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The Killing Jar
This first stand-alone adventure for the DarkMatter campaign setting reveals a disturbing reality beneath the blissful ignorance of everyday life. A case of grand theft auto quickly escalates into a more serious investigation, leading heroes to a sinister forensics lab, a forgotten burial mound, and into a conspiracy of lies best left buried.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Bruce R. Cordell
169 books124 followersBruce R. Cordell authored books for Dungeons & Dragons over the course of 4 editions (2nd Edition through 5th Edition D&D). These days, he’s a senior designer for Monte Cook Games, LLC designing Numenera , Gods of the Fall, and The Strange. Also a novel author, his credits include several titles set in the Forgotten Realms. Bruce’s tenth novel, Myth of the Maker, is just out from Angry Robot Books:
http://brucecordell.blogspot.com/2017...
http://brucecordell.blogspot.com/2017...
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December 31, 2021One of my favorite campaign settings, it’s modern day conspiracy thriller where the PCs (probably) work for the (probably) good non-profit dedicated to discovering and where necessary combatting the weirdness of the world, from aliens, to Freemasons, to the mothman, to demonic cults.
This is maybe the most me thing in the world, considering that I became conscious in the fun conspiracy ‘90s, with the Big Book of Conspiracy, and other light-hearted takes on “the true history underneath known history.” I have no idea how such a campaign like this would be received — or even conceived — when conspiracy and conspiracy-mindedness is blooming and no longer fun.
Still, this gives me so much info in such a short space for just about any sort of weird/conspiracy angle, and I really do love the list of conspiracies, monsters, etc. Also, I love any conspiracy/weirdness game like Trail of Cthulhu or this that gives you several possibilities for each conspiracy/bit of weirdness. (Another smart thing they do in the core book: for each org, they give a main idea and an alternate idea, as I said; but they also give info about departments and projects within the orgs, to remind us that not all orgs are monoliths.)
The one place this falls down for me is in the adventures, which don’t really light a fire under me in the way that, say, Delta Green adventures do because of their true weirdness. Here, the Final Church book (on the demonic cults that all are maybe one big cult) ends with an adventure that is basically “rescue the children before they are sacrificed,” which honestly feels like it could be easily transposed to a D&D world. Where’s the real paranoia and weirdness?
(Here’s a real dumb idea that might actually work: take a page from the OSR movement — which loves randomizing things via charts — and come up with a high weirdness/conspiracy adventure random chart in order to get into some thing that are truly weird and potentially haunting.)
Campaign Guide
Arms & Equipment Guide
Xenofoorms
The Final Church (pdf)
The Killing Jar
This is maybe the most me thing in the world, considering that I became conscious in the fun conspiracy ‘90s, with the Big Book of Conspiracy, and other light-hearted takes on “the true history underneath known history.” I have no idea how such a campaign like this would be received — or even conceived — when conspiracy and conspiracy-mindedness is blooming and no longer fun.
Still, this gives me so much info in such a short space for just about any sort of weird/conspiracy angle, and I really do love the list of conspiracies, monsters, etc. Also, I love any conspiracy/weirdness game like Trail of Cthulhu or this that gives you several possibilities for each conspiracy/bit of weirdness. (Another smart thing they do in the core book: for each org, they give a main idea and an alternate idea, as I said; but they also give info about departments and projects within the orgs, to remind us that not all orgs are monoliths.)
The one place this falls down for me is in the adventures, which don’t really light a fire under me in the way that, say, Delta Green adventures do because of their true weirdness. Here, the Final Church book (on the demonic cults that all are maybe one big cult) ends with an adventure that is basically “rescue the children before they are sacrificed,” which honestly feels like it could be easily transposed to a D&D world. Where’s the real paranoia and weirdness?
(Here’s a real dumb idea that might actually work: take a page from the OSR movement — which loves randomizing things via charts — and come up with a high weirdness/conspiracy adventure random chart in order to get into some thing that are truly weird and potentially haunting.)
Campaign Guide
Arms & Equipment Guide
Xenofoorms
The Final Church (pdf)
The Killing Jar
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review