Cats!: The Conspurracy - Starter guide
What is Cats!: The Conspurracy?
Here is what your cat has been hiding from you: cats created humanity, cats run the world, and the only thing between humans and that truth is the Conspurracy, the veil that keeps them convinced cats are just pets. In Cats!: The Conspurracy you play an awakened cat with psychic powers, an agent of the secret feline organization sworn to keep that veil intact. One badly timed miracle, one human who sees too much, and the whole operation is a saucer of spilled milk.
The tone is tongue-in-cheek spy thriller played delightfully straight: James Bond with whiskers, operating in present-day Paris and on the American west coast. The comedy comes from the contrast between deadly serious espionage and the fact that the operative conducting it also has to be picked up and cooed at by their human.
The game was designed by Vincent Mathieu and published by Black Book Editions, with striking illustrations by Maxime Teppe. The edition Netherbook carries is a hardcover of nearly 300 pages that opens with an introductory short story and contains the complete game, including eight ready-to-run adventures.
How does the system work?
The Conspurracy runs on its own d10 system. When the outcome is uncertain you roll a pool of ten-sided dice based on your Luck, add the relevant skill, and compare the result against a difficulty the game master sets. It is quick to learn, and the skill list alone sets the tone: cats get by on Claw, Fur, Purring and Whiskers.
Characters come in three kinds: cats, humans, and bastets, feline spirits walking around in human bodies. The sixteen cat breeds each bring their own abilities and flaws, so a Maine Coon field agent plays nothing like a Sphynx infiltrator. The awakened also wield psychic gifts, twenty-two of them, from hypnosis to telekinesis, which is how the fridge opened itself last Tuesday.
Around the mechanics sits a surprisingly rich world: the feline organizations and lineages, the three great councils of Paris, Plymouth and Los Angeles, and a full secret history of cat civilization. The joke premise is carried by real worldbuilding, which is exactly why it works at the table.
What do you need to start?
One book. The hardcover contains the rules, character creation, the setting, a rogues' gallery of antagonists, gameplay advice and eight standalone adventures, enough material for anything from a single game night to a full campaign of feline espionage. Bring five ten-sided dice, paper and pencils, and two to five players plus a game master.
Petting a cat before the session is optional but recommended for morale. Yours, not the cat's.
Who is this game for?
This is a game for groups who want comedy with an actual game underneath: light in tone, but with real rules, real missions and a world that rewards taking the nonsense seriously. It is a superb game-night pick, because the eight included adventures mean the GM can run a session with almost no preparation, and the premise explains itself in one sentence.
It is honest to say who it is not for. If your table wants grim drama, tactical depth or long character arcs, a psychic cat protecting a global cover-up is probably not the vehicle. And a certain tolerance for cat puns is, purrhaps unavoidably, required.
How does it compare to other systems?
Compared to Dungeons & Dragons, The Conspurracy trades the dungeon for the drawing room: modern-day espionage, social scheming and heists instead of sword and sorcery, in a system a table learns in fifteen minutes.
Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme is the other great comedy on our shelves, but it works in the opposite direction: it is absurdism as a system, chaos baked into every rule. The Conspurracy keeps its rules straight-faced and lets the premise do the joking.
And Catcrawl is the other cat game in the shop, at the far end of the same spectrum: there you are an ordinary cat whose greatest mission is a nap. Here the nap is your cover identity.
Where do you start?
Read the short story at the front of the book; it teaches the tone faster than any rules summary. Then pick one of the eight adventures and run it as written. Character creation is a pleasure in itself, because the breed choice immediately gives every player something to perform.
One piece of advice: play it straight. The game is funniest when the agents treat every mission with the gravity of a Le Carré novel while being, unmistakably, cats. The moment someone demands belly rubs mid-briefing and stays in character, you have found the game.
Recommended products at Netherbook
Cats!: The Conspurracy is the complete game in one hardcover, adventures included.
If this flavour of fun suits your table, the Comedy & Satire collection gathers every game in the shop that refuses to take itself seriously, and Catcrawl offers the gentle, non-classified side of feline life for the evenings between missions.