Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Is anybody else sick to the death of the Big Shadowy Conspiracy that controls everything? NWO, Majestic 12, the Bilderberg Group... I'm sick and tired of finding the same guy behind every curtain. I don't believe in such things for a second in real life and I'm afraid I can't believe in it in a game world.

"But how can you believe in magic and dragons and pink insanely annoying ponies?"

Because it doesn't run against psychology. And psychology matters. With the grand conspiracy I'm asked to believe that a group of insanely power-hungry people can stick together and not stab one another in the back. Diocletian tried to make that system into an institution. It lasted for 1 year after Diocletian had retired. 1 year. Some of these conspiracies allegedly lasted for 2 000 years.

Sorry, had to vent a little. Aherm...

If we turn down the Grand Conspiracy, what are we left with? What can we do to replace the monolithic threat? Anyone? Bueller?

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Two suggested approaches:


Varied oppponents: Just use brigands, monsters, corrupt rulers, madmen, criminal gangs, localized and plausible cabals, smallish evil cults, etc. This is what I do in nearly everything I run. As an old Dragon Magzine column noted: Evil is not a club. The baddies don't all need to be connected.




The Dark Lord: Take a page from Tolkien and center the evil opposition in your campaign on a terribly powerful but mostly unseen or distant foe who works through minions. He should probably be immortal. No Grand Consiparcy is required. He's got ORKS! Waaaaaagh!

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

No, I don't think Bueller would make a good secret master.


Have you considered moving to a two-conspiracy system? A remains united by their fear of B, and vice versa. It has worked in the US for over two centuries.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The grand non-conspiracy? It's not like you can't have a perfectly blatant threat.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I will agree, the omni-competent Grand Conspiracy has gotten stale. Sometimes it even causes players to become apathetic to the campaign because they feel it is impossible to do anything meaningful.

I like to use various shadowy organizations that sometimes clash and compete against each other for narrow agendas. Allying and then double crossing each other at opportune times. You could play that as kind of a "second society" where even though they are at each other's throats they tend to do enough voluntary cleanup as to not arouse the "mundanes."

As for having them be around for thousands of years steadily working to some overarching agenda, that is always a stretch. If there are immortals or some type of creatures which view themselves as apart from humans, it could be doable. People love the idea of memes, so perhaps the groups manifesto is so persuasive that once someone reads it in the entirety they swear to live only for that agenda.

I tend to place my shadowy organizations at about 50 or 60 years in the making and the reason players get wind of them is because they are starting to unravel a bit. That doesn't mean they are less able though.

Also, I tend to think that any very large monolithic organization bent on major control is bound to quickly kick things into a high intensity conflict territory. Which sorta blows secrecy out of the water.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The only game I play where Ancient Conspiracies exist, or are even slightly believable, is World of Darkness/Vampire: the Requiem. Because there, there really are immortals hiding behind the scenes (the Kindred), aliens that don't think quite like humans (Changelings), and eldritch threats beyond human comprehension (werewolves, kept from normal sight by the Veil; Things About Which Man Was Not Meant To Know, that even Kindred elders speak of in whispers for fear of attracting their attention...).

In some other games, I've posited attempts at conspiracies, but much like real-world conspiracies, they tend to fall apart a few years after encompassing more than a handful of people. Living humans are very bad at keeping secrets.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I agree entirely. I've never been a big fan of the Universal Omnipotent Conspiracy, for precisely the reasons you list. It doesn't work. It doesn't fit human nature.

Now, if you assume that the powers behind such a conspiracy are not human then suddenly it can work, within limits. But only then.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

One trick to make shadowy organizations work is to have them actually behave like such. Shadowy organizations stay in the shadows by arranging their affairs to avoid notice, and by having ways to silence people who might otherwise talk. This can be violent, but does not have to be.

But shadowy organizations that behave like they do in Hollywood versions would not long stay secret or effective. Endless repeated threats to the heroes, threats that are not carried out until (at least) the third or fourth or fifth time, loose ends left untied because of plot convenience, etc. Not to mention death traps and murder attempts based on bizarre, improbable methods, rather than a simple, reliable bullet or blade.

What sort of things can a believable shadowy outfit do that they usually don't in Hollywood?

