Peeping Players

[Drakeburn]

I really, really want to come up with a campaign or an adventure to DM for my little sister and her friends.

But there is a little issue with that.........

You see, whenever I'm working on a campaign or an adventure, my sister tends to peek at my notes at any chance she has. This has caused me to shove aside the adventure/campaign and write up a new one, hoping to make an experience my sister hasn't seen. However, this pattern has been going on for quite some time.

So, does anybody have any advice on how to deal with this sort of issue?

PLEASE! I'M BEGGING YOU! I REALLY NEED YOUR HELP WITH THIS! *sobs*

[Sith_Happens]

Type your notes, minimize the window whenever she tries to peek while you're writing, password protect the document.

[Grinner]

Does your sister read these forums?

[Kid Jake]

I'd suggest playing through it anyway, but change some details on the fly to keep her guessing. If your notes say that old man Ferguson is actually the BBEG and you know your sister's read that, then maybe old man Ferguson is actually just a belligerent drunk and your sister's PC's constant accusations that he's the source of all of society's ills turns from a spoiler into a recurring source of comedy.

[Talar]

If you are good at improv then just improvise the whole thing and only keep loose notes on everything. Maybe lists of ideas that you decide to use on the spot instead of in advanced. I second the typing/password protection thing.

[Slipperychicken]

1. Make sure she's sitting on the opposite side of the table, and doesn't come around to your end. Explicitly disallowing her from coming over could work. Maybe you could have it so your laptop faces a wall or something.

2. Keeping your notes on your laptop can help. Set the laptop to lock the screen when you close it (I personally use a program called LidLock for this). Maybe you can set up a macro "escape key"/"work key" to hide your notes if she gets too close. Bonus points if you set it up to bring up a page of fake notes and have it cover the screen. Similar programs exist, mostly intended to hide illegal/NSFW content, but they could probably be tailored to your purposes too. If you currently have notes on paper, scan them or just take photos and upload them to your computer.


2a. If you don't want to do so much work, you can hit Alt+Tab (or Shift+Tab, something like that) to cycle to a different window when she tries to peek. You could also Control+Alt+Delete and press "lock screen" whenever you leave the computer. Then set your computer to have a login password which she doesn't know.

3. I'm guessing you can't threaten to drop her a level or kick her from the game for peeking at your notes?

4. Don't destroy your notes -recycle them. You never know when you might be able to run that campaign for a different group, or even tweak the same storylines, dialogue, NPCs, enemies, monsters, maps, or missions for another time.

5. Feel free to change stuff in response to her brazen cheating. She loads up on fire weapons for the trolls she saw in your notes? Great, now they're flame-immune half-dragon trolls or whatever.

[cougon]

From the sound of your post, it seems like the notes she's constantly peeking at are for games you're running for other people. To me this just sounds like she really wants to play and see what cool stuff you're doing. You don't mention her age, but have you tried telling her that you're going to make something for her and her friends, but only if she doesn't peek at your notes? It might be that the opportunity to actually play something you run will get her not to peek since she'll really want to play it and won't want to spoil things.

[Mr Beer]

Lock your computer down so it's harder to read notes.

Do an old school D&D binary choice thing, one of the ones where you get a cool magic item with one choice and a horrible curse with the other; there's not much infomration to choose between them. Then switch the results for the peeper.

[Slipperychicken]

Do an old school D&D binary choice thing, one of the ones where you get a cool magic item with one choice and a horrible curse with the other; there's not much infomration to choose between them. Then switch the results for the peeper.

That awkward moment when the peeker tries to save her friends by metagaming and taking the cursed item for herself...

[Drakefall]

Politely, but firmly, ask her not to?

I know, I know. Crazy talk! Sometimes you just gotta be a little crazy though. :smalltongue:

[Drakeburn]

From the sound of your post, it seems like the notes she's constantly peeking at are for games you're running for other people. To me this just sounds like she really wants to play and see what cool stuff you're doing. You don't mention her age, but have you tried telling her that you're going to make something for her and her friends, but only if she doesn't peek at your notes? It might be that the opportunity to actually play something you run will get her not to peek since she'll really want to play it and won't want to spoil things.

Well, she just turned 11 a couple of days ago. And for your information, she does really want to play. She does believe D&D is cool. And this game is specifically for her and her friends.


Does your sister read these forums?


1. Make sure she's sitting on the opposite side of the table, and doesn't come around to your end. Explicitly disallowing her from coming over could work. Maybe you could have it so your laptop faces a wall or something.

