimension with investigation and a trunk full of guns.
Masters of Horror Series, specifically the episode of "Dreams in the Witch House" - This is a great retelling of this classic H.P. Lovecraft story, with a few modern updates. The quality is a little cheesy, but it still does the job.

[anthraxus]

As I was watching the new Doctor Who on the SciFi channel, I realized that if you considered the TARDIS to be a dimensional travel device, and all of the time shifting actually just travel to similar dimensions, you could easily fit the entire series into the DC universe.

[greywolf]

OK, for those who might be interested I have been in touch with Chris and he has promised to dig out the old DC-IMDB files with a view to either he or I reposting them somewhere on teh intarwebb Newcomers will be able to gasp in awe at the sheer arrogance of a bunch of gamers passing themselves off as movie and TV critics

Hey, Morthrai. Just give me some idea of how big the files are and I'll talk to Marcus about hosting them right here at darkconspiracytherpg.info.

[Linden]

Invasion Earth British mini-series about extra-dimensional beings invading the planet with the RAF being the only group in the area to try and stop them.
Ultraviolet Another British mini-series this time about a cop who uncovers a secret organization fighting vampires.

Invasion Earth was a bit of a mess. Started off strong but got mired in some improbable back story about alien breeding sites situated at various points throughout the world. Substandard effort by writer Jed Mercurio (I'd recommend any of his non-sci-fi projects though e.g. Bodies, Cardiac Arrest and 70s sitcom The Grimleys). See also The Uninvited. UK TV series featuring sea dwelling aliens who replace the inhabitants of a coastal village. Again, a strong start but didn't really do anything interesting with the premise. Still, no reason why either series can't be inspiration for DC...

I liked Ultraviolet. Much more grown up than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I thought it had a strange, disconnected quality to it at times, almost dreamlike. Didn't see all of them unfortunately. Must try and get hold of the DVD.

In The Mouth Of Madness An investigator is hired to track down a missing author but starts losing his grip on his sanity as he delves deeper into the case.

Given the Lovecraft influence, perhaps better suited to Call of Cthulhu?

[ReHerakhte]

Just as Lester Smith said, the strength of Dark Conspiracy is that it can take aspects of any horror style and have it fit. You've got everything from Voodun zombies to vampires to aliens to evil corporations to AIs to extra-dimensional beings and it can work with all those elements or with very few of them.
Considering that the Dark Lords are pretty much similar to the Old Ones of the Cthulhu mythos, I don't see that something with a Lovecraft influence is only suited to Cthulhu instead of DC.

I've used various elements from different horror games, movies and novels as material for games. My first DC campaign was set in the modern day with hardly any change from society as we knew it during the 1998-2000 period, my next was set in the near future with the Cyberpunk influences that the book setting describes, my latest campaign is a post-apocalyptic setting along the lines of The Morrow Project RPG. Any material that can be used for horror can be used in DC, that's what makes it my prefered system for horror games.

As for substandard efforts in regards to movies TV series etc. I don't really care if it is, if I can use the material, I'll rape & pillage it without mercy because my aim is to make an entertaining game for myself and my players. Soylent Green and The Boys From Brazil suffer from the overly theatrical acting and bad clothing styles of the times when they were made, but the stories are still useful material.

[Linden]

Considering that the Dark Lords are pretty much similar to the Old Ones of the Cthulhu mythos, I don't see that something with a Lovecraft influence is only suited to Cthulhu instead of DC.

I agree the Dark Lords are similar to the Great Old Ones. That's why I prefer to keep them in the background, much as they are in the rulebook. Don't want people thinking this is Call of Cthulhu but with guns.

Any material that can be used for horror can be used in DC, that's what makes it my prefered system for horror games.

Very true. I currently run a modern CoC campaign and miss not being able to include some of the elements that DC allows; the dystopian future, organic tek and the hostile ETs with their flying saucers (don't own Delta Green and wasn't that mad about the idea of greys being mi-go puppets anyway).

