thread: 2009-06-17 : Secrets
On 2009-06-22, Simon Rogers wrote:
Luke: The other players have taken a piece of game mechanic "Make another player crazy" and formed a secret/plan about it. They're allowing it to affect their play and color the fiction they're creating. But until the target buys in, it's just noise. If she buys in, there's fruit for the labors—it all makes sense.
The downside of this interpretation is that if she never finds out, the secret has certainly impacted play without being revealed to her, even though the others know it. There are many secrets which impact on play which not all the other players find out about, usually between GM and player. Usually they are revealed, often, not.
The secrets in SAJ are also an example of this; as GM I went through the entire game doing my damndest not even to bother taking notice of what the slaves' agendas were - after all, would any slave-holding NPCs even care? It was quite liberating (if you'll pardon the expression) to let the players get on with their plans without me even knowing what they were. In the last scenes of the game I found out a couple of the players' secrets, but certainly not all. "Shared fiction" is not always shared by everyone, and sometimes a secret can impact a game without it ever being revealed at all.
