Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Classic Uncle Sam

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.

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.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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

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.....

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

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...

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.

[Classic Uncle Sam]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

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

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.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

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.

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.

[Anders]

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.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

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.

And we all know how that turned out...

[Anders]

It lasted for seven years.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

It lasted for seven years.

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

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

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.

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.