Question for GM regarding conspiracies

[wolffhound79]

In the last couple of years of gaming I have introduced a shadow government group into my campaigns. This group has been involved first as a tool to help directive PC towards certain areas I wanted them to go or help them out of danger. Its grown into a larger entity. First I used it to introduce the PC to a secure bunker in a area behind Mexican lines to start liberating south California from enemy hands, then used it in another to direct PCs in Guam to rescue space engineers in japan and bring them back to the US with a quick stop to a secret up link on wake island to download the technical info. Lately I've had the PCs in our New York state campaign encounter a shadowy group running around in humvees in unusual camo schemes with prototype weapons (for that time frame of 1997) securing computer resources for a yet unknown goal for a General Erickson. (They are 2 game sessions away from figuring out that general erickson is the name of a computer relay.)

Has anyone else done something like this or thrown any conspiracy into there campaigns?

[Raellus]

The RESET plot line from Free City of Krakow is a conspiracy that many T2K ref's and players are familiar with. I'm sure that there are other conspiracies in the canon, although I can't recall any specific examples ATM.

I ran a brief PbP, inspired by an excellent article by Rainbow 6 and set in Austria (for which I created a sourcebook), involving the death of Pope John Paul II, the new pope, and a pretender. Although I never got to play it out, that scenario would have involved conspiracy.

I also included some elements of conspiracy in Rook's Gambit (Chilikov's plot to use the MDM against the Operation Omega fleet at Bremerhaven) and the Korean Peninsula Sourcebook (the "Red Lotus" DPRK bioweapon project that resulted in the creation of "Ragers").

[RN7]

Wouldn't New America be classed as a shadow government group?

[Tegyrius]

This may be undue X-Files influence, but I tend to parse "shadow government" as indicative of an official or formerly-official conspiracy. I see New America as more of a far-right radical movement - something that the FBI would today classify as a domestic terrorist organization. YMMV.

They were certainly a conspiracy until 01 January 2001, though.

- C.

[wolffhound79]

The new america plot line we havent reached yet, however I have used the makato computer company (Im sure I got the name wrong) from the kidnapped book, as a company my players have come across to complete a mission and at the same time accidentally find the access to the underground bunker. As a result the players are always looking for hidden doors now LOL.

Im going to have to take a look at rooks gambit, thank you for the info.

The end result I was looking at for this special goverment group was to gather the equipment and resources necessary to luanch a prewar satelite into space to better conduct there actions. I havent decided what that is yet, this group could be trying to help rebuild, help with reuniting the milgoc civgoc split, or possibly takeover and run the country themselves.