(Crossposted around and about)

Okay. So I have this Film Noir game "A Dirty World" coming out, and every character has to have a dirty secret. The default secret is humiliating. But some are really bad (if you take a worse secret, you get an extra point to build your character at the beginning of the game). Worse secrets really upset your life and change things profoundly. Or you can got for a HORRIBLE secret (and get two more points) which is the kind of thing like "I smothered my infant child 'cause I just couldn't stand thinking of the incest that produced him."

Yeah. Utter life-destroying shit.

Secrets have a mechanical effect: If someone incorporates your secret into an attempt to manipulate you emotionally, it works like a weapon does for an attempt to manipulate you into a coma or early grave. A regular secret is like poking someone with a sharpened screwdriver. A HORRIBLE secret is like firiing at someone with a Thompson submachine gun.

What I'd like to see with this thread is examples of secrets at various levels. It could be your secret ('cause THAT'S a great idea) or more likely a secret from an old PC or from a character in film or fiction. Or just one you thought up, appropriate for a noir game.

Eventually, I'm hoping to build a Dirty Secret Generator. I've got a first draft, but it ain't great, so I thought I'd toss it out here.

Whatcha got?

-G.

Specifics aren't coming to mind, but some categories are.

Secrets that when revealed lead to a one time payout, eg
The crime you have to pay for
The persons betrayed will come for you
The status, job, relationship that's affected will be altered once, permanantly

Vs secrets that will haunt you, eg
Your secret ("sexual devience", corruption, the thing you tried to protect) will be used by those in the know to coerce you, forever
Your secret will be used to attack you, or undermine your efforts from now on

I also think in terms of cost
embarassment or humiliation
Exposes a weakness in your powerbase eg the favors you had to pay out to get the support of the comissioner, or the Bonetti Mob, the shakiness of your business empires finances
The counter to type that undercuts you, eg the true love of a femme fatale, the one type a criminal won't victimize

And source
Affiliations: unpopular wars, your family, your community, people you would protect or hide
Hidden pasts: the pastor who was a killer, the reporter who faked their best story, the communists, strike breakers, unionizers, mistress/boytoy, - anything where you lose what you have made for yourself because of who you were before

It's just what came to mind.

This is pretty neat.  As an aside, it shows a very interesting contrast with the crosspost on RPG.NET.  There I got 4-5 pages of secrets, some of them brilliant, along with the odd bit of analysis.  Here, I get one reply, but it's very analytical.

Brace yourselves, I'm going to try to lay out a table here...

[table][tr][td][/td][td]Humiliating?[/td][td]Concrete?[/td][/tr][tr][td]One time?[table][tr][td]mild[/td][td]moderate[/td][/tr][tr][td]Ongoing?[table][tr][td]moderate[/td][td]severe[/td][/tr][/table]

Gah, that looks like crap.

-G.

Greg, are you sure this is Film Noir?  I'm getting a Flaubert / Bronte vibe from the write-up.

I'm thinking these secrets are either to build tension over the risk of loss or exposure, or the means by which your stronger types easily intimidate or manipulate lesser characters. By association, even letting people know what you actually care about, or are actually after is a weakness. Examples might be motives and relationships in 4 Dogs Playing Poker, Shallow Grave, or The Last Seduction. Reading through The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade plays close to his chest with everyone. Even his secretary whose opinion he seems to value barely knows anything, and that keeps him from being vulnerable, and lets him probe the motivations and limits of the other charactes. He pries at the unity of Gutman's agents by revealing how they are less valuable than the Falcon to their patron.
Another example is the valued things (a source of income, a person) of the two sides of the war in Yojimbo (A Fistful of Dollars, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Last Man Standing) become the pawns that bring out a final conflict once revealed. Admittedly neither is a secret in those stories, but their coming into play is the consequence of their value and vulnerability being revealed.

Bogart's character in A Lonely place obviously has a temper, but when it is more fully revealed by both investigation and experience, he reaps the cost of lost trust and legal danger.

A tattoo reveals an unexplained link between Leonard Smalls and H I in Raising Arizona that seems to escalate their conflict.

A stupid and rebellious rich girl's involvement in blue photography is the topic of blackmail, murder and the common secret of how far a family will or will fail to go to protect it's image in a book I can't remember. It reminds me of Siouxsie's song Red Light.

Likewise blackmail photos revealing a lesbian affair play a strong part in The Hot Spot.

Many criminal partnership based noir stories seem to use crimes that can be revealed to enforce trust. A twist is the seduction that leads a man to murder a womans husband in Body Heat. The twist is she knows the secret and plays it to make him believe she loves him, and she uses it to escape with money and freedom. There is a similar idea in Mousetrap. So there is some value to the open but not used secret. It's trust, a hard to believe in commodity in the noir genre. Look at the relationships in LA Confidential for good examples of that.