[Review] PC Booster Kit

Written by Lester Smith, with additional design by Frank Chadwick (1992, GDW)

The PC Booster Kit was one of the last releases for Dark Conspiracy, and as such sits in a rather strange space in the overall legacy of the gaming. I say this as the PC Booster KIt isn’t your traditional type of release, acting instead as a sort of halfway-house between a rules update and a simple FAQ. To quote Lester directly “This booster kit is designed to enhance your fight. In it, you’ll find rules for expanding character creation, incorporating the results of social status into initial character design, and thereby increasing both skill levels and personal history. There are also a number of new careers that can be followed, including ones that allow the creation of renegade ETs. rogue androids, and canny street urchins.”

But the question, as always, is – was it successful in this mission statement? Does it add to your Dark Conspiracy gaming experience, or is it nothing more than a misguided grab for few more dollars from GDW? Let’s find out together, shall we, as we take a deep dive into this interesting smorgasbord of diverse and complex content for our favourite RPG.

—————-

Just a note … where, in the past, the reviews on this site have usually focused on providing – what I’d call –  an generalist overall impression of the supplement or scenario at hand, a similar approach probably doesn’t really work for a product like the PC Booster Kit. Instead, given the structure of the kit and nature of its content, I’ve decided to look at each section in some detail and then reflect on how each new rule or mechanic might change the feel of the game (for better or worse). While this might make my comments a bit more critical than those I’ve made in previous reviews, I think these thoughts should benefit the reader better overall.

—————-

First Impressions

The PC Booster Kit is one of the small number of ‘folio-style’ supplements that were produced for the Dark Conspiracy 1st Edition line in the early 90s (see my reviews on Ice Daemon and Nightsider for other examples of this format). This particular iteration of the folio design comes complete with its eponymous tri-fold cardboard cover and contains a 16-page staple-bound insert printed on good quality paper in black and white.  The layout and design of the insert is similar to that seen in the core Dark Conspiracy rulebook although what limited art it does contain are mostly images reused from previous supplements released for the line (except, as far as I can tell, for the cover and the portraits used in its half-dozen new career entries). So all in all, just what you’d expect from a product of this sort of nature. I should, however, state that I do appreciate the fact that the tri-fold can be used as a pseudo Game Master’s Screen, as the main reference and task summaries required for the new D20 mechanic that are introduced in this folio are printed on the inside¹.

I’ve been pretty vocal in my previous admiration for this format in the past, as I believe it really does allow for a otherwise simple product to be delivered in an economically small-form package, and I suppose in some ways it once filled the niche we see these days being met in the use of the modern day PDF².

—————-

A Note on the Folio Format

Please excuse the tangent, but I do reckon the folio format/concept itself deserves some further explanation, especially as, in my humble opinion, it is quite an innovative and interesting design that was delivered during a time when most game companies were generally looking more and more towards larger (and denser) full colour, hard-backed supplements (yes, I’m looking at you White Wolf!). The basic design of the folio is somewhat similar to the old Dungeons and Dragons adventures one might recall seeing in the early 1980s; a tri-fold cardboard cover which wraps around (but otherwise unattached to) a staple-bound insert that provides the ‘guts’ of the product (be that a scenario, or in this case, a collection of new rules and optional game mechanics). The three panelled ‘cover’ is most often in full colour with one side – let’s call it the outside – of two of the panels acting as the products end pages (i.e. what one would call the traditional cover and back of the product), while on the other – inside – has printed notes or maps relevant to the companion insert (in the PC Booster Kit we have copies of the various charts and task summaries used new D20 system). The third panel of the folio is often detachable and likely provides material that can be handed to the players during play (in this instance the third panel is a double-sided, perforated, character sheet, that can be removed from the rest of the tri-fold allowing for ease of use for photocopying etc.)

