[Dirty Secrets] MKRPG first playtest

[Neil the Wimp]

Dirty Secrets is Seth Ben-Ezra's game of detective fiction, in the mould of Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer.  Read Ben's notes and some other playtests

We played Dirty Secrets last Tuesday at my local RPG club.  The mini-campaign we were playing finished a week early so I took the opportunity to give Dirty Secrets a playtest with a semi-captive audience'.  The game went well and people seemed keen to play it again.  We didn't make it to a conclusion, though.    At the end is a set of questions and observations that came out in play. 

All the players had role-played a lot before (some mainly trad games, some with more hippy story-game experience).  All had at least a passing familarity with the detective genre.  I didn't take an active part in the game; instead, I took the role of rules guru and general facilitator.

The Characters
(Name, sex, age, ethnicity, social class, legal status.  Note the slightly flippant attributes in places, a reaction to the novelty of the game and the freeform nature of character generation).

(The Investigator is the only 'PC'.  Other characters are played by the rotating GM and other players on an ad-hoc basis)

Investigator
Ken Kyle, Male, 27, Chinese, Middle class (accountant), ex-convict

Victim
James Evans, male, 89, American Indian, Upper middle class, Private eye

Suspect
Jack Dee, male, 35, white, pikey*, ex-convict

* Pikey is UK slang.  It's a very derogatory term for travellers aka 'gypsies'

Robert Stone, male, 37, white, upper class, Judge

Desmond Harper, male, 17, white, poverty, ex-convict

Crime
Blackmail.  Brought to Ken's attention by Desmond.

We decided that all the ex-convict characters met and knew each other from prison.  Evans was known to them all as the person who'd produced the evidence that put Desmond in prison.

Prologue
Ken was called by Desmond to the Milton Keynes police station.  Desmond complained that Evans was leaning on him about some blackmail.  Desmond asked Ken for help.

Scene 1: Investigation.
Ken and Desmon went to Evans's office.  The were met by Sheila May, his 64-year-old secretary, promoted to a Character.  Sheila tried to fob them off, but Ken managed to force his way into the inner office.  Evans was there, asleep in his chair.  We discovered that Ken was Evans's accountant, but learned nothing more.

Scene 2: Revelation.
Ken and Desmond decided to stake out Sheila's house.  Desmond (revealing himself as being none too bright) knew exactly where the spare key was hidden and let them both in.  Once inside, a quick look around revealed photos of Sheila and Desmond in various sexual positions.  [Much hilarity at the table at the thought of the difference in ages between Desmond and Sheila]

Scene 3: Investigation
Ken and Desmond stayed in Sheila's house until she came home from work.   Ken demanded to know who was behind the blackmail, Sheila refused to tell him.  Our first conflict!  The result was Ken won with two violence dice.  We narrated it as Sheila refusing to hand over an envelope of photos.  When Ken grabbed it from her, she fell and smashed her head on the corner of a table.  The photos showed Evans passing a thick envelope either to or from a person in a limousine.  Jack Dee's handwriting was on the back of the photo.  Desmond stayed to look after Sheila, Ken went off to find Jack.

Scene 4: Investigation
Ken arrived at Jack's pikey park.  After a brief (and abusive) discussion with some kids, who ended up stealing the wheels from Ken's car, Ken found Jack.  Jack revealed that the police had raided his lockup and stolen his supply of cocaine.  He also knew that Evans was selling drugs and suspected that Evans's supplier was in the police force.  This became the second Crime.  Jack revealed that the person in the limousine was Robert Stone.

Scene 5: Revelation
Ken, Jack, and Desmond all met up in McDonalds (the burger bar, that is) to discuss what was going on.  During the discussion, someone (I forget who) examined Desmond's mobile phone and found a text message from Evans, implicating Desmond in the sale of drugs for Evans.

Scene 6: Violence
Ken and Desmond fought over the revelation.  No violence caused.

