Alternity in general is a forgotten gem. I had many of the books, lost them and reacquired many of them, including the startcraft boxed game for Alternity.
All of my D20 books have come and gone out of my collection since the 90s, but my Dark Matter campaign book still sits on my shelf. It still looks and reads amazing. I employ the info in it to tons of other games to this day.
Thank you for shining a light on this forgotten masterpiece--it was both wonderful and sad to see it all again! (this is G.W. Tirpa, by the way--cheers!)
Now G.W. Tirpa is everywhere! Seriously though, thanks for your work at the time and contributions to the video, Phil. Your writing legit changed my life!
Quick add that your contribution to the hobby also significantly influenced me. Your addition to Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen was immaculate and in my opinion the work you and your colleges did on Alternity is the best RPG material I've ever read. It was really cool to see your comment on a video I just stumbled across. Can you be starstruck from a RU-vid comment? 😂
What this legend didn’t say - every year he would do a dark matter one shot story around Xmas - every year we would meet Santa and every year my heart would melt 🥰
My friends and I loved playing 'Alternity' and we had a great campaign going; That is until one of the players decided to start pushing his luck and made his character start breaking too many laws (including murder) on a space station that we were on. He was promptly arrested and, despite a hurried rescue attempt by the rest of us, executed. He complained that the GM killed his character for no reason, but he had straight up shot someone in the face for fun. I don't think we played a game of Alternity after that...Real shame, I had a T'sa character who upgraded our ship with some cool stuff. I don't normally play the tech characters in sci-fi games and was enjoying playing something different
We never got into "Dark*Matter" as we were deep into "Dark Conspiracy" from GDW. At that time we had played a lot of "Twilight 2000" in our own Scandinavian setting, and the familiarity of the rules as well as the fact that the T2K campaign had gotten a bit 'cryptid', we jumped on "Dark Conspiracy". In lots of ways it seems to have been the same theme and overarching atmosphere that inspired the two games, and as you mention, it was very much part of the zeitgeist at the time.
Amazing! I have been looking for more videos about Dark*Matter then suddenly my newest must follow tabletop history channels posts this! Keep up the great work
I bought Dark*Matter (those asterisks were always a source of mockery in my gaming group, particularly the one in Star*Drive, which tended to be called StarStarDrive because of it) back when it came out and I remembered having picked up at least one supplement or adventure for it at some point. Checking my shelves I've discovered that not only do I have the Arms and Equipment Guide and Xenoforms, I also have two copies of the Killing Jar! I'm not sure how that happened. Dark*Matter was definitely a very attractive book and quite interesting to read, but I never actually managed to play or run it myself. I did run a couple of published Star*Drive adventures a while back, I found the Alternity system didn't play as well as I expected it to. I think the D20 +/- DX mechanic was not as smooth as it might have been, but perhaps the balance issues between armour and weapons also played a part. Or it may have been the moderately dysfunctional gaming group. But it was an interesting attempt by TSR/WotC to move beyond the ageing mechanics of AD&D 2nd edition that was their main product at the time.
