Back in the 1990s and the Oughts, I loved conspiracy-based RPG settings and material. I devoured GURPS Illuminati, Delta Green, Kenneth Hite’s Suppressed Transmission columns, and so on.
But in the last decade, I’ve moved away from them. Part of it may be that I realized that how many conspiracy theories ultimately originated in antisemitic slanders. Part of it might be their mainstreaming by the resurgent fascist right and their supporters. And, of course, the great villains of our day perpetrate all their villainy in the open, rarely even bothering to hide what they are doing.
So I no longer enjoy settings where “The Conspiracy” and their schemes are the main focus of the setting. While I don’t mind having “small-c” conspiracies in a game, I don’t like it when there is a secret cabal of conspirators running everything.
How about you? Do you still enjoy Conspiracy-based setting, or have you lost your taste for them as well?
I think Delta Green is still worth playing. They’re not a conspiracy of the “secretly running everything” type, just the “secret cover-up” kind, and honestly they’re kind of terrible at doing that most of the time.
The recently published campaigns, Impossible Landscapes and God’s Teeth, are both fantastic. The latter is very politically minded, with some horrors only possible in the story because of real-world atrocities of the Trump administration. It’s also the darkest fucking game I’ve ever played in, and would be way too much for most tables.
I think delta green is becoming more popular, if anything. There are a ton of quite popular actual play podcasts of it now (pretending to be people and get in the trunk are the big ones which come to mind)
I really like running it because the system is easy to run and teach, and there are oodles of free one shots for it.
The glass cannon network play through of impossible landscapes was an awesome listen.