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Erit
2018-08-14, 02:43 PM
In particular, players keeping secrets about their character from the table. Not story or campaign ones like filching loot or doing under-the-table deals with the villains—those are certainly topics, but they're irrelevant to what I'm thinking.

I have this character, see, who tries to keep everything personal about themselves hidden away; they don't speak, they cover their face, obfuscate their gender, things like that, but they're still generally amicable rather than the brooding corner-hogging lone wolf. They share relevant knowledge, do doodles of the party and actually make an effort to cooperate and get along, just don't let slip anything about who they, personally, are. The intent is for the secrecy to be a source of levity and interesting dynamics, with people trying to get this character to tip their hand somehow and usually getting out-foxed because teleportation and invisibility answers a lot of problems.

Thing is, the DM seems to be having none of that, actively sabotaging the facade by referring to this character by detail and spoiling the entire thing for no reason whatsoever despite my explicitly stating that it's supposed to be ambiguous. And I find this very goddamn annoying, but I want to get a broader opinion on this now that it's come to mind; do you consider it somehow negative for players to not know everything about the other characters, if that lack of familiarity makes sense in the context of the party? Am I somehow in the wrong by thinking it can make a character more interesting if not everything is clear and obvious about them? Was it a mistake to try and spin this old trope of the "enigmatic rogue" in a positive and humorous manner? How could I potentially improve upon this idea to get the DM to play along, rather than encouraging metagaming like he's currently doing?

Stelio Kontos
2018-08-14, 02:49 PM
What did your DM and other players say when you talked to them about it OOC?

Mastikator
2018-08-14, 02:51 PM
The DM seems to not approve of this type of character but instead of just telling you not to he's undermining your efforts in quite an underhanded way.
If the DM straight up told you "no you don't get to play this type of character in my game", how would you react? Is there a reason he's afraid of confronting you?

Erit
2018-08-14, 03:35 PM
What did your DM and other players say when you talked to them about it OOC?

Apparently I was speaking Portugreek, because nobody saw a problem.


The DM seems to not approve of this type of character but instead of just telling you not to he's undermining your efforts in quite an underhanded way.
If the DM straight up told you "no you don't get to play this type of character in my game", how would you react? Is there a reason he's afraid of confronting you?

I'd jump to one of the hindreds of other characters on the backlog. But I'm disinclined to believe that's the issue, as the DM hasn't seemed to have any problems with another player, a friend of mine outside the table, playing a homebrew Gorgon-morph class.

Mastikator
2018-08-14, 03:38 PM
If he doesn't have a problem with your character, then he either has a problem with you, or he doesn't know he's undermining your secrecy.

Basically you have to talk to him. "Last session you revealed this secret thing about my character without my concent and it undermines the whole point of my character, could you not do that please?"

icefractal
2018-08-14, 05:55 PM
Three possibilities:
1) If you didn't make clear to him previously that the secrecy thing was important, he may have just not thought about it.
2) He dislikes secretive characters and is being passive aggressive about it.
3) He (and possibly the rest of the group) play in a "secrets are IC, not OOC" way. Where if someone was a Drow spy pretending to be an Elf, they'd say so up front to the other players, but IC the other characters wouldn't know.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-14, 08:15 PM
In general, it's just a bad idea for a player to keep secrets from the other players, unless it is a very hostile player vs player type game. Typically, the Player Characters are ''best friend" types, so they know all about each other.

At best it can be disruptive to the game, and at worst it can ruin a game. It's bad enough when a player hides game related things, but it's really pointless to hide pointless things.

Is there a point to just sitting there and saying ''ok, you guys know nothing about my cool character". If it does not matter, why even bother to do it?

It really only matters if you disrupt the game all the time to say "haha you guys know nothing about my cool character", If you don't do that, then it does not matter anyway. So again, why do it?

All the players and characters and the DM can know the big secrets...but still the whole game world does not know....so can't you just ''pretend'' that is enough?

Quertus
2018-08-14, 09:59 PM
Thing is, the DM seems to be having none of that, actively sabotaging the facade by referring to this character by detail and spoiling the entire thing for no reason whatsoever despite my explicitly stating that it's supposed to be ambiguous. And I find this very goddamn annoying,

Although I have my doubts about your specific case, I will say that, in general, this is why you don't tell the GM this kind of information if you want this style of obfuscation to be a success.


In general, it's just a bad idea for a player to keep secrets from the other players, unless it is a very hostile player vs player type game. Typically, the Player Characters are ''best friend" types, so they know all about each other.

You know, I've learned things about people I've known for years. People who have known me for years still learn things about me. Heck, I've known me all my life, and I still learn things about myself. I think that knowing all about each other is an unrealistically high bar.


At best it can be disruptive to the game, and at worst it can ruin a game.

It absolutely can. It can also make the game, or even be the game. I prefer for characters building their relationships in character to be the game. Or at least part of it.


It's bad enough when a player hides game related things, but it's really pointless to hide pointless things.

Is there a point to just sitting there and saying ''ok, you guys know nothing about my cool character". If it does not matter, why even bother to do it?

Why bother? That's a good question. Different people attempt it for different reasons, and with different levels of skill, with varying degrees of success.

But, the fact is, it does matter, or else they wouldn't try.


It really only matters if you disrupt the game all the time to say "haha you guys know nothing about my cool character", If you don't do that, then it does not matter anyway. So again, why do it?

All the players and characters and the DM can know the big secrets...but still the whole game world does not know....so can't you just ''pretend'' that is enough?

No. I've not gamed with people sufficiently inhuman as to not possess standard human failings to make it be enough.

Velaryon
2018-08-14, 10:27 PM
In my experience, player characters having secrets is actually harder to pull off than it appears. There are a lot of ways it can go wrong, either because of DMs or other players not being on board with the idea, or because of poor implementation. As for whether such a character is a good idea in the first place, the correct answer is to read the room. I've been in games where secret parts of characters' histories turned into great story points, and I've been in at least twice as many games where the whole secrecy thing was a waste of effort

PCs with secrets are only interesting if those secrets come out eventually. Otherwise, you might as well be the player whose character has "amnesia" because you didn't bother to come up with a background. For those secrets to come out in a way that adds to the game, you need fellow players who care, and you need a DM willing to work with you to make it happen.

There's only so much you can do about that first requirement. Some people are going to see any attempt to make your character secretive as you just trying to be dark and edgy, or you trying to make everything about your character. Or they may just not be interested in that kind of story. It doesn't matter how cool your secret backstory is if the rest of the party is like "yeah dude, whatever. Will you hurry up and check for traps already?"

However, it sounds more like your issue is with the DM. If they're outing things that are supposed to be secrets, then either they slipped up or they don't really want to deal with this. I'd suggest you talk to them and find out which it is. If it's an honest mistake, maybe it would be a good idea to work out a plan together of how to play with those secrets and make the big reveal as awesome as it can be. On the other hand, if they are doing it on purpose then you should think about dropping this aspect of your character, or perhaps changing characters entirely if they don't work without the whole secret thing.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-14, 11:28 PM
You know, I've learned things about people I've known for years. People who have known me for years still learn things about me. Heck, I've known me all my life, and I still learn things about myself. I think that knowing all about each other is an unrealistically high bar.

I guess your talking here more about casual acquaintances you know, though I guess you might be one of the people how does not have close friends. The majority of true friends know a LOT about each other, it's a basic part of friendship. It's what makes some one a ''friend" and not a "stranger".

But there is also a huge difference between the casual friend: oh, you know their name and hang out sometimes......AND then their are friends you can call at 1 am for help and they won't hesitate. Of course, not everyone is or has the second type of friend.



It absolutely can. It can also make the game, or even be the game. I prefer for characters building their relationships in character to be the game. Or at least part of it.

Right, but you can build a relationship without the shock and awe of ''wow, I did not know that about you"




Why bother? That's a good question. Different people attempt it for different reasons, and with different levels of skill, with varying degrees of success.

But, the fact is, it does matter, or else they wouldn't try.

No. I've not gamed with people sufficiently inhuman as to not possess standard human failings to make it be enough.

Well, why bother when it's pointless? You can sit back and laugh to yourself....'''ahahahahaha, no one will ever know my characters favorite color is pink!". Ok?

Other then it does give that cheep three year old thrill of "I know something you don't know"

You game with Inhumans?

The basic point is there is no reason to hide things from the other players.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-15, 12:20 AM
I think it's worth differentiating between secrets you keep from your IRL friends in real life, and secrets you keep from IRL friends in the context of, you know, a game.

If the secret is "I have proof that my friend's IRL SO is cheating on him, IRL, with an honest to god, in flesh person, but I'm choosing not to tell him," or, "I found out that my friend is going to get passed over for an expected promotion at his job, but management is going to lead him on because he's an otherwise productive worker and they don't want him to get angry and quit," I could understand why your friend would be upset if you withheld that information from him.

But to try to extend that expectation for total transparency and honesty to the context of, again, a game that people play for entertainment, is pretty childish in my estimation.

What moral or actual harm is there if I decide to create a mysterious character in a game? It's one thing to find it a bit annoying, or maybe not a very fun characterization strategy, but if my IRL friend feels they can't trust me, as a person, because they don't know the sex and race of my imaginary character, they have other issues they need to work out.

EDIT: To clarify, I think it's valid to say OOC, "Hey man, this secret PC thing is kind of annoying, the curiosity is killing us, just tell us." But if Secret PC Man comes back with, "No, I want to explore the dynamics of having a weird, secret character who is otherwise cooperative, just roll with me on this," then why press it? What kind of paranoia is going on in your life if you can't just go, "Ok, whatever dude, I guess we'll find out somehow, probably," and move on with the game?

Darth Ultron
2018-08-15, 12:54 AM
EDIT: To clarify, I think it's valid to say OOC, "Hey man, this secret PC thing is kind of annoying, the curiosity is killing us, just tell us." But if Secret PC Man comes back with, "No, I want to explore the dynamics of having a weird, secret character who is otherwise cooperative, just roll with me on this," then why press it? What kind of paranoia is going on in your life if you can't just go, "Ok, whatever dude, I guess we'll find out somehow, probably," and move on with the game?

1.The player keeps a pointless secret that has no effect at all on the game. Ok, they can...but it is pointless.

2.The player keeps a secret from other players that has some game effect. Well, now this is a bit more of a potential problem. If everyone wants a back stabbing everyone is out for themselves player vs player game, then secrets are fine. But if just want player wants to keep secrets and 'be cool' and somehow get some form of advantage in the game...well, that is just going to be disruptive.

It's very much a way to play against the other players....and that is always a bad idea.

Like say a player has a character that is so cool, they hide their gender under a full get up. So the DM knows the truth, but the other players don't know. So, when anything related to 'gender' happens.....the one player and the DM get to have a private joke while the other players sit and watch. Ok? So it has the other players ''all a wonder'' about what gender the character is...maybe, if they care. Mostly, it's just a 'secret' waste of time.

And that is if it's done in a good way. It can turn bad...very, very fast and become 'the one player and the stupid secret solo game to watch'.

Mordaedil
2018-08-15, 01:15 AM
I would absolutely not have any of this at my table, mostly because it kinda kills the point. If you play a character that doesn't want to share, what will most often happen is that you will get your wish to the point where you are no longer trusted by the players around your table and they won't reach out to bother learning about your character, because frankly they have their hands full with their own characters and people who are willing to discuss their character openly without subterfuge.

I get what you are going for with this, but frankly letting you go with it is just going to disappoint. It will disappoint your DM, it will disappoint your fellow players and worst, it will disappoint you and you won't even know what you did wrong.

My suggestion for how to handle this is to be open about most things, but pick a few distinct topics that are sensitive to you because of something that happened to you in the past and act out angry when these things come up.

Lacco
2018-08-15, 01:33 AM
Story time!

One of my players, a lady, came up with an idea for a character. The "rich daughter + forced marriage = adventurer called Omar". She wore loose clothes, hid most of her face and overall tried acting as a man. Cue the yakkety sax music and the "let's make 'Omar' break his disguise" contest can start!

Our resident barbarian tried to find out using his special kind of ideas. "In my country we finish the campfire by peeing into it! All men, gather round!"

Interestingly, Omar stayed, even though he refused to participate. And another player's character - a young, shy, beardless half-elf of delicate facial features bailed due to his shyness.

Which - logically - lead to the barbarian assuming that Omar is a fine man (which lead to Omar being usually in front ranks together with barbarian, drinking with barbarian, vomiting his soul due to getting too drunk...) and acting gentlemanly towards the half-elf.

This lead to further funny stories... and one interesting point: the players knew from the first moment - they were kinda genre savvy and the lady was not too subtle. The other players played with the barbarian, putting more manly tasks on poor Omar.

So, secrets? No problem with them. But once you let the players on them, they are more interesting - it gives the players something to play with. And they should ALWAYS be sure about your intent - so that they are playing the same game.

If they know you are a riddle for them to solve, they may try to solve the riddle. If they don't know...

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-15, 01:40 AM
1.The player keeps a pointless secret that has no effect at all on the game. Ok, they can...but it is pointless.

2.The player keeps a secret from other players that has some game effect. Well, now this is a bit more of a potential problem. If everyone wants a back stabbing everyone is out for themselves player vs player game, then secrets are fine. But if just want player wants to keep secrets and 'be cool' and somehow get some form of advantage in the game...well, that is just going to be disruptive.

It's very much a way to play against the other players....and that is always a bad idea.

Like say a player has a character that is so cool, they hide their gender under a full get up. So the DM knows the truth, but the other players don't know. So, when anything related to 'gender' happens.....the one player and the DM get to have a private joke while the other players sit and watch. Ok? So it has the other players ''all a wonder'' about what gender the character is...maybe, if they care. Mostly, it's just a 'secret' waste of time.

And that is if it's done in a good way. It can turn bad...very, very fast and become 'the one player and the stupid secret solo game to watch'.

If a Player is secretly sabotaging the other players' PCs (stealing from them, poisoning them, whatever), I think it's fair to get mad about, but hiding the gender of their PC? I mean, it might be kind of cheesy - or a secret solo game, as you put it - but "turn bad very, very fast?"

I don't understand how it warrants anything more dramatic than *shrug* "This is kind of dumb, but oh well. I guess <Secret PC Player> wanted to try something weird this game. Moving on..."

Kardwill
2018-08-15, 02:46 AM
At best it can be disruptive to the game, and at worst it can ruin a game. It's bad enough when a player hides game related things, but it's really pointless to hide pointless things.

Secrets that stay secrets are sterile, useless things (that also goes for the DM. If my bad guy's nefarious plan is so well hidden it's never discovered, it means I came up with it for nothing, my players didn't understand a big part of the story, AND the stakes of the adventure/campaign was unclear. Bad GMing)

But secrets become interesting when they are discovered, or at least interacted with (during an investigation, for example). And character secrets can be a cool to spice up the game in that context, creating a paradigm change in he character's relations, or moments of levity when the other characters pull some shenigan to see your Sulent Knight without his helmet. In a character-centered game, it can be an aditional source of mystery for the group to engage with : Why does the Silent Knight never pulls off his helmet? why does the Red lady has a white robed, slightly different reflection in the mirror? Why does Amandine, the assetive servant/bodyguard of countess Eleanore, hide her face and become very quiet when in the presence of old Baron Ysgaran? Will the other characters respect that secret, or try to understand the "problem" of the secretive-one?

The player just has to hint obviously that there is something to be found, and accept (or, better, enjoy) the fact that the other PCs will discover the secret and react to it soon afterward. Or stage the reveal themselves in entertaining ways. Which sounds like what the OP is trying to do.

It can be very frustrating when the player is clinging to their character's secrets and refuses that the other players engage with it ("No, even if I'm uncounscious and you want to heal me, my helmet won't come off. Ever!"). But I've seen it played (and played it) in very entertaining ways for everyone at the gametable.

DeTess
2018-08-15, 04:32 AM
What was it that the DM spoiled?