2. Keeping your notes on your laptop can help. Set the laptop to lock the screen when you close it (I personally use a program called LidLock for this). Maybe you can set up a macro "escape key"/"work key" to hide your notes if she gets too close. Bonus points if you set it up to bring up a page of fake notes and have it cover the screen. Similar programs exist, mostly intended to hide illegal/NSFW content, but they could probably be tailored to your purposes too. If you currently have notes on paper, scan them or just take photos and upload them to your computer.


2a. If you don't want to do so much work, you can hit Alt+Tab (or Shift+Tab, something like that) to cycle to a different window when she tries to peek. You could also Control+Alt+Delete and press "lock screen" whenever you leave the computer. Then set your computer to have a login password which she doesn't know.

3. I'm guessing you can't threaten to drop her a level or kick her from the game for peeking at your notes?

4. Don't destroy your notes -recycle them. You never know when you might be able to run that campaign for a different group, or even tweak the same storylines, dialogue, NPCs, enemies, monsters, maps, or missions for another time.

5. Feel free to change stuff in response to her brazen cheating. She loads up on fire weapons for the trolls she saw in your notes? Great, now they're flame-immune half-dragon trolls or whatever.

1. She is on the computer (which is "conveniently" next to the one I'm working on) for a long time. And even when she isn't, she is still in the same room and peeks at my monitor VERY often. :smallannoyed:

Even when I'm writing it out on paper in my room, she'll peek at the chance she gets.

2. I don't have a laptop. :smallannoyed:

3. This will probably be the first IRL D&D game I'm DM'ing, and her first game playing, and her character is at level one. I don't think either of those two are an option.

4 and 5. I tend to do this from time to time. As a new(ish) DM, I tend to treat my first adventures and campaigns like school papers. I make rough drafts, look at what I like and don't like, change it up a bit, etc.


Politely, but firmly, ask her not to?

I know, I know. Crazy talk! Sometimes you just gotta be a little crazy though. :smalltongue:

Well, I tried that, but the problem is that she cannot help herself.

[Jay R]

Yes. Tell her that reading the DM's notes is cheating, and that she won't be allowed to play if she does it again.

Then write notes for an extremely powerful item that her character could use. But actually include a cursed one. (Or more subtly, have her believe the Ring of Featherfall is a Ring of Air Elemental Control. She might spend a lot of time trying to activate it fully.)

Or include notes for a cursed item that turns out to be the most powerful item in the treasure.

But that's just backup. Tell her that reading the DM's notes is cheating.

[The most chilling approach is to give her information that will wreck the campaign, and then stop playing when it comes out. That way, all her friends lose the game in the middle of play, and they all know why.]

[SiuiS]

I really, really want to come up with a campaign or an adventure to DM for my little sister and her friends.

But there is a little issue with that.........

You see, whenever I'm working on a campaign or an adventure, my sister tends to peek at my notes at any chance she has. This has caused me to shove aside the adventure/campaign and write up a new one, hoping to make an experience my sister hasn't seen. However, this pattern has been going on for quite some time.

So, does anybody have any advice on how to deal with this sort of issue?

PLEASE! I'M BEGGING YOU! I REALLY NEED YOUR HELP WITH THIS! *sobs*

Google documents.

[Slipperychicken]

So she really wants to see the notes her big (hopefully) cool older brother is writing, right? What if you make a deal with her: She can read a small part of your notes, but only if she promises to not use that information in-game, and to pretend like she doesn't know about your notes (it's a secret, after all). If she's really nice and doesn't let anyone know she's reading your notes (not even mom and dad), she can even be your "(Secret) Assistant DM" and help you write awesome adventures.

If she accepts and is mostly-faithful to the agreement, then it's a win-win: she can learn about metagaming, DMing, and adventure-writing, and you don't need to worry as much about her peeking. And who knows? If she learns enough from big brother, she might even be able to DM a game herself in a few years. I would expect her to try and abuse her (limited) knowledge for the first 1-3 sessions after the deal, although she might start to grow out of it after a gentle reminder that she can only see your notes if she agrees to keep them a secret and not use them in-game.


Yes. Tell her that reading the DM's notes is cheating, and that she won't be allowed to play if she does it again.

Don't phrase it as an ultimatum like that, because she'll just do it again, then make puppy eyes and whine and cry and cry to your parent/guardian until you (or worse, your parents) let her keep playing. And then your threats won't have credibility to her, so she'll just keep doing it, knowing that you can't stop her.

