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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2041995" data-attributes="member: 812">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.</blockquote>

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