After buying Traveller, Twilight: 2000, and 2300AD; Mongoose Publishing has now purchased Dark Conspiracy. Matthew Sprange, Managing Director of Mongoose Publishing, was kind enough to talk to EN World again about this upcoming relaunch of Dark Conspiracy coming in 2026.
Charlie Dunwoody (CD): Thanks for talking with EN World and me again, Matthew. I really enjoyed Dark Conspiracy. What about Dark Conspiracy excites you the most and convinced Mongoose Publishing to acquire the license and bring back this RPG?
Matthew Sprange (MS): Well, there are kind of two sides to this. First, when we acquired Traveller early last year, we had already expressed an interest in other GDW properties, including Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD. Those two were tied up later in the year, and we had always said that Dark Conspiracy would be interesting but figured it was something for the future. I was chatting to Mr Miller about something unrelated this year, and just happened to make a sideways mention about Dark Conspiracy, and that we could still be interested in it at some point – you know, if anything were to happen, we wanted our hat thrown into the ring. The very next day (!), Marc got back to us, basically saying ‘You want Dark Conspiracy? We can sort it out next week!’ Which is about the fastest we have seen anything like this happen! Seriously, within about ten days, everything had been signed and wrapped up. By comparison, Traveller took about a year to organise (as an IP, it was a lot more fractured, and everything had to be checked and double-checked – and then triple-checked). Second, we saw a golden opportunity in Dark Conspiracy. We have had an idea for a game (working title: Codename Veil) for nigh on twenty years now and, despite going back to it every so often, there was an element to it we could just not figure out. So, back into the drawer it goes, hoping for inspiration to pop up somewhere. As I was pondering Dark Conspiracy and what could be done with it, it suddenly dawned on me that Dark Conspiracy was the missing component for the game we had been working on. Everything just slotted into place rather neatly after that!
CD: Dark Conspiracy had a lot going on: ecological and economic disaster, otherworldly evil, cybernetics, and alien invasion. What theme or themes will be in the in the newest version?
MS: Whenever dealing with science-fiction, especially if it is very near-future science-fiction, there will always be commentary and analysis of our own world – that, after all, is really the point of science-fiction. So, the new Dark Conspiracy will certainly be carrying that forward. The original game’s themes of ecological and economic disaster are even more relevant today, as is the coming of AI, the future of capitalism, the rise of fascism, the commercialization (and militarization) of space… Basically, the world of Dark Conspiracy is not going to be a very happy time to live in! However, maybe the players will be able to create a little light in the dark and, perhaps, usher in a new world.
CD: You have stated that Dark Conspiracy will use the same game system as Traveller. As far as the setting goes, the game was set in the USA with global disaster, otherworldly demons, and alien invasion. Could you describe the planned setting in the upcoming version: is it similar to what came before or do you have any changes you can share?
MS: I can – at least, in terms of what we have now. Please understand that everything I am about to say has the massive caveat that this is what we are doing… unless a better idea comes along. As I type this, we have about 100 pages written of the core rules and outlines for the rest… so a great deal can still change. However… The basic idea is this: We will have not one Core Rulebook but (over time, likely 3-6 years) three Core Rulebooks. Each covers a different era. The first, tentatively titled Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War (or The Hidden War, or Bellum Occultum… this project really is in its early stages!) will be set in the present day, or perhaps just a handful of years ahead. There are a tiny few people aware of the coming of Dark Minions but no one really knows who or what they are, or why they are here. The players have been recruited (by powers unknown) into a small cell to find out what the threat is and, in individual cases, neutralize it. However, there are already less-than-wholesome people and organizations who are trying to take advantage, so the wider world cannot know what is going on. This means that the players will also have to create cover stories and manipulate events to keep everything secret – they will be the ones creating the dark conspiracy. The second Core Rulebook will be Dark Conspiracy: The Open War. Set 12 to 15 years later, the world has kinda broken down and people are now aware of Dark Minions. The players will have a lot more agency in running their side of the war, having control of their own cell and deciding what to do and how to do it as they become true defenders of humanity. Of the three, veterans will find this one closest to the original game. Finally, set perhaps eight years after that, we will have the third Core Rulebook, Dark Conspiracy: The Final War. In this, the players will be in charge of the overall human resistance, and will have the chance to defeat the Darkling Masters, somehow combine them into humanity… or lose utterly. In this way, players will have the choice of which era to play in, or… they will be able to create characters in The Unseen War, and play through a majorly-epic campaign that spans all three eras, starting off in near total ignorance of what they face and ending up in a final showdown that they themselves have engineered. Should be quite the campaign!