—————-

The Content

The staple bound insert of the PC Booster Kit is a real ‘grab-bag’ of new ideas, rules and mechanics, and is opened with a nice introduction (by Lester Smith) explaining why the kit was created in the first place. Here he also outlines what we will find on within: Expanding PC Backgrounds; some new careers (as well as a few additions to existing ones); advice on gaining and using Contacts; rules clarifications and errata, including a few new combat rules; and an introduction to a ‘D20 System’ for use in Dark Conspiracy. All-in-all this is a wide selection of material that can be used to enhance your game and modify it to make the threat of the Dark Ones and their minions even more challenging.

Given the breath of the material appearing in this scant 16 pages I thought I might as well rate them as well (on a simple A to F scale). These ratings are based purely on my own opinion of how likely I’d be to use the material in that section in my own games, and/or by just how much they might add to the ‘flavour’ of a Dark Conspiracy game session. Of course all these rating as mine alone and your mileage might vary based on how detailed or complex you like your own table to be.

Expanded PC Backgrounds

At a couple of pages in length, the Expanded PC Backgrounds section looks at rules to better reflect the setting’s social and economic situation in the character creation process. This is approached in two ways, by introducing the concept of a character’s social class (and the benefits/restrictions resulting from such), and then looking at the options available to the Minion Hunters as they ‘Mustering Out’ (i.e. finish their career progression and ‘enter the world of Dark Conspiracy).

Let’s look first at the Social Class mechanics, as these were something I believe was sorely missing from the original game, especially given all the other extensive detail provided around the ‘rise’ of Dark America. Here specifically we get mechanics for modifying a Minion Hunter’s initial Attributes based on their selected social class (i.e. Gnomes add 3 to Education but reduce 2 off of their Strength, etc.), while also introducing limits in career selection based on the same (for example, the aforementioned Gnome shouldn’t reasonably be choosing a career like ‘Ganger’ in their first term, should they?).  This is a nice simple addition to character creation that really adds a bit of flavour to the Minion Hunter’s backgrounds while actually having some meaningful impacts. Rating – A

It slightly strange to think that Dark Conspiracy character creation didn’t really have a ‘mustering out’ step in the original rules (I actually had to look into the 1st Edition rulebook to confirm that!), and instead players simply chose when to end their character’s career progression (although under some circumstances this could be forced onto them)³.  In any case, Mustering Out in this context is used to reflect the event that ‘awakens’ the character to the threat of the Dark Lords and their invasion(s) into our reality, and mechanically allows the player to select a one-off ‘bonus’ for their Minion Hunter (based, of course, on they type of encounter they select – from gaining Empathy points, receiving a one-off boost in their finances with which to purchase more starting equipment, or an Initiative stat boost). These selections are again based in part on the social background of the Hunter and I personally think these are fine additions to the creation process⁴. My only other comment on this content is that might have been nice to see a few more options offered, but what is provided here is definitely a good start.  Rating – B

—————-

A Note on the Xeno Social Class

There’s one important addition to the PC Booster Kit that I’ve so far neglected to mention (and one that I have very mixed feeling about); the Xeno Social Class. As I’ll go on to highlight below, the kit introduces the Renegade ET (and other character careers connected to the Extra-terrestrial invasion of Dark America) that can’t – obviously – use the social class structure that is so synonymous with Dark Conspiracy (you know, the ‘Nomes, Mikes and Proles) and so instead we get the Xeno. This ‘social class’ provides – just the others do (see my comments on the Social Class mechanics above) – options (and restrictions) to some of the choices a player can make during the character creation process. My biggest problem – probably the result of a lot of my original sessions using these options – is that they seem to provide way too much of an advantage over the other social class benefits. I mean you can only stand so many Renegade ETs, Cyborg Escapees and Martial Art experts in any given party, right, and these sorts of rules just seem to encourage them even more!

—————-

Careers

Prior to undertaking this review I always thought of the Careers section as the core of the PC Booster Kit.  Now, however, after many years have passed and I get too look at the supplement with a more experienced eye, I realise that they are just one part of the greater whole in this grab bag of ideas. The section itself is split into two subsections – New Careers and Additions to Existing Career – and it’s probably a couple of the options outlined in the prior that will be most familiar to long time fans of Dark Conspiracy… the Renegade ET and the Street Urchin.

