[OSSR]GURPS Illuminati

[Ancient History]

I can't fucking sleep and I feel shitty, so let's review one of the most beloved GURPS books of all time.

This is actually something like the third edition of this book - the first printing came out in '92, and this is the 2000 printing; some of the cartoons are copyrighted back to 1979 which is maybe a good aside to talk about how this book is different from other GURPS books. See, before fourth edition, there was very little connective tissue between the various GURPS setting books - they were designed to be lego sets, but it didn't provide any Lego Movie type narrative for mixing your Lego Batman with Lego Star Wars. You were expected to come up with that shit on your own.

Except, there was the Illuminati. It was not a major element of the game, per se, but it was a core staple of Steve Jackson Games. In 1981 they came out with the standalone card game Illuminati, in 1994 they came out with the collectable card game Illuminati: New World Order, Pyramid magazine takes its name from the Illuminati eye-in-the-pyramid symbol, electronic versions of Illuminati were basically the reason SJG had a BBS for the Secret Service to lose their shit over, and aside from GURPS: Illuminati itself, the book has led directly to GURPS: Illuminati University, GURPS: Warehouse 23, and GURPS: Cabal, among others I'm probably forgetting. There have been electronic versions and board game versions and play-by-mail versions. Illuminati may not be a flagship product along the lines of Munchkin these days, but it has been very good to SJG.


Some or all of the above may be false, at least in your paratimeline.

So, the basics. GURPS: Illuminati is based on the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea.



If you're not famliar with it, Illuminatus is a trippy, sporadic, light-hearted, drug-and-sex fueled quest through ancient conspiracies, exotic politics, obscure religious cults, magickal workings, and the search for enlightenment. It combines real history and fiction, and while never approaching an Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum level of drawing the reader in, it is the epitome of the conspiracy novels, the archetype against which Dan Brown flogs his pathetic little penis and whimpers at the mere mention of it, because he knows he has sinned and is not worthy to be shelved next to it.


Sections of the Illuminatus Trilogy were originated in Wilson's first book, pictured above.

It is also fun. Not fun in the way that Shriners drive around in little cars or fun, or the idea that George Bush is a moron with a 84 IQ who dressed in funny robes and kissed a skull and got spanked in college, but fun in the sense that it was surreal, and people believed in it - all of it. The Illuminati, the Freemasons, Reptilians, Black Helicopters, New World Order, the United Nations, Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Greys, Roswell, the Kennedy Assassination, the Knights Templar, the Assassins, the Vatican, the International Monetary Fund...


It's all connected.

There's a lot of fun to be had, in piecing together the bits of the puzzle. It's the game-behind-the-game in stuff like The X Files and True Detective and Planetary, it's the appeal of the Cthulhu Mythos and detective fiction, unraveling the mystery - uncovering the conspiracy - one layer, one episode at a time. Never quite knowing what's going but experiencing a series of revelations...

...and it is the kind of thing that games that feature big important conspiracies like Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness are terribly fucking bad at. CoC and WoD forget that the whole point of conspiracies is the onion; that there is a secret history that the players can uncover and care about. There has to be stakes, the PCs need a place in figuring it out, moving against it, doing shit, but more than that the conspiracy needs to be secretive, complicated, strange, and yet be coherent enough to fit into the backstory and compelling enough to actual have a reason to exist and be of interest to the players. There has to be a bigger picture, and the PCs need to have a piece of it, and want to find out the rest.

Anyway. This book is not your typical GURPS book, because it's a straight setting book. I know that GURPS put out a lot of those, but this book is even moreso, because aside from a couple of statblocks, there's no mechanics in the whole book. It's like if you bought a lego set with no legos. More than that, if you bought a lego set, and there weren't even instructions for building things with legos. Instead, it's like a novel that inspires you to build cryptic structures with your legos.


I either took the lego metaphor too far, or not far enough.

This book was initially written by Nigel Findley, who is mostly known as one of the most beloved authors of Shadowrun, who wrote many classic sourcebooks and adventures, like Tir Tairngire and Harlequin; he's the unofficial saint of the setting because he died young and unexpectedly, so even though he was chin-deep in elfwank by contemporary standards, he gets a pass. But more to the point, Nigel Findley was good at writing RPGs at a time when many people were not, and GURPS Illuminati might be the single best book he ever wrote - it was undoubtedly the most experimental, idiosyncratic, and bizarre RPG book he ever wrote as well, but that might be why it's aged so well an age where fever dreams about black helicopters and freemasons have given way to anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers, birthers, and death panel conspiracy theorists.


You knew this was coming up at some point.

But, this isn't just a Nigel D. Findley joint. It was edited by Steve Jackson and Jak Koke, with additional material from Steve Jackson and regular GURPS hack Chris McCubbin, of AutoDuel fame and GURPS CthulhuPunk Infamy. A lot of the cartoons are from infamous science fiction writer and cartoonist Alexis Gilliland, which tells you something about the nature of this beast - it's a labor of love. It's perhaps one of the best GURPS books that has ever been printed, and that's saying a lot, and yet it exists almost entirely outside GURPS. It's just a pure book on conspiracies for your RPG - for any RPG.

Okay, that's the title page. Tomorrow...the introduction!

[Red_Rob]

If you're not famliar with it, Illuminatus is a trippy, sporadic, light-hearted, drug-and-sex fueled quest through ancient conspiracies, exotic politics, obscure religious cults, magickal workings, and the search for enlightenment. It combines real history and fiction, and while never approaching an Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum level of drawing the reader in, it is the epitome of the conspiracy novels, the archetype against which Dan Brown flogs his pathetic little penis and whimpers at the mere mention of it, because he knows he has sinned and is not worthy to be shelved next to it.

Illuminatus! is kind of the Ur-text for the trademark modern mocking-but-knowleagable attitude to the whole tapestry of Conspiracy Theory and associated tinfoilhattery. The fact it came out 40 years ago highlights how cyclical and ultimately kind of played out a lot of the tropes are that you see in the wingnut faction today.

Also, best review of a title page ever. When I can't sleep and feel shitty I waste another hour browsing Cracked articles. Oh to be so productive...

[rasmuswagner]

I remember this book looking really weak next to Warehouse 23, Cabal and the INWO CCG.