CD: Wow. That sounds awesome. In the upcoming version of Dark Conspiracy, what type of characters will the players run and what type of opponents, challenges, and monsters will oppose them?
MS: That will depend on which Core Rulebook is being played. In The Unseen War, the players have been actively recruited into the cause, and so will be specialists (be that military, intelligence, scientific, etc). However, as the world starts to break down, by the time we reach The Open War they will come from all walks of life, and Traveller works very well with players as the ‘everyman’, ordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary situations. That will also be true in The Final War, but things will be… a little more out there… As for opponents, the focus will obviously be on Dark Minions, though there will be plenty of human antagonists who see an advantage to siding with them. We will be starting ‘slow’ here, gradually unveiling more as the storyline progresses, so in The Unseen War players will be trying to find out the nature of Dark Minions and not really getting all the answers. As the timeline advances, more will become known (and ways to defeat them increase). When it comes to the actual nature of Dark Minions… this is what we are working on right now, and it will ultimately be what makes or breaks this game. We have some very loose ideas at the moment… but will be defining them a little later in the year, after copious amounts of concept art and discussions! I mentioned that we had about 100 pages of the first Core Rulebook written right now – that is all the ‘player-facing’ side of things. To complete it, we need the Dark Minions, so they are really the next task.
CD: For a GM starting a new Dark Conspiracy campaign, what support and advice will in the new rules in regards to kicking off a campaign, the expected tone/style, adventure design, et cetera?
MS: We need a broad church for play styles, and will not be locking people into one or the other, even within specific eras. For example, in The Unseen War, you will be able to do X-Files-style gaming… or X-Files with Guns, or modern Indiana Jones, or full-on military operations, or anything in-between. The best approach for referees may be a combination of all of these. However, expect horror, expect creepiness and, eventually, expect player agency.
CD: Beyond a core rulebook(s), what support does Mongoose plan to provide for Dark Conspiracy GMs?
MS: The easy thing to say would be that Dark Minion Catalogues and DarkTech guides will be present – and they likely will be, with each of the eras forming their own ‘sub-line’. However, anyone familiar with our Traveller books will be aware that while such titles are present, they do not really form anything other than the ‘core’ of the game – most of our Traveller titles are centred around exploring the universe and creating campaigns for players. You know, doing a story! It is all about building a solid foundation for a game that will still be around in the next decade, and the one after that, rather than pumping out flashy books that players will pick up, and then perhaps not do all that much with. I imagine Dark Conspiracy will be much the same. The Core Rulebooks will be very complete, and there will be supporting titles for them that focus on the more mechanical side… but for us, the fun lies in exploring new universes and telling stories within them (or, rather, providing the tools for others to tell stories), so releases will likely lean heavily on that side.
CD: Please share some insights into the game design process. How does Mongoose Publishing take an RPG with various editions from various publishers and turn that into a new RPG?
MS: The trick is not to simply republish old works or reskin them with a new set of core mechanics. At the same time, you need to respect what has gone before and not honk off the veterans of the game who have spent a great deal of time and emotional energy in that universe. For example, when we started work on the Empathy rules for the new game, our starting point was the psionics rules in Traveller – at first glance, they would seem to be an easy and logical conversion. However, as we delved into them, we saw all the ways that a) psionics would not really translate all that well and b) we could do a much better job. What we have (at this time, everything subject to change at this stage!) now is a set of mechanics that are very close to psionics (you will recognize the influence immediately) but are very different in play. Empathy is also a moving target across the eras – in The Unseen War, they are frankly a bit pathetic, not working all that well or all that often. However, because no other humans can do these things, that in itself makes it very powerful. Empathy is one of the things that will (greatly) develop across The Open War and The Final War.
CD: I have to ask, any chance of Larry Elmore art in this latest version?
MS: Well, the art is what a great deal of this game will be resting on, and we are due to embark on the Great Conceptualizing Event that will define the Dark Minions, their masters, and the Dark Dimensions. We are really looking forward to that. So, we have not settled on artists as yet. It would, however, be very easy to imagine that one of our frontline Traveller artists, Nikita Vasylchuk from Ukraine (he actually works in Kyiv, so… yeah) will be front and center during the concept work and a great deal will spring from that.
CD: Anything else you would like to share with EN World about the upcoming relaunch of Dark Conspiracy?
MS: If everything goes according to plan (ha!), we are hoping for Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War to appear around summer next year, hopefully with a full campaign that you can immediately dive into. I imagine concept art will start being revealed early in 2026, giving people the chance to see where we are going and comment. We will run previews, so everyone is invited to swing by and see what is going on!
