request: play that revealed a big secret in a published game

[Paul Czege]

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking a lot about the big secrets in games like Engel and Blue Planet, the ones meant to be kept from the players until they can ultimately be revealed through actual play. And I'm sure there are other games with such embedded secrets. I'm interested in seeing posts from folks who've played through the revelation of one of these kinds of secrets, both from the GM and/or the player perspective. What was it like? How many sessions of play did it take before the secret was revealed? What were the specific circumstances of the revelation? What impact did the revelation have on the continuing game? Was the revelation itself satisfying, or unsatisfying, mind-blowing, or not? Did it end the game? Organically? Or through disintegration of player interest? Did the game continue? With greater player interest, or not?

Thanks,

Paul

[bluegargantua]

I'm interested in seeing posts from folks who've played through the revelation of one of these kinds of secrets, both from the GM and/or the player perspective.

Hmmm...

 I find that big, in-game meta-secrets or meta-plots are worse than useless in most games.  The problem being that if there's enough information for the GM to know what's going on, then it's very likely that one or more of the players will know it too.  Because people will buy the books and read them and go "oh, so it's all caused by X".  And even if they're really good role-players and feign total ignorance of the big secret, there's still no shock and surprise when/if it finally comes out.

 So, I'd have to say that most big secrets come from the GMs imagination rather than the books.  In fact, it's almost a de facto requirement that if a game has such big secrets, the GM should make a few small (or not so small) alterations to help preserve the mystery.  

 Recently, I played in a Nobilis game.  One of the many great things about Nobilis is the fact that while the main book discusses the numerous mysterious and secret things that go on in the game world, it makes no attempt to explain, define or resolve them which means that the GM has to come up with a base cosmology to help define play.  Now, many games could go on merrily spinning away for years without tackling these meta-secrets so if you want to handwave things, it's perfectly feasible, but the GM for this particular game was well known for his love of meta-plot (he frequently ran Amber games which share a similiar penchant for roll-yer-own mysteries).  

 So within a few sessions we're hot of the trail of Life, the Universe and Everything (no, I mean literally, that was a deceased Imperator).  We're investigating the Excrucian menace, talking to God's pet Serpent, learning the music of creation, all pretty heady stuff.

 In the final game, it comes out that the Nobilis of Secrets was actually his own Imperator and that he was the Imperator of the Third Age (as well as his other Imperator Titles) AND that he was, in fact, the Creator.  All of Creation had been an elaborate Excrucian experiment.  The Imperator of Secrets siezed control of the experiment and made Creation his own personal playground.  Excrucians had difficulty perceiving Creation (due to the Imperator's interference), but desperately needed to break it because when new concepts were formed, they became Imperators, not Excrucians as they had before.

 So, in the end, the player of this vastly uber-powerful character (and he wasn't aware of this plot development until the final game itself), made nice with the Excrucians and gave his cronies (the other PCs) all the information we needed to go off and make our own Creations.  Game over, we win.

 It was an....interesting development.  Aside from the fact that it ended the game (and these situations often do), I felt that it wasn't nearly as cool as some of the other theories we'd been proposing during our investigations.  I also felt like this meta-plot had pushed a huge amount of focus onto the Nobilis of Secrets.  This wasn't terribly awful during actual play, although Secrets was definately the guy to hang out with ("We just did something *really* bad." "No problem, it's a Secret!").  I certainly didn't feel as though he took up all the GMs time or anything, but obviously, the entire game hinged around him, even if none of us knew it at the time.  I can't help but feel that this may have skewed the gameplay somehow.

 Currently, I'm hack-n-slashing my way through a D&D 3ed campaign.  I'm having a lot of fun, but the GM has just thrown out a huge piece of his meta-plot:

 We are all (well mostly all) star-children.

 While investigating a pyramid, we came across this hidden complex and discovered that it was the Communications Outpost for a galatic civilization.  Some examinations of the data banks revealed that a large portion of the planet's civilized races (including all the dwarves and elves) had migrated here from other planets.  This Outpost was one of the few high-tech centers that still existed/functioned.  The galactic civilization abandoned the planet when these shape-shifting aliens attacked the world and defeated the in-system defences.  Terrified of the devil we don't know, we've elected not to open up communications with our galactic forerunners until we can chew through some more data (the fear being that unfriendly ears will listen in).

 While my character is foaming at the gob with excitement ("Hi, I'm a priest of Knowlege and Magic"), I as a player am really loathing this development ("ORKS IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!").  Frankly, I'm glad we've tabled this issue and moved on to more important things (like saving kingdoms and thwarting evil gods).  It's mostly a case of not wanting my genres mixed.

