RPGaDay 2024 - Barking Alien Edition - Day 11

Psst. *Whispering* Hey. Yeah you. C'mere. *Looks around* Can you keep a secret?

 

Players love their Secrets don't they? 

Player Character backstories are always full of checkered pasts, tragic childhoods, and embarrassing relationships to the big bad. Don't worry about remembering it all as it's explained in great detail in the ten page character write-up the player has given you. The thing of it is, for the time being this forbidden knowledge is known only to the player and you the GM. By no means should the rest of the group know or even be aware of any of it. Those secrets are to revealed later.

But when is later?

In my mind, secrets are best handled in the same way as mysteries. I've stated it before but what is the primary purpose of a mystery? To have it solved. A mystery that can't be solved lies somewhere between frustrating and meaningless. Secrets are very much the same. A secret no one is aware of beyond the Player and the GM might as well not exist. At some point that secret should be hinted at, then alluded to in a direct manner, then revealed.  Some excitement and drama stems from keeping the secret but even more can result from uncovering or confessing to the truth. 

This can get tricky if the player whose PC holds the secret is reluctant to divulge the information they've been keeping under wraps. You don't want to give it away too soon but the longer its held the harder it is to have it come out. Now I don't mean hard as in the reaction will be more intense, though it might be, but rather its more gets difficult to let go of what has become a well guarded and even coveted piece of a character's lore. If the others learn your secret, then what makes your character special now?

Well, lots of things probably (hopefully) but the expoxing of a PCs hidden information doesn't lessen the character, it simply changes their dynamic, their place in the narrative, and maybe even the narrative itself.

For me it all works best if the secret starts as an unknown, then trickles out into the campaign in the form of small clues and curious interactions or events, until eventually release of the knowledge into the wild becomes unavoidable. This could take half a dozen sessions, a dozen, two dozen, or even more but all relative to the length of the campaign itself. I don't have an exact number or percentage. I'd play it by ear personally. However, the key is I would wing it with an objective in mind - somewhere is trying to keep a secret and the universe is trying to reveal it. 

AD

Barking Alien

BONUS FEATURE: Day 11 of the official RPGaDay 2024 Prompts:

From what I understand, according to gaming friends who use pre-made one-shot adventures, Star Trek Adventures and ALIEN are big winners in this category. Both Modiphius and Free League seem to put out fun, short adventures that work very well as one-shots. 

I don't have any first hand experience so I can't really speak on it beyond this.