Yes. And just because you are angry about it doesn’t change the fact that your approach on this thread was to come in and attack the man not the argument. You are still doing it.
I'm not angry about it at all, I just find your myopia frustrating. Call me bemused. You're the one who's getting his knickers in a twist because I suggested that you weren't addressing the OP in a helpful way. And continuing to ignore my legitimate contributions here in favour of pursuing, well, whatever the hell it is you think you're proving here. IDK.
Well, then you might want to adjust your set - because you are coming across as angry.
No. It's all static.
That's a problem, yeah. Keeping the background movement organized is a big job. Motivations and clocks might help, plus a mind map of connections. Sticky notes would be my first thought.
silva makes a cogent point (a rare enough event in and of itself — love you man but you‘ve been on an elfgame overthinking spree) that while some games give you dedicated subsystems for certain activities, others just give you the same basic building blocks as any RPG and you’re on your own.
Black Vulmea ’s criticism of (IIRC) the use of morale rolls as an adjudication mechanic for thieves’ guild takeovers. Those struck me as observations from AD&D1 DMs who were used to more leeway and/or less bookkeeping in managing factions, organizations and domains in their games.
Ok, here goes a sketchy attempt at what a conspiracy framework could contain:
Yep, its a creative thing for you to do in the way your structure your campaigns.
I'd say that different conspiracy games are built to different expectations. Night's Black Armies has the Conspyramid because it's primary inspiration is Bourne movies. The PCs are going to fight their way up the Pyramid and smack the boss at the top. You can win.
Baulderstone , you can have conspiracies at low/ground-level too. Any pack of entities can result in a conspiracy, even if it's just a street or an aparment building. And that wouldn't contradict the kind of horror and ambience that Delta Green excels at, nor stop players from continue playing it "monster of the week" mode with the (excellent) scenarios existing.Thing is, many of these scenarios are not ‘monster of the week’ and what you described above would be a distraction for my gaming group in terms of our preferred style of play for Delta Green.
That’s a weakness others don’t share. Mechanics for Joining, Confronting, Discovering, Hiding Conspiracies? If there were mechanics for all that, you’d be playing a Delta Green version of Arkham Asylum.
Yes I do, because it is an inspiration for scenarios with various groups and individuals, well written up with advice about how to introduce them into your campaigns, that you can choose to integrate into your campaigns as you wish. The different organizations are basically set out like they are in the core book - there is just more of them.
It totally is that: each faction has an agenda and a step by step of how they change based on triggers like players intervention or time passing. There are hooks to get the players entangled with them, and for the GM to create adventures based on those, or to change existing ones with that objective.
They have the same format in the corebook for the groups presented.
Someone posted here saying he/she remembered the time, and that it was bashed and criticized at the time at it's release due to it's unconventional mechanics for the time. So I'm just basing my point on that. Anedote for anedote, the pattern I see in the rpg community makes it clear what side to believe for me.
Well, it doesn’t make sense. The format used for writing up groups in The Labyrinth is the same that is used for the groups in the core book. It isn’t a structure for how to design a conspiracy game that you described before - there isn’t any discussion of downtime or Exposure points or anything like - it is just complete write ups for various groups that can aid or abet your PCs, and how you can include them in a narrative.
It's not. It adds a progress "clock" to each faction, explicitely called "Stages 1, 2, 3, etc", based on the players actions, with prompts like "Stage 2 kicks in if the players do...". and gives advice on how to make the players entangled with those. This is excatly the same thing as "progress clocks" from blades, but in textual form.
To be honest, I don’t really think the personality mechanics of Pendragon or Delta Green is really on point in this discussion. However, when we started to play The Great Pendragon Campaign last year (or previous, I forget), the game play is put together in a very structured way. Year by year, checking for family events, economics, etc. For me, this would not actually be something that would interest me much in a Delta Green campaign - because the immersive atmosphere of the horror from each given scenario is more important than working out the household management of characters 'off screen’. Just a different type of game, for me.
You mean besides Castle Construction rules that go so far as to factor in the earthmoving capabilities of almost every bipedal labourer you could find, right?
AKA, textbook Silva.
Except 1) my advocation is for procedures or frameworks, not necessarily mechanics, and 2) it's totally about something the game sells on the cover (Conspiracies) but the actual advice on the book doesnt' support.
Well, again, Stage 1, 2 and 3 was how Tynes always wrote up his stuff - right back in Delta Green: Countdown you can see him doing the same thing with his Hastur stuff. In fact they do this in lots of games. But these are not providing gaming structures in a mechanical sense to build a conspiracy - you are not monitoring any points or even have to do it in any formatted way. It isn’t what you described above.
Well, like I say, if you are now giving The Labyrinth as an example, and take the point that actually the groups in the core book are formatted in the same way, then it does do that, evidently. And again, I’ll point out that the Handler’s Guide and The Labyrinth are not for players eyes at all. The scenarios and background material is read up by the Handler, who molds it as they see fit, and then introduce elements of the mysteries on offer to the players through well constructed scenarios. That is how it is done.
Please, refer to some of my above answers. I've already disproved that.
No you haven’t. Refer to your own posts.
