Fly Me To The Moon

Four years ago, on New Year’s Day in Saratoga Springs, NY, I met a pair of elderly friends playing guitar in a fire hut around noon. The smell of marijuana mixed hazily alongside the oaken logs in the fireplace.

One had claimed to have met Frank Sinatra. Then again, who hasn’t claimed to have met Frank Sinatra?

But wait - what if everyone who had ever claimed to have met Frank Sinatra actually had met Frank Sinatra? What if, and bear with the author here, that’s because Frank Sinatra actually had an army of simulacrums who went around just meeting people?

This begs the question, why would Frank Sinatra invest his magical energy into doing such a seemingly pointless task?

Well, in Ocean’s Thirteen, shaking Frank Sinatra’s hand was tantamount to a promise to never backstab another who had shaken Frank’s hand. What if that promise was iron-clad? A literal gaeas?

A Conspiracy Is Born

Frank swirls the whiskey in his glass. “The Soviet Union is a problem, Jimmy.”

“Indeed, Master.”

Frank takes a small sip. “I haven’t shaken Khrushchev’s hand yet.”

JFK nods. “And Malenkov lasted all of a day.”

“I can’t shake hands fast enough. That’s why we have to Fly Me to the Moon.”

JFK gave Frank a quizzical look. “Excuse me, master?”

“Assemble the cult, Johnny boy.”

Session Zero

There were 5 players - 2 couples and a single other, along with the GM.

In this game, at any point in time, players could, and were encouraged to, make up key elements of the story using a mechanic from the game we were playing, Fate.

There are four cult members huddled around Frank Sinatra. Standing in a candle-lit oval office, they are wearing black robes. The first reveals themselves as John F. Kennedy. The second reveals themselves as - player group one, who is it?

Each player group went around, in order, and after some deliberation, explained who each cult member was. They were, in order,

These cult members then informed the actual player characters. For example, one of the players was Helga, Leif’s ex shield-maiden and jilted lover a la Beforeigners. This immediately implied time travel as being in play.

Another was Bigfoot. Bigfoot and Sasquatch are synonyms but not in this campaign. It’s an east-coast/west-coast thing, apparently. Sasquatches are east-coast. Bigfoot’s lover (and out-of-game partner), Jeff Goldblum, traveled back in time to help with whatever is about to happen.

Each player would then become embroiled in the conspiracy from their shared experience as employees at the Ritz Carlton in New York City - when Frank Sinatra visits to assassinate Helga for her knowledge of Leif’s existence.

The Conspiracy

With the core cast assembled, I, the GM, was ready to figure out the conspiracy. Then, I’d have to weave that into the story to let the players figure it out.

Shaking Frank’s hand is not an eternal bond. No magic is forever because of entropy and chaos. This, of course, because of Diana, moon goddess of wilderness, chaos, and the hunt. Her influence over the universe ensures that nothing is forever and, with time, all returns from whence it came.

She is a multi-part deity, however, and one of her counterparts is Luna. Luna is associated with law.

The reason that John F. Kennedy ordered the moon landing was to let Frank Sinatra fly to the moon. Frank Sinatra would murder Diana, marry Luna, become an aspect of law, and usher in a new age of peace through the Sinatra handshake. A Pax Sinatra for all of eternity.

Frank Sinatra and Leif Ericson fly to the moon.

And who else could pilot the Apollo capsules but the greatest ship captain of all time, Leif? That’s why the Pope used his dark powers to bring Leif into our time.

Remembering the Collaborative Conspiracy

Remember that players were encouraged to make up key elements of the conspiracy using mechanics from Fate. This would obviously have massive implications for what my plans, as the GM, were. The looser the conspiracy was at the start, the more the players could believe that it was actually all running together into a tale that would make Iran-Contra blush.

The key reason why this campaign failed was the complexity of bookkeeping. For example:

Why was the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the basement of the Smithsonian important?
Wait, how did J. Edgar Hoover matter?
And he was actually a sasquatch?
And he was actually THE sasquatch at the White House?
How did those mind control drugs work they put in the coal miners’ water?

Each made up thing was another thread to keep track of for both players and the GM. It was another thing to forget and another thing to get blindsided by when one of the players did remember. Each resurfaced detail forgotten by the GM was a detail that interrupted the flow of the game if anyone ever remembered it at all. The rich tapestry of conspiracy theories that tightly interwove between each other in ever more implausible layers could never be properly bound together into a cohesive whole.

We’re building familiar.systems to enable games exactly like this. A conspiracy needs hidden information that players can’t stumble into. Retcons need to be tracked, not forgotten. And the little details that a GM alone would miss are exactly what AI with tooling is good at remembering and surfacing.

I’m excited to play a campaign like this again and not have it die in three months due to neglect. I hope you are, too.