Put simply, Dark Conspiracy is a conspiracy horror Role Playing Game based in a post modern world. (If you are new to the hobby of role playing, see What Is Role Playing? below.)

Imagine an Earth of the very near future where chaos reigns. A future where runaway population growth, diminishing resources, and human greed have all taken their toll on the planet. Mega-corporations have slipped the reigns of national regulation, and now they wage a continual economic war on political governments. A global economic collapse has plunged all but the most privileged into poverty.

The superpowers have collapsed from inertia and economic stress. In some places those federal republics still exist in name, but their individual states have stepped forward to fill the vacuum of power, and where those states fall short, local governments take up the slack. The result is a political crazy quilt of bizarre and contradictory laws and practices. What is the custom in one locale may well get you shot in another.

But economic and political chaos are only the symptoms of the disease. Its cause lies in the roots of humanity's deepest, darkest nightmares. Somehow, an ancient, unspeakable evil has been unleashed on the Earth, an evil which thrives on the anguish of a billion tortured souls. This malevolent power now twists the minds of men and women, using their base instincts to serve its purposes.

Parts of the world have fallen completely under its control, and from them emerge its Dark Minions, creatures of another time and space that feed not only on human flesh, but also on the human spirit.

But there are still people fighting to drive back the Darkness. Sometimes they're agents of organizations that retain some small residue of their former power and independence. Sometimes they're members of what remains of the free press. Most often they're just victims who've escaped the horror and are now fighting back. But always, they have to walk softly, because thousands of people disappear every day, people who simply know too much. People who know that Darkness has returned.

In Dark Conspiracy, the players play the role of normal, or perhaps not-so-normal, human beings who are fighting a global menace of unprecedented proportions. An alien, malevolent intelligence, imprisoned for eons, has been released to wreak havoc on the world. It is doing a pretty good job. Your character has become aware of this menace and, along with a small band of like-minded companions, has set out to uncover and destroy the menace.

The difficulty is that this is no simple back-room conspiracy. The driving force behind it is an otherworldly presence of profound power and evil. Its minions that roam the Earth are hauntingly similar to creatures of dark legend from around the world.

Similar, but never quite identical. But regardless of the power of the enemy, there have been victories. Some were small victories. Some were costly. But enough small victories can turn the tide.

What is Role Playing?

If you have never played a Role Playing Game (RPG) before, there are a few basic things you should be informed of before going any further.

Role playing combines some of the best elements of a number of other activities into a special whole. For one thing, it is a form of shared storytelling. Like any other story, roleplaying concerns the experiences of a select group of characters as it moves through a plot. One person, whom we'll call the Referee, prepares the basics of this plot and acts out the parts of secondary characters the protagonists encounter. Each of the other players makes all of the decisions for a particular character that he or she has designed. Like the audience of a movie or novel, role players become swept up in the experiences of the protagonists. But unlike an audience, which can only observe the events, role players actually decide the outcome of the plot by the decisions they make for their characters. And unlike an audience, in which each person experiences the story individually, role players experience their stories in a shared social setting that fosters friendship and personal growth.

Another thing people enjoy about role playing is watching a character improve in abilities over the course of time (from adventure to adventure, that is). Designing a character is something like bringing a child to life: You want to watch that character grow. For that reason, many people enjoy the sense of accomplishment they feel as their characters collect items and experiences. And some people just like the chance to act a part.

We've mentioned players, Referee (in other games sometimes called game master, GM, dungeon master, DM, director, or other such terms), and adventures (plot situations that may be based upon a locale, a special character, a momentous event, or a number of other things). We've also mentioned characters: those run by players - Player Characters, or PCs - and those run by the Referee, Non-Player-Characters, or NPCs. Next, we should mention rules.

Role playing rules, such as those in Dark Conspiracy, help to determine the outcome of character actions and to take some of the burden of deciding the outcome of events off of the Referee. If a PC and an NPC are wrestling over a gun, for example, how does a roleplaying group decide who gets it? The answer is by checking the rules and rolling dice. The rules explain what the chances are for each character, and the dice determine the exact outcome.

Another function of the Referee, then, is to be familiar with the rules in order to decide how they apply to specific circumstances. It helps if the players are also familiar with the rules, but it should always be remembered that the Referee has the final say in how those rules are applied.