To the original question, weirdly worded as it is... do they? Couldn't say. Should they? Grab whatever inspiration inspires. To the maybe too political for this board if I'm understanding it correctly implication regarding fanbases of old vs new products, there's no need to tailor design to fit every or any particular market. You like your newer games, want to appeal to their fanbases, focus on that. You like older games, want to appeal to their fanbases, focus on that. Not everything is for everyone.
Exactly! Its a great book, but is nothing to do with what Silva has been describing. Its a bunch of write ups for groups you can include in your campaigns. That is it!
So like Tristram said, this is just another “An RPG designer didn’t fill their game with meta-mechanic bullshit like XxxX does, and I think they should.” whinefest.Ok, here goes a sketchy attempt at what a conspiracy framework could contain:
1. Something to track the cell/team EXPOSURE, since hiding your presence and attempting to uncover that of others is the basics of conspiracies. Lots of games these days (Blades, Shadowrun, etc) use an index for it called Heat. Let'as steal that and rename it Exposure for effect.
2. Factions with assets (contacts, safehouses, stashes, etc). Both yours (and that means you must build and mantain it), and the others' (which you will want to disrupt or infiltrate). So, we need some sort of DIAGRAM to track this apparatuses. A crude map on a A4 is enough. Draw a central hub representing you cell/team, and others around it, with respective assets linked by strings. All that for the group to use, and showing only what's uncovered so far. The GM holds in secret another one, but with everything the group didn't uncover yet on it.
3. Some method for tracking time and those factions pushing their AGENDAS and goals. For that we create their agendas proper and some track to show progress toward those. Let's call it the "Agenda Meter". Let's create 2 triggers for those: 1) Time itself, that we could track on a session basis. Each session that ends, you move all factions "agenda meter" one tick further. Other ones could be a reaction to the pc actions. So each mission that fails, it's one tick further for some factions' Agenda Meter. Yet another could be based on Exposure: it goes up, Agendas goes up too as the factions trigger contigency plans.
4. Now we need a list of DOWNTIME actions for the players to do between missions that's about pushing their conspiracy or twarting others. Let's use what Delta Green already gives us? So, each Donwtime every players has 1 action:
- A. work on a project: player starts his own "Project Meter" to implement cell conspiracy assets (informants, safehouses, secret stashes/green boxes, dead drops, wiretaps, expert contacts, etc). each giving some sort of advantage or bonus for the team later. 10 is a good number. Just watch a couple spy movies and steal the ideas.
- B. Engage therapy (to regain Sanity)
- C. Stay with your family (to regain Bonds/strenghten relationships with a relative or friend - in Delta Green this is a buffer to Sanity loss)
- D. Do an operation: let's start with three. Breaking & Entering (social or physical) for getting intel on other factions; Diversion, for disrupting an opponent asset or operation. Raid/Assasination, for eliminating a rival faction asset (physical or human). This may trigger a full-blown session to see how the operation goes, or the group may opt to zoom-out and roll for the results.
Have each one of these be a roll where failure means the Exposure rating goes up and the other factions start taking notice of your actions and assets. Have a big table for rolling complications when that Exposure reach certain thresholds: your network of contacts gets busted, your safehouse ransacked, your agents get tapped, your relatives receives a threatening letter.
5. Make the field open for missions coming from high ups. So, we can insert unrelated "Monsters of the week" sessions here and there for variatation AND as a consequence of other factions Agenda Meter rising.. so March Technologies Meter reached the "agressively takover of Maas Biolabs for their datavault on the unnatural" and the GM can create a scenario based on this where the group must disrupt March Tech agenda by parachuting into a Peru offsite in the amazonian forest to fuck up their op.
Optional: players must find new recruits to pass the mantle when they die. Your character battle may be over but the war against the Unnatural wages on. (so let's add another dowtime action: - E. Train your substitute. Here we take Glory from Pendragon and turn it into a metter that you feed progressively. When you die, this dictates the level of training and resources of your new agent.)
I can't think of anything else. But I think THIS is a good start for a conspiracy game. You continue having monster of the week here and there but now it's weaved into a spycrafdt framework that makes the conspiracy actionable by the players. And all this meshed with the kind of chokingly awesome AMBIENCE and HORROR that Delta Green already does so well.
See the "Stage 1, 2, 3" sections for each faction. Those define how the factions evolve and change based on players actions.
We can see the same things that you are referring to, but these are simply a suggested order of exposition to introduce groups into an ongoing campaign. They’ve done it before - and they are not mechanically driven, they are just plot points. They have absolutely nothing to do with mechanics or procedures that you described above.
Pendragon has mechanics for Joining, Confronting, Discovering, Hiding Conspiracies?That's bullshit and you know itCRKrueger . Pendragon does all that. Is it a fucking boardgame?
It isn't procedural at all though. There's nothing mechanical. Example, "Stage One" for the Center of Missing Child suggests the PCs can meet an agent ideally with a missing child case. It has wording like "he could be lost in the shuffle" and "contrive a situation... maybe he tails the agents". This is just general advice like you get in any GMing section, not play procedures. The "meta-mini game"
CRKrueger references is completely absent here.