If the intrepid hero knows too much, but it would be inconvenient to kill him, they can try things like:

1. Discredit him. Forged documents can be used for this, or faked video. A few believable witnesses lying through their teeth can do a lot of damage to a reputation, too.

2. Sue him into a smoking crater. The suits don't have to be well-grounded, and can seem to come from any number of proxy sources. Even if the hero can defeat the court attack, he has to spend money and time to do it, and they can always keep hitting him again.

3. Make his job disappear (or otherwise cut off his source of support). If his patron suddenly won't/can't fund him anymore, he may have to drop his opposition to the shadows just to find a job to pay the bills.

4. Buy him off. It works a lot of the time, after all, especially when offered in tandem with the hard option (i.e. 'silver or lead').

5. Frame him. Even if he beats the rap, a lot of time and money and reputation has to be spent...if they have leverage or influence with relevant law enforcement personnel, this tactic can be very close to unbeatable.

6. Of course all this stuff can be applied to loved ones and relatives too, even if the hero is unmoved by threats to his own reputation or well-being, his parents, wife/husband/ and kids, friends, cousins, etc, are a different issue.

A competent shadowy outfit won't make 15 threats before actually doing something, though. They won't leave known loose ends unwatched, at the very least they'll keep track of them (if they can).

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

There is a fan game (Genius: The Transgression) where there used to be a big conspiracy that controlled everything. They got killed off, and now no one is in charge.

nWoD has dozens of little conspiracies (I think about 5 per main book, more in the splatbooks, and more in the fan games), and those spend most of their time scheming against each other.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Bonus points if you run them like the People's Front of Judea.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

And really if your characters are so tough being hated by a major religion or nation-state isn't a serious enough threat, you've already moved so far outside realism discovering their elementary school rival is now the shadowy mastermind controlling all the governments in the universe isn't going to be out of genre.....

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

There is something very insidious in supposing that a grand orchestration merely happens because interests converge. That perhaps there is no real conspiracy, just amalgamation and capital. That it happens in such a way the players are certain that there is a grand conspiracy but they find out, much to their horror, they are fighting "straight math" as people of wealth and power just take their interests to the most logical conclusion.

George Carlin painted an interesting picture here: Mr. Carlin on the "Conspiracy"

I surely don't mean to talk real life politics or even society, but it is an interesting plot point to throw around.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Conspiracies and magic actually are pretty harmonious with human psychology, and they come from the same roots - humans like having someone to blame for things that happen. We like knowing that things happened for a purpose, not randomly - in fact, we have such a terrible innate comprehension of "randomly" that it's fair to say that we have to work hard to even grasp the concept.

In a magical-thinking world, people don't "just get sick" for no reason (touching a doorknob that someone you don't know touched 20 minutes earlier after sneezing into their hand might as well be "for no reason"). People get sick because someone deliberately cast a spell to make them get sick - or demons maliciously make them sick, or a god has cursed them with sickness as punishment for something.
Someone gets hit by lightning because someone put a curse-token in their shoe to draw the lightning to them, or a god deliberately threw that lightning bolt at him while in a snit...
All of them are very "personal" explanations and stink of "human" levels of petty revenge. Which is something that's pretty easy to wrap your head around - "Someone is angry, so they're being mean to me."

Conspiracy theories simplify and assign direct human cause to systems that in reality are so insanely complex they might as well be random. The stock market isn't the result of a large number of impulsive men and women (but mainly men) gambling with other peoples money with disproportionately low consequences for failure, the stock market is instead controlled by a secret cabal in Zurich. Instead of your retirement savings being wiped out by a large number of people acting like thoughtless idiots with no interest in you whatsoever, your retirement savings are wiped out for a purpose. Possibly by people with no interest in you whatsoever (unless you're Paranoid) but at least there was a point.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Attributing things to conspiracies is normal for humans. Forging long-term conspiracies is not. The best example I can think of off-hand is the First Triumvirate.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

And we all know how that turned out...

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

It lasted for seven years.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Not as a secret. Looks like it was a secret for around three years.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

And it didn't exactly hold together in the long run.


Civil war, treachery, murder...

