Designed by Craig Sheeley, Geoff Pass, Alex Bund, Winston Hamilton,
and Lester Smith (1993, GDW)
Dark Conspiracy was probably too early to be considered to have ‘splatbooks’1You know it wasn’t until very recently that I discovered where the term ‘Splatbook’ actually comes from. Counter to my wife’s comments about something rude, it arose from the use of the wildcard search – as in *book – for White Wolf Publishing’s various long named supplements…, although I have always thought of the Empathic Sourcebook as about as close to one as you’ll find. I Interestingly, while Empathic abilities have always been an important part of the DC setting, the core rulebook only briefly touched on these powers (ironically, while topics such as Space Travel got their own complete section). That said, while a revisit and expansion of this topic is appreciated, one must ask, ‘is there actually enough one needs to know on Empathic abilities to fill an entire 120-page supplement?’
So that, dear reader, is the purpose of this review: is the Empathic Sourcebook a vital missing cog in your Dark Conspiracy gaming, or is this book just a desperate money grab for a line that by 1993 was struggling to pull its own weight? Read on, and we will find out together….