 Hmmm...can't think of any really cool meta-secret developments I've uncovered through play right now.  Possibly because I never discovered them before the GM was ready to reveal them.  :)

later
Tom

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

If I'm not mistaken, Paul is specifically asking about games in which the actual text of the published game contains the secret. It's either in the core book in the GM's section or published later in a GM-supplement, or revealed bit by bit through a series of published adventure scenarios.

Isn't SLA Industries supposed to be based on some hoo-wa secret of this sort? I own the game but confess to an extreme need to do something else every time I try to read it.

Best,
Ron

[Rob MacDougall]

Well, I really don't want to become known around here as "the Dragonlance guy", but in the D&D history threads last week I did talk about playing the entire Dragonlance saga. There were quite a few big "revelations" that the players were meant to discover along the way.(Obviously these weren't built into the game rules, but they were intrinsic parts of the game setting.)

Not one of them produced a satisfying roleplaying moment. Either (and it seems to me these outcomes are likely in any game with built-in secrets) the players had already learned it from reading the modules or books (players: "we try to look surprised"), or they had long since guessed (players: "oh, we didn't already know that?"), or it didn't strike them as being particularly remarkable (players: "zzzzz"). (Oh, there's a fourth very possible outcome in less railroaded games: the secret that just never comes up in play.) You can chalk all of these down to the quality of the Dragonlance secrets and my skill in those days at a DM, but I think these kind of problems are likely any time you have secrets built into a published setting.

Nowadays when I think of a good surprise to spring on the players, I generally use it immediately. The impact will almost never be heightened by waiting.

Rob

[jdagna]

I haven't found most in-game secrets to be very dramatic when they get revealed.  I've done it a few times, but always tied the secret to something else to keep player interest.  Otherwise, the reaction is pretty mild, since the players themselves haven't learned much.

The only time I've seen someone do it well was with my Pax Draconis system.  One character named Myron is discussed as an evil and psychotic type behind a revolution, but characters aren't supposed to know much about him.  In the game, the characters were pursuing various criminal activities and government corruption and managed to intercept a transmission that contained Myron's name.  Now, the players didn't learn anything about the character or setting, but by tying this infamous character to their current plot, they suddenly perked up and got a sense of the depth to which this plot might extend.  (Mark Eddy was a part of this group, so maybe he can share his feelings).

Even then, the excitement had more to do with the GM's plot than the one written in the book.

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

Many moons ago, I was in a group that played a lot of Dark Consipracy.   Over a few campaigns, the Dark Secret of the game was introduced each time (being about the cause of the supernatural wierdness).  And I think we did the full range of reactions (Shock, Horror, Gasp, Cool, What now?).  Each time it kinda felt either passe ("Oh, yeah", says some guy, "didn't you know it all started when...".) or forced (Powerful NPC turns up, and tells us, and us alone). Whilst this was going on amidst a lot of dysfunctional play, I beilve the most methods would lead to the same outcomes, for the following reasons:

1) There is no natural way to discover the secret.  It needs either someone who knows, or GM fiat and a power mystical character.  If you don't have one of the more obscure mystaical skills, then discovery is pretty much impossible.  Which leads to:

2) The secret is not empowering.  Knowing it adds very little to the game.  There's a very narrow avenue that would allow the PC's to 'make the world better', but, frankly, that's more improbable than discovering the secret.  A game could be based around it, but that would be a radically different game.


The games I played where it happend just ignored it, more or less - in that the game didn't do anything different.

The game that I ran based around an intent to work with the secret fell apart (Partly due to inexperinced GMing on my part.  Mostly in fact.  But partly because it just wasn't the game the players wanted).

I also ran a Conspiracy X game [0] much later.  It was revealing one of the (medium ?) secrets about one of the alien groups.  It worked ok - because it gave rise to events that made the playes go "This isn't what we know to be true" - thus thematically linking to the secrets side of the game.  Unfortunatly [1], the players decided that stomping on any evidence was more important than investigating - so it became a PC talking point - and nothing more.  Which was where I left it.

[0] I do play games without conspiracy in their name.  I do! I do! really.  

[1] For the POV of this thread.

[clehrich]

Personally, I think of this as the "Watchmen" effect.  If you've read the comic. you get to the end and think, "That's his super-brilliant plan?  He's mister brilliant (Ozymandias?) and that's all he comes up with?  That stinks!"

I think this happens every time you deal with a game with a Big Secret --- at least, it does to me.  Take Unknown Armies.  Street Level is cool.  Actually in the Underworld is cool (whatever they call it).  But Avatar?  That's the best they can come up with?  That's the big cool secret?  It stinks, IMO.