The one issue I might have with this character as a DM is if I had no easy way to refer to them. If your character had absolutely no name to go by or other easy to use signifier I could use to indicate something is happening to the character, I'd probably break open the secret enough that it stops being a big inconvenience for me.

Even if I had an alias to refer to, I might not be completely consistent with referring to your character with non-gendered personal pronouns as it takes a lot of work and attention to keep that up, especially during the first couple of sessions. That would indicate no malice on my part or intent to betray your secret, but I dont often deal with non-gendered people (or people unwilling to let me know whether I should use he or she) so keeping that up would be difficult for me at the start.

Quertus
2018-08-15, 08:33 AM
But to try to extend that expectation for total transparency and honesty to the context of, again, a game that people play for entertainment, is pretty childish in my estimation.

What moral or actual harm is there if I decide to create a mysterious character in a game? It's one thing to find it a bit annoying, or maybe not a very fun characterization strategy, but if my IRL friend feels they can't trust me, as a person, because they don't know the sex and race of my imaginary character, they have other issues they need to work out.

Good points. Secrecy obviously has intended value to the one implementing it, otherwise, why would they put forth the effort? But I've rarely seen it turned back around the way it should be, asking why people would call BadWrongFun.


I guess your talking here more about casual acquaintances you know, though I guess you might be one of the people how does not have close friends. The majority of true friends know a LOT about each other, it's a basic part of friendship. It's what makes some one a ''friend" and not a "stranger".

But there is also a huge difference between the casual friend: oh, you know their name and hang out sometimes......AND then their are friends you can call at 1 am for help and they won't hesitate. Of course, not everyone is or has the second type of friend.

I was kinda talking about myself there. If you are only a casual acquaintance of yourself, and wouldn't help yourself, then I think you have bigger problems.


Right, but you can build a relationship without the shock and awe of ''wow, I did not know that about you"

I mean, sort of? Personally, I haven't gone all creepy stalker, and learned anyone's habits, sexual preferences, and favorite flavor of ice cream before being property introduced. Similar thing in the game. There's a certain pacing to relationships that is generally just wrong in many RPGs.


Well, why bother when it's pointless?

Not pointless. That's the point. There is an intended point. For me, it's usually about making the relationships less artificial, and making the game run better as a simulation.


You game with Inhumans?

Sadly, no. All the group's I've gamed with have displayed standard human failings.


The basic point is there is no reason to hide things from the other players.

No, the point is that there are many possible points. For example, as a GM, I might ask a player to make and keep a secret, to test if the rest of the party shows the capacity and inclination to solve mysteries, so as to know whether to make that part of the game.


2.The player keeps a secret from other players that has some game effect. Well, now this is a bit more of a potential problem.

While that's true, it's also potentially much cooler in its effects, for certain groups, at least.


I would absolutely not have any of this at my table, mostly because it kinda kills the point. If you play a character that doesn't want to share, what will most often happen is that you will get your wish to the point where you are no longer trusted by the players around your table and they won't reach out to bother learning about your character, because frankly they have their hands full with their own characters and people who are willing to discuss their character openly without subterfuge.

But what if the subterfuge is the point? What if that part of the game is what certain players enjoy? Would you call them out for BadWrongFun because of their preferences?

Now, it's something you don't enjoy, and wouldn't bother interacting with? That's fine. But why rain on their subterfuge minigame, to the point of wanting to ban it from the table? What harm does it do you?


Secrets that stay secrets are sterile, useless things (that also goes for the DM. If my bad guy's nefarious plan is so well hidden it's never discovered, it means I came up with it for nothing, my players didn't understand a big part of the story, AND the stakes of the adventure/campaign was unclear. Bad GMing)

But secrets become interesting when they are discovered, or at least interacted with (during an investigation, for example). And character secrets can be a cool to spice up the game in that context, creating a paradigm change in he character's relations, or moments of levity when the other characters pull some shenigan to see your Sulent Knight without his helmet. In a character-centered game, it can be an aditional source of mystery for the group to engage with : Why does the Silent Knight never pulls off his helmet? why does the Red lady has a white robed, slightly different reflection in the mirror? Why does Amandine, the assetive servant/bodyguard of countess Eleanore, hide her face and become very quiet when in the presence of old Baron Ysgaran? Will the other characters respect that secret, or try to understand the "problem" of the secretive-one?

The player just has to hint obviously that there is something to be found, and accept (or, better, enjoy) the fact that the other PCs will discover the secret and react to it soon afterward. Or stage the reveal themselves in entertaining ways. Which sounds like what the OP is trying to do.

It can be very frustrating when the player is clinging to their character's secrets and refuses that the other players engage with it ("No, even if I'm uncounscious and you want to heal me, my helmet won't come off. Ever!"). But I've seen it played (and played it) in very entertaining ways for everyone at the gametable.

One need only realize that the question exists - one need not actually answer the question for it to affect the game.

HMS Invincible
2018-08-15, 10:14 AM
1.The player keeps a pointless secret that has no effect at all on the game. Ok, they can...but it is pointless.

2.The player keeps a secret from other players that has some game effect. Well, now this is a bit more of a potential problem. If everyone wants a back stabbing everyone is out for themselves player vs player game, then secrets are fine. But if just want player wants to keep secrets and 'be cool' and somehow get some form of advantage in the game...well, that is just going to be disruptive.

It's very much a way to play against the other players....and that is always a bad idea.

Like say a player has a character that is so cool, they hide their gender under a full get up. So the DM knows the truth, but the other players don't know. So, when anything related to 'gender' happens.....the one player and the DM get to have a private joke while the other players sit and watch. Ok? So it has the other players ''all a wonder'' about what gender the character is...maybe, if they care. Mostly, it's just a 'secret' waste of time.

And that is if it's done in a good way. It can turn bad...very, very fast and become 'the one player and the stupid secret solo game to watch'.

Did someone hurt you? You have a very strong opinion about this. Like a friend of mine refused to unlock a gate (it was a Harry Potter ripoff, had to put liquid into a bowl). He held up the session for a good 15 minutes trying to stop anyone from filling into the trigger mechanism. I found out later that he was royally screwed by a GM after putting a little of his blood into a magic item. He acted the same way you are about it. Very traumatized.

Geddy2112
2018-08-15, 10:42 AM
I generally refer to the angry GM rant about secrets (http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-secrets-part-2/)and how disastrous they can be.

However, I think what your doing is actually pretty cool and fun. Not having some "In my past I was a killer now I am hunted down by blah blah blah" but being secret for the sake of it. The mysterious stranger nobody knows anything about, but is friends with the party and not an angsty lone wolf. Nothing is going to come up from your nonexistent grimdark past, and it is not some pointless esoteric nonsense you are hiding from the party, you are just playing Mr. Everyman John Doe anon.

Communicate to your DM that there is nothing that is going to come out one session and grind the game to a halt. That you are playing the trope for the sake of the trope, minus the hidden angsty time bomb most of these characters end up being.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-15, 11:38 AM
Grind the game to a halt? Turn into a disaster? I'm sorry, I guess I'm not getting something, but I don't understand what could be so shocking about a PC's backstory secret that it would break the game and make everyone unable to continue.

Short of "The PC was secretly the main antagonist of the campaign, and now you have to kill him," how many gamebreaking secrets are possible? Things you can't just work around? Are gamebreaking PC backstory secrets common, or is this just a meme that gets repeated? Honestly curious.

DeTess
2018-08-15, 11:57 AM
Short of "The PC was secretly the main antagonist of the campaign, and now you have to kill him," how many gamebreaking secrets are possible? Things you can't just work around? Are gamebreaking PC backstory secrets common, or is this just a meme that gets repeated? Honestly curious.

I suspect PC's being secretly evil and springing this on the party and DM at a bad time, or the secret haver collaborating with the dm in a way that gets them way too much spotlight time and/or gives them a significant rp advantage will be rather common in some groups. I can certainly see the appeal of playing such a character(in other media they can make great protagonists or antagonists, after all), but I also understand how much it can suck for everyone else at the table.

I've seen Darth Ultron react vehemently to talk about pc secrets before, so I suspect he's been at the receiving end of bad examples of the above a couple too many times. I really don't see the harm in what the OP is doing, but it might be nice to get his DM's perspective so we have the full story.

Icecaster
2018-08-15, 12:29 PM
The intent is for the secrecy to be a source of levity and interesting dynamics, with people trying to get this character to tip their hand somehow and usually getting out-foxed because teleportation and invisibility answers a lot of problems.

My first thought when I see this intent is: How many times did you actually outfox the other players before the DM started outing your character's secrets? If it was many times (or maybe even just a few, depending on how patient he is), then perhaps he thought you, as a player, thought your character was better than the other characters and took it upon himself to be the EqualizerTM. If it didn't really happen before he started this, then it's more likely that he simply doesn't like the idea of a character having secrets.

Personally, I think that secrecy can add to a character, but given that neither I nor (probably) the other people replying to this thread know what your character's secret/s actually are, no true judgement can be made. I once played a character that was a drow, but he wore a black veil as part of his clothing partially as mystique and intimidation and partially so he could walk places without immediately being spotted as a dark elf, similar to how one might pull a cowl over one's face, but I thought the veil was more interesting and fit his backstory. The way the campaign turned out, the other characters didn't have much time to question it, but once when my character slipped away from the party out of the city at night to bathe, he was spotted by another character, a druid who had no idea what the dark elves were, and the druid and my character bonded and were close for the rest of the campaign when his character joined the party, and the secret ended up not being a problem later on and led to interesting roleplaying throughout. In a campaign I'm running now, a new character is about to join who is the subject of a prophecy, but the other characters won't know about that immediately. This will lead to interesting roleplaying. It's not always about only keeping the secret. It's about the roleplaying it will lead to. So, even though I can't really say whether your secret was justified, I'm inclined to think you're in the clear and that secrets can add to a game.


Typically, the Player Characters are ''best friend" types, so they know all about each other.

I would tend to disagree. In almost every campaign I've played in, PCs meet for the first time under some uniting circumstance, save for a few that made their backstories together, and PCs getting to know each other and finding out things they didn't previously know is half the fun of roleplaying a campaign in my opinion. If everything about your character is just assumed to be known, then it eliminates a lot of the potential roleplaying. If that's not what you enjoy in a campaign, then no problem, to each their own, but I play RPG's mainly for the roleplaying.


I prefer for characters building their relationships in character to be the game. Or at least part of it.

This is my point exactly. Relationship building, initial mistrust, and character development to overcome that mistrust and in the end truly risk your lives for one another is a beautiful thing to see over time. Character development is Tier 3 roleplaying, and it's spurred on by flaws and secrets, usually. Flaws and secrets can be hamfisted and poorly done, for sure, but if done well they can make a character.


I suspect PC's being secretly evil and springing this on the party and DM at a bad time, or the secret haver collaborating with the dm in a way that gets them way too much spotlight time and/or gives them a significant rp advantage will be rather common in some groups.

I will say in corroboration of this that character development in the wrong direction can happen, and nobody has fun with that. I've seen it happen where a PC says, "Haha! Trick's on you I'm evil and betraying you all!" and it caused an upset at the table. In general, though, I would classify that as poor player skills rather than a simple secret. Given that OP brought it up with the DM and players, I think that it should not have been an issue. Nothing should be secret from the DM, but it's the DM's responsibility to keep secrets OOC. If, IC, an NPC approaches the party who knows the character, then that would be a whole different story, but a DM trashing a character concept, for any reason, is poor DM skills.

Erit
2018-08-15, 12:44 PM
Typically, the Player Characters are ''best friend" types, so they know all about each other.

Your entire approach to this thread seems predicated on this assumption. The problem is, this assumption is faulty. I can count on one hand the number of campaigns I've been involved in where the PCs knew each other in any capacity before the start of the adventure; the number of those times where I was not the DM specifically asking for such an arrangement is zero. The party of the campaign prompting my initial question is comprised of only two characters out of six who could have sufficient prior relations to claim familiarity; my character and a blind gnome being those two.


-snip-

Funny thing is that this is really close to what I'm going for; Aith (the androgene in question) has been continually punished by circumstance for being a woman, first by the monastery that adopted her unknowing of her femininity (thanks to one monk out of the hundred being good-natured and not entirely on board with their belief system) and then by other, much more sadistic things that need no further discussion.

The idea is that her ambiguous nature can be played both for laughs and give room for some character growth when the cat does, inevitably, come out of the bag, hopefully in such a way as to facilitate more humor before getting down to the more dramatic and less lighthearted aspects of the character.


But secrets become interesting when they are discovered, or at least interacted with (during an investigation, for example). And character secrets can be a cool to spice up the game in that context, creating a paradigm change in he character's relations, or moments of levity when the other characters pull some shenigan to see your Sulent Knight without his helmet. In a character-centered game, it can be an aditional source of mystery for the group to engage with : Why does the Silent Knight never pulls off his helmet? why does the Red lady has a white robed, slightly different reflection in the mirror? Why does Amandine, the assetive servant/bodyguard of countess Eleanore, hide her face and become very quiet when in the presence of old Baron Ysgaran? Will the other characters respect that secret, or try to understand the "problem" of the secretive-one?

The player just has to hint obviously that there is something to be found, and accept (or, better, enjoy) the fact that the other PCs will discover the secret and react to it soon afterward. Or stage the reveal themselves in entertaining ways. Which sounds like what the OP is trying to do.

That's my rationale; I wanted to provide the table with a small puzzle they can fiddle with during downtime in the form of trying to figure out just who and what Aith is. A part of the inspiration for the idea was actually a filler episode of Naruto focusing on trying to get Kakashi to remove his mask, only for every scheme to somehow be foiled. If someone's not interested, they're allowed to be so, because it's not like not knowing this information about the character is liable to hurt anyone in the party; I just take umbrage with the DM undermining my efforts.


However, I think what your doing is actually pretty cool and fun. Not having some "In my past I was a killer now I am hunted down by blah blah blah" but being secret for the sake of it. The mysterious stranger nobody knows anything about, but is friends with the party and not an angsty lone wolf. Nothing is going to come up from your nonexistent grimdark past, and it is not some pointless esoteric nonsense you are hiding from the party, you are just playing Mr. Everyman John Doe anon.

Communicate to your DM that there is nothing that is going to come out one session and grind the game to a halt. That you are playing the trope for the sake of the trope, minus the hidden angsty time bomb most of these characters end up being.

Well, not entirely true. Aith keeps her secrets because once bitten, twice shy; not because someone's hunting her (well, that I know of; the DM said our backstories would influence the campaign world to various degrees), but because there's less harm in the party not knowing who and what she is, and potentially trusting her less, than in dropping the masquerade and opening herself up to even more misfortune. It's not something liable to damage the party, and she's not a brooding corner-hog (predominantly because I get bored too easily to play those types) but she does have unpleasant personal reasons for the veils and vow of silence.

If something does come out of my background, though, it'll be on the DM's initiative, not mine.


My first thought when I see this intent is: How many times did you actually outfox the other players before the DM started outing your character's secrets? If it was many times (or maybe even just a few, depending on how patient he is), then perhaps he thought you, as a player, thought your character was better than the other characters and took it upon himself to be the EqualizerTM. If it didn't really happen before he started this, then it's more likely that he simply doesn't like the idea of a character having secrets.

Zero. The campaign hasn't even been going on long enough for any of the party members to have a reason to care about my character's history; they just know she's good with a knife and can't be detected unless she wants to be (I've rolled pretty well on all things stealth so far.)


I suspect PC's being secretly evil and springing this on the party and DM at a bad time, or the secret haver collaborating with the dm in a way that gets them way too much spotlight time and/or gives them a significant rp advantage will be rather common in some groups. I can certainly see the appeal of playing such a character(in other media they can make great protagonists or antagonists, after all), but I also understand how much it can suck for everyone else at the table.

I'm playing a sneaky rogue-type who refuses to speak aloud specifically to head off that kind of thing; I've played charismatic hero types before who soaked up a lot of the limelight. I always feel guilty for doing it. If this character is center-stage it would have to be because everyone else ceded the conch, as it were.

