 |  Searching For The Truth |
Hints and suggestions on how to design and run mystery and conspiracy games in any genre, with ideas for inventing cunning plots, using historical and fictional sources, and how to create the right atmosphere of fear and paranoia in your own home.
What would happen if a covert organisation wanted to take over the running of your favourite gaming magazine? Chances are you wouldn't even notice right away. So you might realise there had been a change of editorial staff, but that happens from time to time. But gradually, you would come to realise that all was not how it should be in the arcane offices. There would be no more letters offering (constructive) criticism of the last issue, only certain 'approved' products would make it to the review pages, and the articles would be designed not to improve the quality of your games, but rather to covertly indoctrinate you into their way of thinking.
But who are they, and what do they hope to achieve? How organised are they? If they can take over a magazine so easily, what else can they accomplish? How much have they infected our lives already? And what if we don't agree with their agenda, what can we do about it?
If you complain too vociferously, do you find yourself being stalked by shadowy men in black coats, spied on while you go about your daily business? Will you awaken one night to the sound of your cupboards and drawers being rifled, and next minute find yourself running for your life pursued by an enemy you know nothing about for reasons you can't even begin to understand?
| If you're looking to expand the political background to your campaign, you should look back to 'The Power and the Glory' in arcane 12; for ideas on how memory manipulation can be used to induce player paranoia, check out 'Mutations of the Mind' in arcane 13. |
Okay, so that's not really going to happen, but that doesn't stop it being possible. And it is the very possibility that is so compelling. The thought that our lives could be turned upside down in the blink of an eye, that we could become embroiled in a sinister plot that strikes at the very heart of society and threatens the lives of everyone on the planet.
But we're not talking about a simple matter of reporting to the authorities and saving the day here. For a start, the authorities could well be the enemy. At the very least, they are unlikely to believe a word you say. No, for now you're on your own. But before you go any further, you need to know more about what you're up against. You need to know who they are, how powerful they are, and what they want. Then you can work out how to stop them.
Most of us find the concept of conspiracies intriguing, if a little disturbing. In the modern world, where information is so readily accessed and stored, it's more than likely that there are companies and organisations out there who know more about you and your family than you do. For most of us, that fact has little or no impact on our lives. What we get up to is unlikely to be of interest to a multinational corporation funding a revolution on the other side of the globe, or a government department covertly studying the remains of a possible alien spacecraft. But for your average Joe character in an RPG, mixing it with shadowy corporate types or government agents is part of the daily routine, which means you better start watching your back, because you never know when you're going to open the wrong file, or see something you shouldn't. For people who have a habit of being in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time, the chances of getting caught up in something sinister are, at the very least, better than average.
So, having established that your characters are just the sort of people who would likely poke their noses where other noses fear to poke, and thereby attract some dangerously unwelcome attention, you want to construct the kind of earth-shuddering conspiracy that would strike fear into the heart of the most foolhardy player.
Or do you? Sure enough, you want a campaign that's going to hold the players' attention, stretch their minds and challenge their roleplaying ability, but that needn't necessarily involve nail-biting suspense and edge of seat thrills. A campaign based around conspiracy theories can be played successfully in any number of styles with equal success.
If a touch of horror is your preferred gaming poison, then the potential for unearthing dastardly schemes to bring creatures of unutterable malevolence into the lives of mortals lurks in the shadows, awaiting your call. A conspiracy designed for a horror game might be run by Cthulhoid cultists, or dedicated followers of Tzeentch, devoted to the cause of bringing society to its knees at the hands/claws/tentacles of their otherworldly masters. Battling supernatural forces whose power you can't hope to match, driven slowly insane by the sheer horror of it all, this style of campaign is not for the faint hearted. You would need to play up the relative weakness of the characters, the awesome, alien power of their enemies, and the terrifying scope of the consequences should the conspirators succeed in their scheme. One of the toughest challenges when refereeing a campaign of such intensity is in convincing the players of the dire peril their characters face. Players often find it too easy to dismiss the threat, assuming that the referee wouldn't dream of allowing the conspiracy to succeed as it would disrupt the game world too much. Don't let them get away with that sort of intransigence. Be bold, even if it means the minions of darkness taking control of an entire city, or wiping out a sizeable chunk of the population. One mistake shouldn't mean irreperable disaster, but it should at least let them know that you're serious when you say the world is in grave danger. And who knows, if the conspiracy succeeds and your world is overrun by the minions of chaos, then you could find your campaign moving in entirely new and exciting directions.
