"Conspiracy" Fantasy: have you ever done it?

[Nisarg]

It can be a weakness, if piratecats reluctance to change what he writes down leads him to railroad his pcs in order to get them to find the important plot cues he'd already written down.

Its also a slight weakness if it means that you can't explore a prospectively cool but unexpected development down the road, only because it doesn't fit the original boundaries of your already-written plan.

Nisarg

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

It can be a weakness, if piratecats reluctance to change what he writes down leads him to railroad his pcs in order to get them to find the important plot cues he'd already written down.

Its also a slight weakness if it means that you can't explore a prospectively cool but unexpected development down the road, only because it doesn't fit the original boundaries of your already-written plan.

Nisarg

True, but that is a different weakness outside of the "Is it better to pre-plan a world or let it expand as the game expands" question. What you're pointing out is a railroading problem with a DM that could occur whether the setting is pre-planned or expansive with the game.

But I believe that what you've pointed out is a bigger problem with DM's then the problem I mentioned.

 

[philreed]

Here's my usual response when someone brings up running this type of game:

www.davidliss.com

Go there and read the first chapters to A Conspiracy of Paper and A Spectacle of Corruption. Both of those books (and, to a lesser extent, The Coffee Trader) are excellent sources of inspiration for any DM looking to run games featuring conspiracies, politics, intrigue, etc.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, and where is Josh Dyal? I thought for sure he'd be in this thread for a little conspiracy advice-giving goodness.....!

Here I am! Sorry I'm late! Of course, by the time I've shown up, I'm not sure there's much left to offer that isn't already on the table, or so it looks. But yeah, I'm a big conspiracy angle kinda guy, to the point where I'm not sure I know how to run anything else, to be honest with you.

Of course, that makes it difficult for me to describe what I do, because that's just what I do, and I don't know much of anything else, but let me try. First, some general points.

• Have you read Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft series of articles in Dragon? If you haven't, you really need to. They used to be available on the Wizards website, but Paizo --alas-- chose not to continue to host them. I've got all the text, at least, from the articles pasted into a single pdf document, but it's a bit on the largish side, so rather than post it here in the thread, I can email it if requested. OK, so Ray doesn't specifically address conspiracy theory games, but he does champion a GMing style that is focused on secrets and the gradual uncovering of them, and he has some good advice on how to come up with those secrets, and how to gradually unveil them. If you're a first time DM, he's also got a lot of great advice in there for every other aspect of DMing too. Highly recommended, and extremely practical "I can turn around and use this immediately" material.
• To summarize (with my own twists) on the whole angle of secrets, you need to come up with a bunch; one for practically every major element of the campaign setting you develop. If you have a major "homebase" town out in the woods, create a secret about it. If you have a handful of major NPCs; either villains or allies, create secrets about them. You can't have too many secrets. Not all of them are going to be (or could be) earth-shattering, but they should be intriguing at least. Keep all these secrets filed away on a list, or on seperate index cards or something.
• Whenever you run a session, pick a secret or two from this stash and drop clues about it. If it's a smallish secret, the clues can be obvious, or at least straightforward. It's OK to give these secrets away somewhat regularly, but for big secrets, you want to hold them closer to your chest for a while. Generally speaking, the longer between the first clue and the final discovery of the secret, the more satisfying the experience overall, as long as you make gradual progress.
• The best secrets and plot twists are often the ones you didn't even see coming, much less the players. I often play it straight for a while, and then --this is best if you're taking cues from the players actions, even-- developing secrets or double-crosses that I never anticipated, just because they players set me up so well to deliver one. Don't feel like you need to develop everything in advance. In fact, in general, the more you can keep open (to a certain extent) the better off you are. I certainly never plan too much farther than a few sessions or so ahead tops, other than to have a vague idea of the NPCs, their secrets, their motivations, and agendas. I use this information to plan out the next few sessions, naturally, but I don't like to look too far ahead.
• Read drnuncheon's Freeport story hour (I believe he still has the link in his sig, if not I can search for it for you) and any story hour by barsoomcore, but especially his Barsoom story hour. His link actually was just taken out of his sig so he could advertise his "Cut to the Chase" book, but again, if you can't find it, I can point you towards it. I keep it in my subscribed threads.

As to some specific advice on your game, give me a bit to reread your posts about the setting assumptions and whatnot a little better and I'll try to add something.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, and if you don't have the d20 Cthulhu book, you should pick that up too. It's got the best GMing advice, especially for this type of game, that I've ever seen. It's practically the Bible of my GMing style.

