The Retrospective Campaign: The Curse of Frank Herbert

Like many DMs out there, many nerds in general, I'm a fan of science fiction. 

Like some of the older nerds, I cut my science fiction teeth on stuff like Lensman, Dune and Slan. I don't remember much of Lensman (I need to pick it up and re-read it) I do recall that Lensman read like what I'd later identify as a 'light novel.' 

Slan is a discussion for another time, but then there's Dune.

Dune was a book that made a big impact on me, and had a bigger impact on my world design for good and ill.

Notably, Frank Herbert put a positively massive amount of backstory and details in the Appendix of Dune, because his primary story didn't waste time with explaining to you what things like CHOAM, the Bene Tleilax or such were. The story just dropped the terms like you knew what they were and kept running.  In terms of pacing, this is great. However, its contributed to the reputation the man has for the story being positively opaque on first viewing. He also had countless groups operating in intrigue against one another.

As a DM having countless groups at loggerheads all working independantly in a tapestry of plots and objectives can be helpful for staving off the 'they killed my bad guy too early' problem, but can also heavilly contribute to a sense among the players that they went to the swimming pool and found it almost shoulder to shoulder with other bathers.

One of my players developed a 'web of intrigue' to keep the various power players and their relationships and conflicts straight. 

As a DM its easy to get bemused as your players get mystified by not understanding the motivations of enemies, and how they can get so easilly confused by having multiple groups of baddies show up that seem to be working at cross purposes.

I think this is because for many groups, and many campaigns, the idea of the PCs vs 'the big bad' rings true.  The idea that all evil, all trouble, originates from one primary source is a common one in JRPGs and in many story-focused RPGs and CRPGs.

To try to ameliorate this I've tried to give the bad guy's certain schticks and tells (like a group having a specific group of humanoid servants they use or the like). 

I still wonder sometimes though if I have a complexity addiction when nearly every campaign's party has a web of intrigue, or a journal, or a diagram of enemies, allies and unknowns and their changing allegiances.