Le Cirque Macabre

[Jason13]

Hi,

Firstly I must state that I do not own Conspiracy of Shadows or any of the supplements for it yet.  This is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue as from everything I have heard on The Forge and on the Sons of Kryos Podcast this game sounds very cool!  So I am looking to buy the game this month.

The question I want to put to you all on this forum is how well do you think my campaign idea would work with this game.  My campaign is called Le Cirque Macarbe and is about a travelling Circus and Freakshow travelling across a plague torn Europe.  The campaign was originally intended to be written with the D6 Fantasy rules in mind, but after reading about the horror possibilities of Conspiracy of Shadows I'm not so sure.

Basically the PC's are outcasts from normal society (think the TV show Carnivale) and they could play such varied individuals as a Swarthy Knife Thrower, Twisted Midget Jester, Tattoed Strong Man or Sultry Dancing Girl etc.  They travel from place to place, on the surface to entertain the people they encounter and of course rob them blind.  The places they encounter and the people they meet would provide a lot of good adventures alone, but the central character is the Plague. 

Originally the Plague was to be the Black Death, as my campaign was to be set in Europe during the Dark Ages.  The idea was that a conspiracy had at great cost obtained Pandora's Box for using against their enemies and it had been foolishly opened releasing death throughout the land.  The owner of Le Cirque Macarbe along with the PC's was to be a member of a seperate conspiracy who had decided to stop the outbreak and close the box.  Thus retaining it for future use, a fact that the PC's would have no knowledge of, which would provide a nice twist at the climax of the campaign.

With my very limited knowledge of Conspiracy of Shadows and no access to any books yet, I think this could work, I would however welcome any comments or questions about whether this setting could work well with this game.

Regards

Jason

[Keith Senkowski]

Jason,

That sounds pretty fucking cool man. I see no reason why you couldn't run it with Conspiracy of Shadows.  I know of at least one other group that ran a carnival based game.  Your campaign sounds pretty much dead on for the game.  If ya got some specific questions (like how shit might be handled and what not) feel free to shoot them at me.

You can check out the rules free on the site here and take a look at the erratta here and I just started up a dynamic FAQ here.

[Jason13]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the comments I kinda figured I might be on the right track with the reviews of your game that I have seen.  So I will be ordering the Hardback revised and the companion in print form in the next couple of day's and then I can take advantage of the free P&P before Lulu 11 comes in.  Until it arrives I will use the links that you kindly posted to roughly sketch out the campaign framework.

Regards

Jason