TEXT: Gamemaster Section 
  The Gamemaster has what may be the most important role in any Dark•Matter game session: He 
  or she must be inventive, flexible, and creative enough to keep at least one step ahead of the 
  players at all times. In slowly revealing a series of sinister mysteries, the Gamemaster must 
  weave the puzzles together into an overarching plot, one clue at a time. Perhaps the most difficult 
  part of the task involves determining where to draw the line between providing too much 
  information and not providing enough. The Dark•Matter campaign setting offers some guidelines, 
  but in practice just how much you should reveal depends on your players, your plots, and the 
  overall history of your campaign. 
  A Dark•Matter campaign can take a thousand different forms, depending on which conspiracies 
  the heroes choose to investigate—and which ones choose to investigate (or even recruit) them. 
  Though this book assumes that heroes begin play as members of the Hoffmann Institute, they 
  may find their allegiances drifting during the course of the campaign as they interact with various 
  groups. Styles of play can differ as well. One group might burn an action-filled trail of violence 
  across the land and end it all in a cataclysmic firefight against the forces of oppression. Another 
  might peel apart mysteries like the layers of an onion, always finding another layer beneath. In 
  either case, those who learn too much may have to go on the run to avoid becoming the next 
  victims of a global conspiracy. 
  A Dark•Matter game can be run without conspiracies as well. Instead of (or in addition to) 
  investigating secret societies, the heroes can explore the paranormal. This too is a source of 
  endless adventures, because the world of the paranormal is as big as . . . well, the entire world. 
  
  Timeline Sample (1960s) 
  1960—Nixon, CIA agent Bissell, and others plan Bay of Pigs invasion, obtain permission 
  to use Guatemala as launching point. Bernard Barker serves as conduit for Bay of Pigs 
  funding. CIA buys Southern Air Transport, contemplates development of "recruitment 
  pills" and other drugs, studies mysterious amnesia of Korean war prisoners moved 
  through Manchuria, and contemplates giving truth serum to brainwashed American 
  POWs. USAF pilot Francis Gary Powers shot down in U-2 over Russia; summit 
  conference canceled. Project Ozma, searching for sign of intelligent life from another part 
  of the universe, receives unexplained signals from space. 
  1961—CIA invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs fails due to poor planning and 
  cancellation of support by Kennedy; the CIA, the Mob, Cuban exiles, right-wingers, and 
  Nixonites supposedly vow revenge. Kennedy develops extracurricular relationship with 
  Judith Campbell, Sam Giancana’s girlfriend; Giancana and John Roselli enlisted by CIA 
  to attempt Castro assassination. Unexplained transmissions from space monitored by 
  ham radio operators worldwide; Bob Renaud, ham operator, allegedly makes contact with 
  aliens. First known sighting of the mothmen in West Virginia. Betty and Barney Hill 
  kidnapped by a UFO in the first recorded abduction case. Yuri Gagarin becomes first 
  man in space. 
  1962—Suicide of Marilyn Monroe under questionable circumstances. Oswald returns to 
  America with his Russian wife, an alleged KGB agent. Dr. Edgar Schein outlines behavior 
  modification programs for U.S. prisons, based on Korean brainwashing techniques. 
  Cuban missile crisis. UFOlogist Williamson disappears in South America.  
  1963—Assassination of President John Kennedy. CIA begins weather modification 
  project over Hue, Vietnam. Unexplained radio transmission in unidentified language 
  interrupts astronaut Gordon Cooper during final orbit of Mercury 9 mission. Numerous 
  MIBs spotted in Dealey Plaza. Merchant vessel near Gibraltar notes a strange patch of 
  calm sea, about 1.5 kilometers wide and several kilometers long, surrounded on all sides 
  by normal turbulent water. 
  1964—Numerous deaths associated with Kennedy assassination. Report of the Warren 
  Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy released; Commission finds that 
  Oswald, acting alone, killed JFK. 
  1965—Assassination of Malcolm X. U.S. Army explores sites in the Middle East as 
  potential locations for nuclear devices intended to set off earthquakes. Early prison 
  behavior modification program, CASE, begins in Washington, D.C. boys’ school. Fifth 
  UFO flap year. Three Russian scientists receive unexplained signals from space. 
  California highway inspector Rex Heflin takes pictures of UFOs, then receives a visit from 
  MIBs supposedly from NORAD who take the original photographs and depart; NORAD 
  denies involvement. Another ham radio operator, Sidney Padrick, makes contact with 
  UFO aliens. 
  1966—CIA begins weather modification experiments over Cuba, technology is later used 
  in an attempt to ruin Castro’s sugar cane crop. Army conducts simulated germ warfare 
  project in New York City. Numerous mothman sightings in West Virginia accompanied by 
  UFOs, animal mutilations, poltergeist activity, crop circles, and Men In Black. Ancient 
  bacteria (500 million years old) revived in a German laboratory. 
  1967—Rex Heflin again visited by MIBs in connection with his photos of UFOs; similar 
  MIB incidents occur in New York and elsewhere. Another MIB, Mr. Dixsun, allegedly 
  