[TheFlatline]

I remember a story about INWO where I think it was the first tournament that the last two players were kind of at a deadlock. Player A pulls 100 bucks out of his wallet and lays it on the table and offers an in-game deal to throw the game in his favor and Player B would get 100 bucks. Player B agrees, and Player A immediately plays a card that lets him back out of any one agreement while the other side has to honor their agreement. Player B bitches and objects. Judges rule this is all legal play, making Player B throw the game and allow Player A to win.

[Ancient History]

Introduction: Welcome to the World As It Is

The world of the Illuminati is shaped, not by social pressures, market forces, technological development, and the tide of history, but by the actions and conflicts of a few shadowy groups operating behind the scenes. These groups - collectively known as the Illuminati, or just the Conspiracy - are orchestrating world developments to suit their own inscrutable ends. The Illuminati have connections with other groups, some secret and some overt, and those groups have connections with others. The interconnections cover the world, like an infinite spider's web. And at the heart of that web, shielded behind uncountable layers of "blinds" and "fronts" and "shells," lie the Illuminati.

This is classic GURPS. They have their fun - and lots of it in this book! - but they don't pussy foot around. Right to the point, distill the core essence of the whole book down into a few paragraphs...and go on from there.

This follows the standard format of most GURPS books - central inner columns, flanked by the outer sidebars; the introductory sidebar pimps other GURPS products. It is a bit more lavishly illustrated than most GURPS books, with art that varies from little incidental comics to Illuminati card art to standard GURPS fare. We also get a little bit on Nigel D. Findley, ending with:

Nigel Findley died Feb. 19, 1995 of a heart attack in his home in Vancouver, B.C. He was only 35. We, along with his many other friends in the game industry, mourn his passing and dedicate this book to his memory. If you play and enjoy GURPS Illuminati, that is the greatest tribute Nigel could ask for.

As well as this fun Disclaimer:

This book deals with a fictional world in which everyday organizations - organizations that exist in what we laughably call the "real world" - are players and pawns in interlocking conspiracies with the eventual goal of world domination. Of necessity, then, this book refers to real groups, and describes baroque and surrealistic interconnections between those groups.

Conspiratorial view of history aside, rest assured that we are not impugning the reputations of any of these groups. This is, after all, a work of fiction It's just a game. Isn't it?

I've got your ass covered, let's go.

The bulk of the introduction, however, is not your typical fare; it's essentially a quick-but-fairly-accurate history of the real Illuminati, from there tracing the stereotypical connections to the Freemasons, et al., but not in great detail. It's enough history to give Mister Cavern a good idea of who the Bavarian Illuminati under Adam Weisshaupt were, they're not spinning off into "Adam Weisshaupt == George Washington" territory or anything like that just yet; it's the establishing idea that you need to build up to things - the idea of a secret, initiated organization, interlocking with other organizations, with its own goals and signs...then it moves on to the Illuminati in the present day. And this is where this book succeeds where every Vampire conspiracy falls on its face.

How can a group, of necessity small and keeping its very existence secret, have such a great effect on the flow of history? The answer is, of course, indirectly. The Illuminati are past masters at infiltrating other organizations - secret or publicly-known - and bringing them under their control. This control can range from direct command - as when the Illuminati literally hold the purse strings for the subordinate group - to subtle influence - where one or more senior members of the secondary group are actually also members of the Illuminati.

Control can also be indirect. After all, there aren't that many Illuminati, and they would be stretched pretty thin - in regards to both time an resources - if they had to control every significant organization themselves. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, that's not the way it works. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Illuminati directly control only a few other groups - the Freemasons and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have frequently been placed in this category. These directly-controlled organizations then control other organizations, in much the same way. They control other organizations, and they control other organizations, and so on and so on... Very quickly, the world becomes a network of interlinked influence, with the Illuminati sitting at the core, managing everything.

It sounds simple and obvious stated like that, but that is the genius of it. It's like the question about how the Camarilla maintains the Masquerade - they need more than a couple ghouled patrolmen to keep things quiet; they need contacts and servitors in the police, the press, among the local underworld to help dispose of bodies, the coroner's office, the gravedigger's union...the amount of blood to ghoul them all would reach diminishing returns very quickly indeed. So you don't ghoul them all, or even dominate them all; you have a working relationship with the local mob and the mayor's aide and the crooked cops, you only ghoul or dominate the ones you have to and the rest can be bought off with money and drugs and favors, and vampires can get that a lot easier than blood... but I digress.

All of this is leading up to the kind of setting an "Illuminated world" is - a dark world full of paranoia and mystery, where people go through life blissfully unaware of the B.P.R.D. and M.I.B. and R.I.P.D. and the X Files and every other acronym soup agency you can think of - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. In an Illuminated world, there are no coincidences.

Similarly, nothing is trivial: the degree to which the PCs judge any event as meaningless is a measure of their ignorance about the way the world really works.

This introduction - and it's just an introduction - addresses the importance of making sure that the PCs' enlightenment is gradual and step-wise - "Strip away one layer of lies, and all that's revealed is another layer of (bigger) lies." The sidebars are fantastic - "For Every Conspiracy There Is An Equal and Opposite Conspiracy," "What sane investigator would follow up on a lead to the worldwide conspiracy of redheads?" ...it sounds better when you read it.



It talks about how to build the connections between groups and concepts ("Even though it may be difficult to imagine a connection between Freemasonry and Bigfoot, there is a connection."), some things to be paranoid about, an "Illuminated Glossary" - I need to quote some of this:

Fnord:
Reflexive statement" See self-referential
Self-referential: See circular definition

Along with some more useful terminology like "MIBs," "Pawn," "Tool," "UFOlogist," "Hermetic," etc. There's also a highly relevant sidebar called "Victory in an Illuminated Campaign" which just talks about...well, at what point have the players "won?" And the thing is, like in Call of Cthulhu, you might achieve a local or limited victory of a sort, for a time, but you're unlikely to unveil and defeat the real Illuminati...or if you do, some other group is likely to move in and pick up the pieces. If you play your cards right, it could even be you...

Some people will get this, and others will just wonder why all five of these women have the same face.

The introduction - which already does a better job of talking about conspiracies than any other game book - ends with two sections. One is an admittance that this is not a typical GURPS book, because it isn't rules driven - and it explains why.

