/tg/, do you keep secrets from your party?
Or are they sort of open secret, where your group doesn't metagame and carry on as if they knew nothing?
Last session I stole the quest macguffin from the cleric while he was sleeping. He hasn't realized it yet.
Otherwise no.
>>44622312
Yes.
I trust (most of) my groupmates that they would not metagame with that, I do it for extra immersion.
>>44622312
Pic related I assume?
I have a secret, yeah. My blood is a powerful neuromuscular blocking agent, aka a poison that paralyzes those that breathe it: it's also highly volatile. Those who stand near me once I bleed have to roll a fort save or else they risk to become paralyzed for a short while.
My group hasn't discovered it yet.
>>44622312
There are a few, normally inconsequential, secrets that are kept from the rest of the group or they are kept secret for a time so when they get revealed it'll be a surprise to everyone.
Like when our Bard revealed they were actually an Assassin and that the person we were trying to help them rescue was actually their target.
Both the player and DM felt there was to much potential for metagaming so they kept it secret.
We then promptly restrained the Assassin and forced her to spill all the beans, eventuating in us then helping out the intended target over the Assassin.
Where's had we known this before we probably would have just gone along with it all after some quick mock surprise.
Otherwise, secrets are known to us and we just avoid metagaming as much as possible.
Nothing too bad - just a stash of things and stuff for the rainy day.
>>44622408
What DM lets you get away with this?
>>44622538
Why does this upset you?
>>44622312
A mixture of the two. There are definitely open secrets that all the players know and the characters do not and we all enjoy the dramatic irony of having our characters loudly proclaim what a nice bloke Count Evilstein seems.At the same time, it's cool to have a few dramatic twists that make players go "Wow!"
When I keep things secret, it is more to preserve surprise than to prevent metagaming. Players-as-audience, rather than players-as-opponents, if that makes sense.
My egotistical and overconfident wizard who styles himself The Greatest Wizard Who Ever Lived and who never shuts the fuck up about how he and his valiant friends will prevail over these foul vermin...is actually a Bard on paper.
>>44622312
I kept a secret once but I think the party thought I forgot my dumb kobold speech rules under pressure when really my character was just pretending to be a dumb kobold but was a bad liar. Game didn't get far enough to actually delve to deep into anyones backstories though so my group is always going to think I was just dumb.
I play Paranoia.
>>44622312
>/tg/, do you keep secrets from your party?
Only all the time.
"Make him blind and no one finds out until the end"
k, bud
>>44622995
You.
I like you.
>>44622312
Sometimes to have little "gotcha" moment.
But for the most part, no, we trust ourselves to not metagame. We also share character sheet freely and we know what classes or alignement other people have
Six sessions in, my party doesn't know that my paladin is actually a skeleton.
And when they know that, they still wouldn't know that my skeleton paladin is actually an animated object.
My cleric is actually a guy.
>>44622312
Current dm has us make 2 seperate character sheets. One thats simply our stats, a small description, and possibly an image. Second one is our stats, hopeful direction in abilities and story, and a full description. The full description contains things like families, past grievances, past romances, crimes done, etc. be as creative or uncreative as you want.
This does lead to things like the rogue who's turning the cheek getting chased down by his previous employers for stealing money right before he met us which we had no idea about and had to deal with.
Its odd cause this does cause things that leads to general suspicion. Again using the above bit all the rest of the party saw was him with a good deal more starting money which he was sketchy about and no real explanation for it that caused immediate distrust we had to work past just in time for the thugs to get to us.
I'm currently plotting with the DM to betray the party to the bad guys. They all hate my character anyway cause I'm a racist and none of them are humans, so I guess some may suspect a backstab at some point.
Played another guy that wasn't evil per se, but lied about pretty much all his backstory. Never went anywhere cause the campaign never did.
And then there's another character who's a shady as shit warlock, but would never admit that's what he is. That one's an open secret and my patron has appeared before the party repeatedly. Paladin hates it but just sucks it up for the sake of party cohesion
>>44622312
>/tg/, do you keep secrets from your party?
More often than not, but it's mostly stuff relating to my character's backstory. I hate it when new players introduce characters by just listing up their backstory instead of letting the party discover it for themselves through in-character conversations.