As for substandard efforts in regards to movies TV series etc. I don't really care if it is, if I can use the material, I'll rape & pillage it without mercy because my aim is to make an entertaining game for myself and my players. Soylent Green and The Boys From Brazil suffer from the overly theatrical acting and bad clothing styles of the times when they were made, but the stories are still useful material.

I was just saying don't watch Invasion Earth in the expectation of quality entertainment, but you're right, it probably doesn't matter much. I suspect most of us DC fans are also aficionados of bad TV and film and have sat through numerous low quality productions in the expectation of finding something we can use in our games . There seems to be something about the game that lends itself to adapting low budget B-movies (not all of which are bad of course).

As to the dodgy clothing in old films, given DC's retro stylings these fashions might be popular again in the game's version of the early 21st century. Now there's a scary thought.

[anthraxus]

Very true. I currently run a modern CoC campaign and miss not being able to include some of the elements that DC allows; the dystopian future, organic tek and the hostile ETs with their flying saucers (don't own Delta Green and wasn't that mad about the idea of greys being mi-go puppets anyway).

I would think that it would be an easy enough thing to introduce the greys as a totally seperate alien race. Perhaps one that has it's own motivation for invading earth, totally seperate from anything related to the mythos. That would throw some players off. And depending on how successful your investigators are, the Old One influence on the world could be leading it down the path to a dystopian future.

[ReHerakhte]

I agree the Dark Lords are similar to the Great Old Ones. That's why I prefer to keep them in the background, much as they are in the rulebook. Don't want people thinking this is Call of Cthulhu but with guns.

Yeah, I hear that. I was glad they never included stats for the highest level Dark Ones, otherwise, some of my players would have been far too tempted!

I was just saying don't watch Invasion Earth in the expectation of quality entertainment, but you're right, it probably doesn't matter much. I suspect most of us DC fans are also aficionados of bad TV and film and have sat through numerous low quality productions in the expectation of finding something we can use in our games . There seems to be something about the game that lends itself to adapting low budget B-movies (not all of which are bad of course).

As to the dodgy clothing in old films, given DC's retro stylings these fashions might be popular again in the game's version of the early 21st century. Now there's a scary thought.

Ahhh, sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you were saying it was a poor source for stealing ideas from
As for the dodgy clothing idea, that's a scary but damned fine idea. I can just imagine something alongs the lines of the poorest proles wearing outfits like the Chinese peasants of the 1950s-1970s wore and those that can afford to actually spend money on clothes wearing some of the really nasty Western fashions from the late 1960s/early 1970s! That idea may actually make the game too horrific

[Linden]

Ahhh, sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you were saying it was a poor source for stealing ideas from
As for the dodgy clothing idea, that's a scary but damned fine idea. I can just imagine something alongs the lines of the poorest proles wearing outfits like the Chinese peasants of the 1950s-1970s wore and those that can afford to actually spend money on clothes wearing some of the really nasty Western fashions from the late 1960s/early 1970s! That idea may actually make the game too horrific

My fault, I was a bit more abrupt than I meant to be. Some of the ideas in Invasion Earth are really good like the extra-dimensional intrusion, and the part where Maggie O'Neil is trapped inside the alien structure is really harrowing but I just thought it lost its focus as it went on. Tried to shoehorn too many ideas into a single narrative. A noble failure perhaps? Funnily enough, after discussing it on this board I wouldn't mind seeing it again...(not The Uninvited though)

I think the Chinese peasant outfits would be great for the ballotmen. Stands to reason the corps are going to give them the cheapest, most generic clothing available. Possibly the nomen might go for in for horrible 80s fashions, big shoulder pads for the women a la Dynasty?

[Morthrai]

Hey, Morthrai. Just give me some idea of how big the files are and I'll talk to Marcus about hosting them right here at darkconspiracytherpg.info.

Actually, not at all a bad idea Chris has sent me the web page template and the text information but sadly he hasn't been able to lay his hands on the disc containing the backups of the icons that he used. For those who didn't get to see that site, he used small black and white icons next to the title of each movie and TV show to designate which Dark Conspiracy elements were contained within. Maybe I'll make up some new ones?