Buried Secrets - GM

Improvising a Conspiracy

The conspiracy is the central point of a campaign, but you don’t have to define it up front.

In the beginning, you only need a vague idea of the type of threat. Just defined enough to excite the players.

The Shadow. Hydra. KAOS. Protomolecule researchers. Vampires. Great old ones.

Creating a first mission

In the section on teaching the game, we cover the player-facing aspects of running a good first mission. Here, we discuss how to choose the elements needed for that mission.

The key motivation should be to both expose the existence of the conspiracy, and to provide a seed around which the crew can build their investigation. We also need to incorporate opportunities for the players to learn the system.

You will also be establishing the tone and genre of the game. There’s a big difference between a silly spy spoof and a serious supernatural thriller, so you should make sure this is clearly communicated in the first mission. After this, the players will be choosing their own missions, but they will be building on the foundation that you provide.

The campaign arc

The first mission in many ways corresponds to the classical “call to adventure” of the hero’s journey.

Initially, the focus will usually be on uncovering more threads of the conspiracy. Your job as GM is to lay down enough clues in each mission to let them form a couple of theories about the nature, purpose, and actors in the conspiracy. Entanglements should reflect the conspiracy investigating the players and trying to “scare them off” before they get too close.

For the second phase you should choose one of their theories and start planting clues that confirm that theory and tie existing investigation threads into that theory. The entanglements should start to reflect the conspiracy taking an active hand in thwarting the players.

For the final phase, you should decide who the ultimate leader of the conspiracy is and what they want – then start laying clues to a final confrontation.

– TODO: worked example

Preparation

Unlike some games you don’t need to spend a lot of time preparing things between missions, but you can always benefit from doing some prep work. This helps in multiple ways - giving you a foundation to improvise on, letting you compensate for your weaknesses, and giving you a chance to really wow your players once in a while.

Cast of characters

Giving life to a wide variety of characters is always a tough part of the GM’s role, and you’ll often need to come up with people on the fly. You can lighten the load a bit by preparing some details in advance.

Every person you introduce needs at least a role, a name, and a motivation.

The role is the reason you introduce them into a scene. Often this is done on the basis of their occupation (a guard, a bookseller, a retired KGB agent) but it can also be a purely dramatic role - you need a bystander, a love interest, a comic foil.

Giving everyone a name makes it easier to distinguish people from one another, and it’s often the first thing a player will ask when they meet a character. There are dozens of web sites and apps that will generate random names for you. The important thing here is write down the name whenever you give one to the players.

The motivation is important to make a character seem real. It doesn’t have to be a long-term goal - it may be something as simple as selling a book or getting back to the party. This helps shape conversations they have with players, helps you figure out how they react to unexpected developments, and can be built on if the character becomes important to the crew.

If you’re preparing characters in advance, here are some helpful guidelines. They don’t have to be followed to the letter.

In the first version, write your notes as if they are neutral. They know nothing of the conspiracy and are just being drawn in by whatever circumstance has led the characters to them. Perhaps this is a connection to other characters or locations, their area of expertise, or the dramatic needs of the current scene.

In the second version, write your notes as if they are on the same side as the players. They oppose the conspiracy and are likely to help the crew in some way. Perhaps they can provide or decipher a vital clue, offer services or resources that give the players an advantage, or be used as a conduit for future information.

In the third version, write your notes as if they are already working for or with the conspiracy. This allows you to show the extent of the conspiracy, gives players potential mission targets, and can be especially useful for entanglements like a double cross.

In each version of your notes:

Other useful things:

TODO: a worked example

Factions

Factions are groups or organizations that have a specific goal. They help you organize individuals into cohesive groups, make up the different parts of the conspiracy and the player’s allies, and when paired with a logo or key phrase can be a very powerful clue.

I rarely prepare multiple versions of factions, but I often structure them so they can easily be split or combined as the story demands.

For example, early on I might represent a company or even a single government as a single faction, but if it becomes important to the investigation I might split it into factions representing departments or locations. This allows the crew an opportunity to exploit divisions, find allies, or narrow down their search for conspiracy assets. Conversely, if it becomes unimportant I may stop making such distinctions to avoid confusing the issue.

Locations

Objects

Usually you will want to have some objects that you expect to be important to characters, factions, or the players.

When preparing objects in advance, you should try not to anticipate too much. The best option, as with characters, is to prepare multiple variants of the object so you can choose the version that serves the story best at the moment the object is revealed.

In the first version, assume they are very important or powerful. They should be key to dealing a blow to the conspiracy, or provide a wealth of clues after some study. This version can be used if the crew really needs a win, to reward players who have made this a focal point of their investigation, or to help bring together multiple investigation threads.

In the second version, assume they are important, but not particularly so. They should provide some advantage or several new clues. This version can be used to help plant new clues or reinforce old ones, provide motivation for characters or factions, or be used as the key focus of a mission or two.

In the third and final version, assume they are fraudulent, useless, or unimportant. This version can be used to close off investigative dead ends, show the conspiracy or some faction makes mistakes, be a consequence in response to a failure, or even used as a dramatic twist to move the focus elsewhere.

In each version of your notes:

Handouts

Handouts are an excellent way to help players imagine a living world, and can serve as a good reference point for the players in your group who don’t tend to take detailed notes. They also allow you to provide more detailed clues.

Documents of all sorts, especially letters or journal entries, make excellent handouts. Just remember that players will always assign significance to such documents, so you should always strive to incorporate multiple clues or direct references to a character, faction, or location.

As someone who has worked with a lot of handouts, I recommend you keep a plain-text version of a document available. The fancy fonts and busy backgrounds used to make a handout look more authentic can make it hard to read or decipher, or too small to work with on a small screen.

Photos and drawings are very good at helping convey information, though they rely heavily on context to help make sense of them when the players are searching through their clues. Providing a written description or caption can be extremely helpful. Photos or drawings used to help set an ambient mood should be labelled as such, so that players don’t waste too much time studying it for clues that are not there.

Set Pieces

Set pieces are essentially a way for you to prepare a complete encounter or scenario ahead of time. Usually you do this because you have an idea you’re really excited about, or because you’ve got some existing, pre-authored material that you think would fit in perfectly to your campaign.

With one exception, I would avoid using a set piece until you have a clear idea of the shape of the conspiracy and the direction the players are driving the story. That makes it much easier to work in the clues, locations, and people that link the set piece to the wider campaign.

The one exception is using a pre-written scenario as the initial mission. This can serve as the seed around which you begin to build the conspiracy. The initial antagonists of the story become the first node in your conspiracy tree.

Play Aids

I use some or all of the following play aids in most of my own games. The degree to which I use them varies based on genre, needs of the story, and the amount of preparation I do between sessions.

TODO: flesh these out and add more