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

My point is that it makes as appealing a story element as magic because it speaks to the same part of the human psyche. If magic and gods didn't do it, that means people must have done it. But nobody's taking responsability for it... so it must have been secret people.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Meh. Some people are afraid of taking liberties with hard sciences, but take some with psychology, while others go vice versa. Claiming that one matters and the other doesn't (in either direction) seems . . . off.

Exploring a world with same 'hard' laws of nature but different sociological ones can be as interesting as the other way around.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

On topic, I've run a secret-agents campaign (see .sig) weekly since May 2009. It doesn't feature a grand conspiracy . . . even though spy fiction is where people tend to expect grand conspiracy. The only deliberate conspiracy is a minor one: a privately run "righter of wrongs" foundation to which the PCs belong. It isn't grand and it isn't behind or running anything beyond a few modest legitimate businesses. And things have worked fine – we're at close to 140 sessions and the players still show up.

The opposition? Random groups who do nasty things, ranging from mobsters through terrorists to the intelligence services of nation-states. These rivals work much as they do in reality: looking out for #1, often competing, with obvious goals like "make money" and "promote our way of life." When they operate covertly or clandestinely, it's to avoid social complications, not to pull the world's strings. And these organizations have kept the PCs busy for over 100 game sessions without trying to run the world, being secretly linked, or even sharing information.

Based on that experience and several campaigns where I have used the grand conspiracy, I would say that the grand conspiracy in RPGs is attractive because it offers a simplified way to handle enemies. You can largely ignore rivalries, differing motivations, and realistic communications and command structures in favor of a monolith. Whenever you want to turn up the heat, the Secret Masters give orders, which reach minions flawlessly and are obeyed without question. When the PCs take the offensive, it's against a big, diffuse target that they can't wipe out, so it can serve as the enemy for the entire campaign.

It's a lot of work to come up with multiple enemies – some unrelated, others rivals, yet others allies of convenience – and give them plausible, fallible command structures, communications channels, and minions. And after you do all that work, you get bad guys with weak points that the PCs can strike at, possibly taking out that group and forcing the GM to do more work to create a new one. Grand conspiracies have built-in insurance against that situation – that's why I used them in past campaigns.

This isn't a value judgment at all . . . I'm just saying that the grand conspiracy is probably fine for GMs who are short on time and players who don't mind being at perpetual war with one foe. It's less good for groups that want significant verisimilitude, especially if the players get bored with everything always tracing back to the same black hole.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Unions of equals make bad conspiracies; they are metastable at best. A better model is Sejanus, who steadily rose in power for at least 12 years, then was defacto emperor for 5 more. Compare the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, who was up to bad stuff for at least 48 years, and Boss Tweed was but one of a succession of bosses of the Tamany Hall political machine that ran for 180 years.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

There is also the paradoxical ability of people to de-personify misfortune - the carnage of automotive "accidents" obviously involves human agency and choice, but relatively few humans are held to blame morally, even when there are demonstrably people with influence over more than just their own car or truck, like Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (a former automotive dealer) switching New York from pneumatic tubes to mail trucks against the economic interests of the USPS in 1953.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Which doesn't stop them from claiming that they're the heirs of a 2,000 year old secret order which since time immemorial blah blah blah. All kinds of real life secret societies do that, after all.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

But a political machine like Tammany isn't exactly a conspiracy. It may do some things in secret, but the basic nature and existence of 'machines' is rarely any secret from any but the most sheltered/naive. Usually such organizations are less concerned with secrecy than 'deniability'.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

There are 2 fundamental problems with long-term conspiracies. The first is secrecy. It's an old line that if you double the number of people who know a secret, you square the chance of a leak. That's probably loosely true even if mathematically shaky.

Secrets tend to leak over time. All it takes is one major member of the Conspiracy to have a change of heart and everything can leak. That change of heart can come from a change of personal vested interests, a religious conversion, just being tired of the whole thing, etc. If the Conspiracy has 100 people world-wide in the know, and 99 of them keep the secret, then the secret has still leaked.

The other big thing is that, in the words of the old song, 'everybody wants to rule the world'. Power struggles emerge by the naure of the beast. Interests change, alliances shift. The losers of one round of power struggles have an incentive to change the terms of the deal, or to just blow up the whole thing.

