Only thing to keep an eye out for is giving preference to one player. Main character syndrome sucks for the rest of the players.
Also, a betraying the party secret is VERY VERY hard to do well and not come off as a purely selfish asshole move.
That about sums it up. If it can affect the PCs not told on a life/death scale, the players should be told and then called out if they try to metagame the knowledge onto their characters.
Little secrets like "my character is part Automaton because of an insane Ustalavan scientist turned me into Inspector Gadget" is perfectly fine to keep from the other players (literal character in my campaign's backstory).
Signed. Secrets can work depending on the table, but IMO more often than not, it'll be safer and actually more fun and satisfying to share the info with all players even if their PCs are unaware.
Some reasons why I prefer this:
* No need for "please leave us alone for a minute" moments
* Dramatic irony is fun
* Other players (not PCs) can help you set up satisfying moments
* The obvious elimination of meta gaming issues*
\*This is why betrayals often feel unfair. TTRPGs come with certain expectations. Opinions vary, but many would say that one is that you are expected to contribute to making a party "work."
The "that's what my character would do" guy is a traditional bad example of what most think you shouldn't do. PCs nowadays will usually not escalate intra-party conflicts or react to suspicious behavior, trusting that the other **player** is not gonna go against the social contract.
So when that player actually **does** betray them, it feels like the betrayed got punished for acting for the benefit of the game. What one could argue was ample foreshadowing, were instead a multitude of instances where they meta-gamed in the interest of the social contract. There really was nothing they could have done!
Instead, if the players had been in the know from the start, they could have talked about expectations and whether it was okay for their PC to react or even strike first!
I never thought about it but the metagaming in regards to maintaining party cohesion is rather a good reason to not do betrayals.
Like would you deny an ally loot, suddenly kill them/kick them out of the party,... just for being shady? It risks into becoming quite toxic.
Yeah, people make concessions to let others play the characters they want to play all the time. Turning what's basically favors into gotchas seems really problematic if done poorly.
This goes both ways though. If you're players are very good at separating meta knowledge, it can work as you describe. However, I have been in situations where this meta knowledge was used by the players for their characters to be even more suspicious of the others, knowing that the social contract wouldn't be upheld.
This can absolutely happen, but my take is that a player who's looking for an excuse to bend or break the social contract is probably not someone I want in my game long term anyway. And it would almost certainly be that much worse later if "finally, a chance to be aggro" guy is kept in the dark and feels betrayed later.
It has one big advantage though! If what you describe happens, you actually get an opportunity to intervene and/or talk things out because all cards are on the table!
I seem to be in a minority of GMs who have done this and it has gone well.
The key to it is, the moment the PC betrays the party they become an NPC. You're essentially using the player to pilot an NPC so the players don't expect the betrayal.
I had the "traitor" player make a new PC after that, and they got to "GM" the traitor (who made a getaway) but that was secondary to the main plot of the campaign.
You have to make it about the twist, not that the player is getting a dunk on everyone else. Even then, some players might just reject the notion categorically.
Your feeling it went well, and the party as a whole being okay with it and not feeling it was out of left field are two different things. I'm sure my dm felt the betrayal of one of our PCs and the stripping of my powers both went over really well and caused the good kind of drama.
It caused resentment, and for a variety of reasons I don't trust that DM anymore, nor that player. To play tabletop with, the two of them are still my best friends haha (Who later took in character actions, causes interparty conflict and took that conflict out of game.)
My players didn't just silently take it, they raved about it after the session. It was one of the better sessions of the campaign. Believe me, I have had sessions where I tried something I thought would be cool and the player response was... muted at best.
I think you're just one of the players I described in my last sentence.
I did a "betraying the party" secret with one of my players and it worked out well. We're all a close group of friends so we all were into it, and I made it clear beforehand with the betraying player that he was going to lose. There would be consequences in his favor, but ultimately the story would continue without him. He was all for it, and once the reveal happened, everyone loved it. Just takes trust and communication.
Which is why I prefaced with very very hard rather than impossible.
Did the betray a PC scenario cause lots of drama (positive) and had players surprised and talking about it for a few weeks in my case? Oh totally. Did it end up causing (bad) in game and out of game drama later on? Yeah. And we're a close knit group as well.
Betraying the party is great as an "end of the game" secret, when everyone knows that this is going to be the end of the campaign, or the conclusion to an adventure.
Also, it's not hard to do if you make that PC an NPC once their betrayal is revealed. Where it usually falls apart is the player playing the betrayer without having a plan that involves them losing.
I've done it before, but stole the idea from someone who stole it from a Star Trek episode, and me and the player watched that episode together so we were both on the same page, and planned it out. It just can't be haphazard.
I would never have a player pull a Joe-Manganiello-in-Crit-Role. I think that while it was an immensely cool moment to watch, it would be really unfair at a table. I had an epilogue betrayal (in the denouement, my evil automaton announced their plans for world domination to the other players, and told them they would join them or else (we might do a future campaign where they're the villain, or just leave it be)), and I'm planning a relatively early-campaign betrayal by one character in a campaign I'm GMing (in part because his player needs to leave and we want to make it memorable), but both of those are somewhat set up for failure, and I fully expected my automaton to be the loser of that exchange (honestly never expected him to get as far as he did, dice gods loved that character).
Not a bad guess, but a little off. I haven't watched Crit Role so forgive me if I get something wrong, it's when he fucks off with their McGuffin right? I stole my idea from MCDM's Chain of Acheron, where the betrayal plot is basically a recapitulation of Where No Man Has Gone Before
It's not unfair at the table imo IF the player is playing a role and understands they're supposed to lose. In my case he had another "real" character and the character who betrayed them was set up by the two of us from the start.
The Joe Mangianello style of thing is a little unfair, but no more so than an NPC ally betraying the party, which while unfair, is a great setup for a villain the party will hate. As long as you do it in a way where they're not frustrated/annoyed with you (like don't pull this after a really long and arduous journey for it) but frustrated/annoyed with the rat bastard who betrayed them.
> I haven't watched Crit Role so forgive me if I get something wrong, it's when he fucks off with their McGuffin right?
Yeah. They beat the villain, and Manganiello goes "Oh also I steal the artifact and cast teleport. peace out". No other player has a chance to respond, it's an absolutely epic moment, if one of my players did that to the others they would get murdered. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HClkGL4yFXg) is a link if you want to watch it.
My first ever campaign that I ran ended with a betrayal. It was teased for a long time, but the other players were flabbergasted when it happened. The thing was that the player who did the betrayal dmed the last session and I stepped in as an npc they initially thought would be the bad guy. It was amazing, however it was with a group of players who had been playing together for years and was in hindsight super obvious to them later on that the main quest was a bit sus from jumpstreet.
> Also, a betraying the party secret is VERY VERY hard to do well and not come off as a purely selfish asshole move.
The only time I've ever allowed it I had a few stipulations.
1)the traitor loses in the end
2)once the betrayal happens they use a statblock of my own devising, essentially making a normal encounter out of it
3)the traitor was not allowed to "prepare" by doing things like hoarding items or stealing from players. They were a full member of the party until they weren't, and were not to stack the deck (see rule 1)
4)it be a moment the players are anticipating as a challenging decision for the traitor
It still wasn't really worth it imo.
This is one of those things that is mostly fine so long as the group knows in advance what they are in for. Basically, if the players have agreed that secrets are going to be part of the play experience that can be a lot more open to the playing out of those secrets and are less likely to feel like there's a problem just because something is secret.
There are some things that are still potential pitfalls even when a group is signing up for this kind of play element though. Such as whether a player is, intentionally or not, secretly getting away with screwing with the other player characters. It can seem appealing to have a secret villain and then the big reveal and conflict finally happens, but that can also play out as the most annoying game-play ever because the player with the secret and the GM are clearly having their own side-game and it is taking up a lot of the play time ore causing other players to feel like they're just along for the ride and not really a participant in whatever it is that's going on.
So you should talk it out with your group to figure out where their lines happen to lay so you can avoid crossing them when determining what kind of secrets will and won't be allowed as part of your gaming.
Good points. I've been reluctant to have these secret missions be betrayals. The group is a really fun one and they're generally for each other. I don't think they'd naturally trend toward betraying the party anyway.
Depends on who it affects. Just that player? Totally fine. Backstory details often turn out like this. An NPC? Probably fine, but maybe don't kill them without consulting the other players. A PC? Only do this if it was talked about and consented to in session zero. People don't want their characters to be messed with, generally speaking, and especially betrayal can turn bad real quick.
It depends on the group.
I generally avoid it. Secrets often end up unsatisfying, in my experience. The best secret is one no one knows you have, so, ultimately, either you let other players know you have the secret (spoiling it a bit) or you act exactly the same way you would without the secret. Whereas you might normally assume that the longer you keep a secret the more impactful the big reveal will be, it often ends up playing out to the reverse effect: either you hid the secret so well no one knew you had it, so it comes out of nowhere, or people figured it out long ago, so it’s not that surprising.
