The Secret Wars

When I was a young nerd in the 1980s, all my nerd friends and I were really into The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. We carried around our dog-eared copies of the big red omnibus edition in the hallways of my high school, imagining that we were on to something of which our mehum fellow classmates had no inkling. We also liked to play Illuminati, the card game of conspiracy inspired by the trilogy. Back then it came in a cheap plastic box with tiny paper money that was easy to lose. My old, worn out copies of these editions are still in my collection - missing a few bits, of course.

When we graduated from high school, one of my friends offered to start up a play be mail version of the game. I don't know if he got the idea from somewhere else or made it up himself, but it was brilliant. It was done like an RPG, where your character was the head of a conspiracy. You could make up any conspiracy you wanted. Then you would be playing a game like the Illuminati card game, but with the addition of NPC agent characters who would perform missions. On your turn, which you sent by mail to the GM, you would give orders to these agents, as well as the actions you were planning to take in the context of the card game, with your conspiracy and whatever groups you took over and added to your power structure. What was so cool about this way of playing is that you didn't really know how many other players there were, or the full state of the game. You had to figure it out from your correspondece with the GM. I still have my copy of the rules that was printed on dot matrix continuous computer paper, pictured on the right.

Here is the text of the first page to give you a feel for the flavor of the game:

WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE

Sitting back one evening in your cozy London flat (or maybe it was the prayer garden of a monastery in Sri Lanka, or a seat in Air Force One, or a bench in Central Park, or the cockpit of your flying saucer), you flipped casually through the latest edition of The Watchful Eye, the one journalistic publication that's worth your time and trust. In the classified ads a Help Wanted message caught you eye:

IMMEDIATE OPENINGS AVAILABLE for upper-level positions in several global conspiracies bent on world domination. Top wages for individuals capable of coordinating large-scale cover operations involving diplomacy, treachery, mind control, and mindfuck. Good work habits and creativity a must. Mehums need not apply. Contact c/o TWE box 23.

The more you thought about it, the more it seemed the perfect career for you.
After mailing in your resumè, passing a simple personality test and wrapping up your affairs, you found yourself well-placed in a job that promised challenge and reward for a lifetime – or more. You were placed at the head of one of the twenty-four secret societies that have been wrestling for control of the planet since the days of the Roman Empire. Using your knowledge of ancient secrets and the cutting edge of modern technology, you manipulate the unknowing masses, competing with other shadowy warriors from the safety (?) of your secret headquarters.
You are a commander in The Secret Wars.

I don't think we ever finished the game, it just sort of winded down. But it did go on for years; I know because I have the correspondence still, with dates on it. I remember that one thing that came out of the game was my idea for a new group - Dolphins - which I added to my conspiracy's power structure. Not a particularly powerful group, just something fun. I made a version (pictured below) using the blank cards that came with my copy of the Deluxe Edition that got played a lot when I was in college. I also put Dolphins on my page of new Illuminati groups.

In the early 1990s, inspired by the war in Iraq and the President's "New World Order" speech, I started running a game of my own, with new gamer friends I had made in college. I had a lot of fun being the GM for this one, keeping track of all the secret stuff going on and meting out the information to the players based on their actions. I don't remember exactly how many players there were, but it wasn't that many. One fun task I had was to put together issues of "The Watchful Eye" - the only journal trusted by conspiracists to have any inkling of What Is Truly Going On.

**The Watchful Eye issue 1**

I only have a few issues of TWE in my notes, so I have assume this game got through only a few iterations before it, too, faded out. It's hard keeping up with a play by mail game. I'm not even sure I would want to run one now, given that conspiracy thinking has become a serious threat to our governmental process. But maybe it always was. There is certainly plenty of fodder for a game in today's headlines.

So in case you want to run a game, I have transcribed the rules from the original computer printout - with my friend's permission - to create a digital version for general use. I have added some edits of my own. You can read them at the link below, or you can download them in PDF format.

The Secret Wars - PBM Illuminati RPG

**Related Sites**
New Illuminati Groups
Illuminati at Steve Jackson Games
Skeptic's Dictionary: the Illuminati

This page by Steve Barrera 2025