It's almost inherently unstable.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I would say the historical Bavarian Illuminati. IMO they are a textbook example of how secret conspiracies would normally fare.


Hans

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

It doesn't even have to be a purposeful leak. The world is full of nosy people that want to know everything about everyone, especially if they want privacy.
There are also many accidental leaks through incompetence or just bad luck.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The Freemasons are a staple of conspiracy theories, but they're not any more "secret" than Tammany Hall was. (And political machines are conspiracies, pretty much by definition.)

Secrecy is not all that and a bag of chips. The Catholic church is pretty opaque to outsiders. (Especially when the outsiders are Communist countries actively trying to root out the church's influence.) Do people become disaffected? Of course. Are their leaks? Of course. In most of the world, you can walk right up to one of their locations. Does it matter? Not very much. The Roman Catholic church has a lot of resources at its disposal, a purpose, and makes a pretty major impact on the world.

Or let's go in a slightly different direction. The New Age movement. It's kind of deliberately nebulous, but common core beliefs aren't hard to suss out. There's not much of a hierarchy. But a shadowy cabal actually able to practice magic could largely control the scene from behind the scenes. If someone leaks, they're cast out of their social circle, and viewed by most outsiders as just another burned out hippie. The truth is out there, but most people just don't care.

Heck, I can't walk into a pharmacy any more without seeing homeopathic "remedies" mixed in with genuine medicine. They're pretty much entirely distilled water, there's lots of evidence that they're bad medicine, and whistleblowers are commonplace. None of that matters. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. And it looks like our government is going to give it a big, sloppy seal of approval in the near future. (After all, there's a vocal demand for the service, it's cheap--and directly replaces expensive alternatives, and it makes people feel like they've been taken care of. The placebo effect is in full effect.) <shrug> Putting a shadowy force with a nebulous goal behind the phenomenon isn't nearly as unbelievable as the phenomenon itself.

Communism has been as thoroughly debunked as it's possible for an economic/political theory to be. It's track record is so bad that apologists are stuck trotting out the architect of the gulag system (Trotsky) and the Butcher of La Cabaña (Che) as mythic ideals. You can read the foundational texts at nearly any public library (plus lots and lots of cutting critiques). Yet you can find the true believers of the doctrine congregated at nearly every college in our country, often in positions of power. The CPUSA may have largely died when the USSR stopped funding it, but large numbers of informal networks exist.

Ross Perot wasn't exactly stable, and even many of his sympathizers admitted it. In 1992, his highly unorthodox campaign managed to take nearly one out of every five votes cast. His success(?) was largely based on the same themes of limited government and national debt that currently animate the Tea Party. There were (largely polite and legal) rebellions based on the same themes against Clinton and Bush W. Still, a lot of commentators have an unbreakable belief that the Tea Party is novel and rooted in racism against the current president, rather than a continuing point on an established trend. (And one that seems to be in decline.) There are nearly countless groups fighting for influence within the movement. That said, the right person in the right place could influence millions and bring the fractious powerplayers at least roughly into line.
On the flipside, there's a large audience that's happy to believe the worst of the Tea Party movement. Lost of outrageous claims against them have been enthusiastically swallowed by roughly a quarter of our population. It's a situation ripe for demagogues, and there's never a shortage of those in politics or media. There's plenty of room for mischief here, too.
Or you could take it farther, and go for the "paranoid middle". After all, it's the moderates who decide elections. Most are low-information voters that tend to be quite paranoid about those who are passionately involved in the political process. Whichever side best manipulates them wins the election, and they know it. ;) But it's much better gaming if the tail is wagging the dog.

Now, I don't tend to go for overarching world-controlling conspiracies. But smaller ones are all over the place, and many of them dream big.
Are they unstable? Heck yeah. Chronic backstabbing disorder? Check. Most won't outlast whatever recent fad they're cashing in on. But they can change the world, at least a bit. And they *could* just be unwitting tools of a sinister puppetmaster who takes a very long view.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

If you bother to check, you will find Tammany Hall is exactly the textbook definition of conspiracy, complete with secrecy and illegality.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

That's why it's important to have partners of unequal power as I mentioned earlier. Sejanus and Hoover had leverage over their co-conspirators so that they had good reason to remain silent even when they personally did not care to continue towards the goal.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I believe "conspiracy" requires willing particuiipation. The ability to extort people into complying with your wishes is another crime.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

It requires knowing participation in most places, not always willing. Coercion can be a mitigation or a defense, depending upon where...