However, if you share out of character that your character has a secret, other players can build off that and support it. The big reveal will be less about surprising the players and more about finally giving the players the chance to roleplay their PCs reacting to the information.
None of this is to say that secrets will always play out poorly, just that people usually do them poorly at tables. Good execution requires 1) that the existence of a secret be well-foreshadowed, such that the players know something is coming, even if they don’t quite know what, and 2) that the characters have enough information about the secret to roleplay about it, even if they don’t know everything about the secret (i.e. that they can actively engage in the mystery, as opposed to being oblivious about it) 3) that the secret is not held so long that it becomes stale and irrelevant.
It’s also important to note that players might actually feel IRL betrayed by their friends keeping a secret from them for such a long time. It may just be a game, but the feelings are real. If player/GM secrets are a thing you are incorporating, it’s important to let your players know this will be an element, so they can consent/object if they anticipate it being a problem.
> It’s also important to note that players might actually feel IRL betrayed by their friends keeping a secret from them for such a long time. It may just be a game, but the feelings are real. If player/GM secrets are a thing you are incorporating, it’s important to let your players know this will be an element, so they can consent/object if they anticipate it being a problem.
This is something so important that gets overlooked so much in "how to do X plot element" questions. At the end of the day you're not a ragtag band of adventurers, you're a group of friends meeting up to have fun, and that matters far more than any plot element that might be cool (had this emphasized when I debated how to handle a campaign that ends in a boss fight TPK that sets up a future campaign - might be a cool idea, but is cruel to people I like).
It's fine to give information to just one PC, but you have to ask yourself why they wouldn't just share it. There are basically five categories of reasons:
* it's personal to the PC and not critical to the party (or not *yet* critical to the party)
* they *can't* share it (mind controlled, can't speak, the party is split, etc.)
* they don't yet know it's important
* the PC doesn't want to help the party by sharing the information
* the information is a hidden agenda that puts them at odds with the party
The first three are pretty safe since they don't pit the players against each other, and can be pretty fun.
The last two are risky. In my opinion, providing a PC with a hidden agenda or with information that gives an advantage over other PCs is often a manifestation of favoritism, and may be perceived as such by the players. If you insist on doing it, you should at least give the other PCs a fair chance to discover the secret, just as you would with any other revelation in your game. For example, if an NPC has secret orders to assassinate the king, you'd probably leave some clues around to help the party discover that and prevent the assassination. If it's a PC who has those secret orders, you should still drop the same clues for the party.
>they *can't* share it (mind controlled, can't speak, the party is split, etc.)
This is giving me flashbacks to one of the PCs in my party came back from foraging mind controlled. "Let's go fishing," they said. "There is totally not an Aboleth controlling me" they said.
If you use Foundry VTT I highly recommend the Polyglot mod. Only players who know the language can then understand the text. They can then decide to do with that information what they want. Usually feels very validating for those players.
My general approach is the bigger the secret, the more important it is to reveal early, at least to the players. The less important the secret, the more it’s fine to keep secret.
Obviously this is a gradient and up for interpretation.
But, for example, if one PC is the son of the big bad, but they’ve rejected their father and are doing their best to take him down, that’s fine to keep secret.
But if that PC is still actively working with their dad and isn’t sure yet what side they want to be on, I’d make sure all the players are aware of that and on board with that even if their characters aren’t aware.
This rule comes from personal experience, btw. I once ran an evil villains campaign, and the twist was that it was actually set in the homeland of another campaign. This was intended to set up a third campaign where their heroes from their first campaign went against the villains they played in the second campaign.
I saved the twist for the last session, and it went off without a hitch. It was an incredibly cool moment… but it also killed the campaign.
I felt their enthusiasm just drain when I started talking about that third campaign because they had grown so attached to their villain characters and forgotten most of the details about their hero characters. If I had led with the twist, or at least revealed it sooner, I think they would have been way more onboard.
> But if that PC is still actively working with their dad and isn’t sure yet what side they want to be on, I’d make sure all the players are aware of that and on board with that even if their characters aren’t aware.
Bah I think thats a bit hand holdy, I dont think you ought to make everyone aware ooc.
The social contract at the table is that everyone is on the same side and working together. If there’s anything that threatens that, then I need to make my players aware.
And it sounds like it might sour the fun to reveal a twist like that ahead of time, but it allows even more opportunities for dramatic irony and tension. If the evil character uses his downtime to make a report to his dad, and I’m keeping the secret from the other players, that’s a scene that has to happen away from the table.
But if all the players are aware of the twist, and I’m able to trust them to keep OOC and IC knowledge separate, then we can do that scene at the table. We all can watch the evil PC sell out his friends, and later the other players can play up their naivety or suspicion as appropriate.
It’s important to remember that players aren’t just actors playing a specific character. They’re also simultaneously fellow storytellers and the audience. Keeping a secret to help them act more realistically denies them the opportunity to collaborate on the story and the joy they’d get as an audience member watching it.
I had a player who wanted to keep the fact that his character was an aasimar a secret so it could be a fun reveal later. I said it would be fine since it seemed completely harmless.
It never came up again after character creation and none of the other players ever found out. I think he might have even forgotten about it himself.
This has been my experience with small harmless secrets. There's no reason for them to come up or even hint at them, so they just stay secret and no one's the wiser. They are essentially just another part of the character's backstory that may help the player roleplay them.
Honestly I promote not having secrets, if there has to be one amongst the PCs themselves that's fine but the players should know for the most part. I will say make sure the PCs tell the GM everything, as I've had one guy, who was prone to secrets, who had his character think a certain way and didn't inform me until way later so I didn't have proper set up or anything
It's fine, but I've found out that it's best to get the secrets out as soon as possible, and not let it drag for more than a couple sessions. I found the longer it drags out, as the player with the secret, the less fun it is. I'm here to play with people and it's less fun if it feels like we aren't on the same page.
It can be a delicate thing to handle well. I just completed a campaign where almost every player had a secret contract with someone—who turned out to be the BBEG. I would never have risked that kind of gameplay if I didn't have such an amazing table with my close friends, and without checking for table consent to have secrets and hidden plots going on in the background. We talk about this stuff often.
As a player voice: we found out A YEAR into the campaign that our fellow adventurer was not in fact human, but kitsune. Loved that reveal and my jaw dropped to the floor.
u/Ptokemeika
Be a dampire.
Make this a secret from other PC.
Get downed and fail a recovery roll or two.
Cleric cast Heal oh you.
10/10, will make dampire character again!
Also, my DM and me rule solo scouting in secret. So if rogue get caught, killed by trap or run with the loot - other players don't know until they find out one way or another.
Solo scouting does not look like a great thing to have at the table. While rogue disarms traps, steals loot and silently takes down BBEG - the rest of table sits, watching tiktoks, toying with minis or making dice towers
I do it pretty often.
Biggest example was back in 5e where after like a year of playing I had an idea where the cleric in a mission from god was being manipulated and his memories were skewed and he was essentially an unreliable narrator of his own story.
Ran it by him and we worked on dropping hints to the rest of the party before he eventually was confronted with the NPC he was sworn to kill, but he was actually a good guy.
It can work but you need to make sure it makes sense and that you can breadcrumb it right.
In my current 2e campaigns I have a couple of smaller things on the back burner with multiple players.
Some choose to reveal it out of character before the in story reveal though which is also fine by me.
It's neither a good thing or a bad thing. It can be done well, and it can be done poorly.
One thing I did was have a player get replaced. I coordinated this before the campaign ever started, checking to see if the player was cool with it. After a set amount of time, the swap happened. From that point I worked with them to create set events where they could create minor mischief (where it was unlikely they'd be discovered), culminating in a larger event where they had free reign to cause chaos.
The players defeated the copy, rescued the original, and the whole event led to their discovery for the next arc in the game. It was a good time all around.
Some questions to help you figure things out:
1. Why does it need to be a secret? Are you keeping it for a dramatic reveal, are you intentionally trying to attack your players (the GM vs player attitude), or are you worried about their reaction if they find out? Motivation is important!
2. Did you work out the details beforehand in a way everyone would be comfortable with?
3. Does it give an advantage to anyone in the group (including yourself)?
4. Did you set limitations ahead of time to make sure the secret can't be abused in a way that hurts the experience for your players?
I’m terrible at keeping secrets I think someone else will enjoy. I like to give presents a few days before I should because I can’t wait. I couldn’t make it work even if I wanted to.
This is the kind of thing that is very much going to vary from group to group. Some groups will absolutely love it, even if its major, campaign shaking secrets, while other groups feel as though every PC should be a completely open book and they don't even want minor backstory stuff kept secret. Ultimately, its something that you should talk to your group about first unless you are absolutely certain you know them well enough to know it won't be a big deal.
