How did you discover YOUR Dark Conspiracy?

[groovydave]

Because everyone's Dark Conspiracy is a little different. I saw the 1e rulebook on the shelf at my local hobby shop the day it came out. A week later I ran a demo adventure at that same shop. I had 16 players. That adventure became my first published scenario in Challenge. A week after that a long running campaign began at my house I had about 7 or 8 players to begin with, and while some came in and out, and a few moved out of state to college and what-not, I kept the same core group of 4 or 5 for several years. When i met Lester at a convention a couple of years in I told him that DC was the game I would have written, had I thought to do so. I was just so in tune with its vibe. The ideas literal flowed out of my pores. Coming up with an adventure a week was no problem.
I tried a restart a year or so after the first campaign petered out, with an X-files slant this time, and while that worked well enough I never recaptured that first groups enthusiasm. I'd love to get another one going, but right now I am running a Werewolf Wild West game ad playing in an AFMBE game run by another group. Someday, though, someday.

[ReHerakhte]

My path to DC was quite different.
I was still a member of an infantry regiment in the Australian Army Reserve at the time and having been introduced to rpgs via AD&D 2nd Ed. I was after a more military themed game along the lines of the BattleTech rpg a friend was trying to start up some years earlier.

I had originally picked up Phoenix Command and found it too damned rules heavy and so went looking for something better. I wasn't too keen on Recon and was told about Twilight: 2000 2nd edition by one of my friends who actually worked at a game store. I bought that and then moved on to Merc: 2000 and after a while I just started buying up all the GDW games that used the same rules set and from there finally got DC.
I liked the techno-horror/conspiracy/supernatural aspect so much I sort of stopped running the military games to focus completely on DC!

[Morthrai]

I had been a fan of GDW since I started gaming, in fact my first RPG purchase was the original Traveller box. I happened across Dark Conspiracy about a year after it was released, thanks to a mate who ran a game at his place one weekend when a bunch of us had got time off and gone to visit him. Dave was always a great referee anyway, but his skill combined with the DC setting and the general familiarity with the rules I had from T2K really put DC a level above most other games. A couple of months later, I went off into Birmingham (Dungeons & Starships store, Waylands Forge was still a good while in the future), and bought up all of the books that had been released at that time...I think it was the rulebook and the first three supplements.

Never looked back since

[Linden]

Introduced to DC as player circa 92 when a friend in the group I was playing with said he'd bought this rpg that was a bit like CoC but more futuristic. We started a campaign and I was hooked.

Had a hiatus from rpgs for a few years while I moved around various places with work. Once I got a bit more settled resumed gaming, and remembering how much I enjoyed Dark Conspiracy sought out the books on e-bay. Am now running my second campaign and enjoy DC as GM even more than I did a player. I think it's the flexibility of it that appeals to me - something designer Lester Smith has emphasised in his essays on the game - you can do pretty much every type of horror with it. I also like the way the game isn't tied to a rigidly defined background with loads and loads of canon material to be taken into account before you can write an adventure for it. Looking at the various postings on this board it's plain the participants have wildly varying campaign settings and play styles which is something I'm all in favour of. Vive le difference!

[Morthrai]

I think it's the flexibility of it that appeals to me - something designer Lester Smith has emphasised in his essays on the game - you can do pretty much every type of horror with it.

I wholeheartedly agree with this! This was another factor that has kept DC at the top of my list, and it is something that I liked about original Traveller too; the rules are a framework upon which the GM can hang their own style of game Of course, there is official material but due to DC's nature nothing can ever be taken for granted in-game

Looking at the various postings on this board it's plain the participants have wildly varying campaign settings and play styles which is something I'm all in favour of. Vive le difference!

Quite so!

[Marcus Bone]

I think I've said this before, but it seems like this a good as place as any to repeat it

I discovered DC on the shelf of a local bookstore (the only place that sold RPG stuff in a town of 20,000-odd souls). I was a player in what I'd call my first real group (being the tentative age of 16 and playing with 20-something odds!), and was keen on running something.

It was the cover that got me - the whole scene just drew me in and had me thinking about the types of adventures that it could facilitate. I ran a short campaign, that included one of the best 'off-the-cuff' adventure's I've ever thought up (called "Here be Dragons" I've been meaning to write it up for a while now - may be for the Protodimensions 'zine?). Of course, the rules 'jarred' a bit, but I was playing with guys who loved games like Aftermath and Twilight 2000, so the full aspects of game play within DC didn't bother them too much).

Demonground followed, and everyone knows what happened with DC 3e... still DC remains one of my top 5 games ever!

Marcus

[Morthrai]

I ran a short campaign, that included one of the best 'off-the-cuff' adventure's I've ever thought up (called "Here be Dragons" I've been meaning to write it up for a while now - may be for the Protodimensions 'zine?).

Marcus

Well, if you ever do manage to find time to write it up we are already interested in having it! In a way that would be quite a coup, having your (of all people's) first DC adventure out there for all to see.

[groovydave]

As I said, everyone's path is different. Great to hear these stories. If you are familiar with the name Chuck Kallenbach III it'll interest you that his wife worked at my local hobby shop (one I would come to work at as well) and we used to hang out all the time. He was, at one time, tasked with writing DC 2e, prior to GW folding. Somewhere I have his file of that work. Bloomington, while a bit of a drive, was not out of reach for me, and I visited the GW offices several times, the last being when I applied for the position of Art Director. I did not get the job, which was sad at the time, but I now see as a blessing. It would have required moving my family and basically my whole life, and as it turned out they went out of business a year later.
I was, of course, familiar with GW through TW2k 1e and Traveller, both games I'd run previously, so I knew the quality of their work. I had no doubts about DC when I picked it up.

[Morthrai]

You really do have quite a connection with GDW there Dave!

[groovydave]

Meh.

[Zvezda]

Story is very similar to that of Kevin, I started out with playing T2K (Soviets naturally) and later change to Merc because T2K was a bit too hopeless for the Players. As a GM for Merc I incorporated more and more supernatural encounters (as did Jagged Alliance which always has been a great inspiration for our Merc campaign) so we completely switched to DC at one point. Form the beginning we used the rules form all three games. I can’t remember how many campaigns I ran using DC but they were and are a lot. Sometimes with different players sometimes with the same.

[Pennanngalan]

A buddy of mine got some Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Twilight 2000, Merc 2000, and Dark Conspiracy books in a trade. He kept the C&D and I bought the rest. Good decision on my part.

[Phulish]

An ad in Challenge alerted me and I kept an eye out at the local game store.