Before I get too ‘ranty’, however, I should provide a quick overview of the New Careers section. Here we get a total of five new career choices (including those two mentioned above) and these are presented in the same format as those appearing in the 1st Edition rulebook. Each has a bit of background on the career, in addition to its entry perquisites, First and Subsequent Terms skills options, and any special bonuses a Minion Hunter might potentially gain by taking it. While I appreciate the addition of the Biker and Underground Empath careers, the other three (the aforementioned Renegade ET and Street Urchin, along with the Rogue Android) just seem out of place in the ‘lifepath’ character creation system we get in Dark Conspiracy. Honestly, they feel – much like the Cyborg Escapee did in the core rulebook – as if they are trying to break the overall game system, and create a really unbalance party of character. Now don’t get me wrong, I think all of these (except maybe the Urchin?) have their place in the setting, but not in this manner, surely? It makes me wonder if someone on some sort of ‘power gamer’ trip dreamed these types of careers up! Rating – C

Okay, okay, I’ll get off my high-horse on the subject of New Careers, as you might love them and each to their own as we like to say. Taking a quick look at the other material in this section –  Additions to Existing Careers – we get a some errated changes to a few careers in the 1st Edition rulebook. Most of these are minor in nature – for example the Homeless career gets to add ‘Stalking’ and ‘Stealth’ to their first term skill list and an extra skill point to allocate in any subsequent terms taken in the career. These are fine, and I suppose would have come as the result of player feedback or some inhouse playtesting I’m sure (although I will have to question why, oh why, are they giving yet more power to the Cyborg Escapee career!!!). As an aside, it did make me laugh when I saw that the Environmentalist’s career got to add ‘Demolitions’ to its skill list – not so much because it makes a wicked sort of sense that these characters would be ‘those’ sorts of activists, but rather at the thought that anyone would volunteeringly engage in the use of the GDW House System’s explosive mechanics (everyone got their scientific calculators handy?). Rating – B

Contacts

Did anyone ever use Contacts as they were written? I know we didn’t back in the early 90s, but in the light of the 2000s rules-light, innovative mechanics trends, I reckon the Contacts system should have really been given a little more praise. In the PC Booster Kit we get a better explanation on what foreign contacts might represent (in the Gaining Contacts subsection) as well as how a party’s collective pool of Generic contacts can be used to represent ingame networking (as outline in the Using Contacts subsection). Man, as I read both these now both feel very intuitive and logical (so again, why wasn’t I using these rules way back when I ran DC regularly??).

On the subject of Gaining Contacts, as mentioned, here we explore the concept of ‘foreign’ contacts in Dark Conspiracy. As you might recall, for every contact a Minion Hunter gains (as a benefit of a career term) there’s always a small chance (usually 1 in 10) that they are ‘foreign’ in nature. However, nowhere in the core rulebook does it actually explain what this terminology actually mean [^5}. So here we learn that a foreign contact can (and probably should) be used to represent those individuals in a Minion Hunter’s network who also know of the Dark Ones and their threat to humanity (which actually makes a good bit of sense – the characters can’t be the only ones in the know, surely?) Some examples for what this might represent for each Contact category are also provided (for example a foreign ‘Business’ contact could be an employee of a corp under the influence of Darklings or ETs, while a foreign ‘Wealthy’ contact might be a patron willing to fund the good fight in proxy, etc.). All-in-all this is a nice little addition, one that fills in a hole left open in Dark Conspiracy 1st Edition. Rating – B

The other topic explored in this section is Using Contacts, or as it really should be titled – Networking. Another cool idea, this provides an option to use the Minion Hunters’ combined total of Generic Contacts as a network of knowledge, allowing them to – via a task roll – tap into their nebulous collective of contacts to try and gain more information on a mystery or threat. A neat example is provided here on how this might work in play, and I have to say that this mechanic is a really, really good subsystem that all Dark Conspiracy Referees should introduce into their games. Not only does it bring the setting to life – what screams conspiracy-horror more than the scene where the heroes reach out to their ‘faceless allies’ to learn more about the challenges they face – but it also helps bring a group of individual Minion Hunters together as a real team, showing that they are stronger when they stand together than when facing the Dark alone!  Rating – A