My sense is that if your campaign is going to be built on a Big Secret, you'd better feel it out slowly with the players, and make sure that when they find the Answer, they'll say, "Wow, cool!"  Not, "Gee, that's kind of a letdown."

[Bankuei]

The only game which I can confess to having actually sprung the "secret" on players was Feng Shui.  Everyone played a modern day type character, whom I entangled in a mess of gang violence and police actions ala John Woo, and just started upping the ante from there.  

About 3 sessions in they discover the Netherworld, and get caught up in major drama there.  Its not until about 10 or so sessions in that they are introduced to the concept that reality and history is controlled by control of the Feng Shui points on earth, and then the madness really started.  It was the best campaign I had, lasting about 2 years.

Major strengths to it were that I played with mostly non-gamer types who I introduced into the hobby, and also that I had the only rulebook.  Feng Shui's rules are easy enough to pick up, although we did drift significantly from the initiative/shots/damage rules into something simpler.

What was it like? How many sessions of play did it take before the secret was revealed? What were the specific circumstances of the revelation? What impact did the revelation have on the continuing game? Was the revelation itself satisfying, or unsatisfying, mind-blowing, or not? Did it end the game? Organically? Or through disintegration of player interest? Did the game continue? With greater player interest, or not?

The general circumstances were pretty much on the level of "Everybody chases the MacGuffin, oh shoot, we're in another dimension" sort of thing that is only plausible in action movies.   The revelation was definitely entertaining, as it raised the stakes for the players and got them more and more involved in the setting of conflict.  

The big time travel/reality secrets weren't "mind-blowing" as the fact that I threw out the rules to prevent time-paradoxes and the players were tripping off the fact of realizing that some previously unexplained events were the results of actions they committed in a session two weeks later.  The mind blowing part was that I wasn't running off of a script.

The secrets increased player interest, although the campaign did die off as folks got busy with jobs, kids, etc.  I think metaplot secrets can work as an excellent game device for folks just entering into the game, or to gaming in general, but don't work so well for folks who are into gaming and tend to get a hold of the secrets either through books or simply talking to other gamers.

Chris

[ThreeGee]

Hey all,

To a lesser extent, any play that focuses on exploration could be said to reveal secrets about the world. For example, Call of Cthulhu is all about normal people discovering that horror stories are real. In my experience the revelation is incredibly contrived, with part of the group saying things like, "Oh my goodness! Zombies? I would never have guessed," and the rest just waiting for the faux-hysterics to stop before shooting and/or running. The in-game situation is about right, with people in shock, going into fight/flight mode, etc, but the players obviously have no interest, having experienced nothing out of the ordinary.

On the other hand, keeping secret knowledge in the background only has led to some great times, because even when the players suspect, they never know for certain.

A third possibility exists, which is player-cooperation. In a hunters World of Darkness LARP, I played a particularly memorable hunter who just never seemed to notice any of the strange stuff going on around him. His story was that he is kinfolk (decended from werewolves) with limited supernatural powers, but saw his foxhole buddies killed by a werewolf and now hunts 9-foot-tall, hairy vampires. As the player, I chose for the character what he saw and what he rationallized. When the run simply got out of hand, I made the decision that he simply put the pieces together enough to go on a rampage, which was very climactic and fun.

Later,
Grant

[Valamir]

7th Sea was all about the big secrets "what actually happens to Port mages who open their eyes while Porting".  "what's going to happen with the Montaigne invasion of Castile", "When is the pseudo Napoleon guy going to take over Montaigne", "What really is the 7th Sea"....blah blah blah.  About 50 more like that.

Me and everyone I know personally who were into 7th Sea (and when it first came out I was WAY into it) lost interest somewhere around supplement 250 (ok I exaggerate...a little) and quit playing long before the secrets were revealed.  I imagine some of them are out by now, but I find myself completely not careing whatever lame answer they finally revealed.

Secrets can be fun, but they should only last till the next supplement (or two at most) not be diddled out in dribs and drabs over the course of 2-3 years of neverending product.

[Ian Charvill]

I've been running Seventh Sea off and on pretty much since it came out and our game revolves around two of the minor game secrets.  You may want to look away now, yadda yadda.

One of the princes of Eisen (Stefan Heilgrund) intends to make a deal with a supernatural entity (the Schattenman) to help his rise to power.  There is a lost dracheneisen mine somewhere under Frieberg.

That particular campaign has run for about fourty sessions and should be done in about half-a-dozen to a dozen more.  The Heilgrund secret was hinted at in around the third or fourth session and was revealed fully in about the twelfth.  The dracheneisen mine secret was revealed about half a dozen sessions after that.  Play since then has been driven by repercussions and effects from that.