For example, Alaska Statutes:

AS 11.31.120. Conspiracy.
(a) An offender commits the crime of conspiracy if, with the intent to promote or facilitate a serious felony offense, the offender agrees with one or more persons to engage in or cause the performance of that activity and the offender or one of the persons does an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.
(source)

just requires overt action with intent to aid the conspiracy.

But you're right, Coercion is a separate felony... "AS 11.41.530. Coercion."

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I thought we were the Popular Front. Oh, wait. My bad. He's over there.

SPLITTER!

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

A threat can be a defense against a lesser crime, but it is the authorities' opinion which crime is greater and lesser, or course, and if the threat is being turned in for a crime to begin with, tough nuts for you.

Example: a highly motivated campaign worker is pressured to get a crucial signature from a responsible person who cannot be found, like a credit card slip or invoice for catering for an fundraising event. They decide to sign for the person and the day is saved and funds are raised. Later, when they are in a responsible position themselves, they are asked to do something unquestionably bad but unlikely to be traced to them and when they refuse, they are asked to reconsider what being charged with forgery, fraud, conversion, taking possession of stolen liquor, violation of campaign finance laws, and other state and federal crimes will do to their career. The bad thing gets done and they are now considered a willing conspirator.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Not entirely. Large criminal organizations, which is what the classic grand conspiracy is, operate on a mixture of carrot and stick, ideally with a dose of political ideology.

Actually for the first time I am working on a large conspiracy and I think I have put my finger on how to make a conspiracy with roots stretching back thousands of years. Have a conspiracy leader who is thousands of years old. Yeah, Mister Monday's conspiracy gets at least partially exposed and hunted down on a regular basis. Yeah, Monday's lieutenants try to doublecross him and take over his position. But he's unaging and unkillable 2 and they aren't, and he always comes back, rebuilds his organization, takes over nations, loses control again, move on to set up elsewhere.

Thus ageless leader produces conspiracy stretching back into antiquity.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

That's worked for Vandal Savage.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Here's an interesting article showing how a strong boss kept the local mafia an open secret, and how the lack thereof tore it all apart. here It also sheds some light on why the general populace would tolerate, even be glad for such a shadow government.

While I've seen the movies (didn't have the patience for the books) I understand Dan Brown put together some somewhat plausible Vatican conspiracies. Given the history of politics in Italy--birthplace of Cicero and Machiavelli, to name two--I'd expect any grand human conspiracy to come from there. They're artisans.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

In my study of Indo-European I have now found the word for conspiracy (jalos), conspirator (joros), and conspire (janeumi). You can freely drag your big conspiracies back to ca 2500 - 3000 BC or maybe even farther. :)

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Personally, I like the *spir Italic root of 'conspire'. After all the root *spir means 'breathe' (as in 'expire' "the breath comes out", 'respiration' "the act of breathing again", and so on...) so that 'conspire' means "to breathe together".

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

In the real world, people who find LARGE conspiracy theories entertaining somewhat put me off. They seem to have this idea that SOMEONE is in control and it ain't them. Sort of like a globally installed inferiority complex.

For gaming (Ill spare you my anti-'suspension of disbelief' rant) if your looking for plausability, look for purpose. Look for a motive that your players can understand and if possible be able to identify with. In fiction, Ive some favorite conspiracies that may serve as an example:

Aliens from They Live :
Although the ALiens final purpose is never revealed, its enough that they are keeping us pacified, and that pacification is an ominous one. Whatever their purpose (Food source or labor source), they want us plentiful and obedient. The point is that it works as a story telling device, because we may not know the exact details, but we understand greed and eliteism.

Bene-Jezerat Witches from Dune :
The bene-jezerat witches manipulate people and blood lines for thousands of years to get the kwizatz haderach. Some weird religeous zealotry based on a prophecy. This one seems to work because although we may not fully understand that level of religeous devotion, we DO understand that there are religeous fanatics in the world (any world with a religeon).