As for being secretly evil... Well, I've done that before, too, but not in the backstabby kind of way; more the "My friends won't do this because of some tripe about morals, but things will be so much easier if you just... disappear" bent. But this time around I'm LG.

ExLibrisMortis
2018-08-15, 01:21 PM
There's nothing wrong with hiding details that aren't relevant to the game. In 3.5, for example, many physical features (eye/hair/skin colour, age, ethnicity, height and weight, sex) and identity features (gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, class, certain aspects of ethics/aesthetics) have absolutely no bearing on the character's ability to do most anything, and so they can be hidden to no ill effect, as long as you don't use it to get an unfair advantage mechanically (and if some of this information would "leak" mechanically, it is up to you to hide it mechanically). Roleplaying-wise, it's more important that you go along with the plot than that you reveal things about yourself.

In my experience, both playing live and reading online, D&D adventuring parties are commonly held together by a fairly contrived motivation that's more a reflection of an OOC desire to go gaming together than what I'd consider a solid reason to trust one another with your life, health, and general fortune.

DeTess
2018-08-15, 01:24 PM
I'm playing a sneaky rogue-type who refuses to speak aloud specifically to head off that kind of thing; I've played charismatic hero types before who soaked up a lot of the limelight. I always feel guilty for doing it. If this character is center-stage it would have to be because everyone else ceded the conch, as it were.

As for being secretly evil... Well, I've done that before, too, but not in the backstabby kind of way; more the "My friends won't do this because of some tripe about morals, but things will be so much easier if you just... disappear" bent. But this time around I'm LG.

Just for the record, I'm not accusing you of any of that. I just brought it up as an example about why some people might have had very bad experiences with in-game secrets. As explained in the second paragraph of that post, I think what you're doing is mostly harmless.

I don't think you've answered this question, but if you have, I apologize for missing it. What has the DM spoiled so far?

Erit
2018-08-15, 03:59 PM
Didn't think you were, but I figure providing more information will be useful in garnering conclusions on the subject. Ironic, that.

The big thing is the character's gender, at least with how I'm playing it out right now; the DM's referred to her as "her" rather than anything else both in description and when the NPCs that sent the party off were discussing each of the party members (my input that they would have no grounds to know that information be damned.) Considering the reaction here has been averaging out to lukewarm-at-best and the party hasn't been very enthused (though that's a harder call to make two sessions in) I might just give up the greater part of the effort, though.

Pelle
2018-08-15, 04:16 PM
You could try telling the secrets to the other players, but not letting their characters know. Then the GM don't have to spend the extra effort of keeping track of the status of your secrets. Might get more interesting and dynamic roleplay with that approach as well, instead of relying on players who don't know there's a secret to go looking for one. Though that depends on your group I guess.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-15, 08:27 PM
I mean, sort of? Personally, I haven't gone all creepy stalker, and learned anyone's habits, sexual preferences, and favorite flavor of ice cream before being property introduced. Similar thing in the game. There's a certain pacing to relationships that is generally just wrong in many RPGs.

Well, I'll guess your talking about real life here, right? So, for most people when they are friends, they share a lot about each other...it's kind a big part of a friendship. Now, sure, there are silly people who do the thing where ''I know Bob's name, so we are best friends 4ever!", but that is not how normal people are. Sure you don't know everything at the introduction, but you should know a lot after a good amount of time.




Not pointless. That's the point. There is an intended point. For me, it's usually about making the relationships less artificial, and making the game run better as a simulation.

Right, but your playing a selfish, hostile mini game against the other players.....and that is not a good thing at all.



No, the point is that there are many possible points. For example, as a GM, I might ask a player to make and keep a secret, to test if the rest of the party shows the capacity and inclination to solve mysteries, so as to know whether to make that part of the game.

When the Dm does it, it's a game secret.


Did someone hurt you?

No, no...I'm the Other Kind of Person, you know: Make America Great Again. I'm just passionate. I do not believe in psychobabble, like the silly idea that ''everybody hurts" and the only reason they ''are something" is all sad stuff happening to them. For example, no pirates have ever raided my boat, and yet I still hate pirates..though none have ever attacked me personally.


Honestly curious.

A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them. See they can't just sit in the corner and have a secret: that is no fun. And it would not matter. For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Like take the cool character that wears a mask so ''nobody knows what they look like". Now the characters stop and eat, and the jerk player HAS to steal the spot light and say "Attention, my special faceless character moves away from the group and makes sure no one is around and eats in private!"

Then you get the game problems like, the characters are invited to dinner with the king. Jerk player has his silly character in their mask. Obviously the kings guards are like ''sorry silly character, you can't wear your stupid mask in to see the king". And this is where the jerk player will often cry and break down and such.

And then you get the problem of...well, to stop the jerk player from crying..the DM (mistakenly) caves in and says ''ok, fine, your silly character can wear the stupid mask to go eat with the king. And then the player goes full game disruptive jerk and steals silverware or attacks the king. After all, yuc yuc yuc, no one knows what the character looks like, so they can't 'go after them", yuck yuck yuck!

And that is just a few.



I would tend to disagree. In almost every campaign I've played in, PCs meet for the first time under some uniting circumstance, save for a few that made their backstories together, and PCs getting to know each other and finding out things they didn't previously know is half the fun of roleplaying a campaign in my opinion. If everything about your character is just assumed to be known, then it eliminates a lot of the potential roleplaying. If that's not what you enjoy in a campaign, then no problem, to each their own, but I play RPG's mainly for the roleplaying.

Right, on day one the adventures meet for the first time and don't know each other. Ok....then they adventure together for weeks....and get to know each other.

Lunali
2018-08-15, 08:31 PM
This actually reminds me of a similar problem in a current game. One of the characters has a nickname in her background that people hunting her know her by, so she doesn't use it. Unfortunately, the DM has trouble remembering the character's real name so he refers to her by her easy to remember nickname for things like initiative. This led to all the characters referring to her by her nickname that she never told anyone in game.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-15, 09:55 PM
A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them. See they can't just sit in the corner and have a secret: that is no fun. And it would not matter. For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Like take the cool character that wears a mask so ''nobody knows what they look like". Now the characters stop and eat, and the jerk player HAS to steal the spot light and say "Attention, my special faceless character moves away from the group and makes sure no one is around and eats in private!"

Then you get the game problems like, the characters are invited to dinner with the king. Jerk player has his silly character in their mask. Obviously the kings guards are like ''sorry silly character, you can't wear your stupid mask in to see the king". And this is where the jerk player will often cry and break down and such.

And then you get the problem of...well, to stop the jerk player from crying..the DM (mistakenly) caves in and says ''ok, fine, your silly character can wear the stupid mask to go eat with the king. And then the player goes full game disruptive jerk and steals silverware or attacks the king. After all, yuc yuc yuc, no one knows what the character looks like, so they can't 'go after them", yuck yuck yuck!

And that is just a few.

Yeah, I can see those being annoying scenarios. I am not convinced that the problem is the concept of "PC secrets" though - it sounds like an issue of obnoxious players.

I think 99% of these "Would you allow X at your table" discussions can be answered like this:

"Is your player an antisocial a-hole?"

No, your player is generally a good sport:

Okay, sure. Let's see what player can do with concept x. Might be fun.

Yes, everyone is routinely annoyed by your player:

Your player's a-holiness will shine through at some point, no matter what you allow, so maybe just stop playing with him.

I don't know if my new player is an a-hole:

Okay, maybe just be wary of the common problem-causing tropes, but give them the benefit of the doubt.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-15, 11:14 PM
Yeah, I can see those being annoying scenarios. I am not convinced that the problem is the concept of "PC secrets" though - it sounds like an issue of obnoxious players.

Right that is kind of the point: only obnoxious players want to do the ''secret thing".



Okay, maybe just be wary of the common problem-causing tropes, but give them the benefit of the doubt.

If you want to let something go that most likely will ruin the game, you can sure try it. Maybe your game will be a game where everything works out great....or maybe not.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-15, 11:32 PM
Right that is kind of the point: only obnoxious players want to do the ''secret thing".



If you want to let something go that most likely will ruin the game, you can sure try it. Maybe your game will be a game where everything works out great....or maybe not.

Man, don't take this as a put-down, but it sounds like you need to vet the people you play with, better.

You get the right crew, and you can do anything. Secrets, power gaming, evil campaign, whatever. Throw a bad apple in, and it doesn't matter how many "problematic" concepts you've placed-off limits, they will find a way to ruin your game, because *that's what a-holes do.*

EDIT: And quite frankly, if I can't trust a group of people to act maturely enough to not screw-up something as simple as "My character has a secret," why am I spending 5-6 hours a week with them? They're not my coworkers or family, this is a totally voluntary association.

Mordaedil
2018-08-16, 12:55 AM
But what if the subterfuge is the point? What if that part of the game is what certain players enjoy? Would you call them out for BadWrongFun because of their preferences?

Now, it's something you don't enjoy, and wouldn't bother interacting with? That's fine. But why rain on their subterfuge minigame, to the point of wanting to ban it from the table? What harm does it do you?
Subterfuge is always the point, the problem is that they expect other players to slowly dig out their secrets, but in my experience it never plays out the way you'd want to at the table. Either players push to reveal everything at once or they take no interest at all. That doesn't mean all secrets at the table are taboo, I've had characters who started the game evil, worshipping a lawful good deity and the players were confused as to why this was the case. Some secrecy and mystery is good and fun.

Maintaining your character as a complete enigma usually doesn't work out. But I say this mostly as a warning to how I've seen it play out. There's definitely ways to make it work.


No, no...I'm the Other Kind of Person, you know: Make America Great Again. I'm just passionate. I do not believe in psychobabble, like the silly idea that ''everybody hurts" and the only reason they ''are something" is all sad stuff happening to them. For example, no pirates have ever raided my boat, and yet I still hate pirates..though none have ever attacked me personally.

Do you mean "Make Germany Great Again"?

Lacco
2018-08-16, 01:16 AM
Funny thing is that this is really close to what I'm going for; Aith (the androgene in question) has been continually punished by circumstance for being a woman, first by the monastery that adopted her unknowing of her femininity (thanks to one monk out of the hundred being good-natured and not entirely on board with their belief system) and then by other, much more sadistic things that need no further discussion.

The idea is that her ambiguous nature can be played both for laughs and give room for some character growth when the cat does, inevitably, come out of the bag, hopefully in such a way as to facilitate more humor before getting down to the more dramatic and less lighthearted aspects of the character.

That's my rationale; I wanted to provide the table with a small puzzle they can fiddle with during downtime in the form of trying to figure out just who and what Aith is. A part of the inspiration for the idea was actually a filler episode of Naruto focusing on trying to get Kakashi to remove his mask, only for every scheme to somehow be foiled. If someone's not interested, they're allowed to be so, because it's not like not knowing this information about the character is liable to hurt anyone in the party; I just take umbrage with the DM undermining my efforts.

Now then provide them with the puzzle - but once they take the hook, expect that they will do what the characters you speak about did - do anything and everything to find out the reality behind the mask. And expect that you will not be able to foil the attempts - how will your character react to such intrusion?

That's the important part. The lady in my example was actually having lots of fun when the players tried to find out about her - and the character by the time did not mind the actual revelation. Is it the same with your character?


Zero. The campaign hasn't even been going on long enough for any of the party members to have a reason to care about my character's history; they just know she's good with a knife and can't be detected unless she wants to be (I've rolled pretty well on all things stealth so far.)

How many attempts were there from the PCs to actually find out anything?

Because you can use this as a simple measure - if they did not even start, maybe they don't even know there is something. Let them know. If they like the game you propose, they will play it.


You could try telling the secrets to the other players, but not letting their characters know. Then the GM don't have to spend the extra effort of keeping track of the status of your secrets. Might get more interesting and dynamic roleplay with that approach as well, instead of relying on players who don't know there's a secret to go looking for one. Though that depends on your group I guess.

Now this is a good advice.

Ideally: give each player something to work with. A piece of puzzle, so to speak. Maybe even conflicting information. If I were to play such character, I would - instead of withholding information - provide too much information to sort out what is correct/true. Every character would know my backstory, but every one of them differently (and every one of them would have part of it correct)...

But do tell them that these are secrets and that they don't have the whole puzzle.


This actually reminds me of a similar problem in a current game. One of the characters has a nickname in her background that people hunting her know her by, so she doesn't use it. Unfortunately, the DM has trouble remembering the character's real name so he refers to her by her easy to remember nickname for things like initiative. This led to all the characters referring to her by her nickname that she never told anyone in game.

Did you expect the nickname to come up & make trouble in game sooner or later?


Subterfuge is always the point, the problem is that they expect other players to slowly dig out their secrets, but in my experience it never plays out the way you'd want to at the table. Either players push to reveal everything at once or they take no interest at all. That doesn't mean all secrets at the table are taboo, I've had characters who started the game evil, worshipping a lawful good deity and the players were confused as to why this was the case. Some secrecy and mystery is good and fun.

Maintaining your character as a complete enigma usually doesn't work out. But I say this mostly as a warning to how I've seen it play out. There's definitely ways to make it work.

Agreed.

Either the players take it as the main quest of the game, hunting for clues and hounding your character (which, considering the information provided about the character is not really ideal - as the primary reaction could be retreat) or they will not care at all. Which is better for the OP?

Lunali
2018-08-16, 06:35 AM
Did you expect the nickname to come up & make trouble in game sooner or later?

It is supposed to become an issue eventually, when/if we travel to the areas where she's hunted.

Lacco
2018-08-16, 07:07 AM
It is supposed to become an issue eventually, when/if we travel to the areas where she's hunted.

I'm a bit slow today - so apologies if this comes as stupid question, but: why would the nickname be an issue in areas where she's hunted if she does not use it/nobody mentions it?

Tanarii
2018-08-16, 09:03 AM
The solution to the fact that you don't know everything about everyone isn't to have secrets. It's not to write a ten page backstory. Write up a few key personality motivations, choose a few important pieces of history that will possibly act as motivations, and go from there. The little details of your past can be made up on the fly if they come up.

The majority of enjoyable games I've played in, every character effectively starts as a 'mystery' to the others. At best, you know race & class, and a 1-3 sentence description of appearance and personality summary given by the player in the first session. Everything else comes up in play, most often because it's made up on the spot.

Erit
2018-08-16, 10:40 AM
Well, I'll guess your talking about real life here, right? So, for most people when they are friends, they share a lot about each other...it's kind a big part of a friendship. Now, sure, there are silly people who do the thing where ''I know Bob's name, so we are best friends 4ever!", but that is not how normal people are. Sure you don't know everything at the introduction, but you should know a lot after a good amount of time.

Do you think that the friends of convicts are lying when they tell authorities "No, I had no idea they were like that"? I've known my sister for literally as long as I have been alive, and I didn't know she was a Communist sympathizer until last month. Are you about to try, and fail might I add, to convince me or anyone else with a functioning brain that anyone can know everything there is to know about a person? Because that seems to be the criteria you're putting forth for being able to call someone anything more than an acquaintance.


Right, but your playing a selfish, hostile mini game against the other players.....and that is not a good thing at all.

You are operating under the assumption, an assumption that has already been refuted mind you, that it's done with malice or hostility, because for some reason you seem to be convinced that malice and hostility are all that can exist in this equation. Disregard for a counterargument is not a refutation, it's a tacit concession, and to try and press the matter with the same arguments that have already been defeated is among the heights of either arrogance or intellectual inadequacy.


When the Dm does it, it's a game secret.

So when the players do it at the DM's behest, as was the case in the example you quoted here?


No, no...I'm the Other Kind of Person, you know: Make America Great Again. I'm just passionate.

It never stops being interesting to see just how vociferously I can disagree with someone on one thing while sharing their opinion on another. +1.


I do not believe in psychobabble, like the silly idea that ''everybody hurts" and the only reason they ''are something" is all sad stuff happening to them. For example, no pirates have ever raided my boat, and yet I still hate pirates..though none have ever attacked me personally.

