Serendipity is a real thing. When I decided last week to write a Retrospective post about GDW's 1991 horror RPG, Dark Conspiracy, I had no advanced knowledge of today's announcement that Mongoose Publishing has acquired all the rights to it. This isn't exactly surprising. Once it was announced last summer that the company now owned the rights to Traveller (along with Twilight: 2000), I thought it inevitable that they'd also grab the rights to other former GDW properties. Still, it's nevertheless an odd little coincidence that I started thinking again about DarkCon after all these years.
According to the limited information available, Mongoose's re-release of the game won't be until next year. There's no official word on its rules, but I'd be amazed if it didn't use some version of the Mongoose Traveller rules, which are rapidly becoming the house system of the company. I'm fine with that, honestly. For all my complaints about the most recent iteration of the Mongoose rules, it's still a solid system and much better than Dark Conspiracy's original rules, which I never much liked.
When I hear more, I'll be sure to share that information here.
Dark Conspiracy was the victim of bad timing. It was published in 1991 and discontinued a couple of years later. The X-Files premiered in the fall of 1993 and immediately became a huge hit. And Delta Green didn't come out (beyond a small zine piece) until 1997! If DC had just been able to hang on another year it might have become GDW's cash cow.
ReplyDeleteThere is a chap named Lee Williams, perhaps best-known for his excellent (defunct) Protodimension magazine…he is a huge DC fan, and perhaps he will have some exciting contributions to make.
ReplyDeleteI love when older games get new life—their stalwarts always get to celebrate once more, and we bystanders reap the benefits.
What are your complaints about the recent edition of Mongoose?
ReplyDeleteMy complaints are really nitpicks from the perspective of a classic Traveller fan. Mostly, I think MongTrav is more complex and overstuffed than it needs to be – too many skills, too much equipment, etc. It's not a bad game by any means – I play in a campaign using it right the rules – but it feels a lot clunkier and less elegant than the 1977/81 rules to me.
Delete