  visits Colorado University UFO researcher Edward Condon and offers to help him contact 
  the space people. China explodes its first hydrogen bomb. Tramp named Bailey found in 
  an abandoned building in London, victim of spontaneous human combustion. 
  1968—Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis and Robert Kennedy in Los 
  Angeles. Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s brainwashed "assassin," is proven to have 
  shot Kennedy in the shoulder, but Kennedy had also been shot in the back of the head at 
  close range—a woman who earlier had been seen with Sirhan leaves the scene saying, 
  "We’ve shot him!" Approximate founding date of a group called The Kaisers—sixty 
  German-Americans allegedly planning to make Nixon a dictator. FBI begins secret 
  Cointelpro campaign against New Left and black radicals. CIA penetrates the Students 
  for a Democratic Society at Columbia College; National Caucus of Labor Committees 
  (NCLC) formed within the SDS. Mystery ship Scheersberg disappears between Antwerp 
  and Genoa with 200 tons of uranium believed to have been taken to Israel. Astronauts 
  circling the moon interrupted by unexplained voices. Radio stations receive mysterious 
  distress signals from the mid-Pacific; no ships found during ensuing search. U.S. 
  detonates hydrogen bomb 150 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas in underground test. 
  1969—Nixon issues Executive Order No. 11490, establishing plans for dictatorial control 
  in the event of a "national emergency." Pentagon and Department of Interior researchers 
  study methods of inducing earthquakes by injecting fluids into deep wells. Cuban 
  government arrests alleged CIA spy Humberto Carrillo Colon, seizing his very low 
  frequency transceiver and coded messages describing strange lights, a minisubmarine, 
  and other unexplained items. MIB "Carlos Allende" visits UFOlogists Jim and Coral 
  Lorenzen in Tucson, giving them a copy of the ONR reprint of Jessup’s "Case for the 
  UFOs." Men first visit the moon. Reportedly, Apollo astronauts see a number of UFOs 
  (which they identify as huge spaceships) across a lunar crater, apparently watching them. 
  Followers of Charles Manson ritually slaughter Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. 
  
  Sample Location: Chicago, Illinois  
  Long a manufacturing hub and commodities brokering center, Chicago is also a major 
  transportation center and home to an enormous population of hardworking, no-nonsense people 
  with no time for the frivolous pretensions of the coasts. It is both more pragmatic and more 
  devoted to work than the coastal cities, and justly proud of its strong work ethic. Chicagoans take 
  a perverse pride in their town’s ability to weather political, social, and climatic storms. So far, the 
  tides of dark matter have left the city largely alone, and this has led the Hoffmann Institute to 
  store some of its most important assets here in the Chicago Specimen Collection. 
  Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery 
  The most haunted place in Chicago is this German immigrant cemetery, built near the Rubio 
  Woods Forest Preserve and inactive since 1965. Overgrown and poorly maintained, the cemetery 
  is frequently vandalized because of its remote location, and disinterred coffins, defaced 
  gravestones, and animal sacrifices have been found on the grounds. 
  The cemetery was founded in 1864 for the use of immigrants building the Illinois-Michigan canal. 
  In the 1920s and 1930s, gangsters often dumped their victims in the cemetery’s lagoon. The 
  cemetery’s most famous ghost is the White Lady (also called the Madonna of Bachelor’s Grove). 
  Carrying a baby in her arms, she is seen only on nights of a full moon. She seems to be 
  somehow related to a white-robed, monkish figure that also appears from the lagoon. Ghost lights 
  and phantom vehicles are also common in the area. In all, more than two hundred ghost sightings 
  have been recorded in the cemetery’s long history. 
  Chicago Specimen Collection 
  Begun in 1931 after the Sewer War, the Hoffmann Institute Serological and Type Specimen 
  Collection (generally called simply the Chicago Specimen Collection) has collected, analyzed, 
  and stored more than 400,000 specimens of paranormal, mutant, and otherwise unusual 
  biological entities—from alien bodies to ichor recovered at crash sites, blood samples to viruses, 
  and sea monsters to noncancerous but regenerative human cell lines. If it needs storage in deep 
  freeze or in formaldehyde, the field agents send it here. 
  In addition to preserving physical samples, the collection does a great deal of genetic research. 
  The work includes compilation of known mutations and known instances of human 
  bioengineering, as well as medical testing of vaccines, diagnostic techniques, and antigens that 
  may help fight epidemics of various alien diseases. Because much of this work is classified, the 
  site has been largely kept a secret from the government. What the Institute knows about the U.S. 
  Army’s biowarfare experiments, cloning studies, and continuation of Nazi eugenics studies 
  wouldn’t be healthy for Institute staff if it were more widely known at the Pentagon. 
  Lower Wacker Drive 
  Home to rats and litter and crushing rush-hour traffic, Lower Wacker Drive is a street that runs as 
  a subterranean parallel to Upper Wacker Drive. It’s also home to more than a few sites of 
  strangeness and has connections to the Chicago sewers, electrical conduits, and the entire 
  understory of a huge number of skyscrapers. Inhabiting this warren of technology is a small tribe 
  of mole people (see Chapter 8: Xenoforms), passing as homeless humans during daylight hours.  
  This particular group has an advantage over their kindred souls in New York, Paris, Moscow, and 
  elsewhere: Among them lives a powerful adept—jokingly referred to as the Mole King—who 
  seems to believe that he and his disciples are somehow entitled to the goods of the surface 
  