The Illuminated world differs from other campaigns largely in philosophy: the actual mechanics of the game will depend almost exclusively on the genre which has been "Illuminated," And if the "truth" about the Illuminati appeared in this book, the the players would probably know as much as the GM...and that's just not the way an Illuminated world works. Instead of categorical truth, this book provides suggestions - Ideas that GMs can use as is, modify, or totally ignore as they see fit. Examples of Illuminati groups. Illustrations of how the Conspiracy can turn innocents into pawns. Suggestions for Illuminated adventuring.

Maybe everything in this book is true; perhaps the Prieure de Sion still exists and is behind the Knights Templar and the Freemasons. Or maybe everything is different. Only the individual GM knows for sure...and that's just the way it should be.

Now, I have a confession here. When the old World of Darkness ended with Gehenna, I declared that all of White Wolf were morons and bastards and cowards for a) not coming up with a good plot, and b) not being able to choose between four different shitty, half-finished plots and just serving them up to Mister Cavern. I had similar bitchings about VII, but honestly I didn't give a fuck about NWOD at that point, so it was half-hearted. So why would I praise GURPS for making an open-ended book full of plot-elements that might or might not tie together, while bitching about White Wolf for doing the same thing?

Well, because GURPS was presenting it as a bunch of conspiracy lego bricks, and they had no real setting. They approached it as "here are some more bricks for your set, and each one of these bricks will be fucking useful and interesting, Dark Gods of Roleplaying dammit," whereas White Wolf's multi-option books were always exclusive, crap, and fitted poorly into the setting. Choosing any of the options in VII automatically made 3/4 of the book completely fucking useless to you, and none of them were worth the paper to wipe your ass with to begin with. With GURPS Illuminati, you can always work stuff in later. The elements and options aren't exclusive, they're complementary - whether or not you choose to ever use Men in Black in your game, the option is always there, and it is a solid option.


Mel Gibson works equally well in Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia.

The last chunk of the introduction is Steve Jackson's classic article 50 Awful Things About the Illuminati.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 1: Characters
Character chapters are not GURPS' strong suit. It's a game without classes, so at best you have a presentation of character archetypes and suitable attributes, advantages, and disadvantages to realize it. They usually do okay at this sort of thing, but they rarely knock it out of the park; they can typically identify primary character types for a genre or culture, but you rarely see the syncretism of ideas, and novel creativity that sets apart, say, the Shadowrun Former Wage Mage, or Street Druid, or Hobo With A Shotgun.


They neuralized me - but it didn't take!

That said, this chapter isn't bad - suggested archetypes include the Anarchist, Conspiracy Theorist, Historian, Government Investigator, Deprogrammer, Journalist (Respectable or Tabloid), Historian (Conspiracy or General), Lawyer, Researcher (Fringe or Obsessed), Psychiatrist, and Writer...and between them basically covers every major character type in X-Files, Dan Brown novels, Castle, and Men in Black. Maybe a little light on actual criminals and occultists, but that's on purpose - the Conspiracy in GURPS Illuminati may or may not be involved with the occult or super-science, may or may not be in touch with aliens or extradimensional entities, may or may not be maintaining the Masquerade. This is actually emphasized in the advantages section where it includes a point to Magical Aptitude:

Many people claim that some core members of the Conspiracy have magical powers (even in campaigns where magic isn't considered "possible"). In most non-fantasy campaigns, these people are going to be the only ones with magical abilities. Even within these groups, only the most senior members will have significant powers (See sidebar, p. 45)

Shenanigans about needing to couple this with Unusual Background aside, this general attitude actually works to GURPS Illuminati's benefit in one other respect: it means that the level of the game is dependent largely on the setting. The default setting of an Illuminated world seems to be the modern day, no different from today, or at least not much past 20 minutes into the future, and the characters (note: just noticed that no point limits for creating characters is suggested; in another GURPS book, that would be a sin) are more-or-less "regular" people that get drawn into it by their work or interests. But you could as easily set this in a Supers game, where your characters are recruited as part of a secret war between characters with superpowers.


There's a recruiting poster for the mutant underground.

The advantages and disadvantages - as close as this book ever gets to discussing new mechanics - are fairly sparse; there's some expanded suggestions on ally groups, unusual backgrounds, patrons and secret patrons...


Does anyone else remember this guy?

...hard-to-mandate disadvantages like delusions, gullibility, fanaticism, paranoia, the ever-popular amnesia, no sense of humor (-10!), obsession, secret, weirdness magnet, and unknown enemies; as well as a new advantage called "Illuminated" (60 points!)

You have undergone a mystical experience which has made you one of the Illuminati, in the original sense - you are enlightened. You know what's going on, and you know it intuitively.

Bro. Bring it, bro.

Mechanically, Illuminated follows a typical GURPS process of glomming different advantages together with some special silly whatsits on top. In this case, you get 30 points of Luck and Intuition, and you get a roll to recognize other Illuminated characters and to intuit whether or not a given event is caused by the Illuminati.


Hello, Jerry.

Skills don't say much; they introduce the new Mental/Very Hard skill Conspiracy Theory (History -4 or Occultism -4), which is a bit like the Mythos Lore skill from CthulhuPunk. Intimidation is included here as a new skill, which is weird to me, but then this is back in the day when random skills and suchlike tend to be crammed into odd nooks and crannies of different books, to be later compiled and codified in new editions.

Equipment is pretty much what you expect. ("Thus, the core gorups of the Conspiracy will frequently have access to equipment that is one or more Tech Levels higher than the campaign as a whole.") Including a brief aside on McGuffins ("Ultra-tech gadgets make perfect McGuffins for an Illuminated campaign. The heroes get a hint of one miraculous device - possibly the brain-child of a mad scientist or secret Conspiracy project. They follow the clues, and the adventure begins.")


Did you say McPuffin?

Probably the worst part of this chapter is the Jobs table - remember, you're supposed to be a regular jane that needs to put gas in the...well, if you have a car...and food on the table and whiskey in the coffee. This is supposed to be a list of likely jobs, with skill prerequisites, income, Success Roll (usually based on your worst prerequisite skill), and the effects of a critical failure (which I can't really parse, what the hell does -3i or 3d mean? I'm not going back to find out).

