Tempus Fugit: The Dark•Matter Campaign Setting Turns 20 This Year

Two of my favorite tabletop RPG campaign settings of all time have reached significant milestones this year, and since they both fall within the purview of Chilling Tales Horror Roleplaying, I though I'd revisit them both before 2019 comes to an end.

First up is Dark•Matter from TSR/Wizards of the Coast and designed by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker. Published in 1999, Dark•Matter is a "modern" day setting for the Alternity science fiction RPG system and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The setting was inspired by the conspiracy theories, occult studies, parapsychology, and alternative fringe science popular in late 1990s culture and explored on television shows like The X-Files and Millennium. In Dark•Matter, it's all true: every conspiracy theory, alien abduction, the Illuminati, demonic possession, cattle mutilations, the writings of Charles Fort, ESP, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, Mothman, and Bigfoot. All of this high strangeness correlates to high concentrations of dark matter particles and the ebb and flood tides of dark matter concentration throughout Earth's history.

Dark•Matter is a well-crafted campaign setting that provides tons of information and inspiration for creating fun to play characters and adventures for them to experience. Like the episodes and seasons of The X-Files, it has an underlying story arc to unravel but also provides monster of the week style interludes as well. The authors really did their homework to give us a comprehensive primer on real world conspiracy theories, cryptids, UFOlogy, and paranormal activity. One reoccurring and appreciated feature are the alternative motives provided for the secret societies and other elements of the setting that you could use, ignore, or have the truth be somewhere in between. The offerings for "real" world magic and psionics (what Alternity calls SFX) is comprehensive and compelling as well, with spells and powers for ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, diabolism, Hermeticism, Enochian magic, monotheistic faith magic, shamanism, and Voodoo.

Additional Alternity rule supplements for the game include a "monster manual" of additional cryptids and threats called Xenoforms: Aliens, Demons & Aberrations and the Arms and Equipment Guide featuring cool new weapons and tech. A supplement about one of the secret societies featured in the core rulebook called The Final Church was planned but never printed, although Wizards eventually ended up giving it away as a free PDF download. Several tie-in novels were released as well during the Alternity Dark•Matter era.

In Dark•Matter, the default campaign setting assumes the player characters are working for the Hoffmann Institute, a mysterious organization that publicly claims to be an alternative energy think tank but is secretly investigating all instances of bizarre and unexplained occurrences that come to its attention. Like the other secret organizations featured in the core rulebook, it is highly detailed with multiple possibilities to choose from for its true motivations. It makes great resource for the player characters to turn to for mission briefings, equipment, and backup.

Etoile

My personal favorite adversaries to use were the extremely alien and nearly-incomprehensible Etoile and their Sandman servitor creations. In my campaign, I had an Etoile NPC who lived in the sub-basement of The Subway Inn (a dive bar I used to frequent when I lived in New York City). Known by the local street people as Geppetto, he had gone completely insane and was a concern not only to the Hoffmann Institute (as many homeless people in the area were going missing) but other members of his alien species as well. Rival NPC priest investigators from the Order of St. Gregory (another secret society featured in Dark•Matter ) were also investigating the case, and one of the priests was infected with lycanthropy and responsible for several recent werewolf attacks in Central Park. So many layers and players, but that was what made this game so enjoyable!

Wizards of the Coast pulled the plug on Alternity and its associated campaign settings including Dark•Matter when they released Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition and the d20 System in 2000. Due to its continued popularity, it did see re-release in bits and pieces through the d20 Modern game system (2002) and supplements, was featured as a "mini" setting in DUNGEON 108/POLYHEDRON 163 Magazine (March 2004), and eventually got its own hardcover d20 Modern campaign setting book in 2006 at the tail end of d20 Modern's print run. While it was nice to have these d20 Modern conversions, they never really captured the same magic and feel of the original Alternity hardcover setting book.

And I think there are several reasons for that. Sure, the d20 Modern Dark•Matter offerings didn't quite match the production values and presentation of the original Alternity game. But remember, Dark•Matter was set two years into the future when it was first released; the campaign starts in 2001. September 11, 2001 was a major cultural turning point in the United States, if not the world, after the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC. The world was now different and so was the way we perceived and consumed conspiracy. When Dark•Matter saw re-release after 2001, it no longer had the same impact. Fast-forward to 2016 until now where the ramblings of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones get the same attention and consideration as mainstream media news outlets. Then again, maybe Dark•Matter was trying to warn us about something all the way back in 1999...

If I were to run Dark•Matter now in 2019, I wouldn't set it in the present day but keep it in that late 90s where it is definitely at home, a more "innocent" time to explore dark secrets, forbidden knowledge, and hidden truths as it were. I wouldn't use Alternity or d20 Modern either; instead I would opt for something like Fate Core or adapt and mash together several GUMSHOE games like Fear Itself, The Esoterrorists, and Night's Black Agents. It's still a great go-to if you are looking for something that feels like classic X-Files.

