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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8633494" data-attributes="member: 18">Btw if anyone thinks Dark*Matter is coming back, they need to go read their Dark*Matter books, the conspiracies/setting bits particularly, and double-especially the Final Church sourcebook. Warning: you will take at least 2d6 SAN damage and not in a good way. WotC very likely don't want anyone to even think about Dark*Matter, let alone to essentially suggest people go back and look at the original, because holy crap, that stuff would absolutely not fly now, especially not post-Qanon etc. I've written about it before and can link if necessary, but essentially Dark*Matter targets quite a number of real-world non-government groups (including at least two RL religions) and makes those conspiracies be true, and unfortunately a lot of it lines up with what a certain kind of internet nutcase around today believes, the kind of internet nutcase that is sadly more relevant today than they were in, say, 1999. It's also kind of weird in who it paints as the good guys, because it's representative of a certain perspective, one at odds with most well-regarded conspiracy media (like the X-Files or Millennium). Back then it was surprisingly dark and weird to target RL groups (like, say, the Freemasons, which Dark*Matter does), something other conspiracy RPGs shied away from, making up fictional groups instead, but not that shocking. Now? When we've had people commit a lot of acts of violence and even some (inept) terrorism over similar theories? I don't think so. The Final Church stuff in particular closely tallies with a lot of nuttier Qanon stuff (as in agreeing with Qanon theories). There's no way WotC would find that slightly obscure IP valuable enough to risk the reputational damage they'd sustain for even proposing a Dark*Matter RPG when the RPG blogosphere actually re-read that stuff, in 2022, even if ultimately they were not intending to go the same way conspiracy-wise. If they did a conspiracy RPG (unlikely, it's not safe as it once was), it'd be with a new IP and some nice safe fully-fictional conspiracies. Conspiracy X looks likes a totally safe and normal setting by comparison.</blockquote>

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