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Q&A "You found a cursed ring!" How do I let the player roleplay it without spilling the beans to everyone prematurely?

The most relevant question is, why would you not let everyone know. The best way to answer is to consider what are the creative priorities for this group playing this campaign here and now, and wha...

posted 3y ago by tommi‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar tommi‭ · 2021-09-01T11:39:00Z (about 3 years ago)
The most relevant question is, why would you not let everyone know. The best way to answer is to consider what are the creative priorities for this group playing this campaign here and now, and what different levels and techniques will give or take from those creative priorities. Why do we keep playing precisely this game, with these rules, in the game world? How would secret information affect this?

Most of the time dramatic irony, where the character does not know something but the player does, is more interesting than the paranoia or lack of knowledge and the (often not quite as dramatic as hoped for) revelation. This same rule of thumb applies to secrets between players in general. Are they really worth it? To many people, no, not really.

There are a few cases where secrets are often a good idea.

# Very strong player-character identification
Some games, remarkably certain immersive larps and jeepform/structured "freeform" games, aim at players experiencing strong emotions. They might rely on such hidden information, but typically the information is well-prepared and the entire scenario is built around the conceit. Information imparted as a character description is a well-used technique.

This suggests: take a break. This gives you a lot more room to figure out how to communicate the thing. Maybe send an electronic message, maybe talk to the player during the break, maybe write several players something to read. As an extra bonus, the break will not be as disruptive as a rare gimmicky thing like secrets notes that are unusual for the game. Of course, if secret notes are business as usual, there is little need to have a pause.

# Competitive play with hidden information
Your game does not sound like a competitive case of Paranoia or Amber diceless throne war, but in case it is, there should be secret knowledge flying every which way anyway. Notes, some decoys and some not, are the standard way. Sending them electronically is probably an alterntive worth considering.

# Players trying to win and the game master trying to tell their story
I have no particular reason to believe this to be the case with the question, but I add this for the sake of completion.

This is the classical dysfunctional rpg set-up where the players are doing their best to "win" while the game master is not there to play, but rather to tell a story to the others. Here, the fear is that the players will "abuse" meta-information and you should not give it to them, or otherwise it will "ruin your story". In this case I would advise a frank look and discussion about what you are all doing, playing this game, since it does not seem that you agree. Any tricks will fail to fix the underlaying problem of lack of creative coherence.

A surprising amount of generic GM advice assumes this kind of creative dynamic, so it is good to keep it in mind when reading such.