Play has deviated somewhat from the metaplot-as-written implications and effects of the secrets.

A lot of the secrets in Seventh Sea - as Valamar mentioned - are kind of lame.  I think that's because the secrets go the world rather than the characters.  The secrets I used in the game I run impact directly on NPCs with whom the players have had contact.  Also the players actions are settling the outcome of the secrets.  Ultimately, what happens to the mine, what happens to Heilgrund, is going to emerge from the players actions.

With a lot of in-game secrets I suspect they get revealed TA-DA and then there's not much for the players to do afterwards.

[clehrich]

With a lot of in-game secrets I suspect they get revealed TA-DA and then there's not much for the players to do afterwards.

That hits the nail on the head for me.  The other version is what ThreeGee described so neatly with CoC: "Oh look, zombies, I would never have guessed, hoo rah."

One alternative approach I'm working on is where the Big Secret is actually not known to anyone, and is discovered in play.  For example, suppose you played Sorcerer and the GM had no idea what demons were or why or where they came from, but emphasized this question as an essential part of play.  The characters would then spend lots of time trying to figure this out, and might eventually do so --- so the secret would be the players' own invention.

In my own game, http://auroragames.com/pdf/shadows.pdf" target="blank">Shadows In the Fog, the GM certainly knows some secrets, but the Big Secrets --- like how the universe actually works and what magic really is and so forth --- are not known at all.  Each character has his or her own way of approaching the problem, and knows that learning more of "the truth" is the best way to become more powerful (i.e. to avoid getting killed, etc.).  But since the different approaches are extremely difficult to reconcile coherently, there isn't going to be an obvious "truth" that arises rapidly.  In fact, they'll probably never really "figure it all out," because there's no end-point.  My suggestion is that the GM uses pre-planned material as essentially seed-crystals around which player-invented secret weirdness accretes.

Anyway, this is my best shot at having cool occult secrets turn out to be actually cool.

[xiombarg]

The game that is rife with secrets of the sort you refer to is Deadlands.

I'm not going to go into my own experiences, as they echo the most negative stories listed here. I learned the secrets as a GM long before any IC revelations, so I kinda was in the "oh dear zombies" camp. (In fact, nearly everyone I was playing with was in this camp.)

So my data is not good. But I suggest if you're really interested in this topic, subscribe to the Deadland mailing list, and ask your question. I think that Deadlands would serve as an excellent example, in that it has lots of in-game secrets of various sorts, and it's played by a fairly large number of people, so you could get a lot of opinions.

Info on joining the list: http://www.peginc.com/Chat.htm
Info on Deadlands in general: http://www.peginc.com/WeirdWest/Index.htm

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

Here are the three types of Canonical Secret that I've observed.

1) The Curtain. Once The Secret is revealed, there's no reason to play anymore; the players' collective "Gasp! We're all androids ..." is pretty much the last item on the menu of play.

2) The Panama Canal. Upon the revelation, there's only one thing to do: "What, we're all androids too? Argh! We've been killing our own kind! Damn the masters, hitherto our bosses, now our mortal enemies! Join the revolution!" And then play proceeds to the next set of supplements about the revolution, who were putatively the bad guys up to this point.

3) The Big Bang. The Secret opens up a set of new choices, any of which offer an interesting set of opportunities; essentially a new game has started using different parameters from the old one. "We're all androids, eh? And what is an android's place to be, then, in this world?" I call it the Big Bang because it's merely a Setting-heavy, high-potential version of any old regular Bang.

Best,
Ron

[Mytholder]

I'm running SLA Industries (by request of the players) and the Big Secret is about to be revealed fairly soon - that the SLA universe is a hallucination in the mind of a psychiatic patient. I'm using that as the jumping-off point for a Matrix-esque game where the PCs will be flipping between the psychiatric hospital and the SLA-world.

The thing about big secrets in published games is that every fan of the game knows them. Both the SLA fans in the group knew the Big Secret of SLA Industries before I did. In L5R, the nature of the ninja is a Big Secret - but impossible to use in a game "straight", because every L5R fan (or card player)  knows it.

At best, you can use these Big Secrets as examples on how to twist the setting, or a kind of odd grace note/in joke. If you include ninjas in your l5r game, you're not going to surprise the players with the revelation of what ninjas are, but you can try to work it in in an elegant and surprising fashion.

I actually like Big Secrets, but anyone who even thinks the players can't know them is fooling themselves, and anyone relying on the players not knowing is a fool.