All in all, Dark•Matter still holds up today, and is worthy of a re-visit by longtime fans or a first look if you've never experienced it.

Mr. Sandman bring me a dream!

Creepy Comic Conversion Issue 3 for Cryptworld!

The latest issue of Tim Snider's Creepy Comic Conversion series for Cryptworld is out in PDF and print on demand, and it's another winner! Each issue of the Creepy Comic Conversion series presents a pre-code horror comic and then converts it to a fully-stated Cryptworld adventure. Creepy Comic Conversion Issue 3 features "The Cave of Doom" from Chamber of Chills Magazine. I'm especially excited for this issue because some of my Chilling Tales Horror Roleplaying blog content is featured on the back cover in a very fun, novel way!

I wish I didn't break the lens on my smartphone camera recently so I could show you the print quality of these books. They are digest "zine" sized, with full color glossy covers and color interior pages printed on quality paper that do the reprinted comic book pages justice. DrivethruRPG's print on demand service really did a great job with Tim's excellent layout.

Back issues are available in PDF and print on demand as well:

Creepy Comic Conversion Issue 1 ("The Case of the Painted Beast" from Eerie Magazine)
Creepy Comic Conversion Issue 2 ("The Fleshless Ones" from Adventures into Darkness Magazine)

Games and Media I Enjoyed in February 2018

We are now in the month of April so my monthly recap of the things I enjoyed in February is long past due. I spent most of February in nightly rehearsals for the musical Cabaret (which ran successfully in early March to good reviews and audience reception), so I had a few false starts on some of the things I began to consume (Lovecraft Country I am looking at you) but intend to return to those in the near future. I still managed to finish a few things I started and present my favorites below. (Spoiler: I spent most of March in rehearsal for Arsenic and Old Lace opening next weekend.)

BATES MOTEL SEASON 5

Bates Motel has been one of my favorite shows since it first premiered, so when the final season finally dropped on Netflix in February, I stopped watching everything else and jumped right in. I rarely have enough time to binge-watch a show in an entire day or weekend, but I will do mini-binges of two or three episodes at bedtime (I usually fall asleep by the middle of the third or fourth episode and pick up from where I left off the next night). With Bates Motel, I found myself staying up later than usual, eager to jump right into the next episode.

This season did not disappoint. I am going to avoid any spoilers, but I have to admit the temptation is great. As always, the acting was first rate. Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates) is as intense and believable as always, and Vera Farmiga (Norma Bates) is probably one of my favorite American television actresses of all time, right up there with Edie Falco. Without really giving anything away, my favorite part of the season was when the events of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film adaption of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho began to unfold (money stolen from the bank right before the weekend up to the infamous shower scene), and were then turned completely on their head. Really well done!

All in all, the series conclusion left me satisfied with no loose ends or disappointments. I'm glad to see Freddie Highmore having continued success with his new series, The Good Doctor. 

CRIME SCENE d20 SOURCEBOOKS

Back at the start of the new millennium when Dungeons & Dragons was still in its third edition, British RPG publisher Hogshead Publishing released Crime Scene, a series of sourcebooks focusing on modern criminal investigation. All you needed was a copy of the D&D Players Handbook and you were good to go—the books included character classes, skills, and feats appropriate to the genre. Oddly, Hogshead never jumped on the d20 Modern bandwagon when Wizards of the Coast released that game based on D&D.

Crime Scene titles included Police Investigation, Feds, and Forensics, but there were two titles that particularly grabbed my interest at the time: Supernatural and Sheriff's Office: Red Pine Hollow. Red Pine Hollow is a fictional small town in the Pacific Northwest. You could use it for straight up drug/vice squad action and organized crime, but you were also encouraged to combine it with Supernatural to give it a Twin Peaks vibe. Similarly, Supernatural let you decide if psychic abilities, aliens, dark magic, etc. really exist in your campaign or are merely the delusional beliefs of cults on the FBI watch list. I decided to revisit these, particularly Red Pine Hollow, because I've been toying with the idea of formally writing up my personal default modern horror setting that I've used in many of my games over the years.

One of the criticisms of the Crime Scene line was the proliferation of skills, many seeming to cover similar ground. While there is some overlap, I never saw this as a huge problem. In a crime scene/police procedural game, you are going to have player characters who all do similar things and the increased number of skills helps to differentiate them and give everyone something to do and a specialist area to shine in. Pelgrane Press's GUMSHOE games do something very similar with their investigative abilities today (and do it very well). And while the Crime Scene titles are set in the United States, the authors unwittingly let some British-isms sneak in. A common colloquial unit of measurement in America is the football field—describing something as three football fields in length, for example; Crime Scene Supernatural amusingly used football pitch instead. Still, the books were well researched for the time but are now almost two decades old so "modern" might not fit as a descriptor anymore.

