From owner-nephilim@erzo.ORG Fri Sep 29 10:32:30 1995
From: "Isaacs, Ross" (RISAACS@main.nlc.gwu.edu)
To: Nephilim@erzo.ORG
Subject:       Wake up, it's a Conspiracy Generator!



Did that get everyone's attention?

I was standing in the shower, thinking about a Nephilim supplement,
when I first got this idea.  One of the things that troubles me about
publishing conspiracies in game products is that everyone reads the
books; players and GMs read Secret Societies.  Thus, the GM would have
to change things to keep her players on their toes.  That makes those
conspiracies pretty much useless.  Why would I spend three months
writing a supplement telling you all about the conspiracies swirling
in Washington, D.C. when I know you'll likely change it?

That lead to another thought:  when I'm GMing a game (which I do
from time to time) I hate it when one of my players figures out the
thing in the first few minutes.  (You know what I mean.  After
giving them two small clues, one idiot savant in the group looks up,
glassy-eyed, and says "The Butler is probably the cultist."  And it
is!)  Or the players want more of the conspiracy after resolving the
first one.  Or they ask about the motivations of some minor
character.  There are times when I've had to come up with
conspiracies on the fly.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.  

It's not easy coming up with the next layer of the onion time after 
time.  

So I proposed the Great Conspiracy Generator.  Remember that in 
Foucalt's Pendulum, the hero writes a program that randomly selects 
elements of a conspiracy, and he publishes the results, which gets 
him into a lot of trouble because everyone believes it.  My idea 
would be the same thing, only with dice and tables.  Think of it like 
the board game, Clue; Col. Mustard did it in the Dining Room with the 
Rope.  Only here you might come up with, The Rosicrucians and the 
Star Arcanum steal a Gutenberg Bible.  

The GM would roll on several tables, first a Main Table which directs 
her to other subtables.  She would then have to figure out how those 
elements come together.  The Great Conspiracy Generator wouldn't do 
the work for you, it would just randomly provide elements.  

What does the group think?  What kinds of things would you like to 
see on the Great Conspiracy Generator?  I'd like to have both 
policial and supernatual elements included.  (This is the greatest 
strength of the X-Files, IMO.  They link strange tales with political 
conspiracy; face it, we all suspect that the government *knows* about 
Big Foot.)  

Discuss.

Ross A. Isaacs

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


From owner-nephilim@erzo.ORG Fri Sep 29 12:07:19 1995
From: Laurent.Mynard@laforia.ibp.fr (Laurent MYNARD)
To: nephilim@erzo.ORG
Subject: Re:  Wake up, it's a Conspiracy Generator!



I do not repeat the whole message from Ross about his idea of Great
Conspiracy Generator. It would be to long and I suppose everyone read
it...

Ross, sorry, but I do not like your idea. Since AD&D, I fear very much
anything looking like a random encounter table or things like that. I
refuse to have my scenarios built by dice rolls.

Ok, you are right, players have often silly ideas, and you have to
improvize some conspiracy plot. That is why I have always one or two
general conspiratories in the background of my scenarios, which could
come in the foreground if I need it. But they are my own conspiracies,
I thought deeply about them before. Really, I never felt the
need of any sort of GCG while playing Nephilim. If I need a plot
because my players immediatly understood what was going on, I use the
secundary ideas I had kept in the beckground. If one or several
players focus on something they should not, then I think that you must
adapt your conspiratory to the circumstances, and a random generator
is of no use.

That is my own opinion, but I can understand that you feel better
knowing that if there is any problem, your GCG is here to provide some
help.

But I have found something very usefull to find new plot ideas. I have
two independant groups of players (so independant that the players
never met!), which have for the moment completely different
adventures. And regularly, as you describe it, one player focus on
something and imagine some conspiratory where I had seen nothing. But
I always keep such idea in mind, in order to use it with the
other group.

As soon as I have some time, I post my own view about E.Ts (largely
inspired by X-Files) in Nephilim (do not forget the Star
Arcanum... very funny).

Laurent.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


From owner-nephilim@erzo.ORG Fri Sep 29 14:36:57 1995
From: kirstin chappell 
Subject: Re: Wake up, it's a Conspiracy Generator!
To: nephilim@erzo.ORG



This is a truly inspired idea--if only I had even one group to play 
Nephilim with.

On Fri, 29 Sep 1995, Laurent MYNARD wrote:

> But I have found something very usefull to find new plot ideas. I have two
> independant groups of players (so independant that the players never met!),
> which have for the moment completely different adventures. And regularly, as
> you describe it, one player focus on something and imagine some conspiratory
> where I had seen nothing. But I always keep such idea in mind, in order to 
> use it with the other group.

I also have to say I agree with Laurent.  I have worked with a random 
plot generator developed by a group of writers and it still takes a lot 
of work to come up with a decent and coherent story when the generator 
has finished its job.  These things can come up with ideas that you might 
not have thought of otherwise, but they don't save time--you have to put 
in all the bridges, chuck out all the irrelevancies, develop all the 
characters, etc. quite on your own.  Nonetheless, if it's new ideas you 
want, they can be come up with some novel suggestions.

Paul

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From owner-nephilim@erzo.ORG Mon Oct  2 08:59:29 1995
From: pound@is.rice.edu (Christopher Pound)
Subject: Re: Wake up, it's a Conspiracy Generator!
To: nephilim@erzo.ORG



Dice and tables don't thrill me, but an automated version might be nice.
Here's a simple script I wrote to handle things like this:

[NMLA Editor's Note: This script has GT and LT signs in it
that wont appear in your browser, but will appear if you save the
file...]

------ Cut here --------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# adv - random adventure generator.  Written by Chris Pound (pound@rice.edu)
#
# Create a template like "The [1] [2] has [3] the [4]" and put it in a
# file by itself.  Create subfiles (named the same as the template file
# but with the number that is being called appended to that name) from
# which lines will be picked randomly and inserted in the appropriate
# place in the template.  Subfiles may call other files too.
#
srand(time);
($f=shift(@ARGV)) || ((print "usage: adv