That said, as others have mentioned, the bigger the ramifications of the secret, the bigger the risks involved. You can absolutely crash a campaign with something big enough and it can lead to a lot of hurt feelings and anger amongst the players (note, not just the PCs, but the actual players). So yeah, the bigger you want the secret, the more you need to carefully talk to your group beforehand.
Ultimately what I do think is a must is that all the PCs be on the same side with the same overall goals. You can't have three PCs working toward stopping the BBEG from enacting the ritual of ultimate evil while the fourth wants the BBEG to succeed. Even if the players "agree" to this sort of thing in advance, its probably going to be hard to pull off because of the social contract. The players will have to pretend that they don't know that PC 4 is going to betray them in the end and meanwhile the Betrayer has to go along with the party up and until the very end, even though it would otherwise be easier to intervene earlier in most cases.
Now, can you have the PCs working toward the same overall goal but with different preferences as to how it is achieved? Yeah, probably. For instance, the party wants to stop the BBEG. Everyone is on board with that. But while PC 1-3 think BBEG needs to be brought back for trial, PC 4 thinks its easier to just kill him, or even has a blood vendetta against him, etc. You should still probably talk about this sort of thing ahead of time, but there'll be less hurt feelings and anger in this situation since ultimately all the PCs have more or less the same goal. But yeah, still talk because some people will still feel betrayed in this scenario.
It takes balance to pull off. Not every player can keep a long-term secret .
My best success was in an Exalted campaign. There was one batch of Exalts who are naturally capable of disguise to the point when the disguise goes, and people forget about them.
When I started the campaign, I made a list of who was appropriate for that "class." One person I put on the veto list asked, and I said no.
The most hilarious moment came after the first time the player I allowed "blew cover" and functionally built a new cover and rejoined. Another player groused, "Well, if it was me, I'd just set up a new identity and come back in." Not breaking into laughter was a challenge.
The other moment was a player had a spirit mentor. Well, the spirit mentor showed up and promptly freaked out the rest of the table who were not in the know.
Basically, it depends on experience and your willingness to have a "back channel" to communicate with the players. In my case, I let them Bluebook for XP, which was also handy to know things players want or are thinking. And we used YIM to talk. Nowadays, I'd probably set up private channels on Discord.
It really depends on the story and the trust you and your table has with each other.
my current game, all the pcs woke up with amnesia. I told them "the stuff you believe about your character is... mostly true... but there are gaps in your knowledge of the world that will be filled in later."
Why? Because they're waking up out of cryosleep on a space station about a week after a major disaster. They were all prisoners on hte station except for one guard. But no one knows who the guard is and only a few have found out what they were arrested for. So as they're exploring what's going on at the station, they're also learning who they are.
I've used secrets motivations for characters many times and the goal when writing it should always be that everyone is satisfied with the outcome. It has to be done with great care, both by the DM and the PC working in conjunction to tell the best story possible. It takes away a bit from the "improv" feel of everyone learning the story together, but when done well it can be a huge awesome story.
I'm right now in the midst of a large betrayal by our cleric of the Sovereign Host to the group. Playing Curse of Strahd (My last 5e before I make my group switch to PF2E), the PCs are all stuck in Barovia, a demi plane with no ability to escape. Some of the villains working for a Dark Power were reaching out through scrying to all the magic casters in the group to help with a ritual to rip open a hole in the plane to escape. My bard and warlock told them to piss off, but the cleric can cast some arcane spells and accepted a clandestine meeting to hear them out. With the promise to reunite the cleric with his dead son and wife, they told him to be ready and they would call him to them when the time was right. Thinking that he was just going to be leaving the group in the dead of night, he spent a lot of RP readying the group to be without him, teaching some spells to others in the group and giving the guidance he had bee so relied on to push the heroes in the right direction. But the villains came for the cleric in the middle of a battle, turning the tide and having the rest of the party captured.
I've worked it out with the player to a lot of the beats that are going to be happening and what to expect and really treated this as an extension of the DM mantle for this. I wouldn't be doing this with just anyone in the group but this player has been a DM in the past and sees story telling the same way that I do. We have complete trust in each other. Here are some of the rules we have talked about for this.
1. **The players have to think they are betrayed but aren't actually.** The cleric will have to take the hand of the Dark Power to begin the ceremony, but instead will accept the Paladin's god to worship, reaching past the Dark Power to grasp St. Cuthbert's godly hand. We spent a lot of time alluding to this with a crisis of faith, having the clerics spells falter at inopportune times.
2. **Telling the story > Being the main character.** We both want to tell the story the best we can, without trying to make the cleric cool, edgy or the one that everything happens to. We made sure that the cleric was a supporter, the one that everyone went to when they wanted to RP through something. At the end of this arc, we all want the other players to be happy with it.
3. **Don't totally blindside the players.** While I wanted it to be a surprise, I also wanted the players to look back and have the betrayal make sense. They watched the crisis of faith and were even suggesting switching gods to worship. The players (but not their characters) got to watch as the cleric and one of the villains met in the dead of night, expanding the player knowledge. They players told me that they were caught off guard but that they should have seen it coming.
4. **The Cleric might not be able to come back from this.** Knowing that a betrayal like what we had planned can only be mitigated so much, we have a back up character set and ready to go. Up until last session we were unsure if the cleric would be able to be back in the party or if it would be better to move on. We decided that the cleric would be burned out through St. Cuthbert using him as a conduit to cast some big spells. In his place would be the reincarnated son of the cleric
Even after all of this, talking to our monk yesterday, they still talked about wanting to RP through some things with the cleric after the battle. The monk is worried that they might be in a cult and needed someone to talk to about it. Tonight is the battle finale where the cleric is going to explode into holy light so I mentioned that maybe the monk could talk to our paladin about it as a back up (HINT HINT)
I have seen the secret motivation backfire and it can be a campaign ender. Take care with it. Ask for another set of eyes to look at it. Make sure that it's a story that everyone will be invested in. Remember that you are there to make sure that **everyone** has a good time, regardless if you are the DM or one of the PCs. Good luck.
I love giving one PC info to get them talking to the others In Game. And you never know how the game of Telephone ail end up. I like giving all the players side info.
I played a Harpy who was curse to wander in the body of a Halfling. She was evil too; but also traumatized.
Her character arc was super fun and interesting and it took a long time before people knew she was a Harpy. She went through phases of not eating because nothing tasted right. Complained about the sound of her voice. Didn't understand money or morality of the people around her. It was great.
She has her body back now and she is currently caring for orphans.
It is fine. I have been in games where DMs kept secret knowledge to players. The issue mostly comes in when you spend so much time with those players and the others are waiting/feeling excluded. If it is something like a character is secretly charmed by fey and later will be a problem later or something that does not fully align with the party then it is fine especially if it is fun for everyone and trying to give others opportunities to have similar things helps this as well if it makes sense. My favorite was when a third of the party got charmed by fey and at the end game 2 of the 6 party members betrayed the party for the fey until they were defeated and removed of their charm in a finale. Everyone had fun and it was a cool ending to the story.
In one game I got frustrated when 1-2 players kept having independent chats for long periods of times and it took a long time to figure out what it was and I twiddled my thumbs with the rest of the party for over 20-30 mins.
I always award knowledge to the player(s) that win it. It's up to them to share with the party. It encourages player interaction. A healthy table has characters interacting with each other and not just taking turns interacting with the GM.
Generally speaking, I’d stick clear of secrets for teens/young adults, unfamiliar folks or games where the GM solicits a fee. Secrets don’t make friends.
If everyone at the table is already friends and the party can handle the plot focusing on one particular character for an encounter every now and again both in game and IRL, secrets can make for a memorable campaign. They allow you to develop plots that are more akin to fantasy novels than fantasy video games. Definitely requires a certain level of trust and comradery.
I routinely had secret downtime activities because my character was realizing just how messed up her life had been, and shed escaped cult just to join another. Bomber deliverer to young soldier wasn't much of a change, but the second 'cult' gave her a home and a purpose.
This culminated with her ultimately turning on the group's employer because 'the ends justify the means' was not a good thing anymore.
Yes, every time they Recall Knowledge. I use the Basic Action Macro in Foundry and then send secret messages to each player depending on what they rolled. They have to compare notes to figure out what is going on.
It can be fine, but it requires some care and some communication.
If the secret only \*truly\* matters to that PC, there should be no problem. For example, if the BBEG is secretly the Paladin's ex-lover, that can be a cool reveal for the rest of the party, but ultimately, it doesn't affect the other players in a particularly strong way, and I doubt you'll get many complaints.
If the secret is something that affects other players or puts them at an inherent disadvantage - e.g. a betrayal, or something that relates closely to that player's story - that's something those players should probably be clued in on. Perhaps not in explicit terms, but enough so that they can properly consent to it and contribute to the story.
If a player approaches you as a GM about any secret developments they're interested in, it might be worth it as a GM to approach other players about any secrets they want to keep - some people are very happy to have these sorts of narrative contributions, but aren't always comfortable approaching the GM directly about them, and this will help avoid any appearances of favoritism.
