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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rabbitbait" data-source="post: 6676124" data-attributes="member: 60100">Conspiracies are tough. Possibly in this case the best way is to work backwards. Look at the situation, look through the Eberron guidebook and look at which groups might be interested in this.The Lord of Dust seems obvious in this case, and I believe leads to the warlord actually being a Rakshasa.Who else has something to gain from this.Who else would be trying to stop this.Being Eberron, you might find the heroes having to co-operate with baddies such as the Emerald Claw, or getting their plans disrupted by goodies who are following a tangental mission. Other protagonists may be following several missions at once complicating what it seems is going on, or followers may be getting told lies by their superiors in terms of motives.The biggest thing about conspiracies is that you should:1) Listen to your players and what they are thinking is happening - if you like it, steal it and expand on it.2) Be prepared for your campaign to go completely off the rails to somewhere totally unexpected.3) Be prepared for people (enemies, friends, characters) to die unexpectedly.I have found that if you want conspiracies to work it is almost best to have (sort of) 3 campaigns running at the same time - then the players have solid paths they can follow away from the main campaign but you have somewhere pre-planned for them to go. Then you may find ways to loop back into it, but if you don't then it's obviously because you are having fun with the alternate path.It takes away the railway while providing the feeling that lots is going on in the world at once and really meaning the players actions will have consequences - one way or another.In my last campaign, the characters ended up releasing Bel-Shalor and then spent the rest of the campaign trying to re-imprison him as the world collapsed around them. Having him released was felt to be the lesser of two evils.Other alternate plot threads to follow can come from the character's backgrounds. I try to find a campaign arc for each character - including stuff about the character, his background, his goals or his contacts that the player does not know. Then I try and reveal them throughout the campaign. Again, what the players think is going on can impact on what actually ends up happening - they have some crazy good ideas.I hope that helps - it's all pretty broad brush stuff, but this worked really well for me in my last campaign. This one is a bit more straightforward as I am just following a module (kind of). I would say that the last campaign is the best one I have done in over 30 years of DMing though.</blockquote>

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