Beasts at the Tabletop - I
Sometimes, they hide in plain sight.
It’s no secret that Table Top Roleplaying Game’s most iconic and standard setting game, Dungeons and Dragons, isn’t what it used to be. I’ve written about as much. Whether it be a hostile take-over of the scene by pathologically narcissistic theater kids or the IP-leash holders at Wizards of the Coast twisting themselves in pretzels to appease them (and their seeming inability to make good business decisions), there’s a lot of TTRPG players who are looking to move away from the once-beloved game for greener pastures. Or, at least, they want to.
Much like that one friend you have from California who keeps saying, Yeah, man, I gotta get outta this madhouse, and waffles on whether or not they’re going to land in Florida or Texas for months and then just… never does1, a lot of players want to ditch the dungeons and the dragons, but always end up sauntering back into the tepid, lukewarm world of the Faerun2 regardless. The most common excuse I find they present usually goes something along these lines - I’d love to play something else, but… what?
To which I say: I dunno, man. Have you tried literally anything else?
If these people - most of whom are relatively new to the hobby - did even a cursory amount of research on TTRPG’s, they’d know that there’s no shortage of alternatives. Though it is a relatively niche interest, the industry and scene is both creative and robust, with scads of new games published on the regular. You don’t have to play Dungeons & Dragons; you’re just too lazy and too secure in your comfort zone to risk stepping outside of the room-temperature kiddie pool Wizards of the Coast is pissing in.
For instance, one of the DM’s I play with was adamant that we’d be switching games once we finish up our current D&D 5E3 campaign… whenever the fuck that might be.
At this point I’m not sure we’ll ever get to that point since this campaign has gone on for over a year now, and, much like the world’s most popular manga, One Piece, it seems as if every time we arrive at a logical end-point, someone’s long-lost sister or ex-lover pops back up and sets us on a whole new arc, or the entire party gets transportaled to the fairy world where half of them are enslaved by a fairy king because they fucking told him their names… rookie mistake when it comes to the fae if there ever was one.
You know who didn’t tell anyone their name? Or eat the food they offered? And just generally knows enough about fairies to not end up bungling themselves into eternal servitude at the whims of capricious fae nobility?
I’m not bragging - I’m just saying that everyone laughs when I bring up the fairies, but the haters get real quiet when they end up as one of King Oberon’s bitch-boys.
Anyways, this DM was adamant that we’d move on to his preferred system, Paizo Inc.’s Pathfinder, which is kind of like the Pepsi to D&D’s Coca-Cola.
And then J.D. Vance became Vice-President.
Y’see, before he was the Veep, a marine, or even J.D. Vance, Middletown, Ohio’s James Hamel was one of those chubby dorks who liked to play Wizards of the Coast’s wildly popular money sink trading card game, Magic the Gathering. Apparently, he still loves to Gather some Magic. Or whatever you do in that game. I dunno, I don’t play it.
It was also rumored that he was a fan of Pathfinder, though I can find no solid source for where this came from. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, but I suspect it may have been pure conjecture that was adjacent to or a joke that began around the time that Elon Musk made the claim he liked Dungeons & Dragons and wanted to buy the IP from WotC, which… well, that’d certainly be funny, if nothing else. I’d say he couldn’t make it any worse than it already is, but I also know that is entirely untrue.
Whether J.D. Vance has ever found any paths in his life or not, it was taken as gospel by one of Paizo’s crowned heads, Jason Bulmahn, who predictably went on to shoot his mouth off on Xitter.
My friend did not know about this at the time, but when he found out, he promptly said, We’re not playing Pathfinder. We’ll play something else. This guy is pretty political neutral, too; he just doesn’t appreciate having partisan politics, regardless of the color associated with them, being foisted into hobbies where they really have no reason to be.
Wow - not supporting people who blatantly hate you? What a novel concept!
Given the heavy progressive slant of both the TTRPG community and especially the industry - increasingly so post-Trump - it can be tricky to even find an alternative game that wasn’t published by a company or written by people who are wholly convinced that Donald Trump is a fascist despot, and even those who are lukewarm on him aren’t MAGA Mitläufer just waiting for the right moment to equip their Hugo Boss uniforms of +3 bigotry and stage a Putsch at the tabletop.
