So...

I've been thinking a lot lately about roleplaying that uses conspiracies as the basis of antagonism. And I'm interested in what folks might have to say on the following:

• Years ago, the sections for the gamemaster on mercenary, spy, and mystery scenario creation in the Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes rulebook were the definitive text for me on the topic. The author, Michael Stackpole, suggests starting with a simple crime, and working and reworking the details until sufficient complexity and mystery has been introduced. My question: is there a similar strong text on the topic of architecting conspiracies specific to roleplaying? Suppressed Transmission, from what I've seen, looks like content suggestions. I'm interested in text about architecting the structure of a conspiracy.

Or perhaps there's a news article or chapter in a book or something, not specific to roleplaying but worthwhile nonetheless? An explication of how a conspiracy functions? How a conspiracy collapses?

• From the perspective of an outsider (a player character) what definitionally distinguishes a conspiracy from a mystery? Is it just a question of scale and involvement? Is it the transmission of money throughout the structure? What are the required elements?

• I'm also interested in success stories with conspiracies in actual play. How did you handle the conspiracy, and what positive impact on play was achieved?

Thanks,

Paul

1. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein has some cool bits on forming a resistance movement, which is basically a conspiracy. Also check out Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (assuming, that is, that I'm thinking of the right book).

2. My take is that a conspiracy has to involve multiple participants who are motivated by a common goal, and use subversive or secretive means to further that goal. A mystery, on the other hand, is largely circumstantial, and has participants who are motivated by various, sometimes conflicting goals. Tracking down a mystery could lead to a conspiracy, and vice versa. I think that common secret goal is what sets a conspiracy apart.

3. I got nothing.

For me, the best advice in gaming can be found in GURPS Illuminati, though Ken Hite's two how-to-run horror books (Nightmares of Mine and GURPS Horror 3e) have a great deal to recommend for someone running a conspiratorial game.

I find that the ebst way to get into conspiracies is to read about them. And for tht I recommend many of the books written by and edited by Russ Kick.

I was about to say, GURPS Illuminati and GURPS The Prisoner. Illuminati is a bit weak, but it does talk about how conspiracies are structured, how they subvert or control other organizations, and how to map this out; it also talks about ways to get PCs involved, cluing them in to the conspiracy and keeping them guessing.

GURPS The Prisoner, on the other hand, has a handy flowchart that can represent the plot of every episode of The Prisoner, which makes it handy for sculpting byzanitine schemes that PCs can get involved in.

as for non-RPG materials, you can glean some information from several of Robert Anton Wilson's nonfiction works. he talks a bit about the way subordinates adjust the data they collect to fit the expectations of their superiors, which means that the more levels there are to a hierarchy (and the stronger the hierarchy's ideals and preconceptions are,) the more ignorant the powers at the top become -- which, I think, is the main downfall of a conspiracy; they are operating on incorrect data.

of course, this all mainly applies to "big conspiracies"; if you're talking about small groups with more focused goals, what destroys the conspiracy is the revelation of the conspiracy's secrets, which mainly occurs through relationships between one or more conspirators and outsiders; someone spills the beans to a girlfriend or sibling.

another factor would be schisms or conflicts with other conspiracies.

what distinguishes mysteries from conspiracies? not much. murders and the like often involve small conspiracies: one or more murderers, accomplices, people covering up for them... an actual global conspiracy, likewise, is itself a huge mystery -- built out of several smaller mysteries. if you solve all of the small mysteries, these clues can be used to solve the big one. a pure mystery, like a scientific mystery or a murder so old that none of the conspirators are left alive, doesn't seem to be a conspiracy, because no people are involved... so I'd say that the difference between the two is that in a conspiracy, some people know the secret and have a vested interest to keep it secret.

[ edited for spelling ]

1] Conspiracy X has a sourcebook for conspiracy-building, Sub Rosa. This does contain a discussion of the hows and why's of conspiracies, and does provide some terms by which the structure of the conspiratorial group can be expressed. On the down side, I don't think you'd get too much value out of it as a single product.