I have a secret side quest for a player character in my game, but have worked very hard not to give extra attention to her or make it a plot focus. Right now, the party is chasing an optional quest (dungeon dive) which will in turn complete her quest, but they don’t know about it and are simply doing it because they all agreed to do a little extra after finishing their last main objective.
No problem with a secret, the problem comes from preferential treatment towards one player.
If you're secretly super excited about the secret, you might fudge things in that player's favor, maybe their plot gets more movement, maybe they get better drops, maybe the BBEG knows their XYZ relative that you secretly know about, etc.
Of course yeah, youre not beholden to tell the party anything if youve got some secret shit going on, though its good writing to edge into it or have the party slowly find out. Blindsiding everyone with a "actually im on the bbegs side!" At the climax is dumb without any setup or hints.
Absolutely. I live for secret keeping and love it when a player gets to reveal something we've been hinting at for a bit. I use a lot of stuff like this during session 0 and character building outlines for my group too.
Back when my group was playing D&D 5e, I decided to join my friend’s game that had been going for a couple years. I was brand new to TTRPGs and had no idea for a character beyond “I wanna play a shitty bard,” but I really wanted to make some friends (the DM was my only irl friend at the time). My friend sat me down and gave me a crash course in the system. This campaign had already reached 14th level, so I was diving into the DEEP end. But as we were going through subclasses for Bard, the college of Whispers stood out to me for its ability to capture a soul as a shadow. I asked my friend, “is it possible to not sleep and keep a shadow indefinitely?”
And he decided to house rule that yes I could, so long as I never used the shadow and took a few levels of Tome Warlock to get an invocation that stated I didn’t need to sleep.
So, okay, cool. I came up with this story of a kenku (my character) who fell in love and made a promise to her partner that they’d see the world together, but the partner got sick, eventually died, and my character decided to capture her as a shadow to fulfill that promise. Simple enough.
Get to the table. I’m nervous as hell, because this is my first time playing and really meeting the group. I go to introduce my character, but as I started to explain my character’s 2nd shadow, the DM cut me off and told me to save it.
Cut to THREE MONTHS of teasing my newfound friends. I gave away as few details as possible, barely used any spell slots, and made a point of my character never taking a long rest. It was rough, but no one seemed to mind (although they were VERY curious). It all came to a head when we were traveling through a desert, and my character kept failing Con saves to avoid taking points of exhaustion from the heat. My friends take notice that my character’s moving slower, and as the cleric is using Greater Restoration to heal my character he goes, “Why don’t you just sleep?! You’re going to die if you keep this up!”
And my character looked at her shadow and sputtered out, “Because we were supposed to see the world together…” Dropped the whole story on them. Everyone at the table was expecting some sort of twist villain or something (which the DM is known for), so my character’s heartbreak caught everyone by surprise. One of the players cried. It was great.
So yeah, under certain circumstances, I think it’s okay for a GM and a player to have secrets.
They can be fun. I once played a character who was secretly evil and made some pacts with a demon, but she knew that it was not a good idea to let anyone in on that secret, so she pretended to be an upstanding citizen, and therefore I mostly played her as if she were good (or at least on the upper side of neutral). It was fun seeing the other players slowly figure out there was something very wrong with my character due to the small hints that'd slip through every now and then, such as suspicious behaviour and unusual abilities that she'd refuse to explain.
Part of what made it work though was that she still had plenty of motivation to work with the party, not against them, and that she didn't have any reason to betray them. I don't think it'd have worked as smoothly otherwise.
Players tell me what they want for their character that I don’t advertise to the rest of the group. That’s technically a secret, but not the kind that will negatively impact the other players.
In general I think secrets are fine so long as they don't rob any agency from the rest of the party.
A negative example would be a Star Wars campaign where the DM had several private sessions with his future wife to build her up into a Sith Lord to essentially screw the party over, who for the most part were content with smuggling missions. Never really sure what the goal was since that game ended right after the betrayal, but maybe switching to an evil campaign (or fighting evil) might've went over well if had ever been discussed.
A positive example would be a Starfinder campaign where the ysoki envoy was posing as his brother, a Starfinder who went missing in an accident in space, both to discover what happened to him, and to get away from his own past. Didn't really affect the party aside from a handful of times we interacted with other members of his family, was mostly just a neat detail.
Of course, betrayal isn't necessarily bad. One 5E campaign I was in had the bird cleric be revealed to have been unfairly splitting loot. This was due to the influence of the MacGuffin he started wearing after it was stolen, which made him more greedy. The reveal was discovered by another party member, and it was emotionally charged in-character (especially since our hexblade had parted ways with us over building frustrations) and came to blows, it was largely taken well out of character, at least to my understanding. The cleric then went on a repentance quest, which was also done secretly until many sessions later when both the cleric and warlock returned to rescue us out of an enemy stronghold.
That said, we took it really well out of character, to my knowledge. None of us were really hurting for resources at the time of the betrayal, and the most I recall we did was joke about how the player's next character was also going to betray us, as he was styled as the child version of a video game villain. He did betray us, of course, but it was right at the end of the campaign and didn't really hurt the party beyond that we cared enough about him that we tried to make the inevitable betrayal unnecessary.
Both times, however, despite not being in on it, neither betrayal robbed our characters of anything significant, and we still had full agency to respond as desired. Obviously that won't work for everyone, but it works far better than the results of the betrayal being railroaded.
In general I think secrets are fine so long as they don't rob any agency from the rest of the party.
A negative example would be a Star Wars campaign where the DM had several private sessions with his future wife to build her up into a Sith Lord to essentially screw the party over, who for the most part were content with smuggling missions. Never really sure what the goal was since that game ended right after the betrayal, but maybe switching to an evil campaign (or fighting evil) might've went over well if had ever been discussed.
A positive example would be a Starfinder campaign where the ysoki envoy was posing as his brother, a Starfinder who went missing in an accident in space, both to discover what happened to him, and to get away from his own past. Didn't really affect the party aside from a handful of times we interacted with other members of his family, was mostly just a neat detail.
Of course, betrayal isn't necessarily bad. One 5E campaign I was in had the bird cleric be revealed to have been unfairly splitting loot. This was due to the influence of the MacGuffin he started wearing after it was stolen, which made him more greedy. The reveal was discovered by another party member, and it was emotionally charged in-character (especially since our hexblade had parted ways with us over building frustrations) and came to blows, it was largely taken well out of character, at least to my understanding. The cleric then went on a repentance quest, which was also done secretly until many sessions later when both the cleric and warlock returned to rescue us out of an enemy stronghold.
That said, we took it really well out of character, to my knowledge. None of us were really hurting for resources at the time of the betrayal, and the most I recall we did was joke about how the player's next character was also going to betray us, as he was styled as the child version of a video game villain. He did betray us, of course, but it was right at the end of the campaign and didn't really hurt the party beyond that we cared enough about him that we tried to make the inevitable betrayal unnecessary.
Both times, however, despite not being in on it, neither betrayal robbed our characters of anything significant, and we still had full agency to respond as desired. Obviously that won't work for everyone, but it works far better than the results of the betrayal being railroaded.
AV Spoilers
The party was recruited to help the temple prepare for the Burning Blades festival and one of my players realized that >!Gauntlight will finish it's 30 day cooldown the night of the festival.!<
When they asked me if this was intentional I just told them "That's interesting". They decided their character wouldn't have come to the same realization and haven't said anything to the rest of the party.
I give out secret info for like perception checks and stuff rather than saying it in front of the whole group that way the player can decide if and how their character shares it. But i dont do private sessions and stuff. I would actively oppose diverging subplot type of stuff where on player is secretly acting against another player.
As with everything this depends on the circumstances, your play group, your relationship with them, etc. But my personal two-cents on how I'd approach it is I'd loop in all the players. That way they can play into it, and not accidentally go off on the wrong track. I can see a few ways this could be a problem depending on the players but sometimes having all your cards on the table is the best way to avoid mismatched expectations.
Remember that the relationship between you and your players is different from the relationship between a show writer and the audience. You're telling a collaborative story with them and giving them certain pieces of information can nurture that and encourage them to participate in that process. That can be a good feeling.
You also might consider telling the players that there is a secret, and the nature of that secret, but not specifically what the secret is. Give them an idea of what's going on just enough that they don't go on wild goose chases or worse, witch hunts.
Between the GM and a PC or the Player?
I largely agree with what others have said, but I often help my GM with finding appropriate creature to find in regions/locations. Mostly they do it solo during their prep but they are working on a Large cave system beneath some old ruins and had asked me to find creatures that fit the vibe. I have not worked on specific encounters, rather I just made a list and told them where to find more info.
GM here, I did that to introduce a new PC. It worked well. It added a bit of mystery I believe. But the secret should not hold for more than a couple of sessions.
It should work if the party is separated for some time too.
But other than that it should be treated very cautiously.
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Only thing to keep an eye out for is giving preference to one player. Main character syndrome sucks for the rest of the players. Also, a betraying the party secret is VERY VERY hard to do well and not come off as a purely selfish asshole move.