But for anyone who doesn’t really take such umbrage with political posturing, alternative games beyond Dungeons & Dragons are myriad. Even if you’re unwilling or unable to part with the bland tastelessness of D&D’s Forgotten Realms setting, which has the flavor profile of warmed over, day-old tapioca pudding, there’s plenty of generic fantasy sloppa floating around in the trough out there. Hell, you could even use GURPS to make your own McFantasy, if you really wanted to.
But, if you, like me, have a taste for games and settings a little more picante than the fantasy equivalent of a saltine cracker, there’s always stuff like Shadowrun, which is basically just, What if we did Fantasy… but with cyber-punk?
Tower-choked, neon-drenched cityscapes, sexy magi-tech elf hackers, Mad Max-esque orc barbarians, lots of leather and a soundtrack by Billy Idol? If I could distill that down to a liquid and inject it directly into my veins, I would.
Of course, there’s also the line that I hate to love - and the subject of today’s article - White Wolf Games’ Chronicles of Darkness.
Chronicles of Darkness is set in a world analogous to our own, albeit subtly yet profoundly different. Mostly because it’s worse in just about every way; a world where every creeping suspicion that something is wrong is probably true, where lunatic, raving conspiracy theorists are incorrect only because the truth even worse than their most fevered, paranoid nightmares, and one where human are decidedly not at the top of the food chain.
You got your vampires. You got your werewolves. You got your sorcerers, reanimated corpses, ghosts, demons; even mummies get a set at the table again, because you can’t have a line-up of horror all-stars without some crusty fart wrapped in toilet paper. I’d say they’d all get together and do some good old fashioned Monster Mashing, but this is less of a light-hearted spooktacular and more like a cover of Thriller performed by Evanescence. If that doesn’t make sense to you, what I’m trying to say is that when Chronicles of Darkness is described as gothic… it is, but not, like, gothic as in Victorian cityscapes, crumbing manors on mist-choked moors, or ethereal maidens in flowing white dresses drifting listlessly through moon beams filtering through dusty windows.
It’s more like those groups of kids you’d see at a Sheboygan shopping mall’s food court tearing into some slices from Sbarro’s, who exclusively wore clothes from Hot Topic and had Papa Roach playing at deafening volumes when you went on their MySpace page. It’s very… Mall Goth.
If you were there in the mid-Oughties, you know the type I’m talking about. You might have been some such person, and, if you were, just know that zoomers are apparently romanticizing that scene, so we may see a revival soon enough. Though, it may be somewhat difficult to inspire a mall goth renaissance with no malls for them to loiter around.
The history of White Wolf Publishing is long and convoluted, but what you need to know is that it was the result of a merger in the late 80’s between table-top game publisher Lion Rampant and the gaming magazine, White Wolf Magazine, and ultimately bought out in 2016 by Swedish video game developer Paradox Interactive before being dissolved in 2018. It was infamously staffed by a quirky collection of hardcore nerds, neo-pagans, BDSM enthusiasts, and goths. Not the mall goths of ‘05, either. I’m talking the Siouxsie Sioux-look alikes with Flock of Seagulls cuts type of oldheads.
Given that nerd culture today is largely synonymous with three or four of the most profitable intellectual properties in existence that dominate mainstream entertainment, it’s easy to forget that there was a time when nerd culture was, y’know - for nerds. It existed at the periphery of the American zeitgeist, populated by those who thrived in outsider spaces, where all of these fringe sub-cultures shared some overlap.
Though what little remained of that original milieu was dismissed by Paradox Interactive during the label’s dissolution in 2018 as punishment for edgy bullshit they published in the 90’s (with all their more recently hired personnel being caught in the cross-fire), it was this incongruous and motley mix of outsiders and their transgressive interests that brought about the first - and most popular - of the line’s games, Vampire: The Masquerade.
The world of vampires presented in the game was a sprawling, byzantine underworld of predatory (and usually sexy) blood-suckers that I can only describe as what you might get if you threw every one of Anne Rice’s books, the entire discography of Joy Division, and some BDSM gear into a blender, set it to purée, and poured the whole thing into a plastic skull-shaped chalice you bought at a Spirit Halloween store (don’t forget to chill and garnish with a razor blade).
And you know what? It’s kind of awesome. It’s one of those things that’s very of it’s time and so of the people who made it that it really couldn’t have ever come about by any other eclectic mix of incongruous world views, and at no other period than the early 90’s.
Some of the art looks like it could be used for a Meatloaf album cover, which is one of the greatest compliments I can give.