Rules clarifications and Additions

I’ll just briefly go over this section, as most of these rules changes and clarifications are pretty straight forward and generally  just adda bit of flavour to the game. Here we get an updated to Language Table (replacing the existing American, Canadian & Japanese entries with new ones to reflect the ‘influence of Japan in corportised America’), and a replacement Initiative Experience table (oddly making it much more difficult to gain Initiative rating ⁵). Probably the most interesting subject covered in this section is the discussion on the use of Difficulty Ratings, or more specifically encouraging Referees to not make these so high. This is an issue in many games that use ‘levels of success or difficulty rating’ as the ability of a character with say a rating of ‘1’ is disportionality impacted against those with much higher – yeah we know the real world is much like that, but this is an RPG and we want our players to have fun, not fail!  I appreciate that we are told that the term ‘Average Task’ is a misnomer, and really represents a task where there is ‘an average amount of difficulty’. Finally this subsection rounds out by introducing an option to allow characters who have no points allocated to a skill to default to using the controlling attribute when attempting a task (at a higher level of difficulty of course). Rating – B

The other changes presented in this section are focused all on combat, and most are simply revisions or additionals around damage and its effect on targets. Probably unsurprising for a GDW game (boy they did love their guns and swords, huh?), we do also get options for specialising in specific firearms or melee weapons, which – in my opinion – you can take or leave as you see fit ⁶. Sure, there are few worthy clarifications in this section, such as the Vehicular Robot melee rules and an logical extension to the Melee Hit Location chart (for Quadrupeds), but beyond these there is little that I’d be adding to any of my Dark Conspiracy games. Rating – C

The D20 System

So close… yet so far. That’s probably the best way you can sum up the version of the Dark Conspiracy D20 as it appears in the PC Booster Kit.  I won’t go into specific detail here – as it pretty much redundant – but the drive behind moving from the D10 to the D20 is a noble one, with it allowing for more granularity within Task Difficulty  system (and being able to provide a reasonable option for automatic success and failure). However, the rules introduced here take the approach of basically doubling all the attributes, skills and derived statistics of a character (be they Minion Hunter, NPC or Darkling), which just makes everything more complex when you go to work anything out (especially when you have to do something like divide by 40 to create at least one derived stat!). This is all the worse when you realise you also need to change other game factors as well, such as ‘doubling listed recoil factors’ and the such. Sigh.  It’s a shame really, because if the ideas for this system that would soon afterwards appear in the Empathic Sourcebook⁷ had been included here, then it would have made the whole kit just that much better! Oh well, at least I didn’t mark up my Core rulebook with these changes as one of players did when we started using this variation to the rules (Ouch!). Rating – C

Overall Impressions

So what to make of the PC Booster Kit overall?  Well, we get the introduction of a few really cool ideas (looking specifically at the Social Class mechanics and the use of the party’s Networking number), but other than that I feel the kit as a whole – if I might say so myself – a bit of a dud. Even excusing the misstep in the D20 mechanics, I don’t think I can ever forgive the addition of some of those new Career types (yes, I know it was my fault, I should have just said NO at the time!).

Would I recommend someone hunts down a copy? Well, only if they were dedicated players of 1st Edition as written, and are happy knowing that some of what they are getting for their hard earned dollars (I see it goes for about $50 US these days) is pretty much a waste of ink.

Oh well, while I might say that I’ve been a little harsh on the PC Booster Kit in this look back, I can’t deny that the journey of completing this review was a bit of fun, bringing back a few great memories from my youth (playing Dark Conspiracy long into the early morning hours in my mate’s garage… ah to be young and so free of responsibility)! And, I hope you enjoyed it to!