That deals with formally establishing conspiracies as entities rather than a mode of play with exploits conspiracies. I think one danger to consider in the latter case is what precisely we mean by conspiracy. Theres a huge difference between say the Powder Plot to blow up parliament and the vast, hidden hand of a New World Order-style conspiracy. Or perhaps lets say, there are conspiracies and Conspiracies.

This has to be addressed in order to consider any 'real world' analogies to fictional conspiracies. The nearest would likely be comparisons to religious and political sects, segments, factions, fractions, and tendencies, each of which describes a relationship to a central doctrine. An actual covert conspiracy in, say, a government can plausibly be considered a fraction within that governemt, possessed of a different, but probably similar, interpretation of its doctrine. Full bore subversive conspiracies might functionally be a sect of an external doctrine.

Most of these organs would collapse due to: erroneous public predictions, being publicly discredited, covert persecution, infighting, or simply failing to recruit new members and thus falling to temporal attrition.

2] IMO, the key is deception. That is, any act X may be a tragedy, or an accident, or in some degree mysterious. But it only falls in the conspiracy camp if it is perpetrated as a deliberate deception, or is purposefully concealed through deception. This is also why rveealing the existance of a bona fide conspiracy can be its demise: it implicates all its members in an ongoing attempt to decieve, rendering its members liable for other sanction.

3] My main concern about using conspiracies in play is that their formless nature tends to make them more menacing than they may actually be. Also, if the conspiracy is covert, and the players are not privy to its secrets, all they can do is react. This is the danger of the conspiracy IMO: it can easily overshadow the protagonists because the protagonists can initiate no action against it. I think therefore the best route is o make the players insiders to some degree, so that they can particpate in the cloak and dagger rather than merely discover the bodies afterward.

I would check out the reference section of a decent bigbox type chain bookstore( Barnes and Noble or Borders) . That section tends to hold various "writers guide" type books for various genres. Some of them tend to be very good, and the mystery/techno genre ones should give some good ideas, although adapting them to rpging may take a bit of work.

Murder in Harmony, an old TSR module for their Gangbusters game, is a good example of an early attempt to produce a classic Prohibition era criminal conspiracy, and is worth the $6 or so it sells for online. Try The Dragon's Trove site.

For historical espionage type stuff, look into "The Game of Foxes" (German ww2 spying against the US and UK, and counterespionage by the Western Allies, especially the imfamous Section 20 (XX) program by the Brits), "The Red Ochestra" (ww2 Soviet intelligence networks in the Belgium and France), and "Spying for America"(a history of US intelligence activities from the AWI through the late Cold War).

In fiction, start with John LeCarre. His Cold War British spy thrillers are a real hallmark in the genre, and are decidedly different from the sort of James Bondian gadgets and babes action thrillers that make it to the big screen. For that matter, check out the BBC miniseries "The Cambridge Spies" which is about the recruitment and careers of the four big upper class Brits who ended up working inside the UK's intelligence organizations for the Soviets during the height of the Cold War. Tim Powers has also written a LeCarre/HP Lovecraft homage callled "Declare" that you might want to check out as well.

Also, several alt-history fiction pieces are out there that are worth checking out: "SSGB" by ( I think) Len Deighton, "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" by Harry Turtledove, and"Archangel" and "Fatherland" by Robert Harris.

Oddly, you might also take a look at the White wolf stuff. Despite mechanical issues with their wod games, and despite how I've commonly seen them played, all of them are somewhat based on the idea that the norms don't know what is going on, and that simultaneously, the powerful critters are waging factional war on one another.

Best regards,
Robert

I had the seed of an idea a while ago for a game where the players play the heads of various rival factions of a New World Order type organization; basically, a game where you could play The Cigarette Smoking Man.

No mechanics yet, but the idea so far is that each player would first come up with their own organization and construct their own elaborate conspiracy, designed specifically to conflict with one or more of the other players' agendas. Then there would be some sort of resource that can be spent for actions to further your agenda, block other players' actions, and also to create lesser characters (as minions, 'monkeywrenches', or even both) on the fly.