I can empathize with the desire for a job table - because the whole Scooby Doo gang approach where no one has a discernible source of income isn't practicable once you get past a single adventure, but it's also the kind of mundane detail which reminds people why they don't go out on adventures of their own very often; in Shadowrun in fact there's often the problem that getting a job pays better than going on a run (at least when the current management is setting the rates). It is an issue with roleplaying in general regarding resources - logically, you would not take out a second mortgage on your house to buy a second-hand rocket launcher and a cyberheart, because in the long-term you can't support that much debt for short-term gain; but for most games all you have is the short-term, so in that instance it does make sense to gain a sudden advantage now, because the consequences are pushed outside the frame of reference. A bit like how people don't really concern themselves about selling their soul until the possibility of mortality becomes imminent.

So, this isn't the best chapter in the book. It's not a bad chapter, even by GURPS standards, but it lacks the "gosh-wow" factor to a degree, and while it says many good things, none of them are absolutely necessary for play. There is a...I don't want to say lack, but a sort of noticeable thing you see in some GURPS books, in that most of the references are back to the main book, with few references to other books - so, for example, there are no discussions in GURPS Illuminati or GURPS CthulhuPunk how Conspiracy Theorist and Mythos Lore interact, or GURPS Illuminati and GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade. They're two great flavors that go well together, and it makes a certain amount of sense for a Conspiracy Theorist to have some inkling of the Masquerade or the Mythos, but the mechanics don't really reflect that - except insofar as Conspiracy Theory and Mythos Lore both default back to Occultism (at -4 and -12, respectively); but in that direction lies fanwank and rules-spackle.

[JigokuBosatsu]

The INWO card game was the best story generator.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 2: The Illuminated Campaign

This chapter begins with a picture of Zombie Elvis and a quote from FDR.


"...Nothing happens by accident. If it happens, it was planned that way."
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The key issue to developing an Illuminated campaign is that every campaign is Illuminated...the players just might not know it yet. The GM has to know it, however. This means that an Illuminati theme can be introduced into any existing campaign, played with for a while, then pushed into the background again. The players may think that the Conspiracy has been defeated, but it can reappear later in a totally new guise.

This is the chapter that talks to the gamemaster about running an Illuminati campaign. It's pretty much gold as far as gamemaster sections go - discussing how to design a believable Illuminati group, talking in brief about infighting among the Illuminati, celebrated members, not posing them as silly villains...

Look, all I'm saying is that you never follow a person with that kind of hair and a penchant for painting his face green and chasing after young men.

...this is all important, and perhaps most importantly portable information. It applies equally to a game of Vampire or Shadowrun or D&D. It may be focused on the modern period, but the whole idea of trying to rule the world/etc. through secret groups and intermediaries works as well for a megacorp as it does for a doppelganger. It is also, and I love this, highly literate for a gaming product, talking about real-world books on conspiracy, politics, etc. to provide realistic examples. I'm not saying that each page comes with a reading list, but you get a capsule review of how, for example, the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia and Hitler came to power in Germany, based on A. Raplh Epperson's book "The Unseen Hand: An Introduction to the Conspiratorial View of History."



There's also a fun little sidebar on the Secret Service raid over GURPS Cyberpunk:

The apparent illegality and unconstitutionality of this raid makes the incident seem sinister enough... But try this as an alternate reading, an example of how conspiracy theory can work. The target of the raid wasn't the Cyberpunk project; it was this book - GURPS Illuminati - which hadn't been assigned or begun yet! Was the Conspiracy early? Or were they just making a point that nobody's safe, and "if we did it once, we can do it again?"

...and so on in that vein. This is the kind of thing that appeals to me, because Steve Jackson Games is the kind of company that can build a personal mythology for itself; Wizards of the Coast has too much turnover these days (ah, for the days when M:tG references would crop up in Netrunner...) Maybe it's a little self-serving, but I can't really see D&D ever building a product taking the piss out of James Wyatt or Monte Cook to the same degree.



A lot of the content is very straightforward and down to earth, talking about how the Conspiracy could interact with established organizations like the FBI and the CIA (this was long before the Department of Homeland Security was some security subcontractor's bloated, inefficient wet dream), while the crazier stuff like possible involvement with the US going off the gold standard or the Conspiracy using ultratech, time travel, ormagic are mostly relegated to the lengthy sidebars.

The disappearance of magic and the study of magic from the world was an interesting phenomenon. Over the centuries much research had been performed into the "laws" and principles of magic. Yet all of that has apparently been lost. This is actually quite surprising. Consider how the pseudo-sciences "evolved" into the true sciences we know and accept today: alchemy evolved into chemistry, astrology evolved into astronomy. The reason is obvious. Even though the alchemists and the astrologers were on the wrong track - or so we believe - many of their observations and experiments led us along the path of scientific development. With the Renaissance, the key truths were drawn from alchemy and astrology, while the rest fell into disrepute (with certain notable exceptions).

Yet nothing was saved from centuries of research into conjuration, enchantment, necromancy and the other black arts. Why?

This is basically the background to The Atrocity Archives.

For those that don't want to plan out a grand conspiracy in detail, there is a section for you too! It's called "Winging It," and as you might expect, it's about creating the Conspiracy pretty much on the fly - as players uncover clues, they pursue the ones they're interested in, and Mister Cavern uses those to lead them to the next layer of the conspiracy. In effect, instead of finding the Conspiracy, they create it. This is a fundamental of a lot of good gamemastering in general, recognizing the trend of player actions and thoughts and bending the game to meet them. It doesn't mean the PCs might not hit a dead end every now and again, but it's important to work with what you're given - for example, in the Crypts of Chaos I had a character that wanted to play a Transformer (Decepticon type) - which we worked out to be a Warforged Warlock. I could have kicked up a fuss, but instead I rolled with it, and introduced some Transformers mythology into the scenario, and much fun was had. Which is, after all, the entire point.



Look, all I'm saying is they're both called Primus.

One of the shortest but most critical portions of the book discusses how to get the PCs actually involved. This is something a lot of other games do very badly, but here, GURPS tackles the elephant in the room: are the players going to be aware at the start that this is an Illuminated game at all, or do they start out thinking it's going to be an espionage game or wild west game or something, and then stumble upon the Conspiracy? THAT IS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION, AND I AM GLAD YOU BROUGHT IT UP. THANK YOU, MR. FINDLEY.