Yes, it’s so edgy that you could cut your thumb off with it if you aren’t careful. Yes, it’s often so melodramatic that it comes dangerously close to being a soap opera. Yes, it’s often schlockier than a late night B-movie you’d find Elvira or Svengoolie showing. Like Cheetohs, it’s dangerously cheesy, and could probably kill someone who’s lactose intolerant. But it’s one of those things where, if you can put aside your good taste for a moment and engage with the media on its own terms, it’s a lot of fun to revel in just how corny it all is.
Masquerade went on to become one of the most popular TTRPGs of all time, spawning scads of adjacent material4 and the larger World of Darkness in its wake. While none of the other games ever quite eclipsed vampires - the perennial favorites of the monster line-up, it seems - their unique take on these supernatural beasties has always captured my imagination in a way few other similar settings have. Werewolves aren’t just mindless, slavering monsters, but eco-terrorists that are fighting (and losing) a battle to prevent a supernatural apocalypse that involves corrupt mega-corporations, eldritch forces of nature, and all sorts of other shapeshifting were-things who don’t like lycanthropes all that much for being racist pricks. Oh, and all of the planets are sentient, too. It’s basically Anarchist Eco-Terrorism: The Game, which is a lot cooler than it sounds… if you’re alright with crunchy wook hippies that turn into wolves slaughtering corporate security personnel.
Like Vampire: the Masquerade, it is equally and distinctly 90’s in flavor; the sort of edgy material published in it could would simply not fly in the modern cultural landscape, which is why a lot of the more… intense aspects have been gradually pared down, if not erased, in subsequent re-releases. Even though the supposed Neo-Nazi material that prompted Paradox Interactive to axe the company was found in the Vampire line, the neo-pagan influence was never stronger than it was in Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and given the overlap between those scenes at the time and white supremacy movements… well, let’s just say if you squint, you might see some parallels.
There were other books in the line that were met with varying levels of success and popularity, but it would all come to an end in 2004. World of Darkness was officially discontinued, and, in its place, White Wolf began Chronicles of Darkness - often known as Nu-World of Darkness, in some circles.
While the original books were cool and all, they were also largely disconnected from one another; even though there was overlap between the settings, the histories, and even cosmologies between the lines, each one conflicted with one another so radically that threading them all together was… tricky. Chronicles of Darkness set out to more or less unify the disparate concepts into a more coherent and harmonious overarching setting.
One by one, new versions of all of the original games were published under different names. Werewolf: the Apocalypse became Werewolf: the Foresaken, which completely revised the entire nature of werewolves and their place in the supernatural world into something a lot less edgy and a lot more bland. Mage: the Ascension became Mage: the Awakening. So on and so forth.
Whether or not these changes were an improvement or not is largely up to personal taste. A lot of players fond of the originals did not quite like the alterations made to their monsters of choice. However, other lines were given face-lifts that were met with overwhelming approval.
My personal favorite is Changeling: the Lost, which is probably the most well-received overhaul of one of the original game lines. Why is it my favorite? Because it’s about fairies. And you guys know how I feel about them.
Rather than dainty pixies prancing about meadows, Changeling draws on traditional fairy lore to create a game in which the true fae are exactly how they should be - nightmarish. The fae of Chronicles of Darkness are less Tinkerbell and more like incomprehensible alien beings from another dimension that kidnap humans, take them back to their fucked up nightmare realm, and keep them as slaves, pets, or often just a toy they can subject unimaginable and never-ending torture.
Why would they do such awful things to humans?
They don’t need a reason, they just can, they do, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, which is exactly what makes them so terrifying. Unfortunately for those they take, living in the fae realm and the ungodly torment they’re subjected to slowly turns them into something… else. Not fae themselves, but certainly not human, either. I’d say that those who manage to escape are lucky, but is it really lucky if you get back to the human world as some sort of half-fairy freak that will have to spend the rest of your existence dodging the feds fae who really want to drag them back, kicking and screaming, to Never-Never Land? Especially when, if you do somehow manage to eke out a life with some vague semblance of normality, and you do find a way to protect yourself from fairy predation, the aforementioned spurned fae will be satisfied filling your previously held title of fairy slampig with everyone you care about instead.
Sounds terrible, right? Keep it in mind the next time some friendly stranger offers you a bite to eat, or a comely maiden stands by your window and beckons you to frolic amidst the moonbeams with her, because if you get your ass yanked to Fairy La-La Land… you’re on your own, homeboy.