And I do not believe it when you claim to you haven't "been hurt" as the saying goes, following this:


A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them. See they can't just sit in the corner and have a secret: that is no fun. And it would not matter. For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Like take the cool character that wears a mask so ''nobody knows what they look like". Now the characters stop and eat, and the jerk player HAS to steal the spot light and say "Attention, my special faceless character moves away from the group and makes sure no one is around and eats in private!"

Then you get the game problems like, the characters are invited to dinner with the king. Jerk player has his silly character in their mask. Obviously the kings guards are like ''sorry silly character, you can't wear your stupid mask in to see the king". And this is where the jerk player will often cry and break down and such.

And then you get the problem of...well, to stop the jerk player from crying..the DM (mistakenly) caves in and says ''ok, fine, your silly character can wear the stupid mask to go eat with the king. And then the player goes full game disruptive jerk and steals silverware or attacks the king. After all, yuc yuc yuc, no one knows what the character looks like, so they can't 'go after them", yuck yuck yuck!

And that is just a few.

It's okay to admit your opinion is colored by negative experience. No, really, you can admit to it and nobody will light you on fire. It's not too late to accept that most players are actually more interested in cooperating with the story than in undermining it, contrary to the memetic nature of the problem children. But to counter your examples of concerns as to what the character might do:

Aith takes first watch every night and eats her day's rations when everyone else is asleep.

By the time the campaign progresses to the point where meeting an authority figure is worth planning for, either the party will have gotten to know each other well enough, and experienced enough individual and interpersonal character growth, that she's done away with the charade, or they'll be still be disparate enough that she can justify ****ing off to do some busywork for pocket money while the others do their thing. Or she'll have died horribly at the whims of the dice. In all three scenarios, the point is utterly moot.

You have no way of proving my intent to be a disruptive player, because not only can you not in fact read my mind, but I don't intend to be a disruptive player. This is an argument you literally cannot win, as it would be you trying to assert you know my intentions better than I do.

Backing up a bit:


A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them. See they can't just sit in the corner and have a secret: that is no fun. And it would not matter. For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Have you considered, just for a moment, or a second, or for any conceivable iota of time... That "keeping" the secret as you mention is the exact opposite of the point I've stated the whole exercise to have? No, seriously; has the idea crossed your mind that you should deign to notice when someone refutes the postulates of your argument?


Right, on day one the adventures meet for the first time and don't know each other. Ok....then they adventure together for weeks....and get to know each other.

Condescend harder, you might actually push your head far enough up your ass to be able to see through your nose hairs. Or, alternatively, you could reverse and realize you just supported the whole concept of there being secrets because secrets are things you don't know and need to learn over a non-trivial period of time.


Right that is kind of the point: only obnoxious players want to do the ''secret thing".

Absolutist arguments are folly.

Slipperychicken
2018-08-16, 02:24 PM
I've been through this before; my character used an alias, so the GM had the main villain teleport in, reveal his real name, and teleport out before anything happened in the story.

I think GMs do it for cheap drama, because they can't think of any other way to use a secret in storytelling than revealing it during session 2 before the players even know what the main conflict is. It's kind of the same deal as with PCs' families: GMs without storytelling chops see very few ways to squeeze melodrama out of it (slaughter, sex-abuse, or kidnapping), and end up leaving such a bad taste in players' mouths that they go out of their way to exclude it from background detail in all future characters.


Although I will say, abuse of secrecy by GMs has lead murderhobos to become exceedingly open-minded, tolerant, comfortable in their own bodies and minds, and willing to sharing information with their fellow PCs.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-16, 04:31 PM
Man, don't take this as a put-down, but it sounds like you need to vet the people you play with, better.

Sadly, many people lie...but I'm quick to catch them up in the game.



Do you think that the friends of convicts are lying when they tell authorities "No, I had no idea they were like that"? I've known my sister for literally as long as I have been alive, and I didn't know she was a Communist sympathizer until last month. Are you about to try, and fail might I add, to convince me or anyone else with a functioning brain that anyone can know everything there is to know about a person? Because that seems to be the criteria you're putting forth for being able to call someone anything more than an acquaintance.

It is true that some people are not close to their family or friends, but a lot more people are closer.



And I do not believe it when you claim to you haven't "been hurt" as the saying goes, following this:

Guess my definition of ''hurt" is not quite the same as yours. I don't get ''hurt'' when something happens like a jerk player acts like jerk.



Absolutist arguments are folly.

I'd answer....but it's a secret, hehe.

Icecaster
2018-08-16, 07:27 PM
Right, on day one the adventures meet for the first time and don't know each other. Ok....then they adventure together for weeks....and get to know each other.

Exactly. All I'm trying to say with my point is that what would be a "secret" from non-PCs coming to the attention of the PCs' characters can lead to fun roleplaying. Perhaps I should have been a little more clear with my articulation: A secret should come out during a campaign and the other characters should learn all other characters' secrets. When I say "secret," I'm really referring to any facts or backstory of a character that wouldn't be available knowledge to the average NPC. A secret that doesn't come to light is generally simply a waste of time and effort for all parties involved. Such a secret wouldn't necessarily hurt a game, but it wouldn't improve the game either.

Quertus
2018-08-16, 09:42 PM
Sure you don't know everything at the introduction, but you should know a lot after a good amount of time.


Right, on day one the adventures meet for the first time and don't know each other. Ok....then they adventure together for weeks....and get to know each other.

And that transition is a minigame I'd like to play - regardless of how open or secretive the individual characters are.


Right, but your playing a selfish, hostile mini game against the other players.....and that is not a good thing at all.

Historically, you have trouble understanding Sandboxes, so this might be a hard sell, too, but I'll try.

Learning about someone else is an opt-in minigame.

So, you're not paying a hostile game against the other players - you're giving them the opportunity to opt-in to a particular minigame, if that's the kind of thing that they enjoy.


A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Like take the cool character that wears a mask so ''nobody knows what they look like". Now the characters stop and eat, and the jerk player HAS to steal the spot light and say "Attention, my special faceless character moves away from the group and makes sure no one is around and eats in private!"

If a player who takes the 10 seconds or so to say that they eat elsewhere is all it takes for you to consider them a spotlight hog - if you seriously can't stand a player having the spotlight for less than 10 seconds in a game - then you've got much, much bigger problems than players or PCs keeping secrets.


Either the players take it as the main quest of the game, hunting for clues and hounding your character (which, considering the information provided about the character is not really ideal - as the primary reaction could be retreat) or they will not care at all. Which is better for the OP?

That's one very false dichotomy you've got there. Personally, I'd expect that they might take it as a secondary or tertiary goal, not as their main quest. If they didn't just ignore it, that is.


The solution to the fact that you don't know everything about everyone isn't to have secrets. It's not to write a ten page backstory. Write up a few key personality motivations, choose a few important pieces of history that will possibly act as motivations, and go from there. The little details of your past can be made up on the fly if they come up.

The majority of enjoyable games I've played in, every character effectively starts as a 'mystery' to the others. At best, you know race & class, and a 1-3 sentence description of appearance and personality summary given by the player in the first session. Everything else comes up in play, most often because it's made up on the spot.

Other than the bolded bit, my experience agrees with that last paragraph. Some of the best games I've had were where a group of very experienced and well-played PCs met for the first time. And nobody had to make up anything on the spot. Because everyone had thousands of pages of "backstory" in terms of time played.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-16, 10:02 PM
And that transition is a minigame I'd like to play - regardless of how open or secretive the individual characters are.

Though your not playing the game that everyone else is playing:The set RPG adventure. Your all into the private game with just yourself exploring things and 'doing tests on others' and such.



So, you're not paying a hostile game against the other players - you're giving them the opportunity to opt-in to a particular minigame, if that's the kind of thing that they enjoy.

Right, you want everyone to stop playing the game that everyone came over to play....even you, maybe, unless you were just misleading everyone so you could ''sneak in" and play your selfish hostile solo game.

After all, you are not up front and honest, right? You don't say ''attention everyone, I wish for us to stop playing the game and instead, I want you to play my personal minigame. What do you all say?"




If a player who takes the 10 seconds or so to say that they eat elsewhere is all it takes for you to consider them a spotlight hog - if you seriously can't stand a player having the spotlight for less than 10 seconds in a game - then you've got much, much bigger problems than players or PCs keeping secrets.

Of course it's not just 'one' bit of ten seconds...it's more like ten seconds out of every five minutes or so. Plus rants of ten minutes and more. The secret attention hog wants to ruin lots of the game time.

Quertus
2018-08-17, 12:20 AM
Though your not playing the game that everyone else is playing:The set RPG adventure. Your all into the private game with just yourself exploring things and 'doing tests on others' and such.

Right, you want everyone to stop playing the game that everyone came over to play....even you, maybe, unless you were just misleading everyone so you could ''sneak in" and play your selfish hostile solo game.

After all, you are not up front and honest, right? You don't say ''attention everyone, I wish for us to stop playing the game and instead, I want you to play my personal minigame. What do you all say?"

Of course it's not just 'one' bit of ten seconds...it's more like ten seconds out of every five minutes or so. Plus rants of ten minutes and more. The secret attention hog wants to ruin lots of the game time.

An attention hog will be a problem, regardless of whether or not they're keeping secrets. The problem isn't the secrets, it's the attention hog.

As to the rest... few people actually picture the game exactly the same way. For example, I'd almost be happy writing "Quertus, Wizard" on a blank piece of paper as the entirety of character creation. I didn't come here for the character creation minigame, I came here to roleplay. Yet systems and GM's keep insisting that character creation, backstory writing, character sketching, etc etc etc minigames are somehow completely valid in role-playing games, where all I signed up for was role-playing.

And, if the characters that we're role-playing don't know each other, well, then, I'd like to roleplay that. And roleplay them getting to know each other. Funny how the minigame I'm describing is actually more inherently a part of a role-playing game than those other minigames.

How much the other PCs choose to get to know my character is a purely opt-in minigame. As is how much I get to know theirs. And the NPCs. And the world. At least, in the sandboxy games that I prefer.

Kardwill
2018-08-17, 04:36 AM
As for being secretly evil... Well, I've done that before, too, but not in the backstabby kind of way; more the "My friends won't do this because of some tripe about morals, but things will be so much easier if you just... disappear" bent.

Pulling a Gilles? Even Good characters can be pretty vicious when they're all pragmatic about it :smallbiggrin:

Gilles : Can you move?
Incapacitated bad guy : Need a... a minute... She could have killed me.
Gilles (quietly cleaning his glasses) : No, she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later, she will pay for that mercy, and the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take a human life. she's a hero, you see. she's not like us.
Incapacitated bad guy : "us"?

Lacco
2018-08-17, 06:13 AM
That's one very false dichotomy you've got there. Personally, I'd expect that they might take it as a secondary or tertiary goal, not as their main quest. If they didn't just ignore it, that is.

Just for fun: how would Quertus the PC react to such person in his party? :smallsmile:

dino_park
2018-08-17, 06:58 AM
Its the case with almost all the games these days :/

Tanarii
2018-08-17, 08:05 AM
Other than the bolded bit, my experience agrees with that last paragraph. Some of the best games I've had were where a group of very experienced and well-played PCs met for the first time. And nobody had to make up anything on the spot. Because everyone had thousands of pages of "backstory" in terms of time played.
From what you've described, you're not playing anything like the games I'm describing. Where people come to the table with some basic outlines of how a character personality differed from their own personality. Then play the game to make decisions for their character in the fantasy environment, which is what I call roleplaying. And in the process of playing the game, let the at-the-table experiences and decisions made invent who the character ends up being.

You seem to come to the table with a full formed character in your head, and have a primary goal of expressing that character at the table. And define roleplaying as expressing the character at the table.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-17, 11:04 AM
As to the rest... few people actually picture the game exactly the same way.

Not exactly true, as the vast majority of players come to play the RPG adventure. Most players play the same way: role playing their character on the set game adventure.



For example, I'd almost be happy writing "Quertus, Wizard" on a blank piece of paper as the entirety of character creation. I didn't come here for the character creation minigame, I came here to roleplay. Yet systems and GM's keep insisting that character creation, backstory writing, character sketching, etc etc etc minigames are somehow completely valid in role-playing games, where all I signed up for was role-playing.

Sounds like you are saying you just want to free form role play. I wounder why you even play a game with rules then? Why not find a nice free from game?




How much the other PCs choose to get to know my character is a purely opt-in minigame. As is how much I get to know theirs. And the NPCs. And the world. At least, in the sandboxy games that I prefer.

Yes, you can be the Lone Wolf and sit in the corner and not play the game with the rest of the group...it is a valid way to ''experience' the game.

Jay R
2018-08-17, 12:04 PM
Right that is kind of the point: only obnoxious players want to do the ''secret thing".

Right, but your playing a selfish, hostile mini game against the other players.....and that is not a good thing at all.

A common problem is when the secret player goes full jerk and tries to make the game all about them. See they can't just sit in the corner and have a secret: that is no fun. And it would not matter.

For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

You also get the spotlight problem: For the player to ''keep" the secret, they have to steal the spot light.

Well, if that has been your experience, then I can see why you don't like the characters to have secrets. But the problem isn't the secret; it's the player. If you deny a secret to somebody who is obnoxious, selfish, hostile, a jerk, a three year old, or a spotlight hog, that person will find other tools to ruin fun. Such tools are everywhere.

In my experience, people who actively want to support the party will support the party, secret or no secret. When my character has a secret, I generally start out knowing under what conditions he will reveal it to the party. Indeed, that's the most fun part about having one.


For the secret to be fun, the player has to throw it in everyones face all the time and then be like 'nananahaha, I got a secret and I'm not going to tell you", a lot like a three year old.

This has not been my experience. In general, the players I've seen with secrets (leaving aside the selfish ones using them for mild PvP like picking the party's pockets), the secret has been intended for a great reveal at a crucial moment. A few examples:

1. When we started an old west game, I announced that I was going to base my character on an old TV show. I showed up with Cali Yang, a Chinese immigrant with Kung Fu skills, clearly based on Kwai-Chang Kane from Kung Fu. I never mentioned my secret, and players were enjoying my faux oriental proverbs. But in the fifth game, he needed to drop the disguise, and revealed himself as Cal Young, a disguise artist federal agent based on Artemus Gordon of Wild, Wild West.

2. In a Champions game, I was playing a Superman-like flying brick named Hyperion, with a sidekick Pinball. Hyperion was seen to die in battle. In fact, he hadn't died, The DM and I secretly arranged for him to reappear at a crucial moment. The party was fighting a giant robot, and losing badly. At one point the DM said, "You hear a rush of air from above." I looked at him, he nodded privately at me, and Pinball yelled out, "Look! Up in the sky!" And that's how Hyperion returned to save the day.

In both cases, members of the party congratulated me later on a fun, exciting adventure moment.

3. In a current D&D game, one of the characters has an artifact - an intelligent cloak with powers and goals the rest of us don't know about. I'm having fun trying to work it out. But Isaac is a decent player, and has never used it to be obnoxious, selfish, hostile, a jerk, a three year old, or a spotlight hog.

4. In Flashing Blades, a game set in the musketeer era, every player is expected to have a secret. It always makes the political plots more fun, not less. But nobody I've played with uses their secret to betray the party or hurt other people's fun.

5. In a recent D&D game, my character Gwystyl has a secret quest, which he himself knows very little about (which is to say, I set up a background idea which the DM can use or not, as he chooses, and when he chooses). All he knows is that it's tied to his Ancestral Relic, a hooked hammer. The DM has already used it to attach Gwystyl to the party.

In the second session, it came up that he had a quest, and the following conversation ensued.

Gwystyl: Yes, I'm on a quest.
Mycroft: To do what?
Gwystyl: I don't know.
Mycroft: Well who gave you the quest?
Gwystyl: I couldn't tell you.
Mycroft: Well, where are you supposed to go?
Gwystyl: No idea.
Mycroft: Well, then why don't you drop it?
Gwystyl: How? Until I know where the quest is supposed to take me, how can I turn off that path?

Mike and I were having fun with it, and his character occasionally makes comments about the silliness of being on a quest with no knowledge.