If, however, you prefer a more earthly campaign, then a more traditional approach would be a variant on the modern thriller, where the opponents are almost as dangerous and equally single-minded, but at least they're human. Possibilities include a secret branch of the government, the anonymous owners of a powerful corporation, or a quasi-religious group, involved in controversial scientific experiments, such as advanced genetic engineering to create 'supersoldiers' with enhanced strength and endurance, tests involving mind control, telepathy, telekinesis and other psychic abilities, the creation of human-animal or human-alien hybrids, cloning, the development of chemical or viral 'weapons', unheard-of advances in virtual reality, robotic or cyber-technology, or establishing secretive first contact with previously undiscovered lifeforms. Characters might be federal agents with a taste for the bizarre (sound familiar), or investigative reporters with hazardous curiosity, but they could just as easily be innocent civillians - office clerks, computer programmers, postal workers, games designers - who just happen to have the misfortune to stumble upon a sequence of events that will shake the foundations of their lives. The contemporary or near-future setting which this sort of campaign demands has the advantage that its subject-matter is familiar to all of us, and the potential threat is that much more credible and immediate. If you know your players well enough you might even focus on their personal fears. If you have players who find the thought of secret service agents using alien technology to control the minds of the populace particularly disturbing, then why not use that as the basis of your campaign?
| conspiracy n. A secret plan to commit a crime or do harm, often for political ends. |
| (Concise Oxford Dictionary) |
But the prospect of playing in such an intense and psychological campaign might not appeal to you. If you would rather play more of an action-adventure in the James Bond mode, in which wealthy billionaires plot to ransom the world so they can become multi-billionaires, then there's no reason why that too can't provide the basis for an engrossing campaign. Madness, or at the very least extreme eccentricity, should be the watchwords for your conspirators in this type of campaign. And larger than life villains require heroes of similar stature. Ideally suited to the adventure style are spies, secret agents, and millionaire adventurers with nothing better to do with their time than save the world. There's certainly plenty of inspiration available, just watch any Bond movie, or read books by the likes of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.
And if you want to take the idea of a conspiracy to its furthest extreme, either because you don't have the time to set up a protracted campaign or simply because you want to play it just for laughs, why not pay a visit to Paranoia's Alpha Complex, where everybody really is out to get everybody else, the average character has a life expectancy calculated in minutes, and the Computer in most definitely your friend.
But no matter what style you decide suits you best, any good conspiracy campaign must contain certain key elements. First, it must gave the durability of a campaign, as a single adventure won't allow you the space to develop the required atmosphere, to build up the tension and gradually reveal the true scope of the plot the characters have got themselves involved in. Second, the players must be drawn into the conspiracy in such a way that they don't realise the nature and extent of what they've stumbled upon, until it's too late. Third, the conspiracy itself must be utterly believable, in terms of the internal logic of the game world, requiring a defined agenda as well as the resources and personnel needed to have a genuine chance of succeeding in its dastardly scheme. We shall be taking a look at each of these elements, as well as suggesting further ways to prey upon that common sense of paranoia that seems to affect all seasoned gamers (at least, it seems to affect the ones who play my games; can't think why).
| The term 'Cabal' derives from the members of a five-man committee of ministers under Charles II, whose surnames happened to begin with the letters C.A.B.A.L. |
The hardest part of any adventure is in coming up with a credible reason for involving the player characters, without resorting to cliched tavern meetings or midnight calls from a man named Johnson. If you're planning on developing a world-threatening conspiracy, you need to start small. The characters first insight into the workings of the organisation behind the conspiracy should provide them with enough information to get them intrigued, give them a sense that there is more to this adventure than meets the eye, but nothing more. The last thing you want to do is have the players unravel the plot while its still in its infancy.