I like to tell my players a little more than they know. Keeps things interesting. For example, after the party paladin (who couldn't be resurrected without magic outside the party's means) got disintegrated, I had him brought back to life by a high level sorceress in a distant city. Because I thought the scene was dramatic, After I rolled for damage I described the scene of him waking up. In silk sheets in a city he doesn't recognize. I think it added a lot to the plot of the story, because the players got this real sense that the world was bigger than the torches they were holding.
>>44622355
I feel like this is bullshit. Have you been rolling checks every in game hour? This is "lol you didn't say you were avoiding the giant pit" tier. When he does notice, he's going to be furious that you haven't been rolling checks. That seems like something you'd make sure you were carrying
yeah
That vampire castle we were staying in that suddenly got attacked by fanatics, where it went full TPK.
i had sold out the defenses for a clean get away with the vampire queens Blood Pendant. he left the kingdom as part of the agreement with the fanatics, and is spending his time 'grieving' for his lost friends before he was hired by a group of adventures heading towards the frozen wastes of the west.
i was sick the day it happened, but i joked with the DM about a plan i was thinking up to ensure complete his long term goal, but he ran with it.
they still don't know how the fanatics broke through the defenses
>>44622669
>Players-as-audience
This.
I've never seen a tendency to metagame in people over like 19. And if there's a few young'uns playing, well, we just quietly point out when they do and they tend to self correct pretty easily.
>>44622312
Our party was given a Deck of Many Things, but I was the only character who knew what it was, everybody else, thinking it was just a deck of cards, left it alone. I snatched it up and kept it secret from the other players, as the last time we used one it was nearly a TPK, nobody really seems to care at this point.
>>44622312
Try the latter but if I'm digging the game/character I can rarely keep my mouth shut for long periods.
>>44622995
Well, my self-righteous overconfident paladin who styles himself The Most Honorable and Pious Knight That Ever Was and who never shuts the fuck up about the importance of honor and great deeds in the name of the Gods of Light is also a bard on paper.
>>44622995
>>44626854
fucking bards
>>44622312
I once betrayed my entire party at the end of a year long campaign in order to establish a continent wide empire.
I had manipulated all the events behind the scenes (with the DM of course, swell guy) so that everything that happened, save for the first quest, was entirely by my design.
The best part was the look on their faces when the realized they had been helping me without knowing it.
That's what those fuckers get for underestimating the human wizard.
I'm actually working for my current employer's boss who wanted to make sure his protege stays in line.
One. It was real secret for the first few sessions, but they discovered it OOC. They still don't metagame tho and pretend they know nothing.
The secret is my armor clad paladin is actually undead
I played a sorceress once who'd spent years hiding from a wizard who could have killed the entire party. The only thing keeping him off her trail was an amulet of proof against scrying. She kept it from the party because she didn't want to scare them off.
Unfortunately the campaign died before anything came of it.
>>44622312
There are exactly two reasons you will ever use secret-secrets in your game
A: You are intentionally fostering an social powder keg, possibly to add to the tension of a horror game
B: You are too stupid to know you're fostering a social powder keg and think you're being "immersive" or some dumb shit
>>44623603
Lucius?
>>44627443
You sound like a that guy. Are you one?
>>44622312
Relevant article: http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-secrets-part-1/
TLDR open secrets are the only way to not crash and burn your game with no survivors, which is pretty consistent with every experience with secrets I've ever had.
>>44622312
I have tried to keep a secret in my group. It cannot happen. It is not possible.
Once, I had a characters backstory all fleshed out and pretty, and included another player in it. Part of it was supposed to be something that no one but that player knew about. Literally the first session, I talk with the player in character, and "oh, you mean [secret]?"
But mostly, no matter whether I'm the DM or a Player, if I have something that I'm not telling anyone, and ANYONE catches wind of it, it derails the session. Possibly the campaign. Because they HAVE to know the thing. Doesn't matter how minor it is or what we were doing beforehand.
>>44622312
Kept secret my real bloodline in WoD: Vampire.
Wasn't even that hard, when you're ugly as hell, everybody takes for granted that you're Nosferatu.
>>44628176
nothing personnel, kid
If it's something morally questionable or impactful to the story or other PCs, I keep it as an open secret.
That said, in a recent game I came up with a JoJo kind of plan to screw over a villain and kept it a secret for effect on the reveal. It worked out. I couldn't tell the other players IC anyway.