I know (and Gwystyl does not) that the quest is tied to the original owner of the hammer, his ancestor Grabthar, who became a hero while fighting a battle with the dwarf king Warvan and his sons. Someday, when (if) Gwystyl ever learns the entire truth, I hope to bring my Alan Rickman tribute to fruition finally by having Gwystyl swear, "By Grabthar's hammer, by the sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged." When that day comes, the long-held secret will finally be a source of fun for the party.

If the people at your tables treat secrets the way you describe, I can see why you don't want them. But that's not what I've seen, so I enjoy character secrets.

Velaryon
2018-08-17, 03:42 PM
The solution to the fact that you don't know everything about everyone isn't to have secrets. It's not to write a ten page backstory. Write up a few key personality motivations, choose a few important pieces of history that will possibly act as motivations, and go from there. The little details of your past can be made up on the fly if they come up.

The majority of enjoyable games I've played in, every character effectively starts as a 'mystery' to the others. At best, you know race & class, and a 1-3 sentence description of appearance and personality summary given by the player in the first session. Everything else comes up in play, most often because it's made up on the spot.

This is very much a matter of personal preference. The important part is for the DM and the players to be on the same page here. I've had great games where all anyone decided about their character before the game was name, what stats go on the character sheet, and what they looked like. I've also had great games where all or at least most characters have several pages of explanation of what led their characters to become an adventurer and why they are in this particular place where the game starts (some of which was even secret from the other players). My own D&D game falls into the latter character, and a lot of the best parts of the game have been based on things I've pulled out of the PCs' backstories.

When it sucks is when different people in the group have different ideas about this and don't reconcile them. It's frustrating as a player to come up with an awesome character background and then have the DM completely ignore it (especially if they're the one who asked for a background in the first place). It also sucks when you as DM solicit this kind of background info on PCs so you can mine them for adventure hooks, and you have players not even bother to try and come up with anything. Like so many other issues when it comes to RPGs, it's all about having the group on the same page.



This has not been my experience. In general, the players I've seen with secrets (leaving aside the selfish ones using them for mild PvP like picking the party's pockets), the secret has been intended for a great reveal at a crucial moment.

This is exactly what I was saying in my last post. The whole point of character secrets is to see how they affect the game when the secret comes out. Which is why they should be coordinated with the DM, who can decide whether that's something they want to do, and if so then when, where, and how to leverage that secret for the most benefit to the game.

Quertus
2018-08-17, 11:43 PM
Just for fun: how would Quertus the PC react to such person in his party? :smallsmile:

Quertus the character? Hmmm... He has so many sights, many secrets wouldn't be secrets the moment he got to observe them. For most of the rest? Quertus is not a very... People person. He would rarely inquire or investigate much beyond what he can see. Shrug. Here's a rather... focused academic.


From what you've described, you're not playing anything like the games I'm describing. Where people come to the table with some basic outlines of how a character personality differed from their own personality. Then play the game to make decisions for their character in the fantasy environment, which is what I call roleplaying. And in the process of playing the game, let the at-the-table experiences and decisions made invent who the character ends up being.

You seem to come to the table with a full formed character in your head, and have a primary goal of expressing that character at the table. And define roleplaying as expressing the character at the table.

I did limit the scope of the similarity to the second paragraph (minus the bolded bit). I thought it was quite interesting how our first paragraphs would be completely different, yet our second paragraph, nearly identical.

Interesting that your definition of role-playing excludes understanding the characters. I'll have to ponder that one.


Sounds like you are saying you just want to free form role play. I wounder why you even play a game with rules then? Why not find a nice free from game?

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'd want "Wizard" to be chocked full of mechanical bits. Like, say, the ability to move 3 spaces, draw 4 spell cards, and play one. I'm just not generally, you know, terribly interested in the act of character creation, from a mechanics PoV.

Pex
2018-08-18, 12:04 AM
In general, it's just a bad idea for a player to keep secrets from the other players, unless it is a very hostile player vs player type game. Typically, the Player Characters are ''best friend" types, so they know all about each other.

At best it can be disruptive to the game, and at worst it can ruin a game. It's bad enough when a player hides game related things, but it's really pointless to hide pointless things.

Is there a point to just sitting there and saying ''ok, you guys know nothing about my cool character". If it does not matter, why even bother to do it?

It really only matters if you disrupt the game all the time to say "haha you guys know nothing about my cool character", If you don't do that, then it does not matter anyway. So again, why do it?

All the players and characters and the DM can know the big secrets...but still the whole game world does not know....so can't you just ''pretend'' that is enough?

Not much annoys me more than a player who refuses to say what his character's name is or what class he's playing. You're supposed to play with your fellow players, not in spite of them. We need to know what abilities you have so we can plan tactics. When I meet such a player I ignore him or her for the rest of the game session. If he refuses to play with the party then he's not in the party as far as I'm concerned. I'm thrilled when they don't return the next game session.

Quertus
2018-08-18, 12:16 AM
Not much annoys me more than a player who refuses to say what his character's name is or what class he's playing. You're supposed to play with your fellow players, not in spite of them. We need to know what abilities you have so we can plan tactics. When I meet such a player I ignore him or her for the rest of the game session. If he refuses to play with the party then he's not in the party as far as I'm concerned. I'm thrilled when they don't return the next game session.

I mean, a great many of characters will ask, in character, what everyone's tactical capabilities are, if that information isn't known to the other characters already.

But I'll still avoid giving OOC information if possible.

I'm struggling with the "not giving their name" bit, though - unless the character is an illiterate mute, what kind of person would you possibly want to hang out with where knowing their name (or at least something to call them) could possibly be an issue?

Tanarii
2018-08-18, 10:33 AM
Interesting that your definition of role-playing excludes understanding the characters. I'll have to ponder that one.
it requires two things in regards to the characters: not making up one so complex to start with that you have to spend forever thinking before making decisions; a character that comes to be understood from actual play, not a prewritten story.

Basically, it's a technique for people that prefer playing the game, not writing a book.

Quertus
2018-08-18, 02:39 PM
it requires two things in regards to the characters: not making up one so complex to start with that you have to spend forever thinking before making decisions; a character that comes to be understood from actual play, not a prewritten story.

Basically, it's a technique for people that prefer playing the game, not writing a book.

Hmmm... One of the most common phrases for actors is "what's my motivation?".

One of least favorite things to do in a game is to have to ask that question. I don't enjoy character creation - I want my previous limited game time to be spent role-playing the character, not creating it.

Actors who have played a role for a long time tend to understand that role, and it's motivations, better than those who are new to the role.

At least, that's how I look at it.

If I'm reading you right, you so enjoy creating and defining the character, that you go so far as to describe playing a defined character as not role-playing. Have I got that right?

If I could get the appeal of playing some nebulous, undefined something, maybe I'd have a better understanding of your position. But, since about 95% of my characters turn out to be not something I want to continue playing, well, that kinda dissuades me from seeing the unknown a desirable goal.

Maelynn
2018-08-18, 02:55 PM
Right that is kind of the point: only obnoxious players want to do the ''secret thing".

I'm sensing a lot of butt-hurt here, to put it bluntly. While I would like to acknowledge and respect the undoubtedly negative experiences you've had with players keeping in-game secrets, I don't think it's fair to call all those players obnoxious. For one thing, I am such a player.

I 4e Eberron, I played a Changeling Psion who found that her Human form was far more easily accepted by everyone than her true form. She was a Human almost all of the time, until it became normal for her to be one. She became a respected diplomat and travelled far and wide on missions, eventually grouping up with a party of adventurers set out to figure out what happened to Cyre and their loved ones.

The party all believed she was a Human, but sometimes surges of emotion (fear, anger, happiness) would cause her shape to falter slightly, allowing characters with a high enough Perception to notice a darkening of her sclera, her face becoming somewhat gaunt, or a lock of hair getting a greenish hue. Nobody ever rolled high enough to actually see anything other than what they believed was just their eyes playing a trick on them.

At some point the DM would make it a nice plot hook, but I moved to the other side of the country before it could happen. So instead, he made her come back as an NPC for the grand finale fight, where she ended up a casualty. The big twist? When after the battle the party went to search for the bodies of their fallen friends, they never found Jax. They did find a changeling corpse, which surprised them a little - they hadn't notice one in the fight, but then again there were so many people involved...

Now, the players knew about my 'secret' in this case. Early on, one of the players thought they could force me to out my secret by trying to agitate me, once he learnt that such outbursts could make my real race shine through. When he tried to push it, however, both the DM and another player asked him why he'd do that. "Well, my character just doesn't trust Jax and thinks she's hiding something". They both called out his bullfeces, saying that his character couldn't know this at all and that in-game, Jax had never been deceptive about anything to give him reason to think like that.

So in this story, the only player being obnoxious was the one who couldn't play along and respect the border between player knowledge and character knowledge. And even he came round after that one time, playing along for the rest of the ride.

Had I kept this all a secret to them, then they would've seen nothing but the odd results of the Perception checks. It would've given them a mystery to solve, wondering what it could be. Personally I would've preferred this just to entertain the players with a bit of mystery for them to sink their teeth in, but I didn't think of the background/personality until after session 0, when we had already decided on race/class together. I'm happy the group I played with were all mature enough to not let player knowledge ruin the narrative and the mystery. They all enjoyed it, especially the twist the DM threw at them in the end. I still get goosebumps when I think of how it must've gone down at the table that night.. everyone realising that the Changeling was Jax, but their characters didn't know so the body was left alone. Still, it would've been even better if they were puzzled when not finding Jax, wondering where she could've gone - until it finally dawned on them, both as players and as characters, what she really was. Then it would've really been an awesome reveal.

--------------
Right now, in the group where I'm a DM, I have one player who's keeping his background mostly secret from the others. He mailed me his full background, but during session 0 he only told a very concise part of it to the others and hardly anything about why his character went to the city, what his ultimate goal is (now they think he's just a crime fighter), and what happened to the parents of the little girl he adopted as his daughter. His character keeps to himself, not because he's some evil bastard but because he's on a hunt for vengeance and doesn't want to risk his chance of success by people knowing about it. He's distrustful of people, and for a damn good reason. After all the adventuring they've done together he has slowly come to trust the party with his life. Just not with the rest.

Now, I enjoy this player being secretive. I get to use his background as a plot hook, and can feed him little teasers that don't mean a thing to the other players, and I love watching him play out his character. The other players don't even know what kind of awful events make up his background, and will be in for quite a surprise when they eventually face whatever it is that he's followed to the city. It will be a reveal, one that you can only truly enjoy when you don't see it coming. And knowing my players, I know they'll enjoy it and wouldn't want it spoiled by knowing it beforehand.

And the player? He's not obnoxious at all. He's a veteran player, a veteran DM, and loves a good roleplay.

Tanarii
2018-08-18, 07:13 PM
Hmmm... One of the most common phrases for actors is "what's my motivation?".

One of least favorite things to do in a game is to have to ask that question. I don't enjoy character creation - I want my previous limited game time to be spent role-playing the character, not creating it.

Actors who have played a role for a long time tend to understand that role, and it's motivations, better than those who are new to the role.

At least, that's how I look at it.
IMO "What's my motivation" is a fairly critical question to ask if you want to roleplay as anyone other than yourself.

If you've already developed a characters motivations through previous play experiences, which I know you have, fair enough. You can easily slip into character without figuring out what your motivations. Upside is you know the character well. Downside is you're always playing the same character.

The latter famously happens to actors too. They end up typecasting themselves. But that's only a problem insofar as actors are trying to play different parts to entertain others and failing to do so.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-18, 07:51 PM
I'm sensing a lot of butt-hurt here, to put it bluntly. While I would like to acknowledge and respect the undoubtedly negative experiences you've had with players keeping in-game secrets, I don't think it's fair to call all those players obnoxious. For one thing, I am such a player.

I did say it is possible to do 'secrets' right, but it's not too common.




So in this story, the only player being obnoxious was the one who couldn't play along and respect the border between player knowledge and character knowledge. And even he came round after that one time, playing along for the rest of the ride.

I'd note your secret race is exactly what I was talking about:

1)There is no reason to hide things from the other players/characters..other then you want to do a 'surprise' at some point to get a rush.

2)You disrupt the game, as every time your character ''looses control" or whatever you are having players making checks and trying to see what is happening and figure it out. Your trying to make the game all about your character. Oh, look everyone, stop playing the game and try and find out my secret.



Then it would've really been an awesome reveal.

Only to you though.




Now, I enjoy this player being secretive. I get to use his background as a plot hook, and can feed him little teasers that don't mean a thing to the other players, and I love watching him play out his character. The other players don't even know what kind of awful events make up his background, and will be in for quite a surprise when they eventually face whatever it is that he's followed to the city. It will be a reveal, one that you can only truly enjoy when you don't see it coming. And knowing my players, I know they'll enjoy it and wouldn't want it spoiled by knowing it beforehand.

Except, like I said, this is just a private game/joke between the player and the DM. So the rest of the players are just forced to sit their and be an audience.

SirBellias
2018-08-19, 02:56 AM
Secrecy is acceptable in my games, and some growth and development can be gained through slowly unveiling them to each other.

If they don't flaunt it, then it won't come up unless another character is genuinely curious, which is fine.

If they do flaunt it and still refuse to reveal it, then it's really annoying, as the last character removed from my current longstanding game was.

I encourage my players (or fellow players if I'm not DMing) to only act on in character knowledge, and it works pretty well. That way if something big for another character is revealed in a scene they aren't in, it can be withheld if it is suitably dramatic to do so.

An example of this working positively for my group was fairly early on in the game, when my character died, then came back in an unorthodox fashion (acolyte willingly raised by a rival god to avoid an eternity in Limbo). While the other players knew exactly what happened, as they were at the table while the scene played out, they enjoyed playing to their in character knowledge and trying to question my character on it until they finally cracked. Then they enjoyed having the in character dialogue and freaking out about it in character. We're a fairly role-play heavy bunch, I'd say, so that sort of dramatic moment is what we live for, especially if there's enough tension in the scene from us screwing ourselves over due to personal failures. Parties should not be well oiled machines, and some characters are more prone to secrets than others, but our player group all actively enjoy the intrigue and issues our in-character decisions bring, even if they are acting on information only known to them. Usually it gets revealed within 2 or 3 sessions if it's truly important, or much faster in my case (because my character is a terrible liar and knows other members of the party would know the right thing to do in a given situation).

So I think what I'm trying to say is the more glaring the secret is, the faster it should be revealed to spice up the game. If it's minor, reserve it for downtime. If it matters, it should probably come out.

Our last character we had an issue with was actually a mysterious rogue who knew all sorts of things, made it obvious, and never actually revealed them, which doesn't really work well with our dynamic. As such, most of the party never trusted them, they didn't trust the rest of the party, and they went their separate ways when the secretive one got in trouble with the law. So it could be that the DM is trying to spark up something interesting out of your gimmick, OP, or maybe they're just assuming several things will be taken as out of character and there isn't any need to hide them that way.

Quertus seems to have the right of this, IME. I'm not about to hide OOC info like class and stuff though, that'll get told in session 0 so that we can have a general idea of expectations (that get subverted anyways), and everyone knows enough of the rules to be able to guess within a session of actually using their class features, so hiding that is silly. It's the defining backstory elements and in story information sharing that is "secret," and what is the satisfying point in our games. Learning about each other's characters based on our original vision, as well as seeing how they change over time is the meat and potatoes of our fun. Overcoming the challenges is honestly secondary as long as we all live through them.

Our classes give us our powers, but I think our party would function just the same if they weren't explicitly stated. Half the party forgets that we have a Bard whenever that fact gets mentioned, but they damn well know they have Lyla, servant of the Lord of Dreams. And some of our party forgets that most of our Paladin's levels are in Cleric, as he doesn't fit the mold of either incredibly well. Our classes don't inform our characters, as it were, beyond the most general sense.