 

[barsoomcore]

My primary campaign, Barsoom, is very much based on unravelling conspiracies and figuring out who to trust and with what.

I'll echo the earlier advice: plant lots of clues. Even if you don't have a firm idea as to what they mean. Lots of weird stuff that doesn't get explained right away (if ever).

You need a certain number of red herrings. If EVERY clue you mention turns out to be important, the players stop paying attention because they know that everything you bring up is important. If some clues lead to rewards and some lead to (apparently) blind alleys, suddenly the ball on figuring out what's important is much more in their court, and that's more fun for them.

So throw lots of clues. Worry about the details later.

Another bit of advice: Trust your brain. Your brain is smarter than you are. It'll figure stuff out. This is why you shouldn't try to figure it all out right now. Just have LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of bad guys and let things settle out over time. Your brain will figure it all out if you give it time and keep feeding it crazy ideas.

The absolute KEY to my Barsoom campaign, like the big secret that lay behind all the other shenanigans, only came to me AFTER the third season. Suddenly it hit me: OF COURSE that's what's going on! It seemed so obvious.

So don't try to have it all worked out. Concentrate on generating good bad guys (you know what I mean) who can lurk offscreen, wacky goofballs screwing things up and just keep serving up the bad stuff.

Another point:

Not everybody knows what they're doing. One of the most important features of conspiracies is that they often lose track of their original motivation -- especially if they're taking a long time to get things done and have to rely on written words as their authority. Written works can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and groups often split into rival factions over different interpretations.

One thing I find lots of D&D campaigns do is have the "received" knowledge about the nature of the world be basically true. If the stories say that the Demon Lord Hoobajoob stole the angels and dragged them into the abyss a thousand years ago, then that's probably pretty much what happened. One quality I wanted Barsoom to possess was a complete absence of accurate information on what happened long ago. Everyone's got their own version and nobody's version agrees with anyone else's. So the myriad factions and secret groups on Barsoom are all working towards various agendas that may not have any bearing on the actual situation.

An example: the party recently discovered that the entire nation of Yshaka has begun performing a massive ritual known as the Great Spirit Dance. The Yshakans say they must do this because the end of the world is coming and the GSD will allow the People to survive and go to their blessed reward. But it turns out they may be getting manipulated by ancient gelid godlike beings, and that their ritual will in fact BRING ON the end of the world. Or possibly some insane goddess has convinced everyone else that the Yshakans are being manipulated by ancient godlike gelid beings, and in fact the GSD is completely harmless -- she just wants the Yshakans out of the way.

Nobody actually knows because the Great Spirit Dance hasn't been performed for two thousand years, and the only people who remember it are locked away in a crazed prison world sundering from the Living Realm by the uncrossable seethings of the Dream Worlds.

You know, your average situation in Barsoom. Gelid things, crazy goddesses and dance numbers.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You know, your average situation in Barsoom. Gelid things, crazy goddesses and dance numbers.

So, kind of like a Bollywood musical?

 

[barsoomcore]

Exactly!

Barsoom is a Lovecraftian Bollywood musical with dinosaurs, flintlocks, flying ironclads and crazed vampire goddesses.

 

[carpedavid]

The Great Pickle Incident

One of the things I've also found helpful is to seize upon the things that you've never intended to be meaningful, but the PCs somehow fixate upon. In my last campaign, the PCs were tracking down an evil cult that was financing some of their activity through selling of illegal drugs. While searching a room in one of the cult's safehouses, I mentioned that there was a barrel of pickels sitting off to one side.

I had just intended it as a bit of flavor - the room really served as a larder. However, the PCs became suspicious - was there anything in the barrel besides pickles? What kind of pickles were they? Etc...

At the time, I gave it no thought, but after the session, I decided that the evil cult was smuggling the drugs through the town in barrels of pickles. In the next session, they were wandering through the town bazzar, and one of the players asked if any of the merchants were selling pickles. Bingo.

After tracking the carts of various merchants througout the city, they finally spotted one heading toward a suspicious location and intercepted it. When they searched the barrels, they, of course, found a cache of drugs. To this day, they think I had it planned all along.

The best part of the experience, however, was when one of the players, upon discovering the drugs, exclaimed, "Ha! I knew it!"

 

[Tinner]

Do yourself a favor and find a copy of "The Enemy Within" campaign for the Warhammer RPG.
If you want to see an excellent take on "fantasy conspiracy" adventures you won't find many better than this.