  world. As a direct consequence of this belief, he preaches that his followers should raid bank 
  vaults, jewelry shops, and other high-profile, high-value targets, then return to the depths with 
  their loot. So far, the mole people remain unconvinced and have stuck to their traditional low-
  profile lives, avoiding the attention of law enforcement.  
  
  Sample Organization: The United Nations 
  The founding of the United Nations on October 24, 1945, was more than an attempt to streamline 
  international diplomacy; it also established a forum for global concerns best kept out of the public 
  eye. As a result, the UN chartered several organizations with international reach, including the 
  Davos Commission, the World Health Organization, and a Quick Response Force that could be 
  deployed via helicopter to trouble spots around the globe. On the surface, the UN seems like 
  nothing more an than idealistic but relatively naive effort at internationalism. In truth, the everyday 
  bureaucracy, bungling, petty infighting, and nepotism that characterizes the United Nations 
  provides a perfect cover for much deeper plans. Underneath the façade of wasted funds and 
  policy wrangles, a few conferences have helped shape the human response to the rising tide of 
  dark matter paranormalism. More significant, however, is the fact that the UN intends to position 
  itself as a true global governmental body for the new millennium—the New World Order.  
  The phrase "New World Order" comes from the works of H. G. Wells, who published The New 
  World Order nonfiction volume and The Open Conspiracy. Following in his footsteps decades 
  later, in 1991 the Brandt Commission—including President Bush, Robert McNamara, and many 
  others—met in Germany to outline the New World Order. They defined the NWO as "a 
  supranational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization 
  that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would 
  replace the dollar; a world development fund that would make funds available to free and 
  Communist nations alike; an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World 
  Order."  
  This effort hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed. Though they are often dismissed as crackpots, a few 
  people have kept careful records of strange black helicopters moving through the skies of United 
  States, Canada, and Europe. A few journalists and politicos have seen the dim outlines of the 
  New World Order, the world government that many regard as a crucial step toward opposing the 
  encroachment of dictators, military rulership, and alien infestation. Indeed, in the new millennium, 
  it seems that the world population will finally see the end of polynationalism and the beginning of 
  mononationalism, just as polytheism was replaced by monotheism. Entrenched power groups 
  each seek to put the entire world under their control. But how do they intend to shape a response 
  to the Greys, the ever-increasing number of paranormal events, and the rising population of 
  psionically gifted humans? 
  Part of the answer is clearly military. The UN’s standing army numbers more than half a million, in 
  addition to a rapid response force of 100,000 crack troops and scattered peacekeeping forces 
  totaling 275,000. These regiments have been deployed on the orders of the Secretary General to 
  suppress the kinori in Africa, the sasquatch in the U.S., and the alien invaders just about 
  everywhere. They answer to the Office of External Affairs, a small bureau of the UN that 
  occasionally cooperates with the Hoffmann Institute in investigating alien activities. 
  