Sure, you can come to the table with 1 to 3 lines of description and determine who your character is on the fly, as Tanarii said, and that's a great way of doing that. But seeing as how I'm bad at that, I tend to prefer giving myself a solid ground that is more creative than what I can improvise, then building from there. That way my characters have a starting point and a trajectory influenced by the story.

I don't think what Tanarii and Quertus are saying are really all that different, it's just that one of them has a grounded starting point in a heavily crafted character and the other has less emphasis on the start and more on what they become. Both paths involve building a character forward based on what happens in the story, one just has less words to start with.

I find making a complex character to start with hastens my ability to react to situations, as I know a few details that will color my choices from the start. More may be filled in later if I do something that doesn't seem quite right. If you would rather make the decisions then make up a reason for the decision if it comes up on the fly, then that works too. It amounts to the same thing in character, and is basically the difference between my Playing and DMing styles.

Both are the same result, just approached from opposite directions. Or maybe I just need to sleep more.

Tanarii
2018-08-19, 11:04 AM
My experience is that players who spend a lot of time writing a backstory rarely have characters that experience at-the-table character growth. They've already locked themselves in. The same way you can't get character growth IRL by sitting around reading self-help or meditation books and thinking about who you are, or by posting inspiring social media life quotes. You have to do something for that to happen. This isn't universal, but it's definitely a strong trend I've noticed.

Quertus seems to be an exception not because long backstory, but because he uses the same character in multiple games. Sounds like he's got plenty of table experience with that character before he ever sits down at the new one. As well as exceptionally permissive DMs when it comes to acceptable character concepts for new campaigns. :smallamused:

Darth Ultron
2018-08-19, 12:23 PM
My experience is that players who spend a lot of time writing a backstory rarely have characters that experience at-the-table character growth. They've already locked themselves in.

I don't find this to be true at all. Character growth is all in the hands of the player and if they want to do that or not. Sure I character that has a backstory like ''I'm here" will get a ''lot" of growth as soon as they "do" just about anything, but just as the character has a five page backstory, does not make them unable to grow.

Worse, players with little or no backstory or character personality just end up playing a random character....or worst of all: Themselves.

Secrets do lock a character in though. While other players can role play and share, the secret player just sits their and says "I can say anything, it's a secret".

JNAProductions
2018-08-19, 12:44 PM
Oh the horror! Someone wants to play a character like themselves! How ever will we survive?

Honestly, that's probably the best intro to roleplaying, in any system. While I'd certainly like to see more from a player, if the person is a good one, I don't mind if they play someone who's very similar to themselves.

And Maelynn, that sounds like a good example of a well-done secret. It's subtle, but noticeable (even if the other PCs never actually noticed it) and not disruptive.

SirBellias
2018-08-19, 01:08 PM
My experience is that players who spend a lot of time writing a backstory rarely have characters that experience at-the-table character growth. They've already locked themselves in. The same way you can't get character growth IRL by sitting around reading self-help or meditation books and thinking about who you are, or by posting inspiring social media life quotes. You have to do something for that to happen. This isn't universal, but it's definitely a strong trend I've noticed.

Quertus seems to be an exception not because long backstory, but because he uses the same character in multiple games. Sounds like he's got plenty of table experience with that character before he ever sits down at the new one. As well as exceptionally permissive DMs when it comes to acceptable character concepts for new campaigns. :smallamused:

Fair enough. This isn't what I've noticed (in games, at least), but it may just be a different group dynamic. The fact that what most characters do in a typical adventure (for our games) is far more horrific than what their backstory consists of usually gives them some development, as we play that out. Maybe they seem pretty static in the first session or so, unless something really horrific happens, but we tend to build on in game experiences pretty quickly.

While I haven't had such a long running character, it sounds like Quertus (the character) could be just building up and learning based on in game experiences over an exceptionally long time. The fact that they have so many might dull the obvious change, depending on how jaded (or bored) the character is from so many adventures, but there's usually still room to keep growing and building on a concept based on meaningful moments in game. If there isn't, then why have they not retired or been replaced with a character that will have meaningful moments in the story?

I'd hesitate to allow such a long running character in my games, as they usually hinge on the characters not knowing an incredibly large amount on the cosmology and strangeness of the world they are in (because I make things up off the top of my head to make the encounters more interesting), but that's not the point.

Tanarii
2018-08-19, 01:13 PM
Honestly, that's probably the best intro to roleplaying, in any system. While I'd certainly like to see more from a player, if the person is a good one, I don't mind if they play someone who's very similar to themselves.Yeah, it's one of the easiest way to introduce a new player to RPGs. "Just think about what you want to do, then tell me."

That said, I find new players can handle a motivation or two where their character differed from themselves. And they can develop additional motivations as the game proceeds.

The concept of 'check motivations, otherwise just make decisions as myself' is a good approach to 'getting in character' even for experienced players. Although they can usually handle a lot more places where the character differs from themselves.

Pex
2018-08-19, 01:55 PM
I mean, a great many of characters will ask, in character, what everyone's tactical capabilities are, if that information isn't known to the other characters already.

But I'll still avoid giving OOC information if possible.

I'm struggling with the "not giving their name" bit, though - unless the character is an illiterate mute, what kind of person would you possibly want to hang out with where knowing their name (or at least something to call them) could possibly be an issue?

I don't need to know everything about your character. If there's a story to be played out as the campaign progresses (not to betray the party of course) wonderful. Everyone can have their own mini-plot line. Be a fugitive from the Evil Country we have to deal with 7 levels later so you don't mention you're a fugitive at Game Session 1. Let your real name be Kara Nightingdale, only daughter of Lord Nightingdale who was murdered before he could take Title of some importance, so you go by the name Nera. That's all fine and dandy have your fun. Just tell me you're name is Nera and you're a Sorcerer. I've met players who won't even go that far, refusing to say anything and respond with "Why do you need to know?" and then still refuse to answer even if I bother to respond to such an insulting question. Classic case of That Guy, the Jerk player. I've long since learned to refuse to enable that behavior.

Maelynn
2018-08-19, 04:21 PM
1)There is no reason to hide things from the other players/characters..other then you want to do a 'surprise' at some point to get a rush.

2)You disrupt the game, as every time your character ''looses control" or whatever you are having players making checks and trying to see what is happening and figure it out.

The reason is called narrative. It's little events that make a plot more interesting. It's where all characters involved get little moments to shine, little threads that are woven into the main story. Some people actually enjoy having to figure out things, like a puzzle to get through a door or an NPC who's clearly lying about something but you don't know why. I guess you're not one of them, which is perfectly fine of course.


Your trying to make the game all about your character. Oh, look everyone, stop playing the game and try and find out my secret.

Oh hun, here's that butthurt part surfacing again. Without knowing what happened at the table and how the other players felt, you are quite convinced that I made the story skid to a halt and demanded attention? All it implies is that you've had bad experiences with this which cause you to assume I'm similar to whoever it is that griefed you this much. I can assure you, all players involved were entertained by the bit of mystery. They liked how the story wasn't just the main plot but had some other strands woven in as well. Not just mine, but their own too. Like the Cleric who was really NE (as a player he never told us his alignment, and we never thought to ask) who actually found himself doing more and more non-Evil things as he spent more time with us. Or when we surprised the DM by 'adopting' the Goblin NPC by asking him to come with us, when he only intended him to be a brief appearance for some information.


the rest of the players are just forced to sit their and be an audience.

I take it you never read a mystery novel, like Sherlock Holmes? Because that's exactly what happens, when played right: you're fed bits and pieces that are clues and you're wondering what the solution is, you're trying to figure it out on your own, and then in the end you'll get the reveal so you'll finally have the satisfaction of knowing the answer. To each their own, and I suppose this isn't your cup of tea. Just not really nice to talk down on those who do enjoy it. Because there are people who do, trust me. ;)


And Maelynn, that sounds like a good example of a well-done secret. It's subtle, but noticeable (even if the other PCs never actually noticed it) and not disruptive.

Thank you! I'm still sad that I moved away before they found out, would've loved to see how it could've developed. Maybe that's also partly why I'm liking the hidden background of the player in my own group so much, haha.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-19, 06:40 PM
The reason is called narrative. It's little events that make a plot more interesting. It's where all characters involved get little moments to shine, little threads that are woven into the main story. Some people actually enjoy having to figure out things, like a puzzle to get through a door or an NPC who's clearly lying about something but you don't know why. I guess you're not one of them, which is perfectly fine of course.


It's only a narrative plot point if the DM does it. When a player does it, it is at best, a distraction. And at worse it ruins the game. Players should shine role playing in the plot, not hijacking it it make some selfish solo wish fullfillment.



Oh hun, here's that butthurt part surfacing again. Without knowing what happened at the table and how the other players felt, you are quite convinced that I made the story skid to a halt and demanded attention?

I don't know anything about ''you"....



All it implies is that you've had bad experiences with this which cause you to assume I'm similar to whoever it is that griefed you this much. I can assure you, all players involved were entertained by the bit of mystery. They liked how the story wasn't just the main plot but had some other strands woven in as well. Not just mine, but their own too.

There is nothing wrong with playing the Homebrewed Random Player Secret and Mystery game instead of the RPG Adventure.




I take it you never read a mystery novel, like Sherlock Holmes? Because that's exactly what happens, when played right: you're fed bits and pieces that are clues and you're wondering what the solution is, you're trying to figure it out on your own, and then in the end you'll get the reveal so you'll finally have the satisfaction of knowing the answer. To each their own, and I suppose this isn't your cup of tea. Just not really nice to talk down on those who do enjoy it. Because there are people who do, trust me. ;)

Compare Apples and Oranges much? Sure...take a typical ''Sherlock Holmes" mystery. Note how the story is all about The Mystery. Is Sherlock a runaway prince from a far away kingdom running from demon ninja bounty hunters? Nope. Is Sherlock hiding his name or face or stuff about him for utterly no reason other then to be a jerk. Do you think Dr. Watson knows Sherlock Holmes well? Is Sherlock hiding all sorts of personal stuff from Dr. Watson all the time?

And you notice how in the middle of the Case of the Ladies Jewels, suddenly ninja cyborg rabbits don't attack Dr. Watson ''out of the blue'', as he is the ''last all might king of Evermore" and is in hiding? Notice how the author just sticks to the main mystery.

JNAProductions
2018-08-19, 07:18 PM
Why can’t players affect the plot, DU?

Darth Ultron
2018-08-19, 08:12 PM
Why can’t players affect the plot, DU?

I'm not sure what you are even asking here, as your not asking about anything I posted.

JNAProductions
2018-08-19, 08:18 PM
It’s only plot if the DM does it.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-19, 08:38 PM
It’s only plot if the DM does it.

Oh, so you mean above where I said only the DM can make a narrative plot point.

Well, that is easy. Only the DM knows everything about the plot, so only they can make plot points.

The players never know much more then the vague plot outline(maybe), so they can't make plot points.

Perficio
2018-08-19, 09:04 PM
Players can offer and introduce things that the DM adopts, expands on, and makes into plot, though. Is that what you were thinking of, JNAP?

JNAProductions
2018-08-19, 09:10 PM
Somewhat. I’m just well aware of DU’s stance on player agency, and how he hates it.

Quertus
2018-08-19, 09:11 PM
IMO "What's my motivation" is a fairly critical question to ask if you want to roleplay as anyone other than yourself.

If you've already developed a characters motivations through previous play experiences, which I know you have, fair enough. You can easily slip into character without figuring out what your motivations. Upside is you know the character well. Downside is you're always playing the same character.

The latter famously happens to actors too. They end up typecasting themselves. But that's only a problem insofar as actors are trying to play different parts to entertain others and failing to do so.

I think you've definitely got the right of it regarding wanting to just slip into character.

So, if I've played around 400 characters (which seems a reasonable estimate), that makes around 20 tested characters that I consider worth playing (which also seems a reasonable estimate). There's a few traits that I tend to prefer (intelligent, loyal, caster, coward, crafter, chess master, etc), but none that I've noticed to be universal to my character resume.

Weird typecasting is something I've noticed, and probably deserves its own thread. A lot of GM's, when they see me enjoy playing one character, seem to just assume that my next character will be just like them, and are shocked when I play something dramatically different. Sometimes to the point of their adventure falling apart, because they had just assumed I would behave just the way my previous character did.

All that having been said, if I didn't care about personal growth, pushing my limits, or new psychology experiments attempts to understand humanity in convenient character form - if I only cared about role-playing for the joy of role-playing - then I wouldn't view only playing one character, ever, as a downside.


Quertus seems to have the right of this, IME. I'm not about to hide OOC info like class and stuff though, that'll get told in session 0 so that we can have a general idea of expectations (that get subverted anyways), and everyone knows enough of the rules to be able to guess within a session of actually using their class features, so hiding that is silly. It's the defining backstory elements and in story information sharing that is "secret," and what is the satisfying point in our games. Learning about each other's characters based on our original vision, as well as seeing how they change over time is the meat and potatoes of our fun. Overcoming the challenges is honestly secondary as long as we all live through them.

Our classes give us our powers, but I think our party would function just the same if they weren't explicitly stated. Half the party forgets that we have a Bard whenever that fact gets mentioned, but they damn well know they have Lyla, servant of the Lord of Dreams. And some of our party forgets that most of our Paladin's levels are in Cleric, as he doesn't fit the mold of either incredibly well. Our classes don't inform our characters, as it were, beyond the most general sense.

Sure, you can come to the table with 1 to 3 lines of description and determine who your character is on the fly, as Tanarii said, and that's a great way of doing that. But seeing as how I'm bad at that, I tend to prefer giving myself a solid ground that is more creative than what I can improvise, then building from there. That way my characters have a starting point and a trajectory influenced by the story.

I don't think what Tanarii and Quertus are saying are really all that different, it's just that one of them has a grounded starting point in a heavily crafted character and the other has less emphasis on the start and more on what they become. Both paths involve building a character forward based on what happens in the story, one just has less words to start with.

I find making a complex character to start with hastens my ability to react to situations, as I know a few details that will color my choices from the start. More may be filled in later if I do something that doesn't seem quite right. If you would rather make the decisions then make up a reason for the decision if it comes up on the fly, then that works too. It amounts to the same thing in character, and is basically the difference between my Playing and DMing styles.

Both are the same result, just approached from opposite directions. Or maybe I just need to sleep more.

Thank you for bolding my name, to make it easy to see when you're referencing me. It's always nice to see that someone thinks I might actually have bit of sanity left. :smallbiggrin:

See below for some commentary regarding my opinion on / history with discussing classes. I think it largely agrees with what you're saying regarding your experiences.

Tanarii and I have a bit of a history of often saying very much opposing things which, when looked at from a certain point of view, look very similar. I find it fascinating, personally. I suspect it's because red and green are much more similar than red and penguin even if I do have a friend who claimed that penguins are their favorite color.

But, also, I think that what we want out of a game differs. And that that may be the biggest source of difference in our opinions. But I'm still trying to put my finger on the details.

I also find interesting your commentary regarding playing vs GMing style. Care to elaborate on why one is planned / static, vs why the other is spontaneous / dynamic?


My experience is that players who spend a lot of time writing a backstory rarely have characters that experience at-the-table character growth. They've already locked themselves in. The same way you can't get character growth IRL by sitting around reading self-help or meditation books and thinking about who you are, or by posting inspiring social media life quotes. You have to do something for that to happen. This isn't universal, but it's definitely a strong trend I've noticed.

Quertus seems to be an exception not because long backstory, but because he uses the same character in multiple games. Sounds like he's got plenty of table experience with that character before he ever sits down at the new one. As well as exceptionally permissive DMs when it comes to acceptable character concepts for new campaigns. :smallamused:

So many things to respond to... I'll pick a few seemingly at random.

Time spent playing the character is so much... better, so much richer than backstory. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, things that they're good at, and things that they're not. No single GM will ever be able to manage the diversity of content that 20 GMs can provide. So it's rare for a single GM to provide the diversity of content necessary to make me feel that a character has been properly tested.

In a related vein, character growth is not trivial. If it were easy to fabricate the factors necessary to elicit change, they'd have likely already changed by now.

