Apocalyptic Hell Beasts and Secret Airport Bases

Every so often, I like to dive head-first into bizarre, woo-woo conspiracies. Maybe it's the Gen-X'er in me, or maybe it's just part of being a gamer, but I always love a good conspiracy theory, and sometimes it's the whackier, the better - especially if there's juuuuust enough juicy rumor and "things that make you go 'hmmm'..." to give it that air of "just so crazy, it could almost be true".

One such conspiracy theory is the Denver International Airport. I've never flown through there - my one trip through Denver was driving into the city in the middle of the night and driving out again at the crack of dawn - but apparently there's quite the buzz about the airport, no pun intended. My good friend Masakari pointed out this article on a piece of DIA's public artwork that has some of DIA's visitors rather disturbed. A giant blue statue of a mustang with glowing eyes, that killed the man who created it before the construction was even finished? That seems to radiate an almost palpable air of disturbance to anyone who looks at it? Awesome, pure awesome.

And of course, while reading that article, it tickled something in the back of my mind, and further internet snooping brought me to this web site discussing the air of conspiracy surrounding the construction of the Airport. The guy who posted it is, obviously, a conspiracy junkie. However, he doesn't radiate that air of total nut-jobbyness that some of the woo-woo conspiracy whackos give off (that he pretty much entirely dismisses the whole "Black Sun" theory is at least one mark in his favor). Here's another website (it's Geocities, so...) that has a lot more of an "out there" attitude towards the whole thing (not that the first website is in any way "conservative"), and carries on with a whole lot more insanity as well beyond the DIA conspiracy. Freemasons, secret bases, plans for "detainment camps", strange feelings of dizziness and nausea, power fields, alien airport workers, Nazi-themed architecture...does it get any jucier than this? I think not.

Oh, and forget those early-90's looking websites - these days, we have YouTube to pimp our conspiracies for us. Just FYI, this video is seriously weird, and might not be appropriate for all viewers / good to watch at work or in front of your kids...



Now, I'm sure a bunch of you are thinking "Badelaire, you psycho. You can't possibly believe all this woo-woo nonsense...can you?". The answer is thankfully no, I can't. Or at least, I don't give it any credibility - but I do find it really, really entertaining. I post this stuff not to promote it, but to show that, as good as many of them are, you don't really need a conspiracy RPG like Delta Green or Conspiracy X to run a good modern day conspiracy / occult / weird campaign. This stuff is out there all over the internet, and it's really easy to find, far easier than it was back in the day when DG was originally written. Remember, back in the early 90's, most of the topics the X-Files touched on were new to a lot of people. These days, refer to "Greys", and almost anyone who's heard of an alien abduction theory knows what you're talking about.

In many ways, conspiracy has moved from something ominous to a part of popular culture. The challenge for a conspiracy / occult campaign GM in this day and age is to be able to weave together a good campaign backstory that isn't going to have your players quoting Mulder and Scully lines every session.

Tying back into the Techno-thriller RPG column from a few weeks ago, I ask you, gentle readers, how much "conspiracy theory" gaming is going on these days? Is that genre, like the technothriller, fallen somewhat by the "Big Industry" wayside, to be picked up by the small indie press labels and the homebrew RPGers?

Just don't forget your tinfoil hat when you type your comments, and be sure to route your IP packets through a Tor server when you send them, so that They can't find you...