A few years back in the golden age of podcasting I heard about the idea of not having secrets from other players. The concept was that if you share all the information on your character, their abilities and background that the other players would act appropriately to bring these things to the forefront in a dramatic way. I was thinking of doing this with Smite’s new 4E campaign going so far as to post my character survey here on the blog. Something held me back though and I think I’ve finally figured out what that is. I don’t think my friends are interested in playing that kind of game. Even ignoring the limitation inherent in the D&D rules, it still takes a certain mindset and set of skills to play in a campaign that includes that kind of co-operation.

First let’s look at why we want to keep these things secret. Keeping secrets can give a nice ‘I know something you don’t’ superiority feeling but I don’t think that’s why we do it. Heck, most geeks are way to happy to share what they know. I think that it is that we want to have secrets so that we can have very cool reveals. I blame George Lucas for this. Darth Vader’s “I am your father” was the greatest moment of storytelling most of us had ever seen up to that point. So that’s the ideal. Keep something secret till the most dramatic point possible. Then reveal it and bask in the surprise (and maybe horror) on the other players faces. Sure it is still a bit of a selfish thrill for you and the GM but it does make for memorable sessions. The problem I’ve found with this is style is that it never, and I mean never, works out as cool as we hope. Mostly because it requires a GM with crackerjack timing who can get the players hooked into it. If you have to railroad them against their will to the big reveal it looses all emotional impact (boy does that bring back a lot of Shadowrun memories. We played thru every module released by FASA during the first seven-ish years of SR.) A lot of the time a reveal tied into a character background can fizzle either because a player doesn’t recognize something from his characters background (usually this only happens in a long running campaign where the player lost track of where their character came from) or because it takes too long to explain to the rest of the party. They do the latter all the time in comic books. The action peaks at the end of an issue with a big reveal and then the next issue is taken entirely by a flashback telling why it was such a big deal. That’s another reason why “I am your father” is such a great moment. It is incredibly basic and needs no explanation. Even with those pitfalls this is the standard operating procedure for every game I’ve been in and it works pretty well.

I still think that trying the open approach has a lot of merit. The way I see it there are three ways it can add to a campaign. First, in character creation we could share back stories and thereby work our characters into a group from the get go. Smite hasn’t really said how he plans to start this campaign and I am terrified that the first sessions is going to be “you all meet in the tavern and decide to go adventuring.”  I have no clue what my starting relationship will be with the other characters. Still, I think that is just a minor benefit. The real strength comes from the game play. The next process possible is that the other players, out of character, can suggest things that may tie into my background. It could be suggestions for me proposing a tie in that I had not anticipated or it could be a suggestion for the GM on how a situation could be more tailored to us. In an ideal world the GM would be on top of all that already but in reality there are a lot of times that we think of how cool something could have been after the fact. With all brains at the table contributing it is much more likely that someone will suggest something that would make a scene a lot more personal and interesting. The third way that other players could contribute is by taking actions with their characters that play into other character’s stories. It is best when t is something the character is completely clueless about but makes life difficult…uh, I mean interesting for the other character. Maybe it just works in a more collaborative storytelling system like Prime Time Adventures, systems which encourage the players to take a greater role in the narrative. The main downside to this sharing system is that it requires a greater degree of separation of character and player. You have to have a good grip on character knowledge vs player knowledge. Also it require the GM to be good at thinking on his feet to best capitalize on a really cool player suggestion.

By way of example here is something I’ll tell you about my new character and how it could be used. I decided one of Ævernay’s (my dwarf) enemies would be someone he’d stolen from in the past so I created Emilian Essletoth a rich son of a powerful family. I figured his folks would give him a bunch of money when he came of age to start his own business which my characters friends decided to relieve him of. Okay there’s a little more to it than that. Emilian is not a nice person and had hurt one of our friends so it was not so much thievery as righteous retribution. Now I’ve been very careful to not have Ævernay do anything too adventurous so I made the heist a caper designed and carried out mostly by his friends, but he did take part in the conning of Emilian. So while he didn’t plan it or carry out the big parts of it he is one of the people Emilian would recognize. He kind of stuck out since everyone else involved was human. So now I have an enemy that isn’t that potent by himself but who can potentially call on a lot of resources to make my life difficult. (That way he can scale to be an enemy as I go up in level.) I don’t anticipate any direct confrontation for a while but I do look forward to being spooked anytime our party comes across anything associated with the Essletoth family. I also figure Emilian will get his own company set up at some point and I’ll start seeing little “EE” logos on our supplies, treasure, contracts, and such. I figure it’s a great way for Smite to keep me on my toes, or even to distract me if he needs to draw us away from some point.

In the first style of play I discussed I would wait until Emilian came up in the story freak out and then explain to my fellow party members (and players) why we were screwed. In the second style one of my fellow players can use this knowledge to set up the tension. It could be anything from something active, like his character going and getting some contract work from the Essletoths maybe guarding one of Emilian’s shipments or such, or it could be something spontaneous. For example we could have been hunting raiders as a break between story arcs and when we recover the loot one of my fellow players could suggest that it be labeled with the dreaded “EE.” I might not think of it and the GM may have not planned for it but maybe it gives him some good ideas.

As a quick aside I also want to acknowledge that a lot of us like to give our characters secrets in order to add mystery to them. Mysterious characters are cool. But the problem with this is that it just doesn’t last. Either they never get to reveal their mysterious past at which point why bother, or they reveal it and resolve it at which point they lose their mystique. Is Sniktbub still cool once he gets all his memories back? Heck no that’s why they had to bring in sniktbubette. Not to mention Team Sniktbub.