The Conspiracy Style of Gaming

[jeregenest]

head58 posted on running conspiracies as games. I was originally going to reply as a comment, but I decided this was better off as a post of its on.


Conspiracies are not as hard to do, in my experience, as people make them out to be. Mainly because it is human nature to want to see conspiracies, and gamers doubly so, and the players will find connections, or create them, where there might have been none before.

Take my Pantellos game as an example. I started the game with the following points:

• History (and physics) was a lie/tissue thin fabrication that represented the eon old battle between two forces of ultra-terrestrials, which were represented for simplicity sake as the serpents versus the spiders
  
• The major governments of the world (or agents thereof) had known bits and pieces and versions of this for a long time.
  
• Pantellos (the players outfit) was an attempt by one splinter to break away from the majority of opinion on how this war should be handled within the secret masters of US intelligence.

Mix in the players and voila. Endless hours (years) of conspiracy fun ensues. Many of the key elements came later. For example, we ended up making plants really important. I would have ever thought about this until after reading Botany of Desire, but it fit perfectly and actually was helpful to explain (metaphorically) this whole plot line I had going with DNA/biodata. Which by that point was one of the tools of defining reality. This than gave a framework for the players fascination with drugging themselves with spider venom. Which then allowed me to bring in shamanistic interpretations. The list goes on. And it was all possible because of the players ran with the stuff I introduced. Oh sure, I did my fair amount of preparation, but most of that ended up being on the day-to-day missions. The big conspiracy stuff ends up coming remarkably easy once you lay the groundwork.

I’ve used this method all over the place, from Ars Magica to Nobilis, and I think its probably the easiest way to run the style. What I find that works is start with a few strong anchors, keep them firmly in your mind as a gm so when introducing something new ask yourself “what anchors can I attach this to”. And then the players even if they don’t know the specifics of the anchors (which the won’t) will see their outlines and end up associating stuff like mad to what the perceive is going on. You as GM steal the best, modify most everything else, and use some of it as dead alley blinds. The players think you’re a genius and everyone has fun.

Comments

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

The players think you’re a genius and everyone has fun.

For a while, sure, but for how long can such a game be sustained? That's the real question.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Two years before everyone starts moving away on you. If they don't move, potentially longer.

What these games have (I'd say most good games have this aspect) is a need for the players to have continuity. You can't loose half of your players and expect the game to continue. Add in the craziness of having kids and moving several tmes and games just get jinxed and need to be wrapped up.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is how it's done, no question, and while I think it's not quite as easy as you're making it out here, it's clear you have the knack for it. Unknown USA was run from the same Pantellos playbook. But like Jeff and Chris both ask, the $64 question is: how long can you sustain it?

When you discover history is a lie, what's your motivation for going in to work the next day and providing security analysis for an oil company? Which was something that did come up in game with Simon in Pantellos.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

That is when you shift the game focus. Which we would have done if we hadn't ended the game during the seige on Vanatu due to group issues.

Most good fiction in the fantasies of history/conspiracy style have a point where the protaonist shifts from being an investigator to a doer. The problem with the 90s model is that the X-fiels never, ever successfully did that.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Most good fiction in the fantasies of history/conspiracy style have a point where the protagonist shifts from being an investigator to a doer.

A lesson that far too many authors and even more screen & TV writers and directors (especially these days) refuse to learn. Passive heroes seem all the rage these days and that's ultimately boring. Thankfully, in any even remotely successful RPG, the PCs rapidly start becoming doers,typically, IME, well before there have complete information.

[bryant]

The teen heroes game run by Carl Rigney in California had this problem. The first round of heroes figured out that things were pretty deep; by the time a couple of years passed they felt unable to continue as symbolic heroes for the UN while investigating the deep darkness.

We wound up rotating in a new set of teen heroes. The original set quickly made up rules to the effect of "and you can't stick around after you hit 18," which was a convenient reason for them to go off and do other things.

Alas, the new set never really clicked, but I think this was not a problem with the basic concept as much as it was a problem with player friction.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I think this style of gaming is even more reliant on group dynamics than your average game.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

In my experience, the sort of associations and linkages players create are one of the most wonderful parts of gaming. In one long-running homebrew urban fantasy game I was in, the players created an impressively idiosyncratic (and wonderfully fun) synthesis between Voodoo, Chinese Taoist mysticism, and traditional lore about various supernatural creatures like vampires, that held together impressively well and formed the basis for the PCs' understanding of the supernatural.

I don't think you need to have conspiracies to make such things happen, they seem intrinsic in any game that involves esoteric mysteries that the PCs do not fully understand. Conspiracy games then seem to be a subset of games that focus on complex mysteries.