Conspiramancy
A downloadable game
A Conspiracy-Based Journaling RPG
-- Pick a book, uncover its secrets, and write your story! --
Conspiramancy is a single player (or solo) journaling RPG. You write journal entries describing the story of your character based on a series of abstract, inspirational prompts that bring challenges, complications, or twists of fate.
Instead of needing dice, a deck of cards, or a wooden tumbling tower, this RPG uses a book of your choice (novels are good) to help inspire the prompts, measure progression, and delineate the end of your adventure.
You Pick the Book; You Pick the Genre
Your choice of book can inspire the setting and genre of your journaling story - from modern day spy thriller, historical murder mystery, epic space opera, to magical coming of age stories. Whatever the genre and setting, you'll create a character who discovers a shadowy organization that manipulates the unaware from the shadows - and are inducted into the war against their malevolent actions.
Simple Rules; Expansive Prompts
With a set of simple rules, using the words and sentences on the page, you'll create abstract and inspiring writing prompts to generate the People, Places, Objects, and Secrets your character will encounter.
Increasing Threats; Hazards to Dodge
But beware, as your story continues and the Enemy gets ever closer to victory, you'll have to check the pages for Hazards - from A Place You Cannot Escape, to A Secret that Wants to be Known.
End of a Book; End of an Adventure
Ultimately, as you reach the end of the book you've chosen, your story will come to an end - are you victorious in this battle in the greater war, or will you pass the task onto someone else, just as you were introduced to the secrets yourself?
A Caution on a Predisposition to Conspiracy
NOTE: Conspiramancy is about reading too much into random snippets of information taken out of context. It's intended to replicate the feeling of seeing patterns where there are none - of connecting wildly unrelated things and finding meaning, and danger in them. Bibliomancy is an inspiration, too.
If you find yourself prone to taking these sorts of things too far in the real world, this may not be the game for you - it is just a game after all, and does not claim to offer any deep insight or revelatory secrets.
Please take care of yourself.
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Hello hello! Just a quick question about Hazards, if I may. Sorry if I'm just being dumb, but when you choose a hazard in the introduction is that the only hazard that can trigger in the run? For example, if I choose a person as the hazard, I only need to be checking for that trigger as I continue?
Hello! No, it's a good question, you're not being dumb at all :)
You start with your introductory Hazard, and every time you land on a new page, you should check the triggering conditions to see if the page you are on cause that Hazard to be in effect.
However, if you land on a page and its last digit is zero (and the page doesn't trigger an existing Hazard, like the introductory one), then you choose a NEW, additional, Hazard. The next time you land on a new page, you'll then check for the triggering conditions of both Hazards.
The intention is to escalate the sense of danger you're feeling as you play through the book - as you move on, you find new, plentiful, dangers around every corner which in turn (heh) make it feel like they're all out to get you, and the paranoia ramps up.
Note that you can't have two of the same variety of Hazard (so you can't have 2x "A Person is Following You") so the maximum number of Hazards is four.
Also, note that you can only trigger a specific Hazard (like "A Person is Following You") once per journal entry. So if you landed on a page and it triggered your first Hazard, and you skipped ahead the requisite pages to 'elude' the Hazard, and you landed on a page that would ALSO trigger your first Hazard, it does not happen twice. Any other Hazard could still trigger, so potentially you could trigger all four of the different Hazards for one journal entry!
Hope that helps!
Thanks so much for clearing that up! Can't wait to sit down with it proper and give it a go.
Great game! I really enjoyed all of the different methods for generating prompts using a book. Each fit the theme of whatever entity I was generating very nicely.
Thank you! That's great to hear
Phenomenal game!! I played using The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and I had a terrific time as my character tore himself (and the world) apart trying to understand a techno-mystical cult running a campaign of repression and censorship through several layers of reality.
A quick review on my blog (in french) : https://www.gulix.fr/blog/2022/05/07/lectures-de-role-25/
I played with Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It was great (and sometimes crazy/cryptic). I reexplored the game as my character was also reexploring London, trying to find a strange stairway leading to darkness...
Now, I want to know what lies behind "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo" or "The Three Musketeers" (like The Club Dumas book).