Scene 7: Violence again
This time, the police arrive to break up the fight in the nice, posh shopping centre where the McDonalds is.  In the ensuing melee (3 violence), Desmond is beaten to death by the police and his body dragged away for "questioning"

Scene 8: Investigation
Back in Jack's lockup, this time with Evans tied to a chair.  Ken wanted to know how Evans was involved with the drug dealing.  As a result of the conflict, Evans took three violence and died from a heart attack under torture by Ken.

At the end of the scene we had a Crime Resolution.  Before he died, Evans revealed that Chief Inspector Carver of the Thames Valley police (and now made a Character) was responsible for the theft of Jack's drugs from the police evidence store. 

Scene 9: Revelation
Examination of Evans's mobile phone revealed a text message from Carver, his nephew.

That's where we ran out of time.

General feedback was that the game was fun and enjoyable, and everyone expressed an interest in playing it again.

Some specific questions that came up: (Seth's answered many of these in private email already)

• If the Authority play the first character that comes up, even if that person is obviously a faceless extra, does the next person round the table get to play the next character that comes along?


• What relationships, and with what strength, can be established in the fiction without a Revelation scene?  For instance, we narrated in free play a business relationship between Evans and Sheila.  Was that allowed?


• A major issue was the number of homosexual relationships that seemed to come up.  We'd already established in the fiction that Desmond was basically everyone's bitch in jail, so when another homosexual relationship was rolled in Scene 9, there was unanimous dissent at the table (on the grounds of utter implausibility, as opposed to squeamishness), so we rerolled it.  Two suggestions where made about how this could be alleviated.  One was to give much stronger advice about the initial character generation, suggesting that characters should be 50:50 male:female.  The other suggestion was to allow the Authority to eliminate either a relationship type or a character from the random revelation process.  Other suggestions were to roll the relationship type before eliminating a character, or to allow modification of the relationship type by sacrificing dice.
  (Actually, the second suggestion was already in the rules, but I missed it on reading.  Whoops)


• Can the same name appear twice or more on the crime grid?  If so, is there a limit to the number of times one name can appear?


• Can the investigator ever be named on the grid?


• Crime resolution give the perpetrator of a crime.  Must this person be the direct perpetrator, or can they be someone who ordered the crime to be carried out, or who arranged for the crime to be committed?


• We skipped over the starting scene: we did it, but not in depth.  We should have done more in that scene.  Perhaps you could emphasise it more in the final draft of the rules.


• There was a tendency for players to try to grab the same characters in each scene.  This may have been because that's the default mode for RPGs (one Authority, everyone else plays a single character), and it may have been because we decided in the opening that many of the characters knew each other.  I mention this mainly as an observation.  I don't know if you want to give some advice in the final rules about how well the characters know each the Investigator before play.


• In play, we had no appeals and only a few conflicts.  I'm not sure if that was a play-style of our group or if we should push harder for conflicts in investigation scenes.  Perhaps something for the guidance notes?


• We played for 2.5 hours and only part-filled the crime grid and resolved one crime.  I think there's no way you could finish a 3x6 game in three hours, even allowing for reading of rules and a perhaps slow pace of scene.  Something to think about?


• One thing that would be very helpful for readers would be an ongoing example of play, showing how the various scenes work in practice.  It would be especially helpful for illustrating the opening sequence.

Neil.

[GreatWolf]

Here are the answers that I gave Neil.  That way, everyone can see them.  Yay!

* If the Authority play the first character that comes up, even if that person is obviously a faceless extra, does the next person round the table get to play the next character that comes along?

No.  The Authority gets to play the first Character (i.e. written on a card).  He should feel free to play "extras" or to delegate that as desired.  I do need a better way to distinguish between characters (i.e. people) and Characters (i.e. written on a card).  Any thoughts?

* What relationships, and with what strength, can be established in the fiction without a Revelation scene?  For instance, we narrated in free play a business relationship between Evans and Sheila.  Was that allowed?