If you don't have characters who are government agents, investigators or journalists, any one of whom could reasonably be investigating a strange occurrence such as an unexplained murder, a kidnapping, or the sighting of unidentified aircraft, then you might like to involve one or more of the characters directly, either by having one of the victims be a member of a character's family, or have a character as a witness, albeit one who saw very little.
Take great care over your trigger event, because this is the hook you use to draw the players in. It needs to be shocking and immediate, dynamic enough to grab the players attention, yet on the surface appear to have a relatively mundane and straightforward explanation, whilst at the same time possess a certain enigmatic quality, enabling the gradual realisation of something deeper, something hidden and unexplained, something that requires further investigation.
Typically, the dramatic incident that first attracts the characters' attention might be a crime or apparent crime, such as the apparently motiveless murder of a prominent scientist working on an AIDS vaccine, a fire at an old warehouse, or the unexplained disappearance of an outspoken politician. But though it seems mysterious to begin with, evidence soon surfaces which appears to explain the case to everyone's satisfaction. Traces of crack cocaine point to an addict looking to feed their habit, the charred remains of a vagrant and the presence of cigar stubs suggest the fire was started accidentally, and the politician reappears a few days later looking better than he has in months. But then someone notices a few cracks appearing in these apparently open and shut cases. Ballistic reports indicate that the bullets that killed the scientist were fired from a silenced gun, and come to mention it didn't the three wounds seem a little too precise for a crazed drug addict? Dig a little deeper and you might find that your scientist had been working very long hours of late, but his work on the vaccine had hardly progressed at all. A closer examination of the warehouse might reveal unusual scrape marks on the floor, leading to the discovery of a secret meeting room under the warehouse. Abandoned now, but for how long? And as for our politician, he doesn't appear so outspoken these days, in fact one might even suggest he seems like a new man...
These are just a few potential starting points for your campaign, based on the simple premise that things are never as simple as they may at first appear. To add an extra touch of personal involvement, the scientist might be an old colleague or tutor of one of the characters, the dead vagrant could turn out to be a relative who had hit hard times, while the politician's wife might be an old friend, or possibly even a lover. By tying the trigger event to a particular character, you should not only be guaranteed to stimulate the player's interest, but also that they will have a vested concern in seeing the campaign out to its conclusion.
This is not the sort of campaign where you can just lead them along, rolling random encounters and letting NPC associates do all the hard work. The players have to really want to become involved, be keen to get to the bottom of the mystery you've put before them, and piece together the jigsaw of your conspiracy for themselves, because its only when you've got their full attention and commitment that you can begin to feel the creeping paranoia, the genuine fear and bewilderment that can make this sort of campaign special.
But before you can even begin to run a campaign based on intrigue, conspiracy, and paranoia, you need to establish a credible background. Assuming you've settled on a suitable game system and style, the next thing to do is to set up a challenging foe, an organisation so elusive, insidious, and ruthlessly determined to achieve its goals that it will stop at nothing to ensure success. We're not talking about a group of college students planning a protest march here. This is the real thing. In order to have sufficient impact on your campaign, the central conspiracy must have the potential to radically alter it, and in order to gain the players' full commitment to stopping it, they must have plenty to lose if it succeeds. And, as I've already mentioned, it must also stand a very good chance of succeeding.
This style of campaign requires planning. To begin with, you have to decide on the nature of the organisation whose ambitions will form the basis of the campaign. What you need is an organisation that is powerful enough to secretly manipulate the lives of ordinary people, but has a thirsting for greater influence and the resources at its disposal to enable it to achieve that ambition.
In a modern setting, secret services or covert branches of government departments such as the CIA, KGB, or part of the military would have access to the sort of information, funds, and the resources to make formidable opponents. The near future provides the referee with scheming megacorporations, making any cyberpunk setting ideal, while Ben Elton's Stark and Gridlock illustrate the power of international corporations to exert considerable influence on our daily lives even now. There have been secret societies and cults with hidden agendas throughout history, and the realities of sorcery and demons in a fantasy or horror campaign such as Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, or the World of Darkness would make them even more dangerous.