[Kid Jake]

Peeping at notes isn't that big of a deal overall, I often bounce ideas off my players before putting them into play to gauge their reaction; I just make sure to implement them in unexpected ways when they actually come up. Hell, my game notes are saved in our communal Dropbox under the title "My Game Notes" so if one of them wants to sneak a peak, they're welcome to it. Of course my notes are pretty much one liners that are just there to jumpstart ideas while we play, so there's only so much they can read into it.

An example: In my Mutants and Masterminds game there was/is a villain called Tree King that the PCs thought they'd killed several sessions back, but discovered that someone who resembles him has been stealing fertilizer and other chemicals from government contracted landscapers. My notes on him one session read: "Tree King blows up buildings with chemicals, attacks Mayor in public." just enough to remind me what I wanted to do with him once we started.

One of my players (who will remain unnamed) took a glance and thought that it was corny (he pointed out that in their last encounter Tree King had been murdered with an ax) and kind of an unimaginative way to end a session. In play though it turned out to be one of our most memorable encounters because the buildings in question were mostly schools, hospitals and other emergency centers and the police were stretched so thin trying to evacuate everything that the PCs had to rely solely on IC contacts to help with the mayor's situation, which turned out to be a televised rally with hundreds of witnesses.

The Rally was also the first time they found out about Tree King's most potent ability, cloning himself from his own severed pieces. They went in expecting a head to head fight vs a single opponent, they ended up facing 30+ tree clones identical to the original version Tree King which were more interested in bitchering bystanders than fighting them.

The massacre ended up going viral and they ended up having to adopt public personas to deal with the backlash.

In the end, everything they expected to happen, happened; but they were still surprised with how it went down. If she's interested in seeing behind the curtain then let her, just throw in an occasional impulsive curve ball to shake things up; that way even if she knows 95% of what's going to happen that last 5% will still keep her intrigued.

Just imagine reading the entire Song of Ice and Fire series, then watching Game of Thrones and finding out that Ned Stark is now a Highlander style Immortal who keeps challenging the other noblemen for the Quickening. You'll stop focusing on what you know and start looking for what else is different.

[Grod_The_Giant]

So she really wants to see the notes her big (hopefully) cool older brother is writing, right? What if you make a deal with her: She can read a small part of your notes, but only if she promises to not use that information in-game, and to pretend like she doesn't know about your notes (it's a secret, after all). If she's really nice and doesn't let anyone know she's reading your notes (not even mom and dad), she can even be your "(Secret) Assistant DM" and help you write awesome adventures.

If she accepts and is mostly-faithful to the agreement, then it's a win-win: she can learn about metagaming, DMing, and adventure-writing, and you don't need to worry as much about her peeking. And who knows? If she learns enough from big brother, she might even be able to DM a game herself in a few years. I would expect her to try and abuse her (limited) knowledge for the first 1-3 sessions after the deal, although she might start to grow out of it after a gentle reminder that she can only see your notes if she agrees to keep them a secret and not use them in-game.
+1 to this.

[valadil]

The rude approach:

Fake notes. Draw a dungeon. Fill it with loot. Let her see it. The real dungeon has traps where the loot was.

The learning opportunity approach:

Let her read your actual notes. See if the game's any fun when you already know the answers. It'll ruin a couple games, but she might learn something.

The technological approach:

Take notes on the computer. Put them somewhere password protected so only you can open them. I saw Google Drive suggested earlier, and that's a great suggestion. If she's reading while you're writing, shrink the font and write in stupid colors. Dark grey on darker grey will be unreadable unless you're looking right at the document.

[Segev]

Have you spoken with her about why DM notes aren't to be peeked at? If she's interested in playing, she might be open to that kind of information.

[Jay R]

If it were a player other than your little sister, I'd say that your primary responsibility is to prevent her from ruining the game for others.

But since she is your little sister, your primary responsibility is to teach her responsibility. Talk to her about why some secrets should be kept secret, in order to create fun - similar to birthday presents.

[hymer]

Ask your Mom. If anyone is an expert on keeping a kid sister under loving wraps, it's likely to be her.
Explain to her why this behaviour makes it problematic to DM for her, and ask for her advice. This way, you also have parental backup (or a foot in), as I assume your mother will be very sympathetic towards her kids doing stuff together.

[SimonMoon6]

Write your notes in code:

Dbo zpv sfbe uijt?
Bzm xnt qdzc sghr?