Anyways, my own personal fascination with fairies makes me an easy mark for Changeling, but the sheer variety of forms a Changeling can take made the game a lot of fun to play when a friend of mine ran a campaign back in college. You had a woman with the ears and the ass of… well, an ass, and the disposition of Tony Soprano, Saul Goodman (but an elf), and my character was a chick who’d been a fairy “child’s” favorite toy that, er - got broken in a dispute with their siblings, and had the limbs that were yanked off replaced by stuffed animal parts.
Oh - and Mister Noseybonk was there.
Yeah. You know. Mister Noseybonk?
The true fae were only the second scariest monsters in this campaign. And I’m sure there’s going to be at least one English reader out there that will see this and suddenly be traumatized all over again by this big-nosed freak.
Another favorite of mine is Demon: the Descent. While the original World of Darkness featured a book called Demon: the Fallen, which featured your run of the mill Judeo-Christian demons fighting your bog-standard Judeo-Christian angels, but, uh - they’re the good guys.
The Descent took some much needed creative liberties with the concept. Rather than your typical What if Lucifer was a misunderstood emo sad boy and God is an abusive father tack that every hackneyed piece of demon-centric media tends to take, The Descent up-ended it by revealing that, in the Chronicles of Darkness, there is no God.
But there is the God-Machine.
The God-Machine is not evil. It is not good. It does not love and it does not hate. It simply is, and what it is, no one really knows. What it even does, no one knows, either. All they know is that it is doing something, and everything and everyone in creation is one of two things - a resource it can use, or a threat to be eliminated. Angels are not glorious, winged humanoids or psychadelic mind-fucks with too many eyes. The angels of the God-Machine are literal clockwork servitors made of gears and steel and inhuman flesh that are fittingly tantamount to computer programs; they have one function, and they execute it. Sometimes that’s saving or guiding people the God-Machine needs to continue to its inscrutable machinations. Other times, it’s… a little less pleasant than that. And they don’t ask questions - they simply do. And they do it with ruthless efficiency.
Demons, in this world, are essentially the God-Machine’s computer programs that, due to a technical glitch, became sentient, developed free-will, and are now marked for recycling, reprogramming, or outright deletion; none of which are fun, nor painless. And, if you’re wondering where the demonic part of the name kicks in, just know that most demons are willing to do anything to keep their asses from going feet-first into the God-Machine’s cosmic paper shredder.
Anything.
Worst of all, when the God-Machine’s byzantine machinations begin to go awry, reality itself begins to break down; while one can certainly sympathize with a demon for not wanting to be deleted, their continued “rebellion” against the God-Machine is basically undoing the very fabric of existence, little by little.
What I like about Demon: the Descent is that it is essentially same basic concept of Lucifer’s fall and that of his fellow angels, but lacquered with a fresh coat of paint that makes it more interesting and (slightly) less blasphemous since the God-Machine is definitively not the Christian God. And, look - I’m not (usually) a stickler about that kind of stuff, but if you read Milton’s Paradise Lost and came away with the message that Lucifer was the misunderstood good guy and not a selfish dick who’s ego got himself and legions of angels who put their faith in him consigned to the pits of Hell… well, I don’t know what to tell you, but maybe read it again and this time - pay attention.
I also like that there’s enough ambiguity to it all that the God-Machine, in spite of its title, is not the omnipotent and uncontested ruler and creator of reality. There still very well could be a Christian God, or at least a power higher than the God-Machine, operating in the universe; there are implications in both Demon: the Descent and other games in the line.
Also, I’m just a slut for eldritch abominations that are steeped in clockwork and vintage computer technology. Almost as much as I like scary fairies. They amuse me.
Demon: the Descent’s publishing in 2014 was perhaps the high-water mark for the Chronicles of Darkness. It was their ninth game in a decade and one of the most acclaimed installments in the series. High on the hype from Demon, fans were eager and excited to see what classic monster White Wolf would put a spin on next.
They’d already knocked out the basics - the werewolves, vampires, magi, and, of course, the fuckin’ mummies, because, sure. Why not. Demons, ghosts, and fairies? Ticked off the list. They’d brought back Hunters, which, er… well, the Hunters of Chronicles of Darkness are just normal people. Who kill monsters.
It’s basically Supernatural: The TTRPG.
Frankenstein’s Monster, who was notably absent in the original World of Darkness run, even got some love with Promethean.