  Sample Xenoform: Mothman 
  The mothmen are a species of flying, vaguely insectoid 
  creatures most famously sighted in Point Pleasant, West 
  Virginia in 1966 and 1967. While their haunting red eyes, huge 
  wings, and antennalike ears leave quite an impression on 
  eyewitnesses, those who have seen mothmen are curiously 
  terrorized by the sightings, suffering recurrent nightmares, 
  flashbacks, and even insect phobias for years thereafter. This 
  has been the case even when the witnesses caught only brief 
  or obscured glimpses of the mothman, and when they suffered 
  no physical harm.  
  Description: Mothmen are bipedal flying humanoid creatures 
  with a pair of small forelimbs, powerful sweeping wings, and 
  complex, double-jointed legs that end in clawed feet. A typical 
  mothman stands almost a meter taller than an average human 
  but weighs in at only 40 to 50 kilograms—a mothman skeleton 
  is mostly composed of light, strong cartilage. 
  The mothman head is wide and round, with large reddish 
  compound eyes and crowned by two pointed ears. The lack of 
  a snout or pronounced beak makes them seem rather owllike, 
  but their hinged jaw is quite large enough to swallow small 
  mammals whole. Their hearing is as keen as a cat’s, and their 
  night vision is superior—but bright daylight virtually blinds 
  them. 
  Mothmen are capable fliers, able to launch themselves into the 
  air and easily stay aloft in any environment with a reasonably 
  thick atmosphere (0.5 atm or higher) and relatively light gravity 
  (1g or lower). Having the ability to fly means that mothmen 
  never suffer damage from falling, as long as they remain 
  conscious and able to control their descent.  
  Encounter: Mothmen avoid physical confrontation. If violence 
  becomes necessary, mothmen prefer to strike first and strike 
  hard. In addition to their ability to fly, the mothmen’s keen 
  senses reduce darkness- or obscurement-based combat 
  penalties by 2 steps (this cannot grant a bonus). However, 
  their eyes are quite sensitive to bright light, and mothmen 
  suffer a +1, +2, or +3 step penalty to all actions undertaken in 
  Ordinary, Good, or Amazing illumination. Though sunglasses, dark goggles, or visors could 
  negate these penalties, most mothmen do not use such devices.  
  Habitat/Society: Mothman social organization is fairly simple. The mothmen are an 
  extradimensional species of nomadic hunters, moving from place to place when humans (or other 
  native species) force them deeper into wilderness. Family ties are quite strong, even to very 
  distant relations, and the family leaders serve as counsel to the tribe’s chieftain. 
  Mothman shamans are powerful adepts, able to manipulate the tide of dark matter to serve their 
  needs (treat as Shamanism Faith FX). For generations, these shamans have told and retold the 
  legends of the Dark Tide. Mothman legends and lore are invaluable in identifying and fighting 
  Mothman Game Data 
  STR 9 
  (2d4+4) INT 7 
  (2d4+2) 
  DEX 11 (2d6+4) WIL 12 (2d4+7) 
  CON 8 
  (2d4+3) PER 8 
  (d8+3) 
  Durability: 8/8/4/4 Action check: 
  11+/10/5/2 
  Move: sprint 20, run 12, walk 4, 
  fly 40 #Actions: 2 
  Reaction score: Ordinary/2 Last 
  resorts: 1 
  FX energy points: 5 (shamans 
  only) 
  Attacks 
  Wing strike 5/2/1 
  d4s/d4+1s/d4+2s LI/O 
  Talons 11/5/2 d4s/d6w/d6+1w 
  LI/O 
  Defenses 
  +1 resistance modifier vs. ranged 
  attacks 
  +1 WIL resistance modifier vs. 
  encounter skills 
  Skills 
  Athletics [9]–climb [10], throw 
  [10]; Unarmed [9]–brawl [11]; 
  Acrobatics [11]–fall [12], flight 
  [14]; Stealth [11]; Stamina [8]; 
  Knowledge [7]; Awareness [12]–
  intuition [14]; Interaction [8]. 
  FX Skills (shamans only) 
  Faith FX (Shamanism)–
  dreamwalking [15], host dance 
  [15], hunter’s stare [14], trance 
  visions [11]. 
  
  paranormal creatures; in some cases, mothmen know more about Earth’s "mythic" monsters than 
  humans do.  
  The species’ goals, origins, and relationship with other paranormal species are unknown. A few 
  researchers at the Center for Xenological Studies have suggested that they are assassins for the 
  Greys, based on their killing claws, stealthiness, and proximity to a few cases of cattle mutilation 
  and abduction. Other, more theologically oriented investigators such as the Knights of Malta claim 
  that they are fallen servants of the elohim. Still others, primarily at the Institute, believe that they 
  are a mutant strain of the Greys themselves, built as a subspecies genetically adapted to the hot, 
  heavy atmosphere of Earth. 
  Mothman sightings in the historical record include mentions among the Anasazi of the Southwest 
  U.S., the aborigines of Australia (who call them the "Wandi"), and the Dogon of West Africa; all 
  descriptions note the species’ use of paranormal abilities resembling shamanistic magic. Given 
  the archaeological similarity of Anasazi and Dogon (both tribes built cliff dwellings), it might be 
  inferred that the mothmen competed with the human populations for preferred cliff dwelling or 
  nesting sites. 
  The mothmen have avoided human contact for centuries, and their technology has hardly 
  advanced in millennia. As a result, they are comfortable with PL 0–3 technologies but hopelessly 
  inept with inventions of PL 4 and up (the equivalent of the 4-point Primitive flaw). 
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Alternity/1st Edition/Dark Matter/Alternity - Dark Matter Fastplay GM Info Pack.pdf