The idea started as an image in my head of two old guys are playing chess in Washington Square Park, and the outcome of the game determines the course of a civil war going on in some obscure 3rd world country.

-- Ben

Wow...lots of stuff to think about. Thanks. And two questions:

• John...any specific Robert Anton Wilson recommendations? (Essays in collections preferred over whole books.) A coworker of mine is way into him. I just need to know what to ask to borrow.
• What conclusion can be drawn from contrasting the lack of reported actual play success with the relatively large amount published game material about using conspiracies in play?

Paul

p.s. Ben, I quite like the macrocosm/microcosm aesthetic of your chess game idea. The question in my mind is whether the game would feature a mechanical correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, or whether one or the other, the chess game or the civil war, would be color commentary on the other?

I'm curious, Paul. Where I sit, a conspiracy just seems like another mystery to be uncovered. Wouldn't Stackpole's text work?

EDIT: to answer your second question, well lack of reporting could mean only lack of reporting, but it seems to me that when it comes to conspiracies a lot of attention is paid to the structure of the conspiracy and other nuances of it and pays little attention to how in play all of that stuff is unknown to the uninitiated character and the point is to find all of that out, hopefully with something going on where finding out about said conspiracy is pretty important to the characters.

FURTHER EDIT: Hmmm... lopks like John already said what I had said, more or less. I guess you could call any crime a conspiracy of one, although that is by definition not a conspiracy, but just go with it for a bit.

I would recommend the book and film Rosemary's Baby. You can get an idea of what a conspiracy is, I think. At first, everything seemed normal, and then she found out there were these people who were up to no good and she had no idea how far it went, who was involved or where she and her baby could be safe. (Chances are good you already know the ending to Rosemary's Baby, but try to forget it if you read or watch it. It'll work better)

3, The inherent problem with running a conspiracy based campaign is that people involved in conspiracies tend to lie. A lot. If the players are being lied to by everyone in the campaign, they quickly learn not to trust NPCs, and eventually can become paralyzed by the inability to act based upon reliable data. My advice? a) Establish a character or organization early on that the players can absolutely trust. b) Make certain that any seemingly trustworthy sources who, in reality aren't, are recognizable by the player in such a way that they can still roleplay a naive and trusting character.

The biggest problem I've seen in Grand Conspiracy games is that so much of the fun comes from the sense of mystery and hidden grandeur that the final revelation is often anti-climactic.

Look at how boring The X-Files became once it was no longer feasible to hide the show's Grand Conspiracy from the audience. Babylon 5 had a similar problem with the revelation of the Cosmic Conspiracy involving the Shadows and the Vorlons -- although they had other factors which kept the storyline interesting even after the end of the conspiracy's mystery.

I've found two techniques have worked when I've used Grand Conspiracies in my games.

The first technique involves having a "single knot" which, when unravelled, will completely decimate the Grand Conspirators' power base, preferrably in such a way that the players are able to immediately utilize their understanding as a tool for overthrowing the Grand Conspiracy. For example, in one of my campaigns, the Great Secret of the Grand Conspiracy centered on the imprisonment of a Cthulhuian sort of elder godling, and when the player-character unearthed their final understanding of the Great Secret they suddenly knew how information they'd gathered in previous games would enable them to release this imprisoned entity, which not only instantly depowered the conspirators but wreaked havoc most satisfyingly when the unleashed godling took revenge on its former captors. In another, players discovered that all the "cannon fodder" of the Grand Conspirators were held in check by way of a coerced chemical addiction with lethal withdrawl symptoms, so while they ran damage control on the Grand Conspirators' nefarious plots, they spent time developing an antidote to the chemical addiction, then impregnated the atmosphere with that antidote, and within two days every one of the Grand Conspirators' hidden bases had been overthrown by suddenly freed underlings.