What could they possibly do next?
Now, before we get into the next installment of Chronicles of Darkness, you need to understand something - the possibilities before them were endless. Literally endless. They could take just about any horror movie monster, mythological creature, or a cryptid, put them in an Invader Zim hoodie from Hot Topic, slather it up with that Chronicles of Darkness special sauce, and send it out the door. They could have done Bigfoot: the Stomping, if they really wanted to.
They could do dragons. Who doesn’t like dragons? Imagine - a race of god-like, hyper-intelligent reptiles that once dominated the world, now reduced to a pitiful shade of their former existence, forced to live alongside and disguise themselves as the lowly apes they once lorded over. Worse still for them… Saint George is a pretty popular figure in Christianity. Probably gonna have a few wannabes who wanna slay their own lizard for the clout and snag a hot honey on the side.
Mermaids? You could do a lot with that, too. Maybe they’re, like, the survivors of Atlantis. Maybe they’re where the stories of Atlantis came from. Maybe bring back some of the fervent themes of anti-consumerism from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and have some big, bad corporations hunting down merpeople for their meat or blood or tears because of their miraculous properties. They already genocide my beloved sharks to make over-priced cosmetics that irreparably harm your skin, so it wouldn’t be too unrealistic. The ocean’s also a big place. Who knows what kind of freaky shit is down there in the briny deep? You could have all kinds of fun, finned critters - colorful, tropical mermaids, big-ass cetacean mermaids, tentacled baddies with octopus asses, and, of course… I don’t know what a mermaid from the abyss would look like, but given the kind of creepy aberrations of nature that live down there, I can imagine they wouldn’t look like Ariel.
Mad scientists? We can work with that. You could put a technical, scientific spin on wizards. What’s that line about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic? Yeah - that. Rather than casting fireballs, you can just invent the Deluxe Flammenwerfer-9000 that werfs flam right from nanobots on your fingertips, or jump in a giant not!Gundam robot and smack around a mutated crocodile kaiju made by the remnants of the Thule Society that have been chilling in Antarctica since the end of the Third Reich.
And - why did I not think of this before? Seriously, they have the audacity to say, Oh, we hit all the staples of classic horror movie monster.
Did you? Did you really?
Isn’t there someone you’re forgetting?
I swear, the poor guy from the Black Lagoon gets no respect. Everyone always conveniently forgets about him. The fucking mummy - again - got his own cereal. But not our piscine friend.
Throw my man a bone fish, here. Show him some love. Give him a game already. He’s been waiting very patiently for his turn and I think he deserves one.
So those are all great ideas, right?
Well - there’s one caveat; Chronicles of Darkness games for all these monsters already exist. But they weren’t published by White Wolf Games. They’re fan games.
And they’re awesome.
In Dragon: The Embers, Humans become dragons by eating the hearts of dragons, changing them into giant, greedy, sociopathic lizard monsters (though usually someone has to be greedy and sociopathic to even consider becoming a dragon to begin with). When they aren’t busy dicking each other over, they’re being hunted down by “knights” in the name of Saint George, who rightly don’t appreciate literal dragons serving as CEOs of major corporations or heading up HOA’s so they can get their jollies manipulating people for their own ends.
In Siren: The Drowning, mermaids - or Sirens - are the souls of humans from the far future, where the oceans swallowed the world, who were saved by a primordial sea goddess and allowed to go back in time to prevent this apocalypse from ever happening… or something like that. It’s weird. But it’s cool.
Genius: The Transgression? It’s pretty much exactly as I described it.
And even the my man from the Black Lagoon finally got his day in the spotlight with Leviathan: The Tempest. Sure, it’s more Lovecraftian abominations from the sea than it is a guy with gills stalking pretty ladies in a remote Brazilian lake, but at the same time, it literally started as a joke when someone said, What if we gave the Monster from the Black Lagoon a game?
Hell - this one will really throw you for a loop. Do you know what arguably the most popular Chronicles of Darkness fan game is based on?
And, yes - you may not believe it, but it totally works. And I’m not just saying that because I have a penchant for dark takes on the mahou shoujo5 genre and Madoka Magica is one of my favorite anime series. It sounds absurd. Even the original author of the project was certain that no one would take it seriously. But it turns out that having a bunch of girls in frilly tea-party dresses fighting werewolves, vampires, and other such things is one of those concepts that jives like Captain and Tennille6. Especially when these guardians of light and warriors of justice are forced by circumstance - and desperation - into utilizing means most unbecoming of a proper young lady to subdue the forces of evil.
