Hidden Information

[Le Joueur]

My assumptions come from this constraint: can a player gain new secrets in play if they are to be kept hidden from the GM?

Makes perfect sense.  It also depends upon how much 'Director Stance' a game allows.  If I can toss in non-player characters as I wish, in with them I can also insert new secrets.  On the other hand, new secrets could be 'created' between players (after which the game only begins to reflect these 'discoveries').

However, if you assume that a player is not allowed to add major details to the background, then yes, it will be hard to do much other than 'dread secrets from the past.'  Even then you could always 'dredge up' another.

Fang Langford

[clehrich]

I really think we're getting a bit over-specific about this idea of "secrecy."  If it's valuable to specify, we've got to have a number of categories, not keep implicitly redefining "secret" each post.

For example, Thierry is thinking about the issue of secret-revealing effecting closure for a character.  It happens, quite a lot, and it's often deliberate.  You construct a character of whatever sort around a particular secret, and that character climaxes -- and then burns out -- when the secret is revealed.  But if you can just happily construct secrets right and left as a Director Stance thing, then you can readily construct a "fact" or a new revealed secret that invalidates the secret someone else has been working on for months.  Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Certainly I'd agree with Fang that a secret that never comes out and never influences play is no fun.  But that's your own problem: you have to make the secret relevant (assuming the GM doesn't actually block this).  That way when it gets revealed, everyone will respond with a satisfied, "Ohhh, so thaaats why!"

So if this sort of thing is going to be fun, you have to delay and hint for quite a while.  But in the meantime, if everyone can invent anything he or she wants, you can get your careful setup destroyed in front of you.

The basic distinctions I'd draw are (1) buildup and hinting, and (2) aftermath.  As in, do either or both of these things matter?

1. Secret with no buildup and no aftermath: spring-loaded monster in cellar.  Boingg!  Arrgh!  Whackety-whack fight fight crunch.  Fun, but really pointless if done often.

2. Secret with buildup but no aftermath: murder mystery, whodunnit?  Once you know the answer for sure, the mystery is over.  The buildup is the whole finding out part.

3. Secret with no buildup but a lot of aftermath: "Luke, I am your father."  There's minimal warning for this, so the whole shtick happens afterward.

4. Secret with buildup and aftermath: after a lengthy search, the PCs work out (1) that there's a monster in the basement, and (2) how it got there; they track it down, and kill it --- only to discover that all those hints and whatnot that they have figured out were missing one vital clue, and now they realize that the monster is actually the twin brother of a member of the party.  But the party goes on, with everyone always looking over his/her shoulder, and the party-member necessarily always trying to prove that really he's on the right side, and so forth.

As far as I'm concerned, any secret with much buildup should not be undermined, however accidentally -- that needs to be prevented.  Any suggestions, apart from letting the GM hold all the strings?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, one can build up to an unknown secret. That is, events can be determined that give partial information about what something is without anyone actually knowing what the secret is. Then, at a critical moment, the nature of the secret can be invented on the spot.

Such a secret cannot be undermined, as it's nature is determined by whatever leads up to it. This is exactly what happens openly in InSpectres. The players add a bit of data in research. They invent equipment that turns out to be uesful or not. They add information on successes looking around for stuff in the field. Eventually the picture starts to resolve until at some point, somebody just decides what a cool secret would be that fits all the facts, at which point they "reveal" it.

Universalis is entirely that way. You never expect anything that's happening, despite the fact that you are making it up. Because even as you decide something, it's being made on the most recent information. And you surprise yourself with what you've come up with. This was the weirdest thing we discovered playtesting the game. The effect was itself unexpected (by me at least). I created a beastie called a Dragonthane in a game a few nights ago. No idea where I got that (anyone think of a place where the term is used)? A total surprise that such a creature was behind one of the plots going on.

So, Chris, all I can see are these two methods. Either one player holds the power to maintain an objective universe, and therefore can "protect" secret information decided up front, or the information must be created on the spot (and a good Illusionist GM can make the second look like the first if he wants to). I can't really see any other ways of accomplishing this; but then again, maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. :-)


Mike

[bowlingm]

Well, one can build up to an unknown secret. That is, events can be determined that give partial information about what something is without anyone actually knowing what the secret is. Then, at a critical moment, the nature of the secret can be invented on the spot.

I think there's a third way to have buildup, and that is a *known* secret.  I first came across this idea in a Theatrix playtest.  Basically, the GM/player gives away the secret right off the bat to the players, without giving it to their characters.  One way is through a quick cut-scene, e.g., cutting to the villain describing his devious plans for hypnotizing dogs through commercials and using them to take over the city.  Now, there can be buildup in investigating strange dog incidents, and suspense can be created simply by introducing a dog into the scene.  This may not be the greatest example, but still suspense movies do it all the time.  They cut to the danger ahead so the audience knows what the oblivious character does not...  and it is the audience knowledge that gives the secret its suspense.

I suppose this could fit into the taxonomy above by saying this is just a no-buildup secret where the aftermath of the secret invovles eventually revealing it to the characters.  But I think it is qualitatively different than the example of Vader's revelation to Luke.

So, if it is different, then I think there's another way to classify secrets.  (1) Planned, Unrevealed (as per Scattershot mystiques).  (2) Unplanned, Unrevealed (as per Mike Holmes' post), (3) Planned, Revealed (the new one).  Revealed here means whether the group as a whole (not their characters) know the secret.  The other possible combination of words makes no sense since it would require revealing an unplanned secret.

I think the combination of unplanned secrets with planned and revealed secrets can be enough to create mystery and suspense.  That is, its a reasonable alternative to Scattershots propriety rules for mystiques.

Mike