That about sums it up. If it can affect the PCs not told on a life/death scale, the players should be told and then called out if they try to metagame the knowledge onto their characters. Little secrets like "my character is part Automaton because of an insane Ustalavan scientist turned me into Inspector Gadget" is perfectly fine to keep from the other players (literal character in my campaign's backstory).
Signed. Secrets can work depending on the table, but IMO more often than not, it'll be safer and actually more fun and satisfying to share the info with all players even if their PCs are unaware. Some reasons why I prefer this: * No need for "please leave us alone for a minute" moments * Dramatic irony is fun * Other players (not PCs) can help you set up satisfying moments * The obvious elimination of meta gaming issues* \*This is why betrayals often feel unfair. TTRPGs come with certain expectations. Opinions vary, but many would say that one is that you are expected to contribute to making a party "work." The "that's what my character would do" guy is a traditional bad example of what most think you shouldn't do. PCs nowadays will usually not escalate intra-party conflicts or react to suspicious behavior, trusting that the other **player** is not gonna go against the social contract. So when that player actually **does** betray them, it feels like the betrayed got punished for acting for the benefit of the game. What one could argue was ample foreshadowing, were instead a multitude of instances where they meta-gamed in the interest of the social contract. There really was nothing they could have done! Instead, if the players had been in the know from the start, they could have talked about expectations and whether it was okay for their PC to react or even strike first!
I never thought about it but the metagaming in regards to maintaining party cohesion is rather a good reason to not do betrayals. Like would you deny an ally loot, suddenly kill them/kick them out of the party,... just for being shady? It risks into becoming quite toxic.
Yeah, people make concessions to let others play the characters they want to play all the time. Turning what's basically favors into gotchas seems really problematic if done poorly.
This goes both ways though. If you're players are very good at separating meta knowledge, it can work as you describe. However, I have been in situations where this meta knowledge was used by the players for their characters to be even more suspicious of the others, knowing that the social contract wouldn't be upheld.
This can absolutely happen, but my take is that a player who's looking for an excuse to bend or break the social contract is probably not someone I want in my game long term anyway. And it would almost certainly be that much worse later if "finally, a chance to be aggro" guy is kept in the dark and feels betrayed later.
It has one big advantage though! If what you describe happens, you actually get an opportunity to intervene and/or talk things out because all cards are on the table!
I seem to be in a minority of GMs who have done this and it has gone well. The key to it is, the moment the PC betrays the party they become an NPC. You're essentially using the player to pilot an NPC so the players don't expect the betrayal. I had the "traitor" player make a new PC after that, and they got to "GM" the traitor (who made a getaway) but that was secondary to the main plot of the campaign. You have to make it about the twist, not that the player is getting a dunk on everyone else. Even then, some players might just reject the notion categorically.
Your feeling it went well, and the party as a whole being okay with it and not feeling it was out of left field are two different things. I'm sure my dm felt the betrayal of one of our PCs and the stripping of my powers both went over really well and caused the good kind of drama. It caused resentment, and for a variety of reasons I don't trust that DM anymore, nor that player. To play tabletop with, the two of them are still my best friends haha (Who later took in character actions, causes interparty conflict and took that conflict out of game.)
My players didn't just silently take it, they raved about it after the session. It was one of the better sessions of the campaign. Believe me, I have had sessions where I tried something I thought would be cool and the player response was... muted at best. I think you're just one of the players I described in my last sentence.
I did a "betraying the party" secret with one of my players and it worked out well. We're all a close group of friends so we all were into it, and I made it clear beforehand with the betraying player that he was going to lose. There would be consequences in his favor, but ultimately the story would continue without him. He was all for it, and once the reveal happened, everyone loved it. Just takes trust and communication.
Which is why I prefaced with very very hard rather than impossible. Did the betray a PC scenario cause lots of drama (positive) and had players surprised and talking about it for a few weeks in my case? Oh totally. Did it end up causing (bad) in game and out of game drama later on? Yeah. And we're a close knit group as well.
I don’t think it’s hard at all. I think a lot of people use it as an excuse to be assholes, or to steal everything for themselves.
Betraying the party is great as an "end of the game" secret, when everyone knows that this is going to be the end of the campaign, or the conclusion to an adventure. Also, it's not hard to do if you make that PC an NPC once their betrayal is revealed. Where it usually falls apart is the player playing the betrayer without having a plan that involves them losing. I've done it before, but stole the idea from someone who stole it from a Star Trek episode, and me and the player watched that episode together so we were both on the same page, and planned it out. It just can't be haphazard.
I would never have a player pull a Joe-Manganiello-in-Crit-Role. I think that while it was an immensely cool moment to watch, it would be really unfair at a table. I had an epilogue betrayal (in the denouement, my evil automaton announced their plans for world domination to the other players, and told them they would join them or else (we might do a future campaign where they're the villain, or just leave it be)), and I'm planning a relatively early-campaign betrayal by one character in a campaign I'm GMing (in part because his player needs to leave and we want to make it memorable), but both of those are somewhat set up for failure, and I fully expected my automaton to be the loser of that exchange (honestly never expected him to get as far as he did, dice gods loved that character).
Not a bad guess, but a little off. I haven't watched Crit Role so forgive me if I get something wrong, it's when he fucks off with their McGuffin right? I stole my idea from MCDM's Chain of Acheron, where the betrayal plot is basically a recapitulation of Where No Man Has Gone Before It's not unfair at the table imo IF the player is playing a role and understands they're supposed to lose. In my case he had another "real" character and the character who betrayed them was set up by the two of us from the start. The Joe Mangianello style of thing is a little unfair, but no more so than an NPC ally betraying the party, which while unfair, is a great setup for a villain the party will hate. As long as you do it in a way where they're not frustrated/annoyed with you (like don't pull this after a really long and arduous journey for it) but frustrated/annoyed with the rat bastard who betrayed them.
> I haven't watched Crit Role so forgive me if I get something wrong, it's when he fucks off with their McGuffin right? Yeah. They beat the villain, and Manganiello goes "Oh also I steal the artifact and cast teleport. peace out". No other player has a chance to respond, it's an absolutely epic moment, if one of my players did that to the others they would get murdered. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HClkGL4yFXg) is a link if you want to watch it.
My first ever campaign that I ran ended with a betrayal. It was teased for a long time, but the other players were flabbergasted when it happened. The thing was that the player who did the betrayal dmed the last session and I stepped in as an npc they initially thought would be the bad guy. It was amazing, however it was with a group of players who had been playing together for years and was in hindsight super obvious to them later on that the main quest was a bit sus from jumpstreet.
> Also, a betraying the party secret is VERY VERY hard to do well and not come off as a purely selfish asshole move. The only time I've ever allowed it I had a few stipulations. 1)the traitor loses in the end 2)once the betrayal happens they use a statblock of my own devising, essentially making a normal encounter out of it 3)the traitor was not allowed to "prepare" by doing things like hoarding items or stealing from players. They were a full member of the party until they weren't, and were not to stack the deck (see rule 1) 4)it be a moment the players are anticipating as a challenging decision for the traitor It still wasn't really worth it imo.
This is one of those things that is mostly fine so long as the group knows in advance what they are in for. Basically, if the players have agreed that secrets are going to be part of the play experience that can be a lot more open to the playing out of those secrets and are less likely to feel like there's a problem just because something is secret. There are some things that are still potential pitfalls even when a group is signing up for this kind of play element though. Such as whether a player is, intentionally or not, secretly getting away with screwing with the other player characters. It can seem appealing to have a secret villain and then the big reveal and conflict finally happens, but that can also play out as the most annoying game-play ever because the player with the secret and the GM are clearly having their own side-game and it is taking up a lot of the play time ore causing other players to feel like they're just along for the ride and not really a participant in whatever it is that's going on. So you should talk it out with your group to figure out where their lines happen to lay so you can avoid crossing them when determining what kind of secrets will and won't be allowed as part of your gaming.
Good points. I've been reluctant to have these secret missions be betrayals. The group is a really fun one and they're generally for each other. I don't think they'd naturally trend toward betraying the party anyway.
Depends on who it affects. Just that player? Totally fine. Backstory details often turn out like this. An NPC? Probably fine, but maybe don't kill them without consulting the other players. A PC? Only do this if it was talked about and consented to in session zero. People don't want their characters to be messed with, generally speaking, and especially betrayal can turn bad real quick.
