A few years ago, probably 2014, I ran a game called Sonspiracy III. Sonspiracy III was loosely based on the Illuminati! board game by SJG and Seon's NES, also based on the same game. I really like conspiracy theories, not because I believe in them, but because of the amount of reach a lot of them need in order to work.
Have you ever seen a movie or TV show where a character is trying to bust a conspiracy wide open and we're shown a large bulletin board covered in thumbtacks, photos, notes, and strings connecting all these pieces together? That is the part I love the most in these theories, and one Illuminati does use heavily. For example, the innocent Boy Scouts may be just social engineering program manipulated by the FBI, who are
really working for the Bavarian Illuminati.
So, there are a few major focuses I have going into the Fourth World Order.
1. Low Numbers
The Illuminati board game makes use of megabucks and each organization has a se of stats, but the direction I want to go makes numbers pretty limiting. How do you quantify the power and influence of the FBI relative to the Boy Scouts? Not easily, and whatever you
do end up doing just feels limiting.
So, I'm ditching front-end numbers in favor of a more common sense approach. If the Boy Scouts, for whatever reason, want to build up a stockpile of fully automatic rifles, they'll need connections.
2. Individuals and Organizations
So yeah, the Illuminati card game actually had personality cards. For example, Al Gore was a personality card. Again, in these movies and games about conspiracy theories, the end of the road isn't "oh it is the Bavarian Illuminati". The end of the road is usually "oh, the Bavarian Illuminati are these individuals."
Players are individuals, often at the head of this sweeping conspiracies, who will give orders and suggestions to individuals and organizations to move the conspiracy forward. I think this is a good path to go on because in Sonspiracy III players seemed to like building up these personalities and agents of their global conspiracies along with the goals and personality of the conspiracies themselves.
3. Low Information
This is where Black Comedy: The Fourth World Order goes off the rails. Again, I direct you again to the image of an obsessive man, standing before a bulletin board, pouring over his notes and connecting the dots on the board with strings and thumbtacks.
There are multiple levels of secrecy in the game. There is public information, or information widely available to the public. The FBI giving a huge grant to the Boy Scouts would be an example of this kind of information.
The next level of information would be Illuminated information, or information that is known to the Illuminated. This band of information is narrow, but it could include information like "Reptilians are real and they're trying to infiltrate and overthrow world governments and eat us all".
But the final level of information would be the kind of information that won't be widely available. Some individuals, organizations, and even conspiracies may be acting behind the scenes, in the shadows, unknown to all, even other players.
An example here could be that the Director of the FBI
is a member of the Bavarian Illuminati, or that the FBI has any ties to the Bavarian Illuminati in the first place, or that the Bavarian Illuminati is even real.
This, of all the major selling points of this game, will be the hardest to balance on my end, but I do believe I have a good handle on how to pull it off now. No matter how hidden a conspiracy is, they ultimately have to operate in the public realm. A sudden uptick in military exercises globally, or a sudden unexplained rush of mergers, etc., could all be signs of some greater power pulling the strings.
Or a giant coincidence.
4. Not Created Equal
I
really like the national rankings. In Cold War, LH divided the playerbase into a handful of superpowers, a greater numbers of major powers, and a large number of regional powers. I am using the same mechanic in Shadow of the Fall, which does two things.
First, it gives the world
some history and the start some weight. The fact that RNG created great industrial, commercial, and military powers in India, Australia, and East African down to the Cape, creates a vastly different world than one where the RNG created massive industrial powers based in Europe, or a Chinese great power.
Two, I personally think it creates more interesting outcomes. An incompetently managed great power can fall to the wayside while properly managed, or simply well-positioned, powers are able to elevate from their relative starting position.
In Black Comedy, I'm using a similar system. There are three "tiers" of starts, all based on RNG. At the top of the pyramid are the powerful conspiracies, already sweeping but not so powerful that they're toppling the US government and declaring a new world order right out the gate.
The second tier are the rising conspiracies, conspiracies that aren't as powerful yet. The final tier are the newest conspiracies.
As conspiracies grow, and the number of individuals involve grow, so do the numbers of persons with impressive rolodexes and a desire for personal power and wealth. The grand conspiracies must worry about threats from within while dealing with rival conspiracies.
5. Goals
There is no goal to the game, although if we ever get to the point where a conspiracy topples the governments of the world and installing a new world order, I would feel safe calling the game finished.
If a conspiracy's entire point is to
destroy other conspiracies, that is valid. If a conspiracy is just concerned with accumulating truly massive amounts of wealth and prestige for its members, that is also valid. For some groups, power is just a tool to achieving something greater, while for others power
is the greater goal in and of itself.
Anyway, I hope to work out the kinks on these ideas over the next six weeks. If you have any ideas, feel free to contact me.