The second technique involves having player-characters intimately involved by way of bloodlines and lovers in the Grand Conspiracy, preferrably in such a way that the player-characters can attempt to convert loved ones into switching sides so that it switches smoothly from mystery of conspiracy to interpersonal dramatics. (This is somewhat what happened in Babylon 5 when Sheridan and Delenn found themselves contested centers of interest for the Grand Conspirators.) For example, one of my campaigns focused on WWII superheroes who had become time-displaced into a Grand Conspiracy modern day setting not unlike the nasty world of the T.V. series The X-Files or the RPG Corps. Two of the heroes discovered that the psionic ubermensch used as an enforcer by the Grand Conspiracy was also their son, whose nastiness came in part from the trauma of losing his parents without explanation, while another hero discovered that the seemingly deific technology used to spy on others was really an advanced variation on her own super-science and therefore within her abilities to subvert.

Actually, a third technique occurs to me, but I think it would end the campaign as well : if the heroes get ahold of the MacGuffin which empowers the Grand Conspiracy, as happens in the film Sneakers. Of course, that would make for a nice origin story transition from modern day setting to space opera setting or superhero setting or even modern day dark fantasy setting . . .

Doctor Xero

Doctor Xero wrote:
The first technique involves having a "single knot" which, when unravelled, will completely decimate the Grand Conspirators' power base, preferrably in such a way that the players are able to immediately utilize their understanding as a tool for overthrowing the Grand Conspiracy. For example, in one of my campaigns, the Great Secret of the Grand Conspiracy centered on the imprisonment of a Cthulhuian sort of elder godling, and when the player-character unearthed their final understanding of the Great Secret they suddenly knew how information they'd gathered in previous games would enable them to release this imprisoned entity, which not only instantly depowered the conspirators but wreaked havoc most satisfyingly when the unleashed godling took revenge on its former captors. In another, players discovered that all the "cannon fodder" of the Grand Conspirators were held in check by way of a coerced chemical addiction with lethal withdrawl symptoms, so while they ran damage control on the Grand Conspirators' nefarious plots, they spent time developing an antidote to the chemical addiction, then impregnated the atmosphere with that antidote, and within two days every one of the Grand Conspirators' hidden bases had been overthrown by suddenly freed underlings.

Hey Paul,

It occurs to me I might have something to contribute, as most of my games tend to be conspiracy laden (or at least have before I came to the Forge).

1) The thing about conspiracies is that by their very nature they're unknowable. Who cares how they work internally, or whats going on (unless your PC's are on the inside, in which case it suddenly matters). They should engender paranoia. It sometimes even helps if the conspiracy seems slightly implausible. Paranoia is the name of the game.

Of course it's more complex like that - are the PC's going to be unraveling the conspiracy entirely? In which case you'll need to have an idea of its structure so they can do that. are they going to join it? Or are they just trying to thwart one of its goals? In my last Fading Suns game the PCs weren't trying to destroy the great conspiracy, they were just trying to foil one of its many many plots.

2) I'd say the difference is that a mystery is an event, a conspiracy is an entity, if that makes sense. I don't think that I can elucidate it better than that. Conspiracies are going to be surrounded by mysteries - they'll leave them in their wake.

3) Like I said earlier in my last game the focus was on stopping one of the conspiracy's many plots. Let the players know early on that there's some shadowy organization opposing them - the classic way of doing this is to have a single "villian" opposing the PCs who, when bested, in his dying breath mutters something like "this is bigger than you know! They aren't going to stop just because I'm dead." If you've played the PC game Far Cry (SPOILER: DONT READ REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH) the final bad guy's declaration of "You think killing me will make a difference? They're always watching, they already know what's happened" is a good way of going 'bout it.

For the most part in my game this engendered paranoia. Players start jumping at shadows - "was that the conspiracy?" It works well for sim games I think. As far as other ways of doing it - if the players are going to join I'd have them have no idea that they're part of a conspiracy at first - they're just working for some guy or whatever, eventually they meet his superior bla bla bla.

JD