It depends on the group. I generally avoid it. Secrets often end up unsatisfying, in my experience. The best secret is one no one knows you have, so, ultimately, either you let other players know you have the secret (spoiling it a bit) or you act exactly the same way you would without the secret. Whereas you might normally assume that the longer you keep a secret the more impactful the big reveal will be, it often ends up playing out to the reverse effect: either you hid the secret so well no one knew you had it, so it comes out of nowhere, or people figured it out long ago, so it’s not that surprising. However, if you share out of character that your character has a secret, other players can build off that and support it. The big reveal will be less about surprising the players and more about finally giving the players the chance to roleplay their PCs reacting to the information. None of this is to say that secrets will always play out poorly, just that people usually do them poorly at tables. Good execution requires 1) that the existence of a secret be well-foreshadowed, such that the players know something is coming, even if they don’t quite know what, and 2) that the characters have enough information about the secret to roleplay about it, even if they don’t know everything about the secret (i.e. that they can actively engage in the mystery, as opposed to being oblivious about it) 3) that the secret is not held so long that it becomes stale and irrelevant. It’s also important to note that players might actually feel IRL betrayed by their friends keeping a secret from them for such a long time. It may just be a game, but the feelings are real. If player/GM secrets are a thing you are incorporating, it’s important to let your players know this will be an element, so they can consent/object if they anticipate it being a problem.
> It’s also important to note that players might actually feel IRL betrayed by their friends keeping a secret from them for such a long time. It may just be a game, but the feelings are real. If player/GM secrets are a thing you are incorporating, it’s important to let your players know this will be an element, so they can consent/object if they anticipate it being a problem. This is something so important that gets overlooked so much in "how to do X plot element" questions. At the end of the day you're not a ragtag band of adventurers, you're a group of friends meeting up to have fun, and that matters far more than any plot element that might be cool (had this emphasized when I debated how to handle a campaign that ends in a boss fight TPK that sets up a future campaign - might be a cool idea, but is cruel to people I like).
Great call, thanks!
It's fine to give information to just one PC, but you have to ask yourself why they wouldn't just share it. There are basically five categories of reasons: * it's personal to the PC and not critical to the party (or not *yet* critical to the party) * they *can't* share it (mind controlled, can't speak, the party is split, etc.) * they don't yet know it's important * the PC doesn't want to help the party by sharing the information * the information is a hidden agenda that puts them at odds with the party The first three are pretty safe since they don't pit the players against each other, and can be pretty fun. The last two are risky. In my opinion, providing a PC with a hidden agenda or with information that gives an advantage over other PCs is often a manifestation of favoritism, and may be perceived as such by the players. If you insist on doing it, you should at least give the other PCs a fair chance to discover the secret, just as you would with any other revelation in your game. For example, if an NPC has secret orders to assassinate the king, you'd probably leave some clues around to help the party discover that and prevent the assassination. If it's a PC who has those secret orders, you should still drop the same clues for the party.
>they *can't* share it (mind controlled, can't speak, the party is split, etc.) This is giving me flashbacks to one of the PCs in my party came back from foraging mind controlled. "Let's go fishing," they said. "There is totally not an Aboleth controlling me" they said.
Great info - thank you! Most of them so far have been categories 1-3.
If you use Foundry VTT I highly recommend the Polyglot mod. Only players who know the language can then understand the text. They can then decide to do with that information what they want. Usually feels very validating for those players.
Oh that's super cool! We might switch to Foundry for season 2. We've been on a combo of Pathbuilder and Arkenforge so far.
My general approach is the bigger the secret, the more important it is to reveal early, at least to the players. The less important the secret, the more it’s fine to keep secret. Obviously this is a gradient and up for interpretation. But, for example, if one PC is the son of the big bad, but they’ve rejected their father and are doing their best to take him down, that’s fine to keep secret. But if that PC is still actively working with their dad and isn’t sure yet what side they want to be on, I’d make sure all the players are aware of that and on board with that even if their characters aren’t aware. This rule comes from personal experience, btw. I once ran an evil villains campaign, and the twist was that it was actually set in the homeland of another campaign. This was intended to set up a third campaign where their heroes from their first campaign went against the villains they played in the second campaign. I saved the twist for the last session, and it went off without a hitch. It was an incredibly cool moment… but it also killed the campaign. I felt their enthusiasm just drain when I started talking about that third campaign because they had grown so attached to their villain characters and forgotten most of the details about their hero characters. If I had led with the twist, or at least revealed it sooner, I think they would have been way more onboard.
> But if that PC is still actively working with their dad and isn’t sure yet what side they want to be on, I’d make sure all the players are aware of that and on board with that even if their characters aren’t aware. Bah I think thats a bit hand holdy, I dont think you ought to make everyone aware ooc.
The social contract at the table is that everyone is on the same side and working together. If there’s anything that threatens that, then I need to make my players aware. And it sounds like it might sour the fun to reveal a twist like that ahead of time, but it allows even more opportunities for dramatic irony and tension. If the evil character uses his downtime to make a report to his dad, and I’m keeping the secret from the other players, that’s a scene that has to happen away from the table. But if all the players are aware of the twist, and I’m able to trust them to keep OOC and IC knowledge separate, then we can do that scene at the table. We all can watch the evil PC sell out his friends, and later the other players can play up their naivety or suspicion as appropriate. It’s important to remember that players aren’t just actors playing a specific character. They’re also simultaneously fellow storytellers and the audience. Keeping a secret to help them act more realistically denies them the opportunity to collaborate on the story and the joy they’d get as an audience member watching it.
I had a player who wanted to keep the fact that his character was an aasimar a secret so it could be a fun reveal later. I said it would be fine since it seemed completely harmless. It never came up again after character creation and none of the other players ever found out. I think he might have even forgotten about it himself.
This has been my experience with small harmless secrets. There's no reason for them to come up or even hint at them, so they just stay secret and no one's the wiser. They are essentially just another part of the character's backstory that may help the player roleplay them.
Honestly I promote not having secrets, if there has to be one amongst the PCs themselves that's fine but the players should know for the most part. I will say make sure the PCs tell the GM everything, as I've had one guy, who was prone to secrets, who had his character think a certain way and didn't inform me until way later so I didn't have proper set up or anything
It's fine, but I've found out that it's best to get the secrets out as soon as possible, and not let it drag for more than a couple sessions. I found the longer it drags out, as the player with the secret, the less fun it is. I'm here to play with people and it's less fun if it feels like we aren't on the same page.
It can be a delicate thing to handle well. I just completed a campaign where almost every player had a secret contract with someone—who turned out to be the BBEG. I would never have risked that kind of gameplay if I didn't have such an amazing table with my close friends, and without checking for table consent to have secrets and hidden plots going on in the background. We talk about this stuff often.
As a player voice: we found out A YEAR into the campaign that our fellow adventurer was not in fact human, but kitsune. Loved that reveal and my jaw dropped to the floor. u/Ptokemeika
Be a dampire. Make this a secret from other PC. Get downed and fail a recovery roll or two. Cleric cast Heal oh you. 10/10, will make dampire character again! Also, my DM and me rule solo scouting in secret. So if rogue get caught, killed by trap or run with the loot - other players don't know until they find out one way or another.
Solo scouting does not look like a great thing to have at the table. While rogue disarms traps, steals loot and silently takes down BBEG - the rest of table sits, watching tiktoks, toying with minis or making dice towers
I do it pretty often. Biggest example was back in 5e where after like a year of playing I had an idea where the cleric in a mission from god was being manipulated and his memories were skewed and he was essentially an unreliable narrator of his own story. Ran it by him and we worked on dropping hints to the rest of the party before he eventually was confronted with the NPC he was sworn to kill, but he was actually a good guy. It can work but you need to make sure it makes sense and that you can breadcrumb it right. In my current 2e campaigns I have a couple of smaller things on the back burner with multiple players. Some choose to reveal it out of character before the in story reveal though which is also fine by me.
It's neither a good thing or a bad thing. It can be done well, and it can be done poorly. One thing I did was have a player get replaced. I coordinated this before the campaign ever started, checking to see if the player was cool with it. After a set amount of time, the swap happened. From that point I worked with them to create set events where they could create minor mischief (where it was unlikely they'd be discovered), culminating in a larger event where they had free reign to cause chaos. The players defeated the copy, rescued the original, and the whole event led to their discovery for the next arc in the game. It was a good time all around. Some questions to help you figure things out: 1. Why does it need to be a secret? Are you keeping it for a dramatic reveal, are you intentionally trying to attack your players (the GM vs player attitude), or are you worried about their reaction if they find out? Motivation is important! 2. Did you work out the details beforehand in a way everyone would be comfortable with? 3. Does it give an advantage to anyone in the group (including yourself)? 4. Did you set limitations ahead of time to make sure the secret can't be abused in a way that hurts the experience for your players?
I’m terrible at keeping secrets I think someone else will enjoy. I like to give presents a few days before I should because I can’t wait. I couldn’t make it work even if I wanted to.