Depending on the nature of your campaign, different types of organisations could be pre-eminent. In a world with a powerful church, characters such as Cardinal Richelieu or Primate Annias from David Eddings' Elenium have the power and personality to be admirable foes, their reputation and authority effectively placing them beyond the accusations of lowly individuals such as the PCs. Criminal masterminds such as Moriarty, or Marvel Comics' Kingpin can similarly use their undoubted influence and wealth to undermine society's fragile foundations, while the modern obsession with all things extraterrestrial could be vindicated if the world were infiltrated by shape-changing or mind-controlling alien invaders such as Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters or the infamous Body Snatchers.
As you can see, a conspiracy can take many forms, though perhaps the most intriguing, and certainly the most disturbing, is that which infiltrates the dominant political power directly. A senior politician who is also a member of an anarchist cult, or a leading corporate boss who manipulates members of the government and thus has effective control over certain policies. Try to avoid the temptation of infesting your campaign with too many conspiracies, though. Its one thing to have the players believing that everyone is against them, that they have enemies round every corner and in every government department, but that needn't necessarily be true. And even if its is, those people should be working towards them same ends, with the same leaders, that is unless you want your campaign to descend into farce a la Paranoia, where everyone really is a member of a conspiracy and out to shanghai everyone else.
Although your conspiracy should initially appear faceless to the clueless players, you should give some thought to the important individuals who form the upper echelons of the organisation, and the people who work for them. From the wealthy benefactor through the corrupt politician to the expendable lackey, everyone will have their own reasons for being a part of the conspiracy, whether it be greed, blind ambition, ideological conviction or fear. Divide your conspirators into two groups: those the players are hoping to bring down, and those they will hopefully stymie, but whose faces they'll never get to see. That way the players have opponents they will come to know and hate, people they can look forward to defeating, while at the same time the true scale of the conspiracy will remain a mystery.
| A large number of films, particularly science fiction, involve conspiratorial themes. Some you might find useful are: The Net, Strange Days, Roswell, Total Recall, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the Alien trilogy. |
Though their work will undoubtedly involve a vast range of different activities, each organisation is motivated by one primary agenda, the force that drives them to act contrary to the prevailing ideals of their world. Again the nature and membership of the organisation, and the style of campaign you are running, will dictate to some extent the sort of objectives your villains are striving for, but the following are a few suggested goals sought by conspirators.
The acquisition of wealth, whether it be for the personal benefit of a select group of individuals or the treasury of an entire nation, is perhaps the most basic form of ambition. These people have no desire to change the world for good or bad, beyond improving their own status. Of course, in a world where money equals power, that wealth would undoubtedy open new doors for the lucky winners, and they may well try to disguise the true nature of their primitive ambition by dressing it up in some political or theological ideology, but in all these conspirators are really after is a fat load of cash.
Increased political power, perhaps with the ultimate aim of world domination, is the popular choice, while merely attempting to safeguard or consolidate a political position may be sufficient for the less ambitious. These people probably believe with all sincerity that their idea of an perfect society should be adopted throughout the world, to the obvious benefit of all concerned. Whether they be capitalist, communist, federalist, utopian, or members of a fundamentalist religious sect, these dangerous groups are driven by a zealous fervour and faith in their cause that makes them ruthless, single-minded, and often suicidal in their dedication. They are prepared to make any sacrifices to achieve their goals, and will not hesitate to eliminate any obstacles that hinder the progress of the master plan.
Causing governmental collapse and anarchy is a common aim of cultists serving entities of chaos and other paranormal forces. International crime lords might also benefit from a 'relaxation' of law enforcement and heady slide towards societal breakdown, while subversive alien invaders might tend to aim for outright world conquering as a long-term goal, or if they lack the patience they may simply be laying plans for the wholesale destruction of the planet.
Not all of these motivations need be entirely malevolent, though due to the secretive nature of the organisations behind them and the often extreme measures taken to ensure their success they might appear so. Not all conspirators are inherently evil, and many will genuinely believe in the validity of their dream to create a worldwide communist society, or that the advancements in genetic engineering they are able to make will ultimately benefit the whole of mankind. The point to bear in mind is that most members of these secret organisations will seem to be normal, rational people, often highly intelligent, and not megalomaniacal madmen. The difference is that to them the end always justifies the means, and they have the power and potential to make their visions into reality.
