So /tg/, in previous campaigns I've done the standard BBEG as the primary villain, but I was thinking of having a secret society (like the Illuminati) as the main enemy. Have any of you done something similar? Any ideas?
>>44390360
cut off one head and two more shall take its place.
>>44390396
Yeah, basically Hydra.
Played in a game where there was a secret society run by "witches" which were sort of technically a race all their own. Basically they sent out members into the world to integrate and interbreed with different societies and cultures, and then have them pull the strings. For those who lost interest in the mission overtime, were disloyal, or just never knew about it, the witches in charge could control them with voodoo-esque blood magic. So like, having begun the plan many centuries before, your great great great... grandmother of grandfather could have been a witch or even just reproduced with one, and despite the knowledge of that detail never passing on and your ancestry never mixing with witches again, they could still control you.
>tl;dr blood magic "witches" used a fire and forget method of spreading their bloodlines which they could later directly control
>>44390360
Do Brotherhood of Nod, but amp up the stealth and guerrilla aspects.
>>44390396
My first thought. Specfically Winter Soldier style infiltration of some agency by an insidious, difficult to crush society.
>>44390360
Look into megadungeon systems for the secret society. The problem I have with people running secret societies as villains is that they tend to be very arbitrary when they shouldn't be. Give your secret society hit points, methods of attack, reach, recruitment. Stat all of this out. Make striking parts of the society deal damage to other parts of the society. Killing a kingpin can deal overall damage to the society, but unless they've taken out the base, shouldn't kill the whole thing
Work this out ahead of time so it is NOT arbitrary, and you're good.
Remember that there are more ways to hurt someone than with bloodshed.
The players take out one of the conspiracies assets, only to find their bank accounts frozen or their job gone. If they deal a particularly grievous blow to the group, then the conspiracy sets up some kind of false flag atrocity and leaves an evidence trail to the players. Attack their relationships and reputations rather than directly trying to kill them.
>>44390360
Not yet, currently plan to have one exist but not as the main antagonist, and in fact the society wanted the party to defeat the planned BBEG since he's a rogue member.
>>44390360
Have I played Paranoia, CoC, or DG? Yup. Love that shit.
only really done it with trope inversion, most of the time players don't know shit all about the enemy in the first place so doing it for realsies is pretty pointless.
basically had a cult that was obsessed with a fire breathing tortoise because it was "so cool" and no other reason
the party somehow ended up joining the cult and the game got pretty weird from there after "adolf hitler" the 12 year old 6 foot fighter with one level in wizard took the turtle and put it in his bag
>>44392836
woops *warrior
he was a warrior not a fighter, he put levels into the npc class
>>44390360
The trick is to make sure that the conspiracy isn't perfect and omnipotent because at that point there's no point fighting them, there's no point doing anything and no way to even reliably get "in" on fighting the conspiracy.
Sure, they should be powerful. But they're flawed, human. They have only so many hours in the day and so much manpower. They might not even all want the same thing. The greatest threat to a conspiracy is itself.