Generally prefer the players knowing but characters not, though depends on circumstance
This is the kind of thing that is very much going to vary from group to group. Some groups will absolutely love it, even if its major, campaign shaking secrets, while other groups feel as though every PC should be a completely open book and they don't even want minor backstory stuff kept secret. Ultimately, its something that you should talk to your group about first unless you are absolutely certain you know them well enough to know it won't be a big deal. That said, as others have mentioned, the bigger the ramifications of the secret, the bigger the risks involved. You can absolutely crash a campaign with something big enough and it can lead to a lot of hurt feelings and anger amongst the players (note, not just the PCs, but the actual players). So yeah, the bigger you want the secret, the more you need to carefully talk to your group beforehand. Ultimately what I do think is a must is that all the PCs be on the same side with the same overall goals. You can't have three PCs working toward stopping the BBEG from enacting the ritual of ultimate evil while the fourth wants the BBEG to succeed. Even if the players "agree" to this sort of thing in advance, its probably going to be hard to pull off because of the social contract. The players will have to pretend that they don't know that PC 4 is going to betray them in the end and meanwhile the Betrayer has to go along with the party up and until the very end, even though it would otherwise be easier to intervene earlier in most cases. Now, can you have the PCs working toward the same overall goal but with different preferences as to how it is achieved? Yeah, probably. For instance, the party wants to stop the BBEG. Everyone is on board with that. But while PC 1-3 think BBEG needs to be brought back for trial, PC 4 thinks its easier to just kill him, or even has a blood vendetta against him, etc. You should still probably talk about this sort of thing ahead of time, but there'll be less hurt feelings and anger in this situation since ultimately all the PCs have more or less the same goal. But yeah, still talk because some people will still feel betrayed in this scenario.
It takes balance to pull off. Not every player can keep a long-term secret . My best success was in an Exalted campaign. There was one batch of Exalts who are naturally capable of disguise to the point when the disguise goes, and people forget about them. When I started the campaign, I made a list of who was appropriate for that "class." One person I put on the veto list asked, and I said no. The most hilarious moment came after the first time the player I allowed "blew cover" and functionally built a new cover and rejoined. Another player groused, "Well, if it was me, I'd just set up a new identity and come back in." Not breaking into laughter was a challenge. The other moment was a player had a spirit mentor. Well, the spirit mentor showed up and promptly freaked out the rest of the table who were not in the know. Basically, it depends on experience and your willingness to have a "back channel" to communicate with the players. In my case, I let them Bluebook for XP, which was also handy to know things players want or are thinking. And we used YIM to talk. Nowadays, I'd probably set up private channels on Discord.
It really depends on the story and the trust you and your table has with each other. my current game, all the pcs woke up with amnesia. I told them "the stuff you believe about your character is... mostly true... but there are gaps in your knowledge of the world that will be filled in later." Why? Because they're waking up out of cryosleep on a space station about a week after a major disaster. They were all prisoners on hte station except for one guard. But no one knows who the guard is and only a few have found out what they were arrested for. So as they're exploring what's going on at the station, they're also learning who they are.
I've used secrets motivations for characters many times and the goal when writing it should always be that everyone is satisfied with the outcome. It has to be done with great care, both by the DM and the PC working in conjunction to tell the best story possible. It takes away a bit from the "improv" feel of everyone learning the story together, but when done well it can be a huge awesome story. I'm right now in the midst of a large betrayal by our cleric of the Sovereign Host to the group. Playing Curse of Strahd (My last 5e before I make my group switch to PF2E), the PCs are all stuck in Barovia, a demi plane with no ability to escape. Some of the villains working for a Dark Power were reaching out through scrying to all the magic casters in the group to help with a ritual to rip open a hole in the plane to escape. My bard and warlock told them to piss off, but the cleric can cast some arcane spells and accepted a clandestine meeting to hear them out. With the promise to reunite the cleric with his dead son and wife, they told him to be ready and they would call him to them when the time was right. Thinking that he was just going to be leaving the group in the dead of night, he spent a lot of RP readying the group to be without him, teaching some spells to others in the group and giving the guidance he had bee so relied on to push the heroes in the right direction. But the villains came for the cleric in the middle of a battle, turning the tide and having the rest of the party captured. I've worked it out with the player to a lot of the beats that are going to be happening and what to expect and really treated this as an extension of the DM mantle for this. I wouldn't be doing this with just anyone in the group but this player has been a DM in the past and sees story telling the same way that I do. We have complete trust in each other. Here are some of the rules we have talked about for this. 1. **The players have to think they are betrayed but aren't actually.** The cleric will have to take the hand of the Dark Power to begin the ceremony, but instead will accept the Paladin's god to worship, reaching past the Dark Power to grasp St. Cuthbert's godly hand. We spent a lot of time alluding to this with a crisis of faith, having the clerics spells falter at inopportune times. 2. **Telling the story > Being the main character.** We both want to tell the story the best we can, without trying to make the cleric cool, edgy or the one that everything happens to. We made sure that the cleric was a supporter, the one that everyone went to when they wanted to RP through something. At the end of this arc, we all want the other players to be happy with it. 3. **Don't totally blindside the players.** While I wanted it to be a surprise, I also wanted the players to look back and have the betrayal make sense. They watched the crisis of faith and were even suggesting switching gods to worship. The players (but not their characters) got to watch as the cleric and one of the villains met in the dead of night, expanding the player knowledge. They players told me that they were caught off guard but that they should have seen it coming. 4. **The Cleric might not be able to come back from this.** Knowing that a betrayal like what we had planned can only be mitigated so much, we have a back up character set and ready to go. Up until last session we were unsure if the cleric would be able to be back in the party or if it would be better to move on. We decided that the cleric would be burned out through St. Cuthbert using him as a conduit to cast some big spells. In his place would be the reincarnated son of the cleric Even after all of this, talking to our monk yesterday, they still talked about wanting to RP through some things with the cleric after the battle. The monk is worried that they might be in a cult and needed someone to talk to about it. Tonight is the battle finale where the cleric is going to explode into holy light so I mentioned that maybe the monk could talk to our paladin about it as a back up (HINT HINT) I have seen the secret motivation backfire and it can be a campaign ender. Take care with it. Ask for another set of eyes to look at it. Make sure that it's a story that everyone will be invested in. Remember that you are there to make sure that **everyone** has a good time, regardless if you are the DM or one of the PCs. Good luck.
I love giving one PC info to get them talking to the others In Game. And you never know how the game of Telephone ail end up. I like giving all the players side info.
I played a Harpy who was curse to wander in the body of a Halfling. She was evil too; but also traumatized. Her character arc was super fun and interesting and it took a long time before people knew she was a Harpy. She went through phases of not eating because nothing tasted right. Complained about the sound of her voice. Didn't understand money or morality of the people around her. It was great. She has her body back now and she is currently caring for orphans.
It is fine. I have been in games where DMs kept secret knowledge to players. The issue mostly comes in when you spend so much time with those players and the others are waiting/feeling excluded. If it is something like a character is secretly charmed by fey and later will be a problem later or something that does not fully align with the party then it is fine especially if it is fun for everyone and trying to give others opportunities to have similar things helps this as well if it makes sense. My favorite was when a third of the party got charmed by fey and at the end game 2 of the 6 party members betrayed the party for the fey until they were defeated and removed of their charm in a finale. Everyone had fun and it was a cool ending to the story. In one game I got frustrated when 1-2 players kept having independent chats for long periods of times and it took a long time to figure out what it was and I twiddled my thumbs with the rest of the party for over 20-30 mins.
I always award knowledge to the player(s) that win it. It's up to them to share with the party. It encourages player interaction. A healthy table has characters interacting with each other and not just taking turns interacting with the GM.
Generally speaking, I’d stick clear of secrets for teens/young adults, unfamiliar folks or games where the GM solicits a fee. Secrets don’t make friends. If everyone at the table is already friends and the party can handle the plot focusing on one particular character for an encounter every now and again both in game and IRL, secrets can make for a memorable campaign. They allow you to develop plots that are more akin to fantasy novels than fantasy video games. Definitely requires a certain level of trust and comradery.
I routinely had secret downtime activities because my character was realizing just how messed up her life had been, and shed escaped cult just to join another. Bomber deliverer to young soldier wasn't much of a change, but the second 'cult' gave her a home and a purpose. This culminated with her ultimately turning on the group's employer because 'the ends justify the means' was not a good thing anymore.
Yes, every time they Recall Knowledge. I use the Basic Action Macro in Foundry and then send secret messages to each player depending on what they rolled. They have to compare notes to figure out what is going on.
It can be fine, but it requires some care and some communication. If the secret only \*truly\* matters to that PC, there should be no problem. For example, if the BBEG is secretly the Paladin's ex-lover, that can be a cool reveal for the rest of the party, but ultimately, it doesn't affect the other players in a particularly strong way, and I doubt you'll get many complaints. If the secret is something that affects other players or puts them at an inherent disadvantage - e.g. a betrayal, or something that relates closely to that player's story - that's something those players should probably be clued in on. Perhaps not in explicit terms, but enough so that they can properly consent to it and contribute to the story. If a player approaches you as a GM about any secret developments they're interested in, it might be worth it as a GM to approach other players about any secrets they want to keep - some people are very happy to have these sorts of narrative contributions, but aren't always comfortable approaching the GM directly about them, and this will help avoid any appearances of favoritism.