Crime Scene PDFs at DriveThruRPG

That's all for now. I hope to have a blog post about my March media consumption soon. Thanks for reading!

Games and Media I Enjoyed in January 2018

Inspired by Jack Shear of the Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque blog, I thought this year I would do a monthly recap of some of the roleplaying game products, books, movies, and television shows I enjoyed consuming in the month prior. Jack's monthly recap always introduces me to something new and interesting, and hopefully I'll be able to do the same for others as well. I'll try to keep these related to the theme of this blog unless something really knocks my socks off.

A Note on Spoilers: I will do my best to avoid these when possible and merely whet your interest.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed in January 2018:

KIDS ON BIKES RPG

Kids on Bikes by Jon Gilmour and Doug Levandowski was the runaway RPG Kickstarter success story of 2017. Inspired by the hit Netflix original series Stranger Things, I eagerly backed this at a level that will eventually score me a hardcover expanded edition copy (plus a shit ton of modules designed by some of the biggest names in the indy RPG scene). I received my first backer reward in January: a PDF copy of the core rulebook (basic, not expanded). I dove right in and have to say I'm pretty impressed with the game.

This is a narrative-style RPG clearly influenced by Fate, Apocalypse World/various Powered By games, Cortex Plus, and perhaps more. It features collaborative setting building and player narrative control and hits all the right notes with regards to diversity and respect for the wishes and boundaries of the participant players. There are six stats—Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm, and Grit—each of which is assigned a value of one of the following die types: d4 (your weakest stat), d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20 (your strongest stat). These stats are what you roll when you attempt to do something in the game (Stat Checks), either against a difficulty number or another character's opposing roll. There are degrees of success that decide outcome and narrative control of outcome, with an emphasis on "make failure interesting". When you fail a roll, you earn an Adversity Token you can apply as a bonus to future rolls.

What I particularly enjoyed is how the game handles powered characters, the role of Eleven in Stranger Things for example. The powered character is shared between players as well as the GM. Each player gets some aspect of the powered character to roleplay and make decisions for, be that the power itself, a personality trait or flaw, or how they react to other characters. Any player can activate any of these aspects at any time they feel appropriate during the game, but the player controlling that aspect is responsible for making it happen. The GM can introduce things about the powered character as well. It's very clever and a viable solution to the potential problem of every player wanting powers in a game that includes powers.

I also want to give a shout out to the inspired artwork by Heather Vaughan.

DARK
Dark is a German Netflix original series recently dubbed into English and released in the United States.

Pros: A clever science fiction/weird science story with a mystery to unravel akin to Lost, Twin Peaks, or Wayward Pines with hints of Stranger Things.

Cons: You really have to pay attention, more so than you did for Lost. There are many generational characters in several different families over three time periods separated by 33 years—2019, 1986, and 1953*—with some characters played by different actors depending on when the story is taking place**, and then they travel through time. Also the dubbing into English is awkward in many places. It's not as bad as a 1960s Japanese Godzilla flick, but with some characters speaking in English with an accent and others more American in style, at times it reminded me of a dubbed-into-English-from-Swedish Pippi Longstocking movie.

*Don't read anything into the order I listed these. Or do.

**The Wikipedia article has family trees now. Somebody should add stills of the actors. *thumb on nose* Not it!

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ROANOKE

Out on Netflix. Mildly entertaining, but I think we've jumped the shark now.

THE THRILL OF DRACULA BY KEN HITE

If horror roleplaying games have a master authority, it would probably be Ken Hite. I've always enjoyed Ken's work, from the horror roleplaying bible Nightmares of Mine to GURPS Horror and more recently the GUMSHOE RPGs like Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents. I picked up The Thrill of Dracula as part of the recent Dracula Dossier (for Night's Black Agents) Bundle of Holding.

This book starts with an overview of the original Bram Stoker novel themes and characters. It then goes through almost every Dracula movie made—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Each movie is presented through a synopsis, how it differs from and/or pays tribute to the original novel, some thoughtful criticism, and a section on things you can take away and use at the game table. This last section is not only useful for Night's Black Agents campaigns but any game where the Count makes an appearance. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and discovered a few new Dracula movies I hadn't seen before and now I'm hunting down to watch.

MRS. AMWORTH

This half hour long vampire tale is from a very short-lived 1975 British television horror anthology series entitled Classics Dark and Dangerous. I learned about this forgotten little gem from a post on a folk horror site. Actress Glynis Johns (famous for her role in Mary Poppins) does an admirable job in the title role having previously appeared in the 1973 horror anthology movie The Vault of Horror. I enjoyed watching this, if only for the original take on the vampire's identity as a beloved member of the community. I only wish it was a little longer to give the quaint English country village where the story is set a chance to grow more as a character in its own right. It might make an interesting campaign setting.

Mrs. Amworth is based on a short story by E.F. Benson. Apparently there is a 2007 remake.


That's all for this month. Thanks for reading!