It’s interesting to look back at the end of TSR now as it’s almost like watching the T-1000 search for a form that can survive molten metal. A lot of really interesting attempts, but nothing that stuck. At least until Wizards reshaped the entire thing
last time i looked you had a little over 2k subs and now already over 10k we are going to the moon. mostly just the quality of your backlog and the passion of the things you talk about
Was waiting for you to release this! Sent it to my brother already and it might just be time to read the novels again. Time to return to the Hoffmann Institute
I'm so glad you made this video and enjoyed it so much! The amount of passion you have for Dark Matter and Alternity shows and the amount of investigation and research you did pays wonderful homage to the game at hand. I don't comment on videos often at all, so I hope you don't mind but I'm going to make a pretty long comment about my experience with Alternity and how your video has just influenced it, hopefully igniting that spark to start playing again. I first played Alternity when I was in high school in the early 2000's after it was already out of publication and only had the two Core books and the star drive arms and equipment guide. My first experience was in a homebrew space opera set in PL7 as a practically unkillable mutant sniper/spaceship pilot that always had to wear goggles and earplugs because of his severe light and sound sensitivity (mildly modeled after Riddick from Pitch Black). I then played a brilliant but cowardly and combat ineffective research scientist in a PL5 Aliens vs Predators meat grinder campaign where the GM had all four players play two pre generated characters because of how frequent character death was. Any time a character died we would get to choose a new pregenerated character to join the group when it made sense in the story. (Predators decided to use Earth as their hunting grounds and released Xenos in large numbers everywhere.) My scientist was the only character to survive the whole campaign that lasted probably 15-20 session or so from the start and he never got a single combat skill beyond the Ranged Weapons broad skill, only got one kill by hiding under a truck then running over an injured and distracted Predator, and eventually studied alien tech long enough to figure out how it worked and the campaign ended with an epic scene where those still alive in the end flew off planet in a stolen alien ship that I piloted. I fell in love with the system and it's versatility and went on to GM campaigns like a late PL6 Firefly/Star Trek space explorer/bounty hunters game, an early PL6 Fallout/Mad Max apocalypse with magic (FX) game, a PL4 1920's gangsters game that had no sci-fi or fantasy at all and saw my players start as street thugs and grow a powerful and influential organized crime operation, and a PL5 Walking Dead/State of Decay zombie apocalypse campaign. Well now it's been over 10 years since I've played Alternity. Life has changed a lot. 5E had dominated the landscape for me and my group for many years and now scheduling complications have prevented my group from gaming for a long time. But just the other day I was thinking a lot about Alternity and mentioned it to my friends and there was a lot of interest in trying to find the time to get a game going again. I randomly decided to search RU-vid to see if anyone had any actual play campaigns or discussion videos to get back in the mood of Alternity and see if I could get some ideas or inspiration. I'd never heard of Dark Matter before and never really tried too hard to find material for Alternity since I was always able to come up with ideas with the input from my group about what kind of game they wanted. Well I'm older now with a family with much less time to create homebrew settings and come up with plot devices and NPCs and everything. Your video (the top video in my results when I searched Alternity RPG, congratulations) along with the amazing resources online that I checked out while watching that you shared have given me the ability to bring something fresh and new to my group if we can ever get together again without me having to come up with everything. Now if only I could find The Final Church... TL:DR Your video was awesome. Alternity is awesome for it's flexibility. Dark Matter looks awesome and I hope I'm able to play it.
Mate, this sounds like an awesome Alternity career! It was such a fun & versatile system, it really lent itself to great homebrew settings. I hope you do get the chance to try Dark*Matter, and that you enjoy it! It’s retro now of course, but I still love it. Thank you very much for the comment, the super thanks, and your support! Cheers mate!
Ah Dark * Matter ! That game took me by surprise when it was released. I was familiar with a lot of the previous conspiracy games like Conspiracy X and Delta Green but the Dark * Matter transcended them all. I was a subscriber to Dungeon and Dragons Magazines until they ceased publication and enjoyed whatever small snippets were released in there, however since I do live in France I never had the chance to get access to that sweet RPGA stuff. Thanks for bringing back those memories !
Thanks Stu! Well worth a look if you’re wanting a hit if 90s paranoid nostalgia! RPGs were an early love of mine - so much fun with just a book, some dice, and great friends!
Nice to see this rarely talked about game get a deep dive; bonus points for mention of Prey and Eerie Indiana, Holy Blood, etc. 🙂I was almost expecting a mention of Round the Twist 😉 For me and my multiple gaming groups, whilst we got Alternity, we mostly played World of Darkness (older Hunter's Hunter and later Hunter, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, L5R (shadow conspiracy in particular), and in particular Aberrant (supers conspiracy focused plots) and C.J. Carella's Witchcraft dominated our games before 3rd ed D&D. Other games of note for us were Unknown Armies, Feng Shui, and GURPS (everything). So, sadly we didn't have any big campaigns of Alternity: Dark Matter. Continuum and Heaven & Earth were other games of that time on our radar, but we didn't play, but talked about that had a curious small impact, but have gone to be cult classics. Interestingly Monte Cook's mostly fantastic World of Darkness game in 2007 had more of an X-Files feel to it and a throwback to Alternity: Dark Matter 🙂 *Secret-Squeak* 🐀🌠
You may not believe me, but I cut a bit about Round the Twist as I just want too far off topic! I always meant to check out Cook’s WoD, but never got round to it for no good reason!