A large part of it depends on player agency; if the PCs don't follow up the clues, the Illuminated campaign...doesn't happen. The GURPS people seem aware of this, but don't offer any alternatives if the players are thick or uninterested in the Brotherhood of Funny Hats that seem to be causing so much trouble.


When in doubt, you could always kidnap their father and try to kill them.

The rest of the chapter discusses some possible Illuminati campaigns, more-or-less affiliated with various GURPS products like GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel or GURPS Horror (now there's a combination)...

Yes, this is real.

"The might well have human supporters (for example, the insane cultists and worshipers of the Elder Gods that H. P. Lovecraft so enjoyed writing about."

...and then goes into a bunch of adventure seeds with the same. The sidebars for the adventure seeds include descriptions and stats for various characters, which I am guessing are intended to be NPCs rather than sample PCs, because there are no point totals given. The adventure seeds aren't bad, but they are a bit overly-flexible - for example, the first one "Terribilis Est" has some archaeologists stumble onto an ancient cave that shows signs of being visited recently, and inside is an old black altar on which is the naked body of a dead man... "an important political figure, perhaps the President of the United States." It doesn't commit to any particular group or give their rhyme or reason for killing this person in this place, so it is just that - an adventure seed - but unlike a proper adventure seed, it doesn't exactly give players or gamemasters the foggiest notion of where to go from there.

A fun one is "Ghost in the Machine," an Illuminati/GURPS Cyberpunk adventure seed that begins:

It's a borderline cyberpunk world, with technology advanced perhaps ten years from the present day. The Net is only just developing, and neural interfaces are not yet commercially available.

But again, it's just the beginning sketch of an idea - somebody using the style and name of a hacker that's been dead for three years is running around hacking into computers. Is it a ghost in the machine, or what? Who knows?

The last one is, hilariously, based on Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the conspiracy-laden hoax that Dan Brown plagiarized ripped off to create his best-selling Da Vinci Code book.


Also hilariously, Shadowrun beat Dan Brown to the punch by several years. Sure, it had immortal elves instead of Jesuit albino BDSM fetishists, but I personally consider that a plus.

Full disclosure: I once tried my hand at aping Dan Brown's style to write the first chapter of a conspiracy novel called Rites of Melchizedek.

I think the general weakness of these adventure seeds is their unwillingness to commit - and indeed, that's probably the only real weakness of the whole book; it's a handbook for building and running an Illuminated campaign in any given setting, and it doesn't really want to commit itself. As a result, though, things are...well, less interesting than they could be. Unmoored to any setting and unwilling to commit to any particular group for most of the adventure seeds, a chapter that starts off being the go-to source for building conspiracies in your campaign ends a bit wishy-washy. But, that being said, even 10+ years later this is some fantastic advice for running conspiracy campaigns. Just build your own adventure seeds.

[erik]

This thread is the tipping point in making me crave having a GURPS library of sourcebooks on a variety of topics to draw from for running games, or just as idea fuel.

Also,

[RadiantPhoenix]

This thread is the tipping point in making me crave having a GURPS library of sourcebooks on a variety of topics to draw from for running games, or just as idea fuel.

Same here.

[Josh_Kablack]

This thread is the tipping point in making me crave having a GURPS library of sourcebooks on a variety of topics to draw from for running games, or just as idea fuel.

You never played "Grab two random GURPS sourcebooks - write the setting you get from combining them" ?

[erik]

Nah. I've played GURPS but never owned any of their books. A rather conspicuous absence from my collection I suppose.

[Occluded Sun]

Finding the sacrificed body of the President of the US is a terrible adventure seed.

Finding three, identical sacrificed bodies of the PotUS, however...

[Shrapnel]

This is now my favorite OSSR thread ever.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 3: Illuminated Groups

"Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves."
- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

Today, we spin conspiracies about the Koch brothers buying elections. Before them it was the Bushes. Before them, the Rockefellers. Before them, the Rothschilds. The names change, but the attitude is the same - in every century, in every country, where there is power, there are people and groups that seek to control as much of it as possible, and not always directly. They're the shadow groups that are linked to other groups, public and private; the incestuous mix of the rich, the powerful, the connected. This chapter describes a bunch of them.

It is, in a way, still just a bunch of ingredients for Mister Cavern to choose from, but it hits most of the high notes for the popular conspiracies in brief - the Bavarian Illuminati, the Merovingian dynasty, the Cathars, the Priory of Sion, aliens ("Alphans" and Time Meddlers, the Bermuda Triangle and the Network...


Computers, yo.

...Templars and Assassins, Discordians and banks, freemasons and ecoterrorists, the Mafia and the CIA and major corporations, organized religion and unions, it's a solid mix. There's a sidebar about using the Illuminati card games set up the conspiracies for their campaigns too, which is alright if maybe a little sketchy - it's obvious that they're just suggesting a wide variety of different groups, both historical and contemporary, that might be part of or behind the Conspiracy.

The GM must still figure out, in roleplaying terms, how the different groups control each other. (He will have his work cut out for him deciding how the Congressional Wives control the South American Nazis...)

More importantly, they stress why these groups are important, and what their goals are, and how they might go about trying to achieve those goals. They can't cover all the groups - Findley doesn't even try - but the ones that are covered follow the "be brief, be brilliant, and be gone" basics of GURPS. For example, the Alphans are humanoid aliens that, when disguised, can about pass for humans.


Yes, you can play one with the stats provided. It costs 14 points to be an Alphan.

The Alphans goal is to help humanity along in its path of evolution...although what their vision of what ultimate humans might be is an open question. They mainly work to control and advance biotechnology and genetics research.

Not every experimental mutagen works quiet like they'd hoped.

I think the book is a bit dated in how much it leans on "classical" conspiracy stuff like the Illuminatus trilogy, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Erik von Daniken. If this book was written today, Steve Jackson would probably try to buy the rights to the SCP-Wiki and have entries on the Global Occult Coalition, Daevites, GRU 19, Huǒjù de Háizi, Manna Charitable Foundation, and Marshal, Carter and Darke. But it's a fun mix, and despite the odd time-traveler or extraterrestrial or descendants of Jesus Christ, mostly focused on practical conspiracies of money and philosophy, politics and enlightenment.