For me, character growth is not the point or the goal. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy when it happens (with the exception of those occasions where it makes the character unplayable / less fun to play*), but it's entirely optional, an extra, a bonus. Artificial growth, engineered growth, OTOH, are hugely negative in my book - just like I find any other artificial/engineered element off-putting. Thus, I endeavor to not give the GM sufficient information about the character's inner workings to enable them to intentionally engineer such growth, thereby preventing the fail case, and enabling the admittedly rare chance for genuine growth.

My question, strangely worded as it may be, is this: is it a causal relationship between lengthy backstory and limited growth rate? Or are there other factors involved that may** result in those two being related?

Put another way, perhaps my characters that "aren't worth playing" encountered their triggers, and reached their growth potential after the first session. Only those few that still have room to grow after years of play are worth my time to play. Who knows. I don't generally think in terms of character growth.

* As would be the case if someone taught Quertus Playground-approved tactics.
** The existence of such a relationship in the largest community remains untested, and, as I don't generally think in such terms, I feel I am not qualified to comment.


Fair enough. This isn't what I've noticed (in games, at least), but it may just be a different group dynamic. The fact that what most characters do in a typical adventure (for our games) is far more horrific than what their backstory consists of usually gives them some development, as we play that out. Maybe they seem pretty static in the first session or so, unless something really horrific happens, but we tend to build on in game experiences pretty quickly.

While I haven't had such a long running character, it sounds like Quertus (the character) could be just building up and learning based on in game experiences over an exceptionally long time. The fact that they have so many might dull the obvious change, depending on how jaded (or bored) the character is from so many adventures, but there's usually still room to keep growing and building on a concept based on meaningful moments in game. If there isn't, then why have they not retired or been replaced with a character that will have meaningful moments in the story?

I'd hesitate to allow such a long running character in my games, as they usually hinge on the characters not knowing an incredibly large amount on the cosmology and strangeness of the world they are in (because I make things up off the top of my head to make the encounters more interesting), but that's not the point.

Horrific? Curious that you jump there for character growth. Why is that?

For me, it depends on the character. Before play, my characters could live anything from the most sheltered of lives, to having experienced horrors beyond what any sane GM would even consider putting in a game. But I suspect, for the average character, you are correct.

Quertus has as lot of experience. And I wouldn't call him jaded or bored, more... terrified, actually. Granted, he usually comes off jaded or bored, due to a well-deserved level of trust in his allies to handle the terrifying things that exist outside the safety of his laboratory.

And I see that you've got the idea I mentioned above, questioning whether a character is still worth playing once it has no potential for growth. Makes me quite curious why we both went there.


I don't need to know everything about your character. If there's a story to be played out as the campaign progresses (not to betray the party of course) wonderful.

I've met players who won't even go that far, refusing to say anything and respond with "Why do you need to know?" and then still refuse to answer even if I bother to respond to such an insulting question. Classic case of That Guy, the Jerk player. I've long since learned to refuse to enable that behavior.

Strongly agree on the "not betray the party" bit (unless the culture of the game / table allows that kind of thing, but still not my cup of tea).

So, here's the thing: I'm playing two characters. One is in the back in robes, using magic to inconvenience the enemy. The other is in the front in armor, beating up foes with a golf cart of weapons. A Fighter and a Wizard, right? Well, yes. But the guy up front is the Wizard, the guy in the back is the Fighter.

In some systems, it happens on purpose, because i know the system, and it amuses me to create such characters. In other systems - usually ones I don't know as well - it happens by accident, or simply by virtue of not being genre savy.

I've played with too many people who carry large swaths of unspoken assumptions about what role a given class is supposed to have, and get quite upset when you violate their expectations, to consider such questions as "what class are you" conducive to meaningful understanding. Although, should those questions be relevant once the important questions like intended role and capabilities have already been answered, that's a different story.

SirBellias
2018-08-19, 09:34 PM
I'm glad to see this conversation has progressed well!

I disagree with the idea that anything secretive the players do is a distraction. Homebrew is the name of the game unless you're just running modules. Random is simply not true if the player and DM work with each other to coordinate it making sense with the narrative, and trust each other to support it effectively. I feel like there's an awful lot of buzzwords thrown in to this debate with little regard for what they're supposed to mean.

I mean, there's a difference between "making the game all about your character" and "sharing the spotlight for the minute the conversation lasts." The other players don't end up being an audience if they're engaged in the interparty conversation.

If you have a secret that causes trouble for the party, the party should generally get together somewhere quiet, talk through their hidden selves and issues that are relevant, and grow together as a team. Provided there's any team left. Or it's interesting to do so. Which it is at my tables, so that's generally a plus.

Maybe the issue here is that some of us anticipate the entire party having secretive characters, and others assume only one person has them. I usually prefer it when everyone has the same degree of secrecy involved, but it does work to have some less trusting than others with their pasts, provided they walk the line properly. Which is touchy, and wavers in the wind, but it's a dance that can be done well relatively frequently.

Tanarii
2018-08-19, 11:07 PM
Quertus yes it's entirely possible that what I believe I'm seeing are two things correlating, but neither causes the other. Or of, of course, that what I believe I see as a trend isn't actually one. :smallamused:



I suspect it's because red and green are much more similar than red and penguin
Also this had me cracking up. :smallbiggrin:

I agree we sometimes have different preferred goals but similar approaches to things at times. Conversely other times we have similar goals but different preferred approaches. In both cases, the part that's similar can easily jump out to others while we're focusing on the part that's different. I've found that to be true with several other posters.

In this case I think we have very different preferences for what we bring to the table at session one of a game. But it's possible we have similar concepts of what it means to be in character. A form of method acting. Although I could be wrong on how you view it, so feel free to correct me.

Otoh while getting in character is something I personally like a lot but don't think is the core of all kinds of roleplaying. I think it's a subset. Making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, be it deeply different character from yourself or an avatar of yourself, is what I consider the core of roleplaying.

I also think neither of us thinks there's an inherent problem with characters starting off not knowing each other too deeply, and learning more as the game progresses.

Erit
2018-08-20, 12:41 PM
-snip-

So you don't want a player, you want a little ducky that you can lead around on a string so you can show it a bunch of pretty sparklies and then smack it when it doesn't seem impressed enough.


I suspect it's because red and green are much more similar than red and penguin.

I very much want to enshrine this in my signature.

Quertus
2018-08-20, 01:14 PM
I very much want to enshrine this in my signature.

You are welcome to!

Darth Ultron
2018-08-20, 03:25 PM
So you don't want a player, you want a little ducky that you can lead around on a string so you can show it a bunch of pretty sparklies and then smack it when it doesn't seem impressed enough.

I would never smack a duck...he would put any medical costs of that hit....on my bill.

Do I want a player playing a selfish hostile secret solo game in the middle of the main game? No.

Do I want a player hogging the spot light with their character secrets? No.

Do I want a player disrupting the game with their character secrets? No.

Maelynn
2018-08-20, 03:27 PM
I would never smack a duck...he would put any medical costs of that hit....on my bill.

I see what you did there.

Erit
2018-08-20, 03:54 PM
Do I want a player playing a selfish hostile secret solo game in the middle of the main game? No.

Translation: "Do I want a player to have a character who develops and evolves over the course of the game, rather than a set of statistics that facilitates the narrative I want to spin? No."

You are flat-out refusing to entertain the notion of a scenario where there isn't malice involved. And because of that, you have lost this argument, plain and simple.


Do I want a player hogging the spot light with their character secrets? No.

Translation: "Do I want the player having any significance beyond what I proscribe to them at the appointed time? No."

If, and God forbid this ever become possible, I ever somehow was made to sit at a game table with you, you would very quickly learn that what you term a "hostile minigame" is far from what actual hostility looks like. Because from everything you've shown, you are the kind of player and/or DM that actively pisses me off.


Do I want a player disrupting the game with their character secrets? No.

Translation: "Do I want a player to have any sort of control or influence over the events of the story? No."

Why the @#$% are you even playing a TTRPG? Go write your inane fantasy adventure novel so it can be properly critically panned, rather than collaring an entire table of people who came together to tell a story together. I get that a lot of people like to say the game can be played any way the group wants, but from the sound of it you have genuinely missed the point of tabletop gaming.

Cluedrew
2018-08-20, 04:58 PM
It's only a narrative plot point if the DM does it.Hmm...

As you may have gathered from previous exchanges, I don't agree or even understand this point. But I have a question that might help with that: What would you consider the narrative role of the player characters? (Not the players, the in-world characters.)

Darth Ultron
2018-08-20, 07:50 PM
Translation: "Do I want a player to have a character who develops and evolves over the course of the game, rather than a set of statistics that facilitates the narrative I want to spin? No."

You are flat-out refusing to entertain the notion of a scenario where there isn't malice involved. And because of that, you have lost this argument, plain and simple.

Well, 9 times out of 10 a secret equals malice. Sure there is that one time out of ten when like a secret birthday surprise is a good thing....and the other nice are always bad things.

I would point out a player can have "a character who develops and evolves over the course of the game" that has no secrets or nothing to do with secrets. Secrets are NOT a prerequisite for Role Playing.




Translation: "Do I want the player having any significance beyond what I proscribe to them at the appointed time? No."

If, and God forbid this ever become possible, I ever somehow was made to sit at a game table with you, you would very quickly learn that what you term a "hostile minigame" is far from what actual hostility looks like. Because from everything you've shown, you are the kind of player and/or DM that actively pisses me off.

I'm not sure what your ''translation" is even saying here.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'd never make it past my Player Vetting Process.




Translation: "Do I want a player to have any sort of control or influence over the events of the story? No."

Why the @#$% are you even playing a TTRPG? Go write your inane fantasy adventure novel so it can be properly critically panned, rather than collaring an entire table of people who came together to tell a story together. I get that a lot of people like to say the game can be played any way the group wants, but from the sound of it you have genuinely missed the point of tabletop gaming.

Well, that ''translation" is not so bad.

I get you like to play RPGs Only One Way, but you should under stand that your way is not the only way.


As you may have gathered from previous exchanges, I don't agree or even understand this point. But I have a question that might help with that: What would you consider the narrative role of the player characters? (Not the players, the in-world characters.)

The characters are the main stars, focus and point of the whole game.

Quertus
2018-08-20, 08:40 PM
The characters are the main stars, focus and point of the whole game.

I really shouldn't hurt my head with this, but...

So, in your method / definition of gaming, the player's are the focus of the plot that only the GM creates.

And, if they players attempt to create a plot point, it's not a narrative plot point, it's... what?

If the player's attempt to affect the plot, it's... what?

Darth Ultron
2018-08-20, 09:04 PM
And, if they players attempt to create a plot point, it's not a narrative plot point, it's... what?

If the player's attempt to affect the plot, it's... what?

Right the players don't know the plot, so they can't make a plot point. At best the players only know a vague plot outline, so how can they make a plot point?

Everything the players have a character do ''affects'' the plot...but I know we have a difference in that ''effect''. I think of it more like ripples a tossed pebble makes in a river, and your more like a character blinks and blasts the moon out of it's orbit.

Yuki Akuma
2018-08-20, 09:41 PM
If your players only have a vague idea of what the plot for your game is you may not be very good at explaining what's going on to them.

Or they're incredibly passive and don't actually care about your plot.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-21, 12:44 AM
If your players only have a vague idea of what the plot for your game is you may not be very good at explaining what's going on to them.

Or they're incredibly passive and don't actually care about your plot.

Well, you might not understand, but in a Classic RPG the players only know a vague single sentence about the plot. So the players know something like ''we need to save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", and....that is it. Then, in a classic RPG, the players just play though that plot.

Quertus
2018-08-21, 08:09 AM
Right the players don't know the plot, so they can't make a plot point. At best the players only know a vague plot outline, so how can they make a plot point?

Everything the players have a character do ''affects'' the plot...but I know we have a difference in that ''effect''. I think of it more like ripples a tossed pebble makes in a river, and your more like a character blinks and blasts the moon out of it's orbit.


Well, you might not understand, but in a Classic RPG the players only know a vague single sentence about the plot. So the players know something like ''we need to save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", and....that is it. Then, in a classic RPG, the players just play though that plot.

Oh my poor head.

So, if the PCs decide to "save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", not by (collecting the seven super special secret McGuffins and) fighting the orcs as the plot calls for, but instead by evacuating the town, or starting a week-long forest fire between the town and Thung, or, better yet, both, then have not the players created a plot point / affected the plot?

Cluedrew
2018-08-21, 08:29 AM
I'm pretty sure Darth Ultron views the plot (the one true plot to rule them all) as what he has planned. Unlike the more common idea that the plot is actually what happens.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-21, 08:43 AM
For some reason I keep getting this image in my head of the Architect, from the Matrix sequels.

Yuki Akuma
2018-08-21, 11:13 AM
Well, you might not understand, but in a Classic RPG the players only know a vague single sentence about the plot. So the players know something like ''we need to save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", and....that is it. Then, in a classic RPG, the players just play though that plot.

..Oh, so you're talking about the start of the game, not how players learn more about what's going on when they play through it?

See in my experience players will pay attention to what's happening during a given game (or group of connected games) and wind up making decisions you didn't account for, thereby ending up changing what happens because you're a good GM who lets players do things you didn't expect them to do.

Like say, they may know a historian from a previous adventure who can give them some historic context for this emnity between Highrock and the Orcs of Thung. Or perhaps instead of foolishly toying with the ancient artifact found within the Caves of Thung like you expected, they treat it like a proper HazMat situation and call in a specialist they know. Or the PCs call on their own Orcish allies, the Orcs of Krush, to aid them in finding an equitible arrangement for both parties. Or something.

Games are not novels - you don't decide what will happen at every stage from the start to the finish. Unless you're just running one shots with new characters every single game the PCs are going to have pasts that they can call on, and even if you only play one-shots, PCs will never do what you expect 100% of the time.

SirBellias
2018-08-21, 12:12 PM
I also find interesting your commentary regarding playing vs GMing style. Care to elaborate on why one is planned / static, vs why the other is spontaneous / dynamic?

Ah, yes. That. See, when I play a character, I like to have a reason for them to do the things that they do, and have it follow realistically based on what they experience. I make a backstory that reflects the character that I want to play so I can base how I play them off of something "tangible" in the world. As a character in someone else's game, I feel it's important for them to be well grounded in the reality of the game world and not be too dissonant with the ideas and themes expressed in session 0.

When I'm the GM, the PC's are the star of the show, and my goal is to have the best story emerge from their interaction with the world. Therefore I tend to make decisions about what NPC's and monsters can and will do that align with creating interesting encounters with an appropriate level of tension, then coming up with a reason for that to make sense in the constraints of the world while the PC's are dealing with the hot mess they just got served. It also cuts down on prep time dramatically, which is good for me because I am extremely inefficient with it as it is.

An example of this is with my recent West Marches game. As it was meant to be (even more of) a oneshot than usual, they were given a hook beforehand that they were all up and coming members of the thieves guild going on one final test mission to a mansion deep in the Man's Bane (and aptly named forest to the south).

During their travels, they encountered several different things (random encounter tables are the name of the game) and rolled very high on perception each time. One of them was the lair of a boss that was the goal of a different quest on the quest board. This boss was called the Red Reaper, and the attached quest was something about rumors of headless bodies being found at the edge of the woods and a fairy tale that may be true.

They didn't actually approach any of them, because they knew how dangerous the Man's Bane was both in and out of character, and as such traveled a bit further and settled down for the night. They elected to try and make a safe camp. This consisted of everyone but the dwarf barbarian sleeping in a hastily constructed tree outpost, while he made some barricades and slept in a circle of them. ("I'm not climbing no stinking tree.")

They chose their watches, and their Elf Druid elected to take the first two as they didn't need to sleep. One encounter roll and two botched stealth checks later he heard the crunching of paws approaching the camp and a twig snap in a tree nearby. The Red Reaper hunts at night, apparently, with a team of Dire Wolves.