@@jordansorcery I believe you, your videos show your wide range of lore and deep dives. Given the scale time and references of the video, probably sensible you cut it 😀 but we know you know 😉 I hope you get a chance to check Cook’s WoD, it is quite different to the WoD, but not alien to it. The result feeling like one foot in WoD and one foot in several '90s conspiracy-worlds' 😁
Another masterpiece, sir. Unlike this comment, which will ramble. I feel as if most of your videos are showing me the things I missed in my youth and this is no exception. I own the core books for Alternity, I bought them with the hopes that I'd either finally see the D&D system in the future OR a return of the old TSR game Star Frontiers with a modern coat of paint. When neither proved to be the case, Alternity was shelved (but I still have the books, I may finally give them a proper read). Dark Matter itself was missed as, by that time, I was deeply immersed in both Delta Green and the Black Ops setting for GURPS (wherein you play nigh-superhuman agents both protecting the world from cryptid threats AND maintaining the conspiracy that no such things exist), as well as owning Conspiracy X and just didn't have room in my budget or time for another conspiracy game. Alas it sounds like I missed a truly magnificent one. On a sidenote, may I direct your attention to Pandemonium, published in 1993 by MIB Productions Inc, a comedic game focused on the tabloid, Elvis Is Bat Boy's Father side of fringe theories? If you can find it cheap somewhere you might get a kick out of it. And, again, yes, I fully agree that the visual presentation of a game matters so much, and Dark Matter looks to have been a masterclass in visual immersion in their setting. Maybe one day I'll find the books and dig into this game...
If you’ve already got Alternity then it’s well worth the punt, even just to read. I think they did a terrific job with that core book. Pandemonium sounds super interesting, will definitely check out more about that! (especially as I just revisited the first MIB movie!)
I have never heard of this game, but it looks like it is right up my alley! I came into the hobby during D20 Modern and D&D 3.5, so it might have been before my time. Great tip!
The D20 Modern version has a few bits cut out, but it was still a strong book if you’re familiar with the system. That said, it’s tricky to get hold of these days!
My tabletop group was about to start a playtest of Alternity Darkmatter system tonight, and I checked this out to have a bit of a primer - i may have picked the right game to join
that was my favourite hardback when i was 13+ back in the late 90s early 00's i can still hear the creak of the spine and the smell of the pages 20 years later. it informed so much of my world view. the hoffman institute!
The first TTRPG I ever played was the starter adventure in the Dark Matter core book. I remember my friend's older brother ran it for us at their dad's poker table. It was a great game, shame it didn't catch on.
I have the d20 modern version in my collection. It was clear even when I first read them how much of the Alternity setting existed within d20 modern's dna. Never read the original books though, they were out of print by the time I got into it.
Wow - thanks for sharing this Jordan. Really great. I loved Alternity and Dark Matter. I still have my book for both. You have prompted to me drag them out and run a session for my gaming group!!
Goodness, I have my Alternity corebooks buried somewhere, got it after the "AD&D to Alternity" conversion preview at the back of the Tale of the Comet 2E AD&D adventure. Had a weird thought the otherday that using the Proficiency Dice optional rule for 5E ends up looking superficially quite similar to Alternity.
I'm willing to bet that there's still some lines of Alternity code in the modern game, so to speak! The ramp up to Alternity was awesome, the marketing team did some great work I think
Another great video about a thing I wish I'd had as a kid! I love when you weave your storytelling in with the greater tapestry of the company's timeline, like mentioning Dragonlance, it's like "oh I watched that video!" lol. Also I'm slightly disappointed GW Tirpa wasn't Games Workshop, since they seem to be involved in every other video you've done (Maybe the J in Jordan stands for James Workshop???).
I've been in this hobby for over 20 years and I've found myself to be an everything Monte Cook/Reynolds/Cordell lover. You can't imagine my surprise being today years old when I found out about this setting. Now I need to know everything about it! Did you check The Magnus Archives? It has the same vibes but it's based on a fictional podcast and it uses de Cypher System.
