PC Secrets

[Haltherrion]

[MENTION=60907]thewok[/MENTION] in the Backstory thread got me thinking about having players play a character that might either be tied to the plot or has a secret element to it that might affect the other players.

There's a lot of different levels of PC secrets, some pretty benign, some campaign shaking. Certain types of secrets can obviously only play in certain types of games (the more plot-heavy types).

I'm not opposed to it in principle. Little secrets, especially ones created by the players are fine with me. Plot-impacting secrets I tend to avoid, they can be tricky to implement in a way that feels right to the other players once revealed.


Some types of PC secrets (not meant to be comprehensive, feel free to add others):

• Player wants to keep a background element secret: his father, a crime, etc.
• Player wants to keep an "in-your-face" thing secret (something day to day behavior might reveal): alignment, race, etc. This may require magic or skills to do and is generally just a matter of time before it is revealed.
• The PC has a secret (like the changeling) that will ultimately cause the PC to act against the party but the harm might be limited to a theft, trouble with NPCs, possibly the death of another PC.
• Pre-campaign start, a PC is a member of a group or works for an NPC that is not aligned with the other PC's interests.
• In-game, a PC is recruited for a group or NPC as in previous bullet (I do this sometimes time myself).
• The PC is ultimately a foe of the party, a doppleganger only using the party for cover to assassinate the king or some such.
• The PC has knowledge critical to the success of the party in the main campaign story arc and will use this knowledge to thwart the party.

Thoughts? Experiences?

 

[Almacov]

I'll occasionally leave open ended plot hooks for DMs when building my character, which can involve secrets. Sometimes even the character doesn't know about them. I had a character with a one-night stand in a tavern written into his backstory, and gave my DM this on a list of plot hooks:
"-The half-elven woman Sloane met in the pub has placed a special arcane mark on the back of his neck, with an inscription meant for him. Sloane has no idea."

I also had another character with an emotional need for leverage over anyone she associated with, who naturally wound up building a fair number of secrets of her own.
Some had to do with leverage over PCs, but not all did - she wound up being somewhat secretive in general.
At one point she had to enter a dreamspace to fight off a demon. (An encounter which happened privately, away from the party.) The demon offered power to her in return for being spared, promising to not return to her plane within her lifetime. She accepted, gaining some neat homebrew magic.
The rest of the players, naturally, assumed she had destroyed the creature, and were mostly oblivious to the deal for the duration of the game.

I think secrets can be a nice way to let characters feel more distinct from their fellow party members. Whether they're large secrets or little ones, they make the character's experience feel a bit more special.

One of the players in my 4e game is running a Paladin of Zehir that doesn't remember being anointed as one. Or much at all about the cult, for that matter. Too the outside world, and most of her inside world, she's lighthearted and absent minded. A little forgetful. Not sinister in the slightest, but a little... unsettling, sometimes.

Plot-impacting secrets I tend to avoid, they can be tricky to implement in a way that feels right to the other players once revealed.

Most plot-impacting secrets I've seen that work out well are ones where the player has woven an open-ended plot hook into their backstory, and let the DM develop a secret around it independently.
My DM for the game with Sloane came up with some really effective things to do with the one-night stand hook.

 

[arscott]

I'll be proposing a Prime Time Adventures game to my group soon, where they'll play members of a counterterrorist unit. Primetime Adventures is a very story-focused game, one where the PCs are characters in a TV show.

During the "Pilot" session, It will come out that one of the characters is a mole--but neither I nor the players will know who: We'll only decide who the mole is when the TV audience finds out.

 

[Ydars]

I recently DMed a game where all the players had characters with secrets and often have played or DMed games like this.

A number of observations;

1) Many players are not sufficiently mature (even 30 and 40 somethings) to properly separate character and player knowledge and so you have to pass notes or keep sending people out of the room to make it work right. Indeed sometimes, with good groups, the players do not pick up on things they ordinarily would because they are erring too much on the 'I wouldn't know that' side of things. In other words, if the secrets are out in the open at the table, then good players sometimes become too reluctant to use their brains in character to avoid being accused of metagaming.

2) If you do keep sending people out of the room, some players become hyper-paranoid and it can get annoying when the party turns on itself.

3) the way to work out whether a 'secrets' game will be fun, is to ask yourself 'How much interparty conflict do I usually have?'. If the answer is already medium or high then you have a receipe for disaster. If it is low or zero, then it will work excellently and add some spice.

 

[MarkB]

The main guideline I'd suggest for this style of game is that, while you can keep the secrets unknown to other players, you shouldn't keep the fact that there are secrets unknown to them.

Games in which the main characters have secret knowledge and agendas are a different style of experience than games in which the main characters can trust and rely on each other completely, and whilst both work very well, they each require a different mindset. Finding yourself in one type when you thought you were in the other will be disconcerting at best, game-breaking at worst.

 

[Ydars]

Oh and I forgot to echo what someone else said; the best secrets games are ones where the DM plays a double bluff. Every PCs has the same or related secret (they are all changelings or all agents of some power) but don't know it.

That way, when the secret is blown open it is all OK in the end.

 

[Cyronax]

Every PCs has the same or related secret (they are all changelings or all agents of some power) but don't know it.

An all secret-all changeling campaign would be interesting -- at least until the dam breaks and everyone realizes they're changelings.

That'd be an especially cool Eberron campaign. Maybe all the changelings were agents sent by different nations or factions. Maybe its some sort of ploy by the Cabinet of Faces. Maybe the group is the perfect terrorist/assassination squad because none of them known anything about anyone else, other then a single cell leader.

C.I.D.

 

[Haltherrion]

1) Many players are not sufficiently mature (even 30 and 40 somethings) to properly separate character and player knowledge and so you have to pass notes or keep sending people out of the room to make it work right. Indeed sometimes, with good groups, the players do not pick up on things they ordinarily would because they are erring too much on the 'I wouldn't know that' side of things. In other words, if the secrets are out in the open at the table, then good players sometimes become too reluctant to use their brains in character to avoid being accused of metagaming.

I have that issue with my players- they quarantine the info so tightly they don't let their PCs eventually learn it. Although I think a lot of that is forgetfulness in the sense that at the moment they (the player) learns a fact, it may be unknown to their PC. They therefore don't act on it. The next few times it comes up, they still can't "share" it with the PC. They get used to not having the PC act on the info and forget to revisit whether the PC ought to know it by now.

 

[Richards]

Many years ago, when my (then) 8-year-old son was in tears over his first PC death, I used a secret to get him to move on to a new PC without too much fuss. The rest of the party naturally assumed that Talon, his new PC, was a human ranger - because that's what he looked like. However, he was really a falcon hengeyokai, able to turn into a falcon as needed - as, indeed, it was needed many months later, when doing so was the only way to save the party. He got a cool PC, he got to save the day by revealing his true status as a hengeyokai, and no more tears were shed over poor Aelik Trapspringer.

Johnathan