Conspiracy X is an intriguing role-playing game (RPG) originally released by New Millennium Entertainment in 1996 and since revised and released by several publishers. The game’s premise is identical: shadowy, unaccountable conspiracies and government agencies are cooperating with alien forces, while monsters and psychics exist. Conspiracy X takes place in a world of dark secrets and hidden agendas, where the only certainty is what it seems.
The game offers some outstanding twists to the standard Unisystem rules set, especially when it comes to character creation, cell creation, and other aspects of the game. The game’s first edition has an interesting setting and a system whose basic axioms are decent. All the books in this line are very well produced, with great artwork that conveys the modern conspiracy alien supernatural bent of the game.
One of the big differences between Conspiracy X and other horror games is that the players are part of a conspiracy. Most games cast the players as part of a conspiracy, but Conspiracy X makes for a great setting with dark conspiracies, government coverups, and an impending alien invasion. It is one of the easiest RPGs to play, as players are part of a conspiracy.
In conclusion, Conspiracy X is a well-produced, up-to-date RPG that offers a thrilling world of dark secrets and hidden agendas. The game’s first edition has an interesting setting and a well-produced system, with the main difference being that players are part of a conspiracy. The game is one of the easiest RPGs to play, as players are part of a conspiracy and can interact with the aliens and government coverups.
📹 Game Geeks Classics#15 Conspiracy X 2.0 by Eden Studios
Game Geeks Classics #15 Conspiracy X 2.0 by Eden Studios http://edenstudios.net/ http://gamegeeksrpg.com/ Geeks and Game …
📹 Conspiracy X (New Millennium Entertainment, 1996) | Retro RPG
Description: On the surface the world looks very much like the one outside your bedroom window. The same people are walking …
The main way the game plays out is as an investigation game where you can start with anything paranormal/conspiratorial, ghosts, UFOs, even Bigfoot, and slowly the players get to piece together the massive interlinked truths going on and try and figure out what to thwart and what not to and what might be utilised. Through the supplements you get an amazing Big Picture and a campaign can run for years (mine starting with 1st edition has!) without exhausting the huge supply of secrets within secrets and connections between things.
ConX2.0 is a great game… I love the character generation system. My biggest problem with all of the Unisystem games is just that the core mechanic is clumsy. Specifically, how you handle rolling a 10. Ironically, you can take the stats and characters right out of ConX2.0 and use the NWoD game mechanic with very little work, and it shines much more brightly!
I remember first finding out about this game via the excellent write up about it in the ‘Arcane’ RPG magazine; I ran a couple of campaigns of the 1E NME/Eden Studios version – both cut short due to real life issues, rather than any fault of the game/setting, so we didn’t really get far into the underlying plots of Con X – but even with the clunky 2d6 system behind the 1E version, both the players and myself as the GM still had a fun time while it lasted. I did end up getting the three Alien books (‘Nemesis’ for the Greys, ‘Exodus’ for the Saurians, and ‘Atlantis Rising’ for the Atlanteans), which did expand the scope of the games considerably past that of the base game (enough that some of the players referred to one of the campaigns as “F@#$ing Atlanteans!!”, given how prone Atlanteans were to meddling in everything the PCs came across). I did also get the ‘Forsaken Rites’ book, but never really used it much – as cool as the idea of the Seepage was, I felt the Supernatural side of tye game was underdeveloped from the start, and never really improved (that, and White Wolf’s World of Darkness games, also released back in the 90’s, seemed to do a much better job with the Supernatural anyway). Over the years I also picked up the GURPS and 2E versions (the latter using Eden’s ‘Unisystem’ rules) of the game, and I do hope to run at least one of these versions at some point in the future – though there seems to be less interest in it nowadays, what with the lack of what can be described as ‘Pre-Millenial Tension’ (ie no one is worrying anymore about Alien Invasion/the Day of Revelation/Y2K or any of the apocalyptic, esoteric scenarios people were both openly and low-key worried about heading into the 2000’s that shows like ‘The X-Files’, ‘Millenium’, and ‘Dark Skies’ were tapping into).
Conspiracy X was an innovating game, but as pointed out in this review, it was largely overtaken by Delta Green as a Call of Cthulhu supplement/setting and also the Guide to the Technocracy for Mage: The Ascension (WoD) when that came out. I also note that the psychic ‘Archetypes’ concept was actually adopted in a way in Unknown Armies. Conspiracy X has a more traditional conspiracy back-setting, but was a little more predictable because of this and struggled to maintain a market niche in comparison to the other big lines.
Great review, appreciate you taking a deeper dive into one of my favourite game settings. It is interesting that the 90s saw the rise of a number of games of this type (zeitgeist of the time I suspect). I feel the early 2000s changed the view of the world a lot (especially the idea of government conspiracy after 9/11), and its only really the last decade that these have come back into vogue. I’d also suggest looking into the 2nd edition (which uses the Unisystem mechanics) as that run of books does a lot to bring the setting together in a more coherent manner).
This has been one of my most successful games to run, I’ve had several campaigns go for years. Where it really shines is the sourcebooks. Each adds a ton of lore and that lore in each connects to the others, it really connects up everything in an amazing way that players get to slowly piece together (and the GM does too as they get all the books lol). For example without spoiling it I grabbed the Cryptozoology sourcebook thinking it’d just be a cool bestiary for one-off sessions and was blindsided to learn it includes several big-players in the big picture and something critical to understanding a lot of what’s going on behind the scenes. And then the Sub-Rosa book reveals some deep dark secrets about the one group that had seemed like they might have genuinely been “good guys”. It’s masterfully done. While I play the Unisystem version these days (though I house rule away the nonsense range on Remote Viewing) the old books have tons of lore that didn’t fit the condensed new edition sourcebooks (though each of the new ones do add some cool new elements the one extraterrestrial book couldn’t fit everything in the original 3 alien sourcebooks). And the axe et cards work better with a full deck of them (I snapped up a deck plus some official Conspiracy X dice from an official Kickstarter for the last Unisystem sourcebook.. that again added whole new layers to the lore).
I remember reading a supplement called Forsaken rites which is the magic sourcebook for conspiracy X, interesting history of magic and its origins, in that yes magic ties in with psychic ability and Magic is a refinement of psychic ability which draws from the seepage, and magic can corrupt (that is why you get supernatural creatures like werewolves vampires etc. ). As I recall(I havent read the book in 20 years, sold my copy in Ebay a decade ago), back eons ago, the Greys ruled the planet and men were created by the greys and made as slaves. however man developed psychic abilities and magic was created with the help of another race(which we call Faeries) beat back the Greys and break away from their subjugation. The Atlanteans look human but they are an alien race. and the Saurians look at earth as their lost homeworld they left millions of years ago before even man walked the earth and when they came back they saw it overrun by us. blasphemy.