Blood of God or not, nothing good comes from fucking your sister.

In a lot of ways, I think wikis have sort of passed this kind of sourcebook chapter by - the snippet views on the histories of how banks and the mafia and whatnot have risen to power at various times behind the scenes were fine in the day when you maybe couldn't get a book on that kind of thing at the local library, but today we can cheerfully wikiwalk from the Ku Klux Klan to the Gnomes of Zurich without leaving the well-cited paths of Wikipedia; if we dangle a toe into stranger wiki waters were get more conspiracy groups that you can shake a stick at - but for its day this was a really solid, if short and straightforward take on how different groups could legitimately influence society. And it was fairly open and non-judgmental about it, which is a nice touch.

For example, none of the conspiratorial groups discussed really talk about Africa directly, but none of them exclude Africa either. When Frank and I were talking Kindred of the East and GURPS CthulhuPunk, we were both really appalled at how badly Africa was made out to be a complete shithole primitive wilderness where no one would ever go. GURPS Illuminati doesn't do that. It might not yet have provided any compelling reason to go to Africa, but it also hasn't ruled Africa out in any way either. That's the kind of open and inclusive GURPS atmosphere I'm more used to. Why not include Africa in the Conspiracy?

[Ancient History]

Chapter 4. Pawns of the Illuminati

"The stupider it looks, the more important it probably is."
- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, The Book of the Sub-Genius



This chapter is, in effect, a discussion on how to use "senseless" and "random" elements in an Illuminated campaign. This is information that has import a ways beyond just a romp against the Illuminati - consider, for example, Videodrome, where things start off with the bizarre treated as truly bizarre, but as it escalates the bizarre becomes commonplace...I may not be doing justice to the concept with that example. Maybe Shakespeare might illustrate it better:



You actually see something like this a fair bit in Shadowrun, where the PCs are hired for X task, but it either appears to be pointless, or else the result is quite different from what they imagined - the PCs, in other words, have been tools or puppets, and don't know the significance of what they've done or why. It's an interesting starting point for a lot of characters because it depends - usually - on the players' burning curiosity to know why they replaced all the rubber stamps in the office, or why every day the mark deposits exactly $4,986.34 at the bank, and three hours later withdraws it again.

Most of this stuff is even more formless than the adventure seeds, but that's no matter, because it's not trying to be an item on the menu, just an ingredient in the mix. Odd NPCs are flavorful, but are they meaningful? Is it significant that the guy is wearing a tinfoil hat, or carrying a cane topped with a bird skull? It's not all that kind of thing, but it's a lot of sections that make you think a bit about how you might frame strange and unsettling events in the game - to imply a level of manipulation or organization that may or may not be there.

For example, one of the best moments in the Crypts of Chaos campaign was when half the group was down in a dwarf's cellar, and he had a mindflayer in a gimp suit in a box...when the dwarf (inevitably) died, the mindflayer climbed back in his box. And nobody was particularly upset about that...until they looked and found out that the box was empty. Now they panicked.

All of this would perhaps make more sense if I included a sample from the book:

So Why Are They So Secretive
Why do the Illuminati keep themselves hidden? The obvious answer is that their goals, or the means which they use, are so disgusting that if we knew what they were doing we'd rise up and destroy them. Maybe it's true. It implies that we could fight them, if we just knew what they were up to.

Or perhaps their schemes can only come to fruition if we're ignorant. If we knew that magic was real, we'd become wizards ourselves. If we knew what was in the water, we'd all drink orange juice. In that case, we might or might not be able to fight them, but we could frustrate their plans if we understood them.

Of course, it's also possible that their plans will work no matter what we do...but it's just more convenient for them to remain secret.

Maybe they just like their privacy. It could be that some of the Secret Masters have perfectly reasonable goals, and are going after them in perfectly legal ways...and don't want publicity. If you had found Bigfoot frozen in a glacier, and were trying to bring him back to life with the help of a famous blonde singer, would you tell the press?

And perhaps they're just hiding from each other.

Actually, that might explain a lot about Britney Spears.

[Ancient History]

Chapter 5. On the Trail of the Illuminati
Last chapter was short, I'm gonna do another one.


UFO, UFO!

I mentioned before that this isn't your typical GURPS book, and when I say that I mean more than the general lack of mechanics - I mean it doesn't flow like a normal GURPS book. This book is pretty much a book-length equivalent to what would be a chapter on gamemastering in another book, but unlike the Dungeonmaster Guides and that sort of crap, this one actually speaks to the subject at length and in some detail. If chapter 3 was about planning an Illuminated campaign, and chapter 4 was about easing players into or starting an Illuminated campaign, then this chapter is about running an Illuminated campaign - although there's a fair bit of crossover between the different sections, so don't take that as gospel. So it talks about secret codes and other means of secret communication, how the PCs might find out about the Conspiracy on their own or be brought in to it.

Humor - The Perfect Weapon
As the old saying goes, the best method of lying is telling the truth but in such a way that nobody believes it. The Illuminati are experts at this. Many humorous treatments of the Conspiracy have appeared in print, on radio, and on the screen. A classic example in print is The Book of the SubGenius, by J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs - a gonzo, speed-rap view of the global Conspiracy that includes quotes like "Give up the not-giving-into of temptation," and, "The U.S. government is a sham, something propped up for you to blame." "Everybody knows" that things like this are out-and-out parodies, ridiculing anyone who believes in that kind of thing.

What only a very few people know is that many of these works are telling the truth - literally an explicitly - but doing so in a way that invites laughter. It may be deliberate, or it may be the only safe way the writers can find to tell you the things you need to know, that you must know if you are to survive the next decades with your mind intact!

But people who read such a book and later encounter real evidence of the Illuminati are likely to discount it: "Sounds like something 'Bob' would say." And the Illuminati laugh.

Investigators into the Conspiracy are advised not to discount anything, no matter how ludicrous it may seem.