Oh yes.  Whatever you like.  The Revelation sequence is there mostly to give things a kick if the players are running out of ideas.

* A major issue was the number of homosexual relationships that seemed to come up.  We'd already established in the fiction that Desmond was basically everyone's bitch in jail, so when another homosexual relationship was rolled in Scene 9, there was unanimous dissent at the table (on the grounds of utter implausibility, as opposed to squeamishness), so we rerolled it.  Two suggestions where made about how this could be alleviated.  One was to give much stronger advice about the initial character generation, suggesting that characters should be 50:50 male:female.  The other suggestion was to allow the Authority to eliminate either a relationship type or a character from the random revelation process.  Other suggestions were to roll the relationship type before eliminating a character, or to allow modification of the relationship type by sacrificing dice.

Funny that you should mention this.  The second suggestion is how things are currently handled.  I *thought* that I put that in the draft that I sent you, but maybe not.  Essentially, after the investigator player chooses a Character or relationship type, the Authority can remove one Character or relationship type from the random pool.  So, if you roll the relationship type "vetoed" by the Authority, then you just reroll it.  If he vetoes a Character, just don't shuffle his card into the pool when you're drawing Characters.

* Can the same name appear twice or more on the crime grid?  If so, is there a limit to the number of times one name can appear?

Yes.  No.

* Can the investigator ever be named on the grid?

No.  Good question, though.  I need to make this clear in the rules.

* Crime resolution give the perpetrator of a crime.  Must this person be the direct perpetrator, or can they be someone who ordered the crime to be carried out, or who arranged for the crime to be committed?

Huh.  Good question.  Silly me, but I hadn't thought about that.  I'm leaning in the direction of saying that they don't have to be the direct perpetrator, but I'll have to think it over.

* There was a tendency for players to try to grab the same characters in each scene.  This may have been because that's the default mode for RPGs (one Authority, everyone else plays a single character), and it may have been because we decided in the opening that many of the characters knew each other.  I mention this mainly as an observation.  I don't know if you want to give some advice in the final rules about how well the characters know each the Investigator before play.

Yeah.  The assumption is actually that most of the characters will actually know each other.  Again, those entangling relationships. That's a good point to explain in the text, though.

* In play, we had no appeals and only a few conflicts.  I'm not sure if that was a play-style of our group or if we should push harder for conflicts in investigation scenes.  Perhaps something for the guidance notes?

Appeals and conflicts fill two different needs.

Appeals are all about players establishing the boundaries of narration.  It's a way for players to say, "I don't like that."  So, few appeals doesn't concern me, so long as no one felt like his opinions weren't being heard.

Few conflicts is a different matter.  Those are all about character conflicts of interest.  As such, these should be fairly common.  So, a couple of notes.

First, anyone (not just the Investigator and Authority) can call for an Investigation sequence to enter conflict.  (This is subject to appeal, of course.)  So, if ANY player thinks that two characters have a conflict of interest that isn't being quickly resolved in free play, he should feel free to send the game to dice.

Second, conflicts are good for a game, both because they produce unexpected results and because they produce surprise Violence.  Both of these effects shove the story in unusual directions, which is good for everyone.

* We played for 2.5 hours and only part-filled the crime grid and resolved one crime.  I think there's no way you could finish a 3x6 game in three hours, even allowing for reading of rules and a perhaps slow pace of scene.  Something to think about?

My time estimates were based on my playtest sessions that were between 60-90 minutes, so I may have been overly optimistic in my time estimates.

* One thing that would be very helpful for readers would be an ongoing example of play, showing how the various scenes work in practice.  It would be especially helpful for illustrating the opening sequence.

I hear that.

What I'm actually hoping to do, once I lock down the rules, is to film an entire session of play on a short story Grid, and draw examples of play from this game.  Plus then, I could make the session available online.

We will see.

And thanks for the playtest!  I greatly appreciate the help.