Good Guys As Agents Of The Ancient, World-Owning Conspiracy

[Leliel]

The Illuminati. The Patriots. The Knights Templar. The Gnomes of Zürich (no offense to any Swiss people on this board).

Everyone, at some point or another, has encountered the concept of the "Ancient Conspiracy", those conspiracy-theorized bastards that, quote "control everything".

During my musings, however, I thought to myself, "Assuming the "Shadow Government" is a real entity, I wonder what life is like from their prospective? After all the universe is chaotic, and from the point of view of the "True Ruler of The World", he's only keeping us mundane folks safe. Are the Illuminati, from a certain perspective, good?" During that same session: "How do I put this into a D&D game?" So here's the cinch:

Players are the non-evil "Men in Black" of a Illuminati-type organization. Using their highly skilled manipulative abilities, they have to guide "official" governments to keep the organization in power, and hopefully achieve some of their ends, which will make the world the world a better place. All this while trying to deal with corrupt members of the conspiracy, other, not as nice Ancient, World-Owning Conspiracies, and trying to maintain an official identity of fairly innocuous people (who may or may not be "mild mannered reporters").

So is this a good idea? How would you go about a game like this? How would the player's orginazation be structured? What would be some good antagonist ideas? What should be the "origin story" of the PC's conspiracy? How many uses of the word "Fnord" be tolerated?

The Illumanati are looking forward to your responses, posters.

[Xuincherguixe]

Hard to believe in a conspiracy "for our own good". But, supposing that I was just doing things as a twist.

There's something fundemental that needs people not to know about them, or what they're fighting. Maybe the thing isn't really aware of most people, but once people become aware of it, then it can kill them. The illumanti train people to fight the stuff. Also there would have to be some reason to not just leave it all alone. Like maybe it will wake up ancient evils or something if left alone.


Or, race of Aliens comes along, and demands that no one learns of them and that a conspiracy must be formed to help them do their experiments. Failure to comply means they'll just grab a bunch of humans and blow up the planet. It's not exactly reasonable, but who's to say other species can't be stupid bastards with big guns too?

[Leliel]

[QUOTE=Xuincherguixe;3662257]

There's something fundemental that needs people not to know about them, or what they're fighting. Maybe the thing isn't really aware of most people, but once people become aware of it, then it can kill them. The illumanti train people to fight the stuff. Also there would have to be some reason to not just leave it all alone. Like maybe it will wake up ancient evils or something if left alone.
[QUOTE]

Yes...There is potential in that idea.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I'm watching a Discovery Channel special on the Freemasons right now.

Perhaps it's an ancient society of adventurers that gathered so much wealth and influence that they effectively run every nation they have a presence in? A conspiracy of high-level characters?

[Falconer]

You could go with the ol' "Secret Order of the Knights of (insert name here)", dedicated to fighting some ancient evil the public would genuinely be better off not knowing about.

Y'know, like in the Mummy, where there are the mysterious Arab guys with black turbans who run this whole secret operation to keep the mummy from coming back to life. (I'm currently watching the movie as I type)


To the OP: Actually, a "good" ancient conspiracy sounds like a brilliant idea, if you handle it right. Hope I helped.

[Dode]

Or a Lovecraft-esque "Things Mankind Was Not Meant To Know" organization, rolling in and whacking around cultists who want to pierce open the Far Realms and whathaveyou.

[FlyMolo]

The ancient conspiracy is in charge of keeping monster populations under control. Seriously, a single incorporeal monster is capable of going through several hamlets(killing everyone) without a chance of even hurting it.

The Illuminati here cannot be bothered with the paperwork of running the world(A tax census? of the WORLD? and what about undead? are they people? even the unintelligent ones? And extraplanar peeps? Are they people? Who wants to deal with the wizard claiming a room full of chain-bound efreeti are dependents?). And they also want to avoid threats to their existence. A worldwide empire would fall eventually, because of revolts and famine, etc etc. Ergo, secrecy. They hire(through secret middlemen) adventurers to go out and neutralize threats to the populace, from wandering mohrgs to lich sorcerers, to wayward governments.

So, secret rich people working for everyone. They don't even have to be selfless. They could just realize that its hard to get rich and lie around in the lap of luxury if every settled village is slowly whittled into extinction by random Ogres and whatnot.

[MrNexx]

The Watcher's Council?