Secrets in IC game - how to handle

[SpaceBadger]

Several of the characters in our SBRD campaign have secrets, ranging from character hobbies that they simply have not chosen to reveal yet, to portions of their character career background that might get them in trouble with the law and/or their fellow-PCs.

Had one of those come up in-game this afternoon, just had the contact occur out in the kitchen where the other player could not hear. Now I am looking at how to follow up on this - either keep pulling the mixed-loyalty player aside to the kitchen if at home, or send PMs if we can get things going again in the IC?

Any more subtle suggestions?

 

[HiverLord]

I think it would depend on the other players.

Traveller gamers are smart, of course, and they will quickly realize something is 'up' if you keep pulling the other player aside. It could make for some interesting roleplay; it could also lead to a big fracas. (I obviously don't know the personalities involved.)

You could try the PM option; everyone seems to be distracted by that sort of thing during a game, so it might not be noticed as quickly. It might be a good idea to arrange it with the player to 'delay' his response via pm if possible; someone will likely notice both of you sending messages in succession, but that really depends on how secret the player wants to keep things.
(Not sure at this early hour of any other possibilities; off to work I go...)

 

[CosmicGamer]

How do you handle any other time the characters are split up where one can be doing something without the other knowing? Some groups do have people step out of the room. If that isn't what you commonly do for keeping information about what is happening that other characters wouldn't know from the players of those characters, then I don't see why you'd need to do anything differently for these "secrets".

Overall, it's a roll playing game and there is no reason experienced and mature players can't know something and still role play their characters as not knowing.

 

[atpollard]

I don't know if this is relevant at all, but my gaming group once played a short adventure that we called "THE GAME". Loosely inspired by some old CT JTAS contact or adventure that I read where some NPC dies and hands something to a player's character.

In THE GAME, every player had a character and every character had TWO generated character identities. In one identity, the character was a member of a secret organization ... from law enforcement to corporate security to a contract hit man. In the other identity, the character had a 'cover' that he was using. There were several cross plots going on - an attempt to steal a prototype, a political defector, that sort of stuff. What tied them all together was being on a large commercial liner travelling from one port to another. To make matters just a little more interesting, since every character had access to an intelligence network of one sort or another, I generated a matrix for each character of who every passenger claimed to be and what their security organization uncovered about that character. Some covers survived the security check, some partially held and just turned up something suspicious and some were broken, revealing who the character really was.

In actual play, each player had to play along with both their false identity and the identity that each other passenger claimed to be. At the same time, every player was aware that at least some of the other players were aware that their character was not who they seemed ... but who was a natural ally, who was a natural adversary, who had nothing to do with you?

This setup generated a need to play on two levels at all times. The players needed to communicate openly with the referee and other players about what was obvious, and secretly with the referee and sometimes just one other player about what was happening in secret.

Secret communication was most often handled by passing notes to the referee. Players sometimes heard (and enjoyed watching) events that they needed to keep their characters ignorant of. There was a strong element of 'the honor system' required (which is what I would expect of a group of friends gathered to have fun). Technology assisted in throwing a surprise or two into the game when one of the players had to leave, but continued to play by calling in to get an update and set a bunch of "If this happens then my character does that" scenarios.

Specific advice to help with your game ...
1. It is not practical to keep the players from knowing that SOMETHING is going on, so be open, mature and friendly about it. Everyone should probably be willing to let a player have some special fun with the expectation that the favor will be returned if their character has a similar opportunity/need.

2. Pass notes. Do not underestimate the usefulness of communicating 'what ifs' to the referee to invoke as needed.

3. Back in the day, we had phones ... today, you have iphones that can send and receive text messages. High tech notes might be an option.

4. You are correct that some times, the Ref and player may need to step out for a secret moment. See #1 and the group should understand.

Hopefully, some of that will be helpful.

 

[SpaceBadger]

Thanks for the replies. This was actually a scene in our SBRD game, that I am writing up to include in the IC thread. We have had several scenes like this where one or another character wasn't present, so the player would know but the character would not, and have not had any problem so far. The difference here is that the scene involved part of the character's secret background that other players do not know about, and I think it would be hard to set that knowledge aside in continued dealings with the character as part of the crew.

OTOH, our IC action on the forum has slowed down to almost nothing w Sabredog and Sam taking breaks for busy RL activity, Dave seriously ill, and Fritz mysteriously dropping out of sight. That leaves us with three active players, and since two of them already know the secret, I guess I can depend on the third (that would be you, ATPollard) to keep player knowledge separate from character knowledge.

Now if I can just get Chaos to remind me of a few details (it was late at night, toward the end of the session, and I had a headache) then I can write it up for IC, hoping to get us all back on the same page and get the action moving again.
Hoping to get all of that written up and posted some time today, so as soon as the freight inspection/unloading is finished we can move on to some new stuff!