Just got back to X-Files by revisiting the phenomenal three-parter that bridges the second and third seasons! This game seems awesome. I actually have d20 Modern and remembering Dark Matter being heavily advertised on the website. Had no idea what it was until today. 😅
Great video! I totally missed this era of stuff, after going off to college in the mid 90's and mostly abandoning the RPG world. That said I love this genre of stuff, and like the author miss the era when conspiracy theories were more fringy "fun" and less involved in actual politics. Anyway thanks as always for putting this together and shining some light into a dark corner!
While I enjoyed Alternity/Dark Matter I have to say that the best horror conspiracy game I ever played was Delta Green. I mainly GM’d the games of it my friends played & had an absolute blast making up those adventures.
I do love a bit of Delta Green, it's a fantastic game. I bounced off the first edition as it just didn't visually appeal to me, especially compared to Dark*Matter, but the latest books are brilliant and there are some great ideas and horrors in them. I'm actually working on a shotgun scenario for this year's competition as I think I have a fun idea!
Intriguing. 😮 I'm a huge fan of _Hellboy/B.P.R.D.,_ so this is really the game I've been looking for. One aspect I like about paranormal agency fiction is the more mundane stuff. The office politics, paperwork and staff meetings add this humour and humanity that I feel invests one more in the proceedings. I'm definitely going to absorb as much of this as I can. 😁
It's interesting watching your channel grow and develop. You've had impressive research and writing and presentation from the outset. At a glance, I'd expect you to have several hundred thousand subscibers, I wonder how you can improve on this already excellent formula in the future. Keep it up, you've become my go to for long and listenable gaming content on youtube. My only critique: MYTH-os with an ith 😊
That sounds like an awesome game! I doubt I'll ever play it, as I can barely get my players to try anything except D&D, but one can always dream. I'm very glad I found your channel (courtesy of Vincey V) as it seems your content is made for a person just like myself. Keep it up!
I recall playing a Dark Matter solo adventure in one of the last issues of Dragon Magazine I received before my subscription ran out (this would have been in the 230s/240s). I liked it, though at the time my home town didn't have a game store so I never had a chance to look at the actual setting.
I wanted this game so bad at the time but just didn't have the cash in my teenage account. I eneded up in the world of darkness crowd for the longest time. Was sad to see the game go before I ever got a chance to play it.
Great video....I have been looking for a physical or pdf copy of 'By Dust Consumed' since I learned of it in 2007. The author told me that he is not able to share it. 🤔 I like to link this game to the Marvel Super Heroes rpg, of all things.
Wait, hold up, you didn't mention Psi Factor: Chronicles of the paranormal! It was tv series started in 1996, hosted by Dan Akroyd and season 1 had a more documentary style. While Mulder & Scully worked pretty much alone, here you had the OSIR, (Office of Scientific Investigation and Research) a whole organisation dedicated to studying the alien and paranormal.
@@jordansorcery It's a shame it's so obscure. I really like their angle of "this is not a show, it's a re-enactment of real events." Even tough it was all fake. Good of you to mention Eerie Indiana. Imagine living next to Elvis and having Bigfoot eat out of your trash.
I did listen to the 90s where there were monstrous corporations government conspiracies and horrible secrets that could end the world. Why would I want to play a game that just reflected everyday real life so perfectly in the 90s?😅
For me, the 'conspiracy' game of the 90's was Nephilim. I'd picked up a battered old copy from a LGS and had no clue what to do with it, so ran it as some kind of X-files/Indiana Jones/HBHG mashup. The PCs started off as human, with the grand overarching idea of the real mystery being their Nephilim nature... needless to say, the campaign never got anywhere near that far.
Alas, though I wish it were, it was a quote from Monte Cook’s 1999 introduction in the Dark*Matter book. Of course, the Dream Weaver is not bound by conventional time so perhaps it Cook was quoting Marenghi!
Definitely! There’s a lot of fantastic storytelling in DG, and these days the books look better than ever. I think they’ve also done good work to bring the conspiracy and horror into a more modern world as well. Designer Dennis Detwiller’s DG Patreon is also one of the best things on the platform!
@@jordansorcery ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pHp8ZUtR2is.html&ab_channel=sachs2 its not on pirate bay or anywhere but here it is the first and only season all 13 episodes in glorious 240p
@@jordansorcery yes I agree. Alter it’s in general though was very interesting especially the way it calculated wounds, where you could fall unconscious with a fatal wound etc
