Secret Telepaths setting inspired by Vampires

[Mr_Sandman]

I'm running a psychic conspiracy game right now. It seems to be going well, and the players are enjoying it.

My inspirations are things like Scanners and Firestarter. I set it in the present day, rather than a dystopian future. There's no public knowledge of psis. Everything remains hidden, so far. Although, once PCs enter the mix, there's no telling what secrets might get blown up.

There's a corrupt corporate conspiracy (like in Scanners) and a shadowy government conspiracy (like in Firestarter) that are rivals. The PCs have also made contact with a small, loosely-connected underground network of psis who are trying not to be exploited by either. Of course there are also "free-agents" and people who are unaware of their own abilities, but manifest them subconsciously.

I've defined a few psi-tech gadgets and psi-drugs, that either suppress or somehow enhance psychic abilities. The tech tends to be experimental, cumbersome, and prone to malfunction, and the drugs have minimal effectiveness and/or side effects. I'm going for a feeling that psionics is a relatively new phenomenon, and since it is being kept secret, it is not well-studied or understood.

The pharmaceutical corporation that discovered the means of producing psis through drug exposure during gestation (stolen from Scanners) has the most knowledge of how psi works and the records of people who where given the experimental drug in trials during their mothers' pregnancies. They try to track them and watch for signs that they are developing powers, then indoctrinate or mind control them.

The shadow government is made up of higher-ups in law enforcement and intelligence who became aware of psis and the corps actions due to an informant. For the most part, they only have access to psis who have defected or been captured and 'deprogrammed' (sometimes it might be closer to reprogrammed), but they have better operational security and tradecraft, as well as access to the resources of the US Federal Government.

I started the campaign with the PCs unaware of any of the background, and captive in a psychiatric facility controlled by the corporation, awaiting mind-control indoctrination. There was an incident involving a power failure taking out the psi suppression fields, and a powerful NPC mind-controller fighting back that caused a distraction that the PCs used to escape. They've been on the run and piecing things together since then.