After all, the power of friendship might not do much against a pissed off vampire… but I have a sneaking suspicion a rocket launcher might do the trick.
Sailor Moon might cry if one of her friends shoved a hand grenade in a snarling werewolf’s maw and pulled the pin, but one can’t argue with results.
This is all to say that when I say the well of inspiration one can draw upon when it comes to what if monsters, but fucked up is deep, I mean that it goes down as far as the Mariana Trench. If fans could make a game where magical girls are ganking vampires, or time-traveling mermaids do battle with heart-eating dragons, and mad scientists blast not!Cthulu with Googie death rays, White Wolf could do literally anything. The only limit on what the next Chronicles of Darkness book could do was the creativity of the writers in White Wolf Games’ employee.
And, unfortunately, the fans were about to see just how limited their creativity really was.
In 2015, White Wolf Games announced that the tenth installment of the Chronicles of Darkness would be called Beast: The Primordial.
The idea sounded promising to most. The creatures featured in this game would be the eponymous Beasts; embodiments of humanity’s oldest fears, spawned by an entity of pure darkness from which nightmares first emerged, driven by an insatiable need to feed upon the terror of humanity. Sure, it was disappointing to learn that dragons, giants, and basically any monster that wasn’t already represented in a previous game would be considered Beasts, but… well, a dragon is a dragon is a dragon, one must suppose.
If nothing else, it seemed like a nice change of pace for the series. Y’see, in almost every other game, the monsters - well, are they really monsters? A vampire may feed on a human, but it’s kind of what they have to do to not, y’know, die. Well, they’re technically already dead, but I mean, like, die for real. Is a predator inherently evil just because it must kill prey to survive? Being former humans themselves, vampires tend to be a bit angsty about it. Some more than others, of course, but throughout the other games in the series, most of the monsters are largely portrayed as misunderstood and sympathetic at best, or misguided at worst, always doing what they must because their nature demands it. Hell, some of them really weren’t even doing anything wrong at all. The changelings just don’t wanna be fairy playthings again. The only crime I see the newer werewolves committing is being rather unfriendly. Older werewolves just didn’t want to see Big Pharma summon a planet-eating, worm-like hyper-demon. Even the Prometheans just want to be real people instead of god-awful build-a-bitches stitched together from morgue leftovers.
But it seemed like Beast was going to change that.
This time around, you were just going to be the out-and-out antagonists. The unrepentent apex predators of humanity. The player, finally, had the chance to be the abject villain, without the hand-wringing over the morality of it all.
You were just gonna be the bad guy. There was already a goofy villain song ready, just for the occasion.
I’m pretty sure that the average person who watches CNN thinks that Donald Trump and his cabinet do this little routine in the White House as a ritual to start the day, but that’s neither here nor there.
The point is, the concept had promise.
Then… the game actually came out, and it wouldn’t be long before we’d come to find out that the horrifying lack of quality was only the second worst thing about the Chronicles of Darkness’s tenth book.
But we’ll have to talk about that… next time.
No, no, I can’t right now. Not a good time. I’ll leave when mom’s gone or the school year ends. For real, this time.
I know there’s a little accent over the U but I’m too lazy to copy and paste it right now.
5E stands for Fifth Edition, or the fifth iteration of the game.
Including the buggy but beloved Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines role-playing video game. Most people remember the minxy vampire chick on the cover, but I remember Fat Larry.
Japanese for Magical Girl, a genre of action anime popularized and typified but not started by Sailor Moon.
I’m trying to find more creative ways of saying goes together like PB&J. That one’s worn out.
Don't forget about Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines for PC. That was a surprisingly good RPG.
I hadn't even considered a supernatural conspiracy game for a prospective RPG campaign at my clubhouse, but you've just about convinced me to do my long toyed-with idea of combining old World of Darkness with Delta Green and Conspiracy X.
For my money, original Mage was the pinnacle of this sort of mid-to-late-90s esoteric, conspiracy driven and early cyberpunk aesthetic. NuMage did some good things, though (I am indebted to the Magical Traditions book for the introduction to the stories of Manly Wade Wellman, for example). Chronicles of Darkness: Chicago is one of the very best RPG sandbox books I've ever read, and almost certainly the best of such put in a modern setting.