In order to have a significant impact on your campaign world, you secret society will need to have a large membership drawn from all quarters of society. Naturally, the majority of these members will have only the most basic understanding of the cause for which they fight, and little or no idea as to the many ways in which the society goes about achieving its goals. Some will be active agents, the sort of villainous thugs, hitmen, and spies that the PCs will face directly, while many will be sympathetic 'sleepers', patiently going about their daily lives while awaiting the day when they can make their contribution to the cause.
Given only as much information as they need to perform their assigned duties, these agents are the members of the conspiracy that the PCs are likely to run into in the early stages of the campaign, and could provide a number of useful clues or frustrating red herrings. These are the ready-made scapegoats, the ones who'll have to face the music should the unthinkable happen and something go wrong. They are also the ones who do the organisation's dirty work.
These are the activities that the characters will find themselves investigating, or perhaps becoming the target of. By following up on clues from earlier incidents, information supplied by informants, and educated guesswork, they will gradually piece together enough information to uncover another layer of the plot. All the while they will be trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, yet at each turn they will meet fresh obstacles, every answer yields a dozen questions, and the risks increase exponentially the further they delve.
Control of information is vital, and the conspiracy will need contacts in the media if it is to have any chance of succeeding. Stubborn investigators will need putting off the scent, a mistake could require covering up, and it may even become necessary to sacrifice an inconsequential member in order to protect the identity of someone more important. Any attempt to manipulate the media could attract the characters' attention and provide valuable clues, if they can avoid the minefield of misinformation placed in their way. You can use blunders and obvious cover-ups to provide the players with help if they need it, such as an obviously fraudulent document left at a crime scene, or a reliable witness missed by a complacent assassin.
From time to time the organisation might need additional funds, weapons, or other vital equipment. If your contacts can't provide for your needs, you'll have to despatch some highly-trained operatives to get the goods for you, making sure the theft can in no way be connected to the upper levels of the conspiracy. Once again, the characters can find valuable clues at the scene, if the look hard enough.
But sooner or later someone is going to find out about your plans, and you have to make sure they can't do any lasting damage. You may just want to keep them quiet for now, perhaps by blackmailing them. After all, everyone has a few skeletons in the closet, and its a useful way of acquiring extra funds. But blackmail is a risky business, so you may resort to kidnapping. Perhaps you're running short of specimens to experiment on, or need a few extra body parts. If you have the capability, you could even replace your victim with a doppelganger, particularly useful if they are an important senator or rival corporate boss.
Alternatively, why not indulge yourself with a spot of memory adjustment or removal, if you have the technology? Its clean, reliable, and the poor sap won't even know they're being used until its too late. You might even abduct a character, tinker with their mind a little, then return them to their friends apparently none the worse. That is, until they begin to realise that certain events are missing from their memory, that skills they've possessed for years have deserted them, and that whenever someone says the word 'messerschmidt' they go on an uncontrollable killing frenzy.
All sound a bit too convoluted? Then just eliminate the threat altogether. If the engineer won't build you the super-weapon you need, make him take a short walk off a tall building. If that reporter persists in interfering, let her try a concrete overcoat for size. If they happen to be friends of the characters, even better. And don't just limit the use of deadly force to unfortunate NPCs. Put the players in genuine fear for their characters' lives. Have them race blindly down unlit alleyways pursued by dogged and highly-trained assassins whose work they are all too familiar with. Fire-bomb their homes, blow up their cars - "No, not my BMW!" - kill their friends and torture their goldfish. Let them know how serious you are. Its messy, sure, but dead men tell no tales. Just make sure it can't possibly be traced back to you.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the conspiracy is how much of it you will reveal to the players, and at what stages each new facet will become apparent. The pace at which you allow the campaign to develop will determine the levels of tension and paranoia you will be able to engender and sustain. By setting intermediate goals, allowing the players to expose new levels of the conspiracy, thwarting the ultimate plan but not defeating it entirely, you provide them with the element of success that they crave, while retaining enough surprises to keep them guessing for a while yet. Take your foot off the pedal every now and then, and allow the players a chance to relax with a diverting little side-adventure, nothing too dangerous. Particularly after they've just unearthed someone who they believe is central to the whole conspiracy, but who in reality is little more than an ambitious middle-man, a diversion can create a wonderful feeling of security and self-congratulation that is just dying to be exploited by a devious referee.
| Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's greatest adversaries are the Founders of the Dominion, metamorphic liquid-form aliens who control a vast galactic empire. Their ability to adopt any shape or form, and their abiding hatred of us 'solids', creates understandable paranoia whenever anything bad happens, and enables them to manipulate their enemies with great subtlety. This is graphically illustrated in episodes such as 'Homefront' and 'Paradise Lost' from Season 4. |
Your players are really going to struggle to topple a global conspiracy all on their own. Particularly at the start, they won't have the faintest idea what's going on, and the more they discover, the more they'll realise just how little they really know. It can become overwhelming, and they might well feel like giving up if they feel they're getting nowhere, and that no matter what they do things are out of their control.
So from time to time they're going to need a little help, someone on the inside who can supply vital information, point them in the right direction, or correct them when they go wrong. But that help is limited. The contact needs to protect their own identity, otherwise they risk being discovered and that's the end of the help. Another thing to bear in mind is that, as with everything else in a conspiracy campaign, even apparent friends can't be trusted entirely.
Why is this person offering their help? How did they make contact in the first place, and how did they prove they could be trusted? What do they hope to gain from aiding the characters, if anything? They risk their lives every time they make contact, but how far are they prepared to go? They almost certainly have their own agenda, but what could it be? They could in fact be working for the other side all along, feeding the PCs misleading information either deliberately or without their knowledge. Anything is possible.
| If you're still running low on inspiration, if you're absolutely desperate for ideas, then you can always resort to the X-Files. But bear this in mind - your players have probably seen those episodes too. |
You could have a regular informant, someone the players come to rely upon, right up to the moment when he gets found out, and ends up as just another statistic. There might also be any number of anonymous helpers coming forward with what they claim is vital information, no doubt retrieved at great personal risk. But how reliable are they, and how do you know they haven't been followed? Will they look to the characters for protection in return for their information, or will a holdall full of used notes suffice? For players, the important question to ask is: why is everyone so keen to help you out? And of course there is that definitive piece of advice for every paranoid investigator: Trust no-one.
There will come a time when your players feel they have uncovered enough information to bring down your carefully constructed conspiracy. But before you let them ruin all your hard work, give some serious thought as to just how much of a conclusion you want the campaign to reach. Whilst a tying up of all available loose ends at the climax of a campaign can be very satisfying for players, it leaves something of a hollow feeling for the humble referee. You will have put in a lot of work designing a cunning scheme with which to challenge the players, and although deep down you always knew you would lose in the end, you probably still yearn for even the tiniest of pyrrhic victories.
Fortunately, logic is on your side. Think about it, what are the chances that every significant member of a powerful syndicate of corporate or governmental figures will fall to the same sword stroke? Pretty unlikely, I would say. How reasonable is it to assume that there are still a number of powerful individuals out there whose interests have been severely harmed by the characters' actions, and who still have plenty of followers dedicated to their cause? It's a fair bet. Some of these peripheral members will be mopped up in the aftermath, as the players wrap up remaining clues and follow up on outstanding leads, but no matter how thorough they are, there will always be someone out there they know nothing about, but who knows about them all too well. If they stop and think about it for a moment, they may even realise that their victory is just a touch too good to be true. But then again, maybe they won't.
So let the players have their moment of glory, they probably deserve it. But take some solace from the thought that there are still a few loose ends unaccounted for, and that your conspiracy may just rise again from the ashes for another bite at world domination. Yes, they'll be back. And guess who's gonna be top of their hit list?
The Truth is Out There: some games that work well with consipiracy based plots
Historical Models: things that may have happened in real life...
