Spoiling Secrets

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Once, long ago, I was a precocious goblin cabin boy. I've got the full story below the comic over here, but the TLDR is that I spoiled my werewolf buddy's secret affliction in Session 1. Concealing her lycanthropy was supposed to be an ongoing plot point for her. Sure it's "what my character would have done," but in retrospect I could have found a reason to not be that guy. #regret

Have you seen a big secret spoiled in a game? What was the fallout like?[/FONT]

When I first started playing around age 8 or 9 I thought certain player knowledge and character knowledge could be shared. My 3rd PC was a thief that had a problem stealing from other characters, like Tasselhoff. The other players did not find this cute and kept tying my character up a night to keep him from stealing. The bad thing was that he never got to steal from them. Maybe because the other players were 12-13 years old and I was the youngest.

Um, if my buddy were a werewolf... I wouldn't want to piss her off.

I've had a couple of characters with big secrets that came out. Some were bad for the character, some amusing, and one had some great roleplaying.

I was joining an existing Champions (superheros) game. Great game, and a lot of internal character drama that the players were happy with - good RP, not inter-player problems.

With the DM and the player of the leader of the team, we worked out my character and she was actually an android whom the leader wanted because the team needed a brick (heavy hitter tank). But she had been programed not to know she was an android so she couldn't give it away, and had false memories of a childhood at the equivalent of a more mainstream expy of Xavier's Academy for Gifted Youngsters.

Part of what made her so effective in pretending to be real was that she had low level telepathy not under her conscious control to allow her to learn to act as expected. Which was a completely different subsystem then powers she knew about.

Anyway, things are going well for a while fitting into the team, and two of the existing heroes were wooing her. Finally she became an item with one and the other started sleeping around to try to make her jealous. Right about then someone discovered she was an android, petrified her with magic, and the whole team go together to discuss.

What followed was several hours of fantastic roleplay, even though I couldn't participate being turned to stone. Had I been kidnapped and replaced, was I a spy, all sorts of things. The person who had been turned down was sure I was up to no good, while the other one was dismayed to find out I wasn't alive. Then the team psychic talked about seeing telepathic emanations which was not part of my powers they knew about which made things even more interesting. After a while it came out that the leader knew, and there was all these accusations about why the rest of the team hadn't been told. Just really good soap-opera. The fact that most of the players hadn't known about it either gave it a great edge.

In the end, they decided to keep her on the team on probation, woke her up and told her. And she didn't believe them. Champions has a disadvantage system, and she has a 15 point Psychological disadvantage: Won't believe she's an android. Hardcoded in so she couldn't accidentally discover and out herself.

Things ended up working out really well long term. Though at a later point when her husband (I did say later) cheated on her she ended up going all emotionless robot who didn't bother to breath or blink for a few months.

Or when she got possessed and turned evil for a session - you know, someone with low-level telepathy plus perfect recall who's been through all the rosters including weaknesses - that's a really NASTY person to fight. Fighting in orbit and turned off all of one hero's powers - including life support. Was able to tell her new evil allies the perfect attacks to use against all of the rest her team. Oh, it was a glorious, horrible day. So I guess that was the the other half - when she let all of their secrets slip.

Eh, I mentioned several, but none of the others were as interesting so I didn't post them above. Here they are for completeness. Both were from the 80s, when gender and orientation were more taboo.

One was a male elf whom another party member, a female human wizard, had a crush. The elf was friendly but just seemed not to notice - he was urbane and polite with everyone. Almost Spock-like in interpersonal relations, though he could really get up a hatred for orcs. Things proceed with this unrequited crush for a while (and many levels) and then the whole party was at a, well, party where the main drink being served is a powerful aphrodisiac. The DM had us making rolls against poison with increased effect for each failure. (This was AD&D 2nd - I think the save was "Petrification/Poison/Death Magic".) After I failed two and while the wizardess had been next to throwing herself at my elf, I wasn't RPing the return. The DM, knowing I'm a good RPer, pointed out that I should be randy at the least. I agreed. As the night went on, it eventually became obvious that the elf was, in his urbane and polite way, trying to put the moves on the swashbuckling and charismatic leader of the party, who was also male.

Nowadays that wouldn't be a thing, but for teenagers in the 80s it was unexpected. Good RP came out of it, and a very, very disappointed wizardess.

The other story was around gender, and also in the 80s. Had a really cool painted, moderately armored mini with a chainmail mask under a hood. Who would wear something as uncomfortable as a chainmail MASK? Well, someone trying to hide not just what they look like, but the very curves of their face. So, the idea of Lady Jenna was born, fleeing an arranged marriage and taking on a male persona of "Jorum Farstalker" who had an aversion to being touched.

Was found out by the cleric (back then heals were ranged touch), but she kept my secret. Was all good until one of the other players introduced a paladin to replace his previous character. "Jorum" dropped in combat, and the paladin used his lay-on-hands and found out. He broke it to the whole party, wouldn't lie.

The only problem is that Lady Jenna was pursued by her powerful family whom she was causing no small deal of embarrassment on running out on the wedding. While I am sure the DM could have made it a cool part of the campaign, her personality was more that this was the one flaw she couldn't fight, only hide, so she left the party and took up a new persona. And I rolled a new character.

I did get a chance to play her again elsewhere in the same world (DM ran a lot of connected games). She's a somewhat tragic character to me, for all her heroics he never faced her family and let the secret define her.

It's pretty much a foundation plot thread that the secret was going to out eventually. Regret and early outing are now just two more things to work into the story.

Stories have twists. It can be fun for a story to go in an unexpected direction and see where it goes. An 'outted' Werewolf that wants to survive being a known Werewolf can also be a fun story.

A player in a campaign I'm in had her character's fear of heights spoiled by both another player and the DM. A bit of a shame. Could have gotten a lot of cool role playing out of it if they'd kept their mouth shut. :/