Charlie Dunwoody (CD): Thanks for talking with EN World and me again, Matthew. I really enjoyed Dark Conspiracy. What about Dark Conspiracy excites you the most and convinced Mongoose Publishing to acquire the license and bring back this RPG?
Matthew Sprange (MS): Well, there are kind of two sides to this. First, when we acquired Traveller early last year, we had already expressed an interest in other GDW properties, including Twilight: 2000 and 2300AD. Those two were tied up later in the year, and we had always said that Dark Conspiracy would be interesting but figured it was something for the future. I was chatting to Mr Miller about something unrelated this year, and just happened to make a sideways mention about Dark Conspiracy, and that we could still be interested in it at some point – you know, if anything were to happen, we wanted our hat thrown into the ring. The very next day (!), Marc got back to us, basically saying ‘You want Dark Conspiracy? We can sort it out next week!’ Which is about the fastest we have seen anything like this happen! Seriously, within about ten days, everything had been signed and wrapped up. By comparison, Traveller took about a year to organise (as an IP, it was a lot more fractured, and everything had to be checked and double-checked – and then triple-checked). Second, we saw a golden opportunity in Dark Conspiracy. We have had an idea for a game (working title: Codename Veil) for nigh on twenty years now and, despite going back to it every so often, there was an element to it we could just not figure out. So, back into the drawer it goes, hoping for inspiration to pop up somewhere. As I was pondering Dark Conspiracy and what could be done with it, it suddenly dawned on me that Dark Conspiracy was the missing component for the game we had been working on. Everything just slotted into place rather neatly after that!
CD: Dark Conspiracy had a lot going on: ecological and economic disaster, otherworldly evil, cybernetics, and alien invasion. What theme or themes will be in the in the newest version?
MS: Whenever dealing with science-fiction, especially if it is very near-future science-fiction, there will always be commentary and analysis of our own world – that, after all, is really the point of science-fiction. So, the new Dark Conspiracy will certainly be carrying that forward. The original game’s themes of ecological and economic disaster are even more relevant today, as is the coming of AI, the future of capitalism, the rise of fascism, the commercialization (and militarization) of space… Basically, the world of Dark Conspiracy is not going to be a very happy time to live in! However, maybe the players will be able to create a little light in the dark and, perhaps, usher in a new world.
CD: You have stated that Dark Conspiracy will use the same game system as Traveller. As far as the setting goes, the game was set in the USA with global disaster, otherworldly demons, and alien invasion. Could you describe the planned setting in the upcoming version: is it similar to what came before or do you have any changes you can share?
MS: I can – at least, in terms of what we have now. Please understand that everything I am about to say has the massive caveat that this is what we are doing… unless a better idea comes along. As I type this, we have about 100 pages written of the core rules and outlines for the rest… so a great deal can still change. However… The basic idea is this: We will have not one Core Rulebook but (over time, likely 3-6 years) three Core Rulebooks. Each covers a different era. The first, tentatively titled Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War (or The Hidden War, or Bellum Occultum… this project really is in its early stages!) will be set in the present day, or perhaps just a handful of years ahead. There are a tiny few people aware of the coming of Dark Minions but no one really knows who or what they are, or why they are here. The players have been recruited (by powers unknown) into a small cell to find out what the threat is and, in individual cases, neutralize it. However, there are already less-than-wholesome people and organizations who are trying to take advantage, so the wider world cannot know what is going on. This means that the players will also have to create cover stories and manipulate events to keep everything secret – they will be the ones creating the dark conspiracy. The second Core Rulebook will be Dark Conspiracy: The Open War. Set 12 to 15 years later, the world has kinda broken down and people are now aware of Dark Minions. The players will have a lot more agency in running their side of the war, having control of their own cell and deciding what to do and how to do it as they become true defenders of humanity. Of the three, veterans will find this one closest to the original game. Finally, set perhaps eight years after that, we will have the third Core Rulebook, Dark Conspiracy: The Final War. In this, the players will be in charge of the overall human resistance, and will have the chance to defeat the Darkling Masters, somehow combine them into humanity… or lose utterly. In this way, players will have the choice of which era to play in, or… they will be able to create characters in The Unseen War, and play through a majorly-epic campaign that spans all three eras, starting off in near total ignorance of what they face and ending up in a final showdown that they themselves have engineered. Should be quite the campaign!
CD: Wow. That sounds awesome. In the upcoming version of Dark Conspiracy, what type of characters will the players run and what type of opponents, challenges, and monsters will oppose them?