One of the unspoken rules of my West Marches game is problems and enemies get harder to solve the more they are ignored. So, 6 direwolves on a level 2 party, as well as a boss that i never bothered to stat up but I decided had some array blood related and beheading powers. Neat.

They freaked out a bit, because 6 direwolves is obviously ridiculous for a level 2 party on their own, let alone a weird headless figure they've never seen before, so they did what any appropriately terrified people would do and pull each other up the tree to avoid the wolves, before focusing on the boss up the next tree over.

Now, everyone had some ranged ability (even the barbarian had javelins) and it occurred to me that I didn't describe my boss as having a ranged weapon and couldn't think of a way to make it happen without being incredibly silly. The entire encounter would be trivialized and be quite boring as they could just ping at the enemies until they retreat. Which would have also been an appropriate move, don't get me wrong, it's just that this was probably going to be the last encounter they'd do this session (we had a small block available) and it's usually best to end with a bang and some loot instead of a whimper.

So I had the boss jump down and behead a wolf.

The players cheered as they assumed their enemies would kill each other, until they realized that the wolves were ignoring the Reaper, and a red mist was coming from the bloody stump and clawing its way up the tree. An ability that certainly wasn't planned out, but fit the mold of the boss' description. I didn't plan on him having a dire wolf escort either until the encounter tables were rolled. It was just decided, and an excuse was dropped into the Reaper's backstory as fact.

They fought bravely, and all but one survived because they made a poor gamble and knew it. But it was a suitably dramatic encounter and a great finisher to a session that involved very little drama to begin with, and now we can run the actual mission with a sense of who their characters are.

I recognize that ad-libbing boss abilities to mitigate tactical advantage and rebalance encounters isn't well liked in these forums, but it works for me and prevents me from wasting too many hours coming up with them beforehand.

As such, my method of DMing kinda follows the "make decisions to define the character, then come up with a logical excuse later" paradigm instead of the "plan ahead what and why these actors do what they do."




Horrific? Curious that you jump there for character growth. Why is that?


Oh, that's easy. When I do get to play, I have a tendency to play characters that are either young or naive in worlds where that's dangerous. In the current long running game I'm in, my character has been impaled, killed, tortured, betrayed, dismembered, tortured, and dismembered again in that order. Suffice to say, that leaves a mark or two on a young soul. While I do recognize that character growth and emotional scarring are two different things, that's just the first example that pops into my head.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-21, 01:12 PM
So, if the PCs decide to "save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", not by (collecting the seven super special secret McGuffins and) fighting the orcs as the plot calls for, but instead by evacuating the town, or starting a week-long forest fire between the town and Thung, or, better yet, both, then have not the players created a plot point / affected the plot?

Well, the players are not creating anything, they are playing along the plot. And they are ''effecting'' the plot, by playing along the plot.


I'm pretty sure Darth Ultron views the plot (the one true plot to rule them all) as what he has planned. Unlike the more common idea that the plot is actually what happens.

Right, some games just rubber stamp 'plot' on 'absolutely anything that happens in the game'.



See in my experience players will pay attention to what's happening during a given game (or group of connected games) and wind up making decisions you didn't account for, thereby ending up changing what happens because you're a good GM who lets players do things you didn't expect them to do.

In my experience only poor or bad DMs are ''always surprised" by ''anything the players do".



Games are not novels - you don't decide what will happen at every stage from the start to the finish. Unless you're just running one shots with new characters every single game the PCs are going to have pasts that they can call on, and even if you only play one-shots, PCs will never do what you expect 100% of the time.

Well, you might need to check the rulebook for your RPG....but most of them with a GM do have them deciding what happens from start to finish. And while you can't predict what the players will do, that is more your own personal falling then a blanket statement for all people worldwide.

Quertus
2018-08-21, 02:19 PM
OK, so, DU, to you, "plot" is simply the elements of conflict that the GM introduces? And perhaps however the PCs choose to deal with them?

Darth Ultron
2018-08-21, 03:57 PM
OK, so, DU, to you, "plot" is simply the elements of conflict that the GM introduces? And perhaps however the PCs choose to deal with them?

That is not right the ''elements of conflict" are just..well..spots of conflict, so they are tiny parts of a whole plot. And really the PCs micro actions don't effect the plot much....again, when you toss a pebble in a flowing river it makes a splash and a couple ripples and then fades away.

Cluedrew
2018-08-21, 04:11 PM
That is only how it works if you take away their agency.

If you take away their agency than the only way they can have agency is by disrupting the game.

If the only way they have agency is by disrupting he game than you are justified in taking away their agency.

Congratulations Darth Ultron, you are your own echo chamber.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-21, 06:32 PM
That is only how it works if you take away their agency.

If you take away their agency than the only way they can have agency is by disrupting the game.

If the only way they have agency is by disrupting he game than you are justified in taking away their agency.


Well, you can't take away something that does not exist...so there is that.

Erit
2018-08-21, 08:15 PM
Well, you can't take away something that does not exist...so there is that.

And people say I'm a tyrant at the table.

BreaktheStatue
2018-08-21, 09:12 PM
That is not right the ''elements of conflict" are just..well..spots of conflict, so they are tiny parts of a whole plot. And really the PCs micro actions don't effect the plot much....again, when you toss a pebble in a flowing river it makes a splash and a couple ripples and then fades away.

TTRPGs aren't some force of nature. The DM controls the "river," he can let the "pebble" make as much of an impact as he wants.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-21, 09:53 PM
TTRPGs aren't some force of nature. The DM controls the "river," he can let the "pebble" make as much of an impact as he wants.

True, but that is kinda my point.

MrSandman
2018-08-22, 01:32 AM
Well, you can't take away something that does not exist...so there is that.

I'd be rather interested in getting a real example of how you deal with players who want to do something different than what you've planned, as right now I imagine that your games must go something like this:

DM: You finally reach the hut of the which you need to talk to. It's a small building with a straw roof.
Player: I still don't think talking to a witch is a good idea. I say we kill her before she's got a chance to jinx us and problem sorted.
DM: You keep walking towards the hut.
Player: You know what? I'm going to light a torch and throw it at the hut's roof.
DM: A strong wind comes, quenches your torch, and knocks it off course. It falls harmlessly a few yards away.
Player: I'll use a fireball from my fireball necklace, then.
DM: Soon after you knock on the door, an old woman opens it. Her eyes--
Player: I stab her in the face.
DM: Turns out that today the tarasque decided to go for a morning stroll. It steps on your character, who immediately dies. The door is over there, please shut it after you leave.

Quertus
2018-08-22, 07:18 AM
That is not right the ''elements of conflict" are just..well..spots of conflict, so they are tiny parts of a whole plot. And really the PCs micro actions don't effect the plot much....again, when you toss a pebble in a flowing river it makes a splash and a couple ripples and then fades away.


I'd be rather interested in getting a real example of how you deal with players who want to do something different than what you've planned

So, again, if the plot plot point / element of conflict in the larger plot was "save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", and, instead of (collecting the seven super special secret McGuffins and) fighting the orcs as the plot calls for, the party saved the town, by starting a week-long forest fire between the town and Thung, and evacuating to Gondor in the interim, why do you consider this a pebble?

Understand, I ask in small part because you claim to be a huge fan of railroading. I can see many possible horrible answers - many of them involving railroading - and many possible good answers to the question. Let alone the many answers that i wouldn't consider merely ripples, that perhaps we are calibrated to describe differently.

So, would you consider this course of action jumping the rails? Ripples? Disruptive players? But, most of all, why? What happens to the rest of the plot if Thung isn't dead, and, in fact, now occupies the village? Where do you go from there with the plot once one element of conflict is resolved in an unconventional fashion?

Earthwalker
2018-08-22, 07:39 AM
Just replying to the original poster.

I don’t think that the GM should be letting slip details about your character if you are trying to keep them secret. The GM agreed you could play the character they should leave you to play it.

I do want to offer some perspective tho. Say two characters came along with the same skill set as your character. One acted perfectly normally and didn’t hide everything away and the other was your character and acted like they act.

Why would anyone choose your character to join the group over the other ?
Then think do other people in the game world have your character skill set or close to it ?

I am not saying THE OP is doing anything wrong just offering perspective. I have had many an argument at my table of weird character stuff and the question asked “Why am I even grouping with character X”
Its weird you are grouped together because you are Player Characters but that does sometimes strain credibility.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-22, 01:00 PM
I'd be rather interested in getting a real example of how you deal with players who want to do something different than what you've planned, as right now I imagine that your games must go something like this:

Oh, well, I would never ''plan" any "one" event or action or encounter, but more just ''plan" to ''have something happen", but it does not matter what that ''something" is.


So, again, if the plot plot point / element of conflict in the larger plot was "save the town of Highrock from the orcs of Thung", and, instead of (collecting the seven super special secret McGuffins and) fighting the orcs as the plot calls for, the party saved the town, by starting a week-long forest fire between the town and Thung, and evacuating to Gondor in the interim, why do you consider this a pebble?

Well, I would not all the two above actions a ''pebble", as they (might) end/solve/take care of the plot.



Understand, I ask in small part because you claim to be a huge fan of railroading. I can see many possible horrible answers - many of them involving railroading - and many possible good answers to the question. Let alone the many answers that i wouldn't consider merely ripples, that perhaps we are calibrated to describe differently.

Well, admittedly everyone things Railroading is One Thing as they don't like it. If the plot is to save the town, it does not matter ''how'' the town is saved.



So, would you consider this course of action jumping the rails? Ripples? Disruptive players? But, most of all, why? What happens to the rest of the plot if Thung isn't dead, and, in fact, now occupies the village? Where do you go from there with the plot once one element of conflict is resolved in an unconventional fashion?

Well, it would not even get close to a ''unconventional" blip on my radar.

MrSandman
2018-08-22, 03:09 PM
Oh, well, I would never ''plan" any "one" event or action or encounter, but more just ''plan" to ''have something happen", but it does not matter what that ''something" is.

Well, I would not all the two above actions a ''pebble", as they (might) end/solve/take care of the plot.

Well, admittedly everyone things Railroading is One Thing as they don't like it. If the plot is to save the town, it does not matter ''how'' the town is saved.

Well, it would not even get close to a ''unconventional" blip on my radar.

So, am I right in understanding that you don't plan out everything that needs to happen in an adventure, but rather you give your players a challenge/plot/something, and have the world react to their actions?

Darth Ultron
2018-08-22, 05:21 PM
So, am I right in understanding that you don't plan out everything that needs to happen in an adventure, but rather you give your players a challenge/plot/something, and have the world react to their actions?

Well, no. I run set and planned out Adventures.

Quertus
2018-08-22, 05:27 PM
Well, I would not all the two above actions a ''pebble", as they (might) end/solve/take care of the plot.

Well, admittedly everyone things Railroading is One Thing as they don't like it. If the plot is to save the town, it does not matter ''how'' the town is saved.

Is failing to save the town an option?

OK, so, the PCs can successfully make more than a ripple?

Maelynn
2018-08-22, 05:38 PM
Well, you can't take away something that does not exist...so there is that.

And people say I'm a tyrant at the table.

This had me laugh hard enough to startle my cat and make him fall off the edge of the bed he was chilling on. So I laughed harder. Which caused me to almost knock my drink over my keyboard. Careful with your remarks, sir! They cause accidents!


Well, no. I run set and planned out Adventures.

Heaven forbid the players want to get off these railroad tracks. Even the smallest secret, the tiniest 'none of the above' choice could ruin the whole preplanned story - no sorry, 'plot'. It does explain the level of control freak that's emanating from all these posts, if it's all 'planned out'.

I shouldn't have read this before going to bed. I'm going to have nightmares about this kind of playstyle... *shudders*

Erit
2018-08-22, 07:09 PM
This had me laugh hard enough to startle my cat and make him fall off the edge of the bed he was chilling on. So I laughed harder. Which caused me to almost knock my drink over my keyboard. Careful with your remarks, sir! They cause accidents!

Yes, well... I am LE. Only slightly more L and slightly less E than Fel, by my estimates. We'll have to rectify this... accident-prone-ness post-haste.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-22, 09:21 PM
Is failing to save the town an option?

OK, so, the PCs can successfully make more than a ripple?

Well, I'm not sure failing counts as a option ever. The players can make more then a ripple with some sort of planned action.


Heaven forbid the players want to get off these railroad tracks. Even the smallest secret, the tiniest 'none of the above' choice could ruin the whole preplanned story - no sorry, 'plot'. It does explain the level of control freak that's emanating from all these posts, if it's all 'planned out'.

I shouldn't have read this before going to bed. I'm going to have nightmares about this kind of playstyle... *shudders*

Players are more then free to leave the game and go find a random mess of a game if that is what they want. And if players really want to have a ''secret game", they are free to go do that too.

Mordaedil
2018-08-23, 01:40 AM
Well, I'm not sure failing counts as a option ever. The players can make more then a ripple with some sort of planned action.
Just running this by you, even though I already know the answer.

Say you have an adventure where the players are given the task of defending the village from a raid of goblins. Do you have a plan set for them in advance that they should follow? Or do they need to plan the defense?

Say that the fight starts, and you've made the entire thing to be reasonable challenging given what you know they have in their reserves. But if they don't use the wand of fireballs you provided, they might have a tougher time, but you account for this. How do you account for this? Do you have an outcome where they win anyway or will you just let the dice fall?

Say they do not manage to hold the lines and forgot about the wand you gave them. One of them orders a retreat. You had planned a pincer attack by the goblins in anticipation of this earlier. Is the only outcome death at this point?

Say they now run into the ambush, get surrounded and finally, with all the villagers dead and some of the party members dead, they remember the fireball wand and use it, easily clearing out the goblins, after they'd effectively failed. Did you account for this? Is this a failure or a success? What do you do to prevent this from happening ever in your games?

Cealocanth
2018-08-23, 08:50 AM
I have found that keeping player secrets in character descriptions is actually pretty hard for me. If your GM is not doing this intentionally, I understand where he is coming from. It is so easy to mention how your enigmatic figure stands with a 'cloaked, slender form' or 'looks at you with his glowing red eyes', details you think would be just meaningless and contribute to the enigma of the character, but instead piss the player off because it's a description at all.

If your GM is up for suggestions, I recommend covering up details about your character with a more easily describable lie. It's hard to describe something as indescribable, but it is easy to repeatedly describe something as 'terribly mysterious' even when that detail of them would be obvious. Stuff like:

"Enigmo stands like an enigmatic shadowy figure over the party. In this lighting, they are a sillhouette against the moon, making it difficult to pick out specific details."

"Enigmo stumbles into the trap. The swinging axe blade seems to cut his mysterious coat, but any revealing parts of the character are coincidentally hidden behind the rush of the blade."

"Enigmo appraoches the duke and begins to converse with him. The duke's guard, wary of any shenanigans, stands directly between the party and Enigmo."

etc.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-23, 12:16 PM
Say you have an adventure where the players are given the task of defending the village from a raid of goblins. Do you have a plan set for them in advance that they should follow? Or do they need to plan the defense?

In general I have at least three plans, maybe five or more.



Say that the fight starts, and you've made the entire thing to be reasonable challenging given what you know they have in their reserves. But if they don't use the wand of fireballs you provided, they might have a tougher time, but you account for this. How do you account for this? Do you have an outcome where they win anyway or will you just let the dice fall?

As always, the dice will fall where they may.



Say they do not manage to hold the lines and forgot about the wand you gave them. One of them orders a retreat. You had planned a pincer attack by the goblins in anticipation of this earlier. Is the only outcome death at this point?


Most likely. I'm a Hard Fun Killer ''let dice will fall where they may" type DM. If the PCs do anything unwise there is a big threat of loss or character death.




Say they now run into the ambush, get surrounded and finally, with all the villagers dead and some of the party members dead, they remember the fireball wand and use it, easily clearing out the goblins, after they'd effectively failed. Did you account for this? Is this a failure or a success? What do you do to prevent this from happening ever in your games?

Pyrrhic Victory for sure. I don't do anything to prevent this, sounds like a good game to me.