Shapeshifters in ST:DS9 :
In as much as I recall the series, the shapeshifters had a well organized conspiracy that they kept running largely for self defense and intelligence. We can sort of even sympathise with them as they dont seem to be overtly violent, content to make subtle changes in their own best interest as there arent that many of them and they need to feel safe. We understand what its like to be outnumbered, so the idea seems reasonable even if its somewhat distasteful.

The Companies from Rollerball (James Cahn original not Remake tragedy) :
We see them only breifly, but their interests and motives seem plausable. They impose an order on the world and keep the public distracted through sport. They do this because it streamlines the process of making money and getting things done. Thats it. Well structured greed. Do what we want and you live a wealthy comfortable life. A functional balance of terror that makes sense because we assume that the independant monopolies have specialized to the point where one NEEDs the other. P.S. THen energy Corp is centered in Houston. Thanks to this film for giving a great town some needed exposure :)

Veridian Dynamics from Better Off Ted :
Played for Yucks, the company keeps volumes of personal data, constant surveilance and makes or breaks lives in a casual off-hand way. Constant jokes abound about horrifying scientific research (The Octochicken, Weaponizing pumpkins etc) toppling countries, child labor practices (Do you like to paint? Today we're painting lines in the Parking Structure!) and a host of other dubious ventures paint a vast conspiracy. We Identify with this as we normally want a job with a big wealthy company for the superior pay and benefits, but at the same time we fear that size for the wealth and power it can bring to bear. Its interesting to note that Veridian isnt painted as being 'evil', more childish and reckless and that makes the humor go down a bit easier.

Who controls the British Crown? Who Keeps the Metric System Down?
Nymdok

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The Bene Gesserit aren't quite along the same lines as the Grand Conspiracy of which the OP has grown weary; they aren't shadowy, they're no more secretive than any other religious order, and the only thing they seek is to create the Kwisatz Haderach (apparently under the impression that if they bring him to be, he will obey them. Didn't work out well for them in the long run). Also, everyone's already suspicious of them.

The Founders are along the right lines, as their lifespans and ability to pose as anyone they study long enough will give them the chance to run things behind the scenes. They also engage in disinformation, as when they left one of their captives with the impression that the highly-placed Klingon they'd replaced was Chancellor Gowron (when in fact it was ).

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I like Farmer's Nine. They don't try to rule the world exactly, just make things that interest them go the way they want. And often fail at at that, they want a smaller, greener population. They are very powerful however. Thirty thousand years ago a shaman discovered an youth potion and he and the others that make up the council have been around a long time. The youngest of the Nine was born around 3 B.C. There are several hundred candidates who each only know the ones that get their yearly dose at the same time. Obey and do what they order occasionally and you live unaging forever. If one of the Nine dies you might get to be the replacement. Disobey and even if manage to hide so they don't kill you start aging again.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

ISTR this refers to people gathered so closely to talk in low voices that they are breathing in each other's breath.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Sending the Gem'hadar to infect everybody on your planet with a horrible disease, or just killing everybody isn't overtly violent?

What about what the female Changling said to Garack after he kept badgering her about the Obsidian Order/Tal'Shiar combined fleet. Something like:
"They're dead."
"All of them?"
"Cardassians, Romulans, you are all dead. You were from the moment you decided to attack us."

Yeah, nonviolent.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

No, it's covertly violent.

That is to say, from the moment they decided to defend themselves against the Founders.


Hans

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Why does this have to be the case? Why can't people enjoy big conspiracy theories with out believing that they are possible in the real world? I love conspiracy theories, big ones small ones, I think they make a good story. That doesn't mean I think real people are capable of such things. Just like I think Iron Man is a good movie, but I don't think people can build the things he has in a lab much less a cave. I enjoyed the Alien movies, but I don't find the idea of life like the Aliens particularly plausible. For me entertainment doesn't have to be about- wow this could be real. It just has to be fun. I loved the Illuminati Trilogy and they had a sub that was immune to radar because it was made of gold.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Here is a link that goes to the Conspiracy Skeptic podcast which deals with all things conspiratorial.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I don't see much that's covert about the Gem'Hadar (other than the shroud, but really they just use that that to brutally murder you more efficiently).