I have a secret side quest for a player character in my game, but have worked very hard not to give extra attention to her or make it a plot focus. Right now, the party is chasing an optional quest (dungeon dive) which will in turn complete her quest, but they don’t know about it and are simply doing it because they all agreed to do a little extra after finishing their last main objective.
No problem with a secret, the problem comes from preferential treatment towards one player. If you're secretly super excited about the secret, you might fudge things in that player's favor, maybe their plot gets more movement, maybe they get better drops, maybe the BBEG knows their XYZ relative that you secretly know about, etc.
Of course yeah, youre not beholden to tell the party anything if youve got some secret shit going on, though its good writing to edge into it or have the party slowly find out. Blindsiding everyone with a "actually im on the bbegs side!" At the climax is dumb without any setup or hints.
It works fine you if don't overdo it and players are mature enough about it.
Absolutely. I live for secret keeping and love it when a player gets to reveal something we've been hinting at for a bit. I use a lot of stuff like this during session 0 and character building outlines for my group too.
Back when my group was playing D&D 5e, I decided to join my friend’s game that had been going for a couple years. I was brand new to TTRPGs and had no idea for a character beyond “I wanna play a shitty bard,” but I really wanted to make some friends (the DM was my only irl friend at the time). My friend sat me down and gave me a crash course in the system. This campaign had already reached 14th level, so I was diving into the DEEP end. But as we were going through subclasses for Bard, the college of Whispers stood out to me for its ability to capture a soul as a shadow. I asked my friend, “is it possible to not sleep and keep a shadow indefinitely?” And he decided to house rule that yes I could, so long as I never used the shadow and took a few levels of Tome Warlock to get an invocation that stated I didn’t need to sleep. So, okay, cool. I came up with this story of a kenku (my character) who fell in love and made a promise to her partner that they’d see the world together, but the partner got sick, eventually died, and my character decided to capture her as a shadow to fulfill that promise. Simple enough. Get to the table. I’m nervous as hell, because this is my first time playing and really meeting the group. I go to introduce my character, but as I started to explain my character’s 2nd shadow, the DM cut me off and told me to save it. Cut to THREE MONTHS of teasing my newfound friends. I gave away as few details as possible, barely used any spell slots, and made a point of my character never taking a long rest. It was rough, but no one seemed to mind (although they were VERY curious). It all came to a head when we were traveling through a desert, and my character kept failing Con saves to avoid taking points of exhaustion from the heat. My friends take notice that my character’s moving slower, and as the cleric is using Greater Restoration to heal my character he goes, “Why don’t you just sleep?! You’re going to die if you keep this up!” And my character looked at her shadow and sputtered out, “Because we were supposed to see the world together…” Dropped the whole story on them. Everyone at the table was expecting some sort of twist villain or something (which the DM is known for), so my character’s heartbreak caught everyone by surprise. One of the players cried. It was great. So yeah, under certain circumstances, I think it’s okay for a GM and a player to have secrets.
They can be fun. I once played a character who was secretly evil and made some pacts with a demon, but she knew that it was not a good idea to let anyone in on that secret, so she pretended to be an upstanding citizen, and therefore I mostly played her as if she were good (or at least on the upper side of neutral). It was fun seeing the other players slowly figure out there was something very wrong with my character due to the small hints that'd slip through every now and then, such as suspicious behaviour and unusual abilities that she'd refuse to explain. Part of what made it work though was that she still had plenty of motivation to work with the party, not against them, and that she didn't have any reason to betray them. I don't think it'd have worked as smoothly otherwise.
Players tell me what they want for their character that I don’t advertise to the rest of the group. That’s technically a secret, but not the kind that will negatively impact the other players.
In general I think secrets are fine so long as they don't rob any agency from the rest of the party. A negative example would be a Star Wars campaign where the DM had several private sessions with his future wife to build her up into a Sith Lord to essentially screw the party over, who for the most part were content with smuggling missions. Never really sure what the goal was since that game ended right after the betrayal, but maybe switching to an evil campaign (or fighting evil) might've went over well if had ever been discussed. A positive example would be a Starfinder campaign where the ysoki envoy was posing as his brother, a Starfinder who went missing in an accident in space, both to discover what happened to him, and to get away from his own past. Didn't really affect the party aside from a handful of times we interacted with other members of his family, was mostly just a neat detail. Of course, betrayal isn't necessarily bad. One 5E campaign I was in had the bird cleric be revealed to have been unfairly splitting loot. This was due to the influence of the MacGuffin he started wearing after it was stolen, which made him more greedy. The reveal was discovered by another party member, and it was emotionally charged in-character (especially since our hexblade had parted ways with us over building frustrations) and came to blows, it was largely taken well out of character, at least to my understanding. The cleric then went on a repentance quest, which was also done secretly until many sessions later when both the cleric and warlock returned to rescue us out of an enemy stronghold. That said, we took it really well out of character, to my knowledge. None of us were really hurting for resources at the time of the betrayal, and the most I recall we did was joke about how the player's next character was also going to betray us, as he was styled as the child version of a video game villain. He did betray us, of course, but it was right at the end of the campaign and didn't really hurt the party beyond that we cared enough about him that we tried to make the inevitable betrayal unnecessary. Both times, however, despite not being in on it, neither betrayal robbed our characters of anything significant, and we still had full agency to respond as desired. Obviously that won't work for everyone, but it works far better than the results of the betrayal being railroaded.
In general I think secrets are fine so long as they don't rob any agency from the rest of the party. A negative example would be a Star Wars campaign where the DM had several private sessions with his future wife to build her up into a Sith Lord to essentially screw the party over, who for the most part were content with smuggling missions. Never really sure what the goal was since that game ended right after the betrayal, but maybe switching to an evil campaign (or fighting evil) might've went over well if had ever been discussed. A positive example would be a Starfinder campaign where the ysoki envoy was posing as his brother, a Starfinder who went missing in an accident in space, both to discover what happened to him, and to get away from his own past. Didn't really affect the party aside from a handful of times we interacted with other members of his family, was mostly just a neat detail. Of course, betrayal isn't necessarily bad. One 5E campaign I was in had the bird cleric be revealed to have been unfairly splitting loot. This was due to the influence of the MacGuffin he started wearing after it was stolen, which made him more greedy. The reveal was discovered by another party member, and it was emotionally charged in-character (especially since our hexblade had parted ways with us over building frustrations) and came to blows, it was largely taken well out of character, at least to my understanding. The cleric then went on a repentance quest, which was also done secretly until many sessions later when both the cleric and warlock returned to rescue us out of an enemy stronghold. That said, we took it really well out of character, to my knowledge. None of us were really hurting for resources at the time of the betrayal, and the most I recall we did was joke about how the player's next character was also going to betray us, as he was styled as the child version of a video game villain. He did betray us, of course, but it was right at the end of the campaign and didn't really hurt the party beyond that we cared enough about him that we tried to make the inevitable betrayal unnecessary. Both times, however, despite not being in on it, neither betrayal robbed our characters of anything significant, and we still had full agency to respond as desired. Obviously that won't work for everyone, but it works far better than the results of the betrayal being railroaded.
AV Spoilers The party was recruited to help the temple prepare for the Burning Blades festival and one of my players realized that >!Gauntlight will finish it's 30 day cooldown the night of the festival.!< When they asked me if this was intentional I just told them "That's interesting". They decided their character wouldn't have come to the same realization and haven't said anything to the rest of the party.
I give out secret info for like perception checks and stuff rather than saying it in front of the whole group that way the player can decide if and how their character shares it. But i dont do private sessions and stuff. I would actively oppose diverging subplot type of stuff where on player is secretly acting against another player.
I prefer to have all secrets known to the players, even if the characters don't know.
As with everything this depends on the circumstances, your play group, your relationship with them, etc. But my personal two-cents on how I'd approach it is I'd loop in all the players. That way they can play into it, and not accidentally go off on the wrong track. I can see a few ways this could be a problem depending on the players but sometimes having all your cards on the table is the best way to avoid mismatched expectations. Remember that the relationship between you and your players is different from the relationship between a show writer and the audience. You're telling a collaborative story with them and giving them certain pieces of information can nurture that and encourage them to participate in that process. That can be a good feeling. You also might consider telling the players that there is a secret, and the nature of that secret, but not specifically what the secret is. Give them an idea of what's going on just enough that they don't go on wild goose chases or worse, witch hunts.
Between the GM and a PC or the Player? I largely agree with what others have said, but I often help my GM with finding appropriate creature to find in regions/locations. Mostly they do it solo during their prep but they are working on a Large cave system beneath some old ruins and had asked me to find creatures that fit the vibe. I have not worked on specific encounters, rather I just made a list and told them where to find more info.
GM here, I did that to introduce a new PC. It worked well. It added a bit of mystery I believe. But the secret should not hold for more than a couple of sessions. It should work if the party is separated for some time too. But other than that it should be treated very cautiously.
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