[elliott20]

So she really wants to see the notes her big (hopefully) cool older brother is writing, right? What if you make a deal with her: She can read a small part of your notes, but only if she promises to not use that information in-game, and to pretend like she doesn't know about your notes (it's a secret, after all). If she's really nice and doesn't let anyone know she's reading your notes (not even mom and dad), she can even be your "(Secret) Assistant DM" and help you write awesome adventures.

If she accepts and is mostly-faithful to the agreement, then it's a win-win: she can learn about metagaming, DMing, and adventure-writing, and you don't need to worry as much about her peeking. And who knows? If she learns enough from big brother, she might even be able to DM a game herself in a few years. I would expect her to try and abuse her (limited) knowledge for the first 1-3 sessions after the deal, although she might start to grow out of it after a gentle reminder that she can only see your notes if she agrees to keep them a secret and not use them in-game.



Don't phrase it as an ultimatum like that, because she'll just do it again, then make puppy eyes and whine and cry and cry to your parent/guardian until you (or worse, your parents) let her keep playing. And then your threats won't have credibility to her, so she'll just keep doing it, knowing that you can't stop her.

of all the responses I've read here, this is literally the only one I think is worth a damn.

the last thing you want is to make her not like the game by getting all huffy about it. she's CLEARLY really excited about the game that she's willing to go to childish lengths to get an edge.

That's not a bad thing!

Don't let this ruin the game for her. let her have some sneak peaks here and there of things that you think will get her excited. think of it like a move trailer. They exist for two reasons. 1. build excitement and hype and 2. deflate the public's desire to get some scoops in on the movie.

It's the same principle here. You give her just a bit so that she'll feel like she got something from you, but only enough to only have the vaguest idea of what is going to happen.

[FabulousFizban]

Keep everything on your flash drive. Keep said flash drive with you. Or what slipperychicken said, that flumph knows his business.

[weckar]

If it is mostly lore notes that she sees, make sure her character has the knowledge skills to back up that info.

That's all I got.

[MLai]

Aww that's so cute. I wish I had a little sibling who actually understood and is interested in what I like.

Some ppl hate getting spoilers and that ruins the entire movie for them. Some ppl love spoiling themselves on movies they are going to see first thing tomorrow, and they feel knowing the spoilers add to their experience. People are different. We're talking about an 11 y/o playing a game. If she wants to spoil herself, let her. :smallsmile:

[Lord Torath]

The "Spoilers" argument works well for me.

"Well, I could tell you, but that would ruin the surprise of finding it out for yourself." Clearly let her know that your role is to make a fun game for the players, not to beat the stuffing out of them. So she doesn't need to try to "beat" you by peeking.

Make a deal with her. Tell her if she doesn't peek, you'll let her read all your notes on the adventure once it's over. I did this for my 12-year-old son so he could see what the module gave me and what I did with it. It's good training for future DMs.

[Knaight]

The core of the issue seems to be the physical set up - if your sister looks a particular way when using the computer, she'll see your notes. That may or may not mean she'll read them, depending on how subconscious reading is. As someone who usually spends most of their computer time looking out the nearest window instead of at the screen (at least when typing), I get that it's a difficult situation here. Not looking is made way harder.

Which brings in an obvious possibility - can you hand write your notes? It changes the physical layout, which probably fixes the entire problem.

[veti]

So, does anybody have any advice on how to deal with this sort of issue?

Write the notes in code.

I don't mean letter-substitution cryptograms, those are far too hard to use, and far too easy to decrypt if she's mathematically inclined. Instead, you pick a few dozen key words that will be coming up a lot on your notes, and substitute them for other words that won't be included at all. E.g. every time you mean "magic", instead you write "ventricle". "Sword" becomes "spoon". Numbers just get multiplied by 3. So when you're statting out the +4 magic sword, you write about the "+12 ventricle spoon". To her, it'll look like gibberish. So long as you can remember the encoding, you'll be fine.

For proper names, you can use some reversible obfuscation technique such as pig latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Latin). That way she won't recognise the names when she hears them in play.

When you've finished writing, run a word-substitution on your notes to convert them into plain English. Just "find/replace all", every word processor does it - maybe write a macro to do it before you begin. You might want to only store one sessions' worth of notes at a time in un-encoded form.

[Slipperychicken]

"+12 ventricle spoon"

That sounds like something you'd find on an Illithid Savant's belt.