My players had a vision of the wizard's future and learnt that he had made a secret pact and would betray the party.
Two slips of tongues later, turns out 3 out of 5 had different pacts.
>>44628256
Most people can't into deception play for shit. Don't even bother trying, it'll most likely fail.
>>44623974
You are committing badwrong fun because you are having fun at the other players's expense, and RPGing is about everyone at the table having fun.
>>44628347
He's right though.
In one game I GMed, one of the PCs was being helped by a fallen angel. The player let slip a couple things in and out of character, so the other PCs became suspicious(mainly when he poisoned the water supply of a village on account of almost every woman there being pregnant with fiendspawn - the party left the village before finding out what he had done, though). From the player in question, it was some of the best RPing I've seen. The campaign collapsed just before we got to the finale because of scheduling problems, so we never did play out the big reveal.
Played a sorcerer in a low magic campaign. Founds some artifact or another that made my character crazy power hungry, gave him the desire to rule the world. I say it "made" him that way, but as he was already that sort of person, he shrugged and rolled with it. Three sessions later, he was on the path to becoming a lich, though that was going to be 10 levels later.
For the next 20 sessions, though now very evil, he tended to like his party members. And they liked him. He saved them, they saved him, ying yang. Never really came out that he was evil. As the only real caster, he tended to mage sense the evil loot and, with the party watching and everything, claim it as his share.
But that one player. That one player was just suspicious of him, for seemingly no reason. As a player, I never answered questions about the character. That was for in game, in character discussion. This only made the player more suspicious.
Long story short, the party nearly wiped on a rough encounter. It was just me and Mr. Suspicious left, and he decided that he'd had enough of my nonexistant bullshit. Took all my valuable shit the next night after I went to sleep.
So I killed him and took it back. The DM at the time had his face in the hands the entire time, and we all decided that the campaign was pretty much over at that point. Damn shame, it was a fun game.
>>44628475
Not necessarily. If it kills the campaign then I'd agree, but having a party member pull a Lando Calrissian could be cool.
>>44628600
Your secret ruin your game. Congratulations.
>>44628475
DM loves intrigue and drow-esque plotting and backstabbery; I imagine it's his ideal fun
>>44629260
Sounds more to me like that one other player ruined the campaign, not him.
How are you guys handling your secrets?>>44628225
the guy here(the one linked) complained about lack information being distributed, failures in trust and info holes leading to campaigns leading to dead ends, which are all true faults to not sharing information, but the case isn't as clear cut as that.
My group ran a CofD one shot recently online(d20) were the premise was, "Someone here killed the VIP, his friends(mostly cops) are going to show up at dawn and take you away to be tortured/killed unless you cough up a guilty party or escape." The catch was everyone had done something horrible, and was guilty of something and would rather not be caught. We each got a secret handout. Literally called "Jame's Secret". If we told the secret or someone found out about it(everyone had clues to their secrets, once you had some of the clues you could get the truth. I think it was more the GM testing the new CofD clue system) the gm would literally just give them the hand out.
We had a cop killer who was wearing fake facial hair(me)
A Japanese mob boss with a girl(still alive) in his trunk
The murderer, who literally just stabbed the guy, pushed him off the building and took a shower
A teenage girl who came to the house to kill the VIP
Everyone wanted to escape. The secrets didn't get in the way of game play but did make people wonder why the Asian guy didn't want to leave his car and didn't want anyone looking in his trunk. Honestly I think everyone though it was me because my fake facial hair was really obvious. The worst thing that happened was that the girl in the trunk got out, picked up a gun and attacked the Asian guy, which made everyone realize the Asian guy was human trafficking(we all had clues), and the girl who came to kill the VIP pulled out her knife and helped kill the Asian guy.(the player of the Asian guy played trunk girl, she was full of drugs).
We escaped, had some fun and told everyone our secrets. A fun one shot.
>>44630665
>Secrets are fine in 1-shots
Yeah. You know we're talking about campaigns, right?
You can get away with basically anything in a 1-shot because by definition you're not going to have to worry about it tomorrow.
>>44622312
I ran an alchemist that secretly had 4 arms. Didn't tell anyone, thought it would be fun to keep it a secret and let them find out in and out of character simultaneously. I also didn't tell them my class, to throw them off a little. I just introduced my character as a priestess, because, well she was.
>>44627443
moar
>>44627443
10/10, would play with.