For me, part of the appeal of GURPS Illuminati is that it's...I don't want to say edgy, but it touches on a lot of literature that is closer to that special grey area where underground lit touches on real-world politics. It's hard to explain. Shadowrun will tackle some real-world issues like racism. Mage would have the Men in Black being run by the Conspiracy. Unknown Armies tried to give the impression of a hidden, grimy underworld of the occult, even if it never succeeded. But none of them ever cited Bob Dobbs. And none of them that I'm aware of had a section on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Protocols are perhaps the most blatant and grotesque example of disinformation and propaganda ever to exist. The Protocols are a document - in the form of a policy statement, or perhaps a kind of "inter-office memo" - describing a step-by-step procedure whereby the "international Jewish conspiracy" would take over the world. The Protocols described a grand Conspiratorial plan, steps of which involved destroying certain regimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and similar organizations, and seizing control of all political, economic and social institutions in the Western world. Further, the Protocols' authors described how they "stage-managed" whole peoples and races "according to a political plan which no one has so much as guessed at in the course of many centuries."

The Protocols first appeared in their present form around 1903 in Russia, presented to Czar Nicolas II by one Sergei Nilus as "evidence" of a world-girdling Jewish conspiracy. According to Nilus, the Protocols had been composed at an International Judaic Congress that took place in Basel in 1897. As has since been proven, the Protocols did not come from this source.

Presumably, Nilus' intention was to stir up anti-Semitic hatred in the czar. If this was his goal, it backfired; Nicolas ordered that all copies of the Protocols be destroyed, and banished Nilus from the court in disgrace. Unfortunately, the Protocols survived. The document was published in 1903 and again in 1905. In 1919, it was widely circulated by Alfred Rosenberg, who had become the chief racial theoretician and propagandist for Hitler's National Social Party. Hitler himself put great stock in the Protocols, according to Mein Kampf. The Protocols were presented as authentic by the Morning Post in England, and The Times gave them credence in 1921 (although it eventually admitted its error).

Today, most historians consider them purest forgery. Some, however, believe that Nilus actually modified an existing document so that the "international Jewish conspiracy" would be implicated. This original document - if it ever existed - could conceivably have been the game-plan of a true world-girdling Conspiracy, but one that wasn't Judaic in nature...

I wouldn't have trusted White Wolf to present the Protocols of Zion in any of their games at any point without making a fucking mess of it. I wouldn't trust TSR or WoTC to do a fantasy version of it about Gnomes (and yes, I'm aware Eberron did that thing.) It is actually a significant accomplishment that GURPS, in this four-paragraph sidebar, can give a factual account of one of the most openly duplicitous and terribly racist documents in relatively recent history, present it accurately, and then spin a game-relevant idea off of it that doesn't suck. Okay, maybe it's not in the greatest of tastes to use a 112-year-old big of propaganda as a gaming aid, but in the right campaign...y'know...I could see it. It's history, and history isn't nice, and it is relevant today. This is the kind of thing which for me makes GURPS stand out; any hack could pump out a book on conspiracies if given sufficient access to Wikipedia, but how many of them would dare to put something this provocative in a mainstream RPG book?



My second-favorite sidebar is called "The Hidden Truth." It consists of a simple statement: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this sidebar is an important illustration of the conspiracy hunter's job." The rest of the sidebar is the word "fnord" printed a thousand times.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Two Bloom County strips in one post. My thimble runneth over!

[CapnTthePirateG]

Wait, Gnome Elders of Zion? What?

[Username17]

Wait, Gnome Elders of Zion? What?

I'll just quote the Eberron Wiki here because it's too much work to look shit up in the actual book when I'm not drunk.

The Sivis dragonmark first appeared around 2800 years ago. The gnomes have carefully cultivated the peoples around them since that time and have remained firmly neutral in all conflicts. So, while most people are suspicious of the devious and conniving nature of gnomes, House Sivis has remained above reproach and their services are now indispensible.

Gnomes have an innate thirst for knowledge, and always ask questions of those around them. Gnomes have made up for their small stature by sharpening their knwoledge as a weapon. They often use diplomacy as a tool, but are not above using blackmail or espionage as a tool either. They frequently keep knowledge to themselves, and hide both their truths and their emotions from others. Most gnomes wear a false smile, all the while absorbing information from those around them. even good gnomes tend to use manipulation of knowledge, and often justify it by using their skills for good rather than for evil.

The "Gnomes Are Jews" thing didn't start in Eberron. It's something that D&D has flirted with for a long time. For fuck's sake, they are big nosed people who specialize in gem cutting. But Eberron Gnomes are a bit more on the creepy end of the Jewish stereotypes than they have to be.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

Well, it sort of goes back farther than that:
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_i ... es_as_Jews

so AD&D had a problem because Dwarves had to be Gimli and couldn't be the Niebelung, so they added Gnomes (and later Duergar).

[Ancient History]

Chapter 6. The Men in Black

Conspiratorial groups constantly need new blood. Current members die - in the line of duty, by accident, or of old age - or become ineffective, or perhaps "graduate" to other organizations higher up the power structure. Even those Illuminati groups whose members become immortal - if such exist in the campaign - might remain on the look-out for new talent.

You can buy the hats now.

This chapter addresses being a member of the Illuminati; as such it covers both the PCs being initiated into secret societies and NPC MIBs (with stats) as your primary antagonists.

So you can be this:


Or face this:


It's a fairly solid chapter. Discusses chains of command, blood samples, signs and symbols (including, yes, the secret handshakes...)



...but also the type of missions you, as a foot soldier of the Conspiracy, might undertake. This largely overlaps with spy games, and indeed you could cut off the sidebars and much of this chapter would go without comment in GURPS Espionage, a fact that Mr. Findley comes right out with:

Just about any espionage-type adventure can be used in an Illuminated campaign. By the time the PCs have become agents of the Conspiracy, the GM should know how the different conspiratorial groups fit into the overall power structres. Just looking over the web of interconnection should be enough to suggest many mission types, targets and opponents.

The "Adventure Design" portion of the chapter is mostly taken up with some example ideas - getting false orders, infiltrating other groups, etc. My main qualm with the section is that traditionally, espionage campaigns can be hard to work out for a group, unless you're doing it Mission: Impossible style (for which I suggest GURPS Covert Ops, GURPS Special Ops, GURPS Black Ops, or GURPS I.S.T.: International Super Teams). The problem with ensemble espionage is pretty much the same in real life: a large part of it involves three people waiting in a van while super-spy dances the fandango.


There is probably a more appropriate scene from True Lies to reference, but I am only human. As far as you know.

Chapter 7. FNORD!