MS: That will depend on which Core Rulebook is being played. In The Unseen War, the players have been actively recruited into the cause, and so will be specialists (be that military, intelligence, scientific, etc). However, as the world starts to break down, by the time we reach The Open War they will come from all walks of life, and Traveller works very well with players as the ‘everyman’, ordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary situations. That will also be true in The Final War, but things will be… a little more out there… As for opponents, the focus will obviously be on Dark Minions, though there will be plenty of human antagonists who see an advantage to siding with them. We will be starting ‘slow’ here, gradually unveiling more as the storyline progresses, so in The Unseen War players will be trying to find out the nature of Dark Minions and not really getting all the answers. As the timeline advances, more will become known (and ways to defeat them increase). When it comes to the actual nature of Dark Minions… this is what we are working on right now, and it will ultimately be what makes or breaks this game. We have some very loose ideas at the moment… but will be defining them a little later in the year, after copious amounts of concept art and discussions! I mentioned that we had about 100 pages of the first Core Rulebook written right now – that is all the ‘player-facing’ side of things. To complete it, we need the Dark Minions, so they are really the next task.
CD: For a GM starting a new Dark Conspiracy campaign, what support and advice will in the new rules in regards to kicking off a campaign, the expected tone/style, adventure design, et cetera?
MS: We need a broad church for play styles, and will not be locking people into one or the other, even within specific eras. For example, in The Unseen War, you will be able to do X-Files-style gaming… or X-Files with Guns, or modern Indiana Jones, or full-on military operations, or anything in-between. The best approach for referees may be a combination of all of these. However, expect horror, expect creepiness and, eventually, expect player agency.
CD: Beyond a core rulebook(s), what support does Mongoose plan to provide for Dark Conspiracy GMs?
MS: The easy thing to say would be that Dark Minion Catalogues and DarkTech guides will be present – and they likely will be, with each of the eras forming their own ‘sub-line’. However, anyone familiar with our Traveller books will be aware that while such titles are present, they do not really form anything other than the ‘core’ of the game – most of our Traveller titles are centred around exploring the universe and creating campaigns for players. You know, doing a story! It is all about building a solid foundation for a game that will still be around in the next decade, and the one after that, rather than pumping out flashy books that players will pick up, and then perhaps not do all that much with. I imagine Dark Conspiracy will be much the same. The Core Rulebooks will be very complete, and there will be supporting titles for them that focus on the more mechanical side… but for us, the fun lies in exploring new universes and telling stories within them (or, rather, providing the tools for others to tell stories), so releases will likely lean heavily on that side.
CD: Please share some insights into the game design process. How does Mongoose Publishing take an RPG with various editions from various publishers and turn that into a new RPG?
MS: The trick is not to simply republish old works or reskin them with a new set of core mechanics. At the same time, you need to respect what has gone before and not honk off the veterans of the game who have spent a great deal of time and emotional energy in that universe. For example, when we started work on the Empathy rules for the new game, our starting point was the psionics rules in Traveller – at first glance, they would seem to be an easy and logical conversion. However, as we delved into them, we saw all the ways that a) psionics would not really translate all that well and b) we could do a much better job. What we have (at this time, everything subject to change at this stage!) now is a set of mechanics that are very close to psionics (you will recognize the influence immediately) but are very different in play. Empathy is also a moving target across the eras – in The Unseen War, they are frankly a bit pathetic, not working all that well or all that often. However, because no other humans can do these things, that in itself makes it very powerful. Empathy is one of the things that will (greatly) develop across The Open War and The Final War.
CD: I have to ask, any chance of Larry Elmore art in this latest version?
MS: Well, the art is what a great deal of this game will be resting on, and we are due to embark on the Great Conceptualizing Event that will define the Dark Minions, their masters, and the Dark Dimensions. We are really looking forward to that. So, we have not settled on artists as yet. It would, however, be very easy to imagine that one of our frontline Traveller artists, Nikita Vasylchuk from Ukraine (he actually works in Kyiv, so… yeah) will be front and center during the concept work and a great deal will spring from that.
CD: Anything else you would like to share with EN World about the upcoming relaunch of Dark Conspiracy?
MS: If everything goes according to plan (ha!), we are hoping for Dark Conspiracy: The Unseen War to appear around summer next year, hopefully with a full campaign that you can immediately dive into. I imagine concept art will start being revealed early in 2026, giving people the chance to see where we are going and comment. We will run previews, so everyone is invited to swing by and see what is going on!