Preemptive strike is self-defense? Hans, how very non-European of you!

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

I apologize. Poor choice of words on my part. I said enteraining when I should have said compelling. There are people in the real world who legit believe in shadowy organizations secretly running the world. I know some of these people.

Here on these fora, due in large part to the Principia, conspiracies are all fnord and cheeky fun. Sadly for all the world this is not the case. That was what I was refering to. I was NOT refering to the ability of a conspiracy to be an entertaining plot device in fiction. I was refering to real people who sincerely believe that there are real conspiracies that are running the world and , almost invariably, those shadowy hands are somehow keeping them from some happiness.

Apologies for the confusion.
Nymdok

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

To me, it looks much more like a unifying label attached to thousands of seperate conspiracies, by hundreds of different people, united only by geographic location and meeting place, more or less similar goals, and by being constrained by more or less the same factors, i.e. the workings of the political and legal system in place, the power blocs, the risks, rewards and suchlike.

Both the First Triumvirate* and any individual conspiracy you can name from Tammany Hall or the Atlantic City machine are very much small 'c' conspiracies, in that they are believable, realistic examples of humans cooperating, to some extent at least, with other humans, to their own benefit and against the interests yet other humans. And they share more or less awful records of long-term successful cooperation along with even worse records of keeping the secret from anyone who wants to know.

*Which is simply the most famous of the several thousand short-term allegiances that Romans formed during their constant electioneering and intriguing. They didn't rule Rome and their tactics were neither more nor less conspirational or criminal than typical Late Republican political maneuvers.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Um, no. Just no. (Except in a nit-picky technical sense.)

Tammy Hall did some things in secret, but it was a conspiracy only in the sense that any illegal organized action can be called a conspiracy. It was just a political machine, nothing remotely like the grand conspiracies of popular mythology. The sort of conspiracy that people think of with regard to the Illuminati or the like is quite a different beast than Tammany Hall or the Mafia or that sort of activity.

Maybe we could express it by saying that Tammany was a conspiracy, but not a Conspiracy.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The Bene Gesserit are not religious fanatics by any stretch. In fact they're more like the opposite of that, they look at religion as a complex and manipulable social phenomenon that they use toward their own ends. They are fundamentally quite cynical about religion, to the point that it becomes a blind spot of their own (that Leto II takes ruthless advantage of).

The BG conspiracy fits the Conspiracy mold, in that they are far more powerful than even those who fear them suspect, have vast webs of secret power reaching all over the Empire, and multi-tiered ulterior motives. To make all this work, though, again requires something more than ordinary human abilities, i.e. the BG 'race memory' ability that gives them access to the memories of previous Reverend Mothers over thousands of years.

The Kwisatz Haderach project isn't based on prophecy, it's an attempt, based on the BG's understanding of genetics, biology, paraphysics, and other things to breed a prophet and someone with access to the full race memory (the BG only have access to the female side). In theory, as the BG understanding goes, a male with the race memory ability could get access to both sides, but paradoxically most males have no race memory ability at all.

Thus the breeding project. As for the issue of control...well, the BG are not the first group, in fiction or reality, to not think through what they wanted.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

That is the sense that I used, because that is the sense the OP asked for ("If we turn down the Grand Conspiracy, what are we left with?").

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

The Bene Gesserit are a grand conspiracy - they've been coopting religions since their founding, according to the later Frank Herbert books. They introduce messianic myths for later use by the BG. They can conspire with the dead, by continuing projects and policies unmentioned by any living soul aloud. They can share memories of those conversations without speech (but requiring the sharing be done by two reverend mothers under the effects of the spice drug). They even manipulated scions of the great houses by use of younger sisters as concubines and/or wives. Count Fenring is drawn into their service by his wife...

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

Without a grand conspiracy... yeah we'd have just the little potatoes. Maybe a few conspiracies that don't exist but many people think they do.

Re: Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?
 

You can still have small-c conspiracy with global scope, in particular the LBJ and Nixon administrations' exposed manipulations of domestic and world opinion. Watergate is also a textbook example of under-coordinated conspiracies, where indeed a relatively minor crime leads ultimately to the involvement of most powerful men in the world.