"Beneath the broad tide of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depths the changes that take place upon the surface."
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians

Bringing us back to the beginning a bit, this chapter looks at secret societies in the real world, as well as "small-c" conspiracies - ordinary corruption, racketeers, and monopolists; if the Illuminati is dead (but was influential at one point); and using the Illuminati in a non-Illuminated game. Which is nice. It's very GURPS-ish to discuss how to do the same concept at different scales. It's not all world-shaking and magic, sometimes it's just your local council gone a bit barmy.


It's all about the greater good.

The obligatory GURPS pimping takes place in describing how you can work the Illuminati into different genres. These effectively involve much better examples/adventure seeds than in that previous chapter. So for example, this is the one given for Fantasy:

Coronation. The Priests of the Mother Goddess are concerned that "heresies" and rival sects will soon sweep worship of the Goddess from the land...leaving them without the wealth and influence they've come to cherish. What they need is a powerful secular supporter. The priests decide to throw their support behind a would-be usurper and regicide. When he takes the throne, the priests will bless and anoint him, making him a "rightful" kind despite this common birth. In return, the new king will make worship of the Mother Goddess the only official religion of the land.

Which isn't bad, although it doesn't quite work for D&D-ish fantasy (D&D-ish fantasy presupposes that the gods actually exist and are somewhat active in the world, which eliminates a lot of the heresies right away, because anyone not getting with the program gets a lightning bolt up the ass); but for Conan-esque fantasy where priests == wizards for all intents and purposes, this works well. Other genres include Space, Cops and Robbers, Supers, Time Travel (with one of my favorite although least-useful ideas, the "Forbidden Years" that you can't travel to because they're protected...), Autoduel (GURPS loves them some Autoduel), and of course Riverworld...


I would trust SJGames to do an RPG based on Phillip Jose Farmer's sex novels, but honestly, I don't know if I'd want to sit down at the table with anyone willing to actually play it.

One of the funner "realistic" conspiracies is "The Jokers." A group called TRI (Three Random Initials), where pranksters with more money than couth create evidence of conspiracies that don't exist to fuck with people.

In the last 25 years, the group has been responsible for three suicides, nearly 20 wrecked careers, and an incalculable amount of grief, confusion and anger.

Chapter 8. Press the Button Marked "Help"

"The only problem with enlightenment is that if you think you got it, you didn't get it."
- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, The Book of the SubGenius

The ultimate chapter is marked "Advice for the GM." Which may seem a bit excessive, since this entire book is basically GM-advice, but this chapter in particular includes some more specific tools for Mister Cavern's toolbox: how the Illuminati can try to drive people insane, drugs for chemically inducing amnesia, altering and implanting memories, implantable attitude chips - basically, everything from the Manchurian Candidate to cyberpunk, etc.

It also talks frankly about your general difficulties of GMing an Illuminated game. For example:

For a successful Illuminated campaign, the GM must walk a fine line. The Conspiracy must not be so impenetrable, so full of dead ends and false trails, that the player's can't find a way to proceed. But he must not give away so much that tracking the Conspiracy isn't a challenge.

There's no simple answer; it depends on the personalities of the GM and players. Some players will enjoy picking away at the fringes of the Conspiracy for a long time, finding that every lead is actually a red herring or a meaningless coincidence, until they get that one big break that lets them shatter the first layer of deception Others will get impatient and frustrated if they don't see continuous progress, if each gaming session doesn't bring them one step closer to the Mysterious Illuminati. (Then, of course, there are the "power gamers" who don't feel satisfied unless each gaming session includes a firefight. An Illuminated campaign probably isn't the most appropriate genre for players like this...)

GMs must "fine-tune" the campaign to match the style of play of their players. Fortunately, this is easier in an Illuminati campaign than it is in many other genres. The structure of the Conspiracy is known only to the GM, allowing him to alter it as necessary as the campaign progresses.

Which is all good, non-railroad-y advice. None of that "The Game Master is Always Right" crap. I might have added a few additional asides. For example, in movies when they want to get the plot moving and don't want to fiddle with the fine details of what the PCs do in their normal lives, they start out with a corner of the conspiracy (usually a criminal conspiracy) already uncovered; the PCs are thus on to something from the beginning, they just might not know what or how deep the rabbit hole goes. Likewise, there is a tremendous benefit in having something like the X Files - the random accumulation of strange occurrences that need to be investigated, and which can either serve as one-offs or provide some fragment of greater insight (much like your average SCP entry). Also, I think the date on this book is telling, because I doubt a modern book could get through this material without doing a Matrix reference - the world you know is but a simulation/dream/etc.

Page 122 has a sidebar for "The Mind Control Laser," which I love (especially because it isn't a laser.

And Just WHAT IS FNORD?
Sorry, but you're not cleared for that.

The book ends with a photocopy of a sample letter from the Bavarian Illuminati, an extensive bibliography, and that most GURPS of all things, an index.

Final Thoughts

It's all good fun.

Like all GURPS books, this one covers a lot of ground. It may not go into as much depth as an individual would like, but it touches about 90% of all the bases, and while the jokes might take up a good bit of space, it's nothing like you'd call shovelware. If Onyx Path dared to try something like this, you'd probably be looking at a series of 300-page hardbacks that ended up saying nothing and offending everyone.

I think I needed this as a palate cleanse after GURPS CthulhuPunk. It is not your typical GURPS book, in that it really does have very little in the way of raw mechanics. But it is otherwise the quintessential GURPS book in that it tackles a complex subject and tries to do right by it. There is such an attitude expressed in this book, about having fun that is so utterly lacking in something like Unknown Armies...and maybe that's because they haven't committed to any of the revelations. You could build Unknown Armies from GURPS Illuminati and GURPS Magic, you couldn't build either from UA. GURPS is always about possibility space, the huge number of options that it puts out to players and gamemasters, and while they can't think of everything, they do think of a lot. A tremendous amount of work went into this book, and I for one appreciate it.


This is Nigel D. Findley. He died 19 February 1995. Pour a sip. They might be watching.

[icyshadowlord]

Why hasn't my GURPS-running GM ever mentioned this book?

[Ancient History]

Because he's been mining it in secret.

[Occluded Sun]

So the content is excellent, if out-of-date. What's the point in history at which you'd say the book stopped drawing on real-world developments? A year before publication? Five? Ten?