I'm posting this across several forums, in order to get more replies.

This is a mini-game that mixes Cthulhu, time-travelling bandits and Secrets.

The premise is simple: in the near future, NATO dropped the A-Bomb on a portal from where Big Cthulhu threated to invade, and it worked. Thing is, it also destroyed everything miles around. Also, no one knew they were dropping the bomb, so millions died. But hey, they stopped Cthulhu! Characters are time-smugglers, time-travelling to the past to steal stuff and sell in (their) present to less than scrupulous individuals for huge amounts of money. And sometimes favours. They can only time-travel using very expensive exo-suits, and only to the exact moment the bomb fell; the good thing is, time is moving v e - r y - s l o w - l y so they can go about their business undisturbed, the bad thing is, they get to see people melt and burn to death in extra-slow motion; sometimes even their loved ones. And sometimes, sometimes, they try and take someone from the past; no one has been successfull, so far at least, and the ones that try, often die as well. Adding to that, sometimes they encounter strange and horrifying entities that live in the atomic blast and want to strip them from the exo-suits and eat them. All in a day's work.

So, on to basic mechanics.

Characters have only two atributes, Courage and Athletics, rated 1d4 to 1d12; the party has a common pool of d6's they can draw to help them, which is a Time Reserve.

The atomic horrors have Horror and Dismember, for the two things they do when seeing the characters, also rated 1d4 to 1d12.

When a fight breaks out, the pc's roll Courage vs the horror's Horror, and compare numbers, highest number wins: if the PC's win, they manage to overcome the fear of seeing the horror; if they fail, their Courage drops one die type (from d8 to d6, for example). When it drops below d4, the character is catatonic and has to be dragged by his mates.

After the Courage test, the character has to fight or flee the horrific manifestation. The roll is the same, but the story results are different: if the character succeeds the roll to Flee, he doesn't have to Fight; if he fails, he immediately drops the die type, and then Fights. The mechanics are the same as per the Courage test. The character can flee at any time, but he always uses the current die type. The character is dead if the Athletics die type drops below 1d4.

Characters can never be healed in Courage of Athletics, but they can always draw from the common pool; no, make that: they can draw from the common pool anytime they want, and they must always draw from the pool everytime they are doing something exhausting, like running, fighting, lifting heavy things, carrying others, etc; when they add a d6 to their roll, they add both results together; thing is, when the pool is exhausted, the party's time is up and they get stranded in A-Bomb time: they die, very slowly and very painfully.

Now on to the title of this (longish) post and where I need help brainstorming: Secrets.

Ever seen the movie The Descent? From IMDB:

A group of female friends led by Juno (Natalie Mendoza) encounter bloodthirsty creatures when they get trapped in a mountain cave due to rockfall. Worst of all they their friendships sour and they discover their real fear is from each other... 

The only thing I can think of is clue... make it so the secret isn't known, but pieced together, and that piecing together must be done in game not by interacting with the GM but with other players. Getting to the revelation should be a good thing for some and a bad thing for others, 50/50, but no one should know which it will be for them.

Thanks for your suggestion, it's different from what I've been suggested thus far and I'm liking it.

Are you saying there should be just the one secret per group? Instead of, for example and what I've been suggested so far, a relationship map thing with levels per secret?

I guess so, but I was imagine that the big secret might be something that affects all of or most of the characters, like a "what really happened that night" scenario where everyone thought that Jen killed Anna's mother but it was really Carla and Jen was just covering and if if was Carla and not Jen then Anna can't forgive it because blah, blah, blah... Its hard to think of a concrete example, but the players could have things like "It was me who really did it," "The Culprit can't be forgiven," etc... when these clash together the players would interpret what it means and then reinterpret something that they had already settled and maybe there would be a special scene dealing with the breakdown, or each clue pair or sequence could be narrated in as a splicy partial information flash back... it very top down way of doing it but it could be cool.

As I have little time to write the mini-game I thought of scratching this whole idea and do something simpler; perhaps in the future someone better than me will write a game around Secrets.

So, the mechanic I came up with is Obsessions. Obsessions will give you dice, but will also sap your reasoning, and other players's relations to you will become sour with time.

You write your Obsession on the character sheet (example: find the wife), along with 5 check-boxes with the die type, like so:

[] d4
[] d6
[] d8
[] d10
[] d12

Everytime the player acts in accordance with his Obsession, he uses one of those dice in place of the Temporal Reserve die.

However he can only use one die at a time, everytime he uses it, he must use the next die type, and the action to justify this must always be worse than the previous, i.e., the Mission is in great danger, more people are at risk, the losses are now permanent, etc.

And from check-box 3 (the d8), other players get dice to use against this character, to prevent him from pursuing this Obsession that is so obviously risking the Mission.

They get [] d4, [] d6 and [] d8 on their character sheets, along with the names of each other player, to represent the level of abuse they are willing to take.

This is direct PvP here. The damage done is either to Courage (the character was intimidated to stop), or to Athletics (the character was beaten into submission). The other players don't have to take this bonus dice, if they think their friendship is worth it.

The GM is responsible for framming scenes where each character's Obsession can rise. At these scenes, the player can chose to follow his Obsession, or not; but in this case, his Courage drops by 1 die type, until the time he decides to follow the Obsession, and then the Courage goes up to normal.

Thoughts?

Well, I think you're missing which is the point in this part of the game. That is: is the game about keeping secrets? is about discovering everybody else secrets? about confession? about redemption?

But here you are a mechanic, for example, just improvising: every player has to write three to six clues about his secret. At the beginning every player discover one (or two) clues selected by chance. Of course, only player and GM know the secret and the clues. Players can introduce plot conflicts. But the thing is: every time a character goes through a conflict that is related which one of the clues, he must discover that clue.

So players think about what conflicts to introduce the way they can discover everybody else clues. And that coud make a very interesting story.

I'm missing the point of my own game? :-)

Anyways, I've dropped the ball on the secrets' side of the game, and I've opted for Obsessions instead. I thank everyone that has taken the time to help me on this one, but has proven way more difficult than I first expected.

Rui! wrote:
I'm missing the point of my own game? :-)

Anyways, I've dropped the ball on the secrets' side of the game, and I've opted for Obsessions instead. I thank everyone that has taken the time to help me on this one, but has proven way more difficult than I first expected.