Hello Gamer Nation!

In my new campaign I have a player who would like to keep the Force-sensitivity of his character a secret from the other players until it is revealed in-game. One idea we had was to have him make Force rolls ahead of time that I keep recorded (so hopefully he will forget them when the session comes around). Any thoughts on this solution, or any other suggestions?

Thanks!

-Lauguz

What's the power they intended to use? Can they not use force talents to generate similar effects without being so obvious?

Might be tricky if he ends up having dice committed, since then you essentially have to pick and choose. Besides, it doesn't really do much for more active powers that you need to choose effects for and which upgrades to activate and such.

I'd recommend good ol' fashion note passing. Or texting/instant messaging.

the best way to handle this is probably to let it be out in the open out of character, but to emphasize that IN-CHARACTER, this isn't something he's told anyone. That way, your groupmates "buy in" to the narrative ahead of time.

You can also use the dice rolling app. That way he can roll the dice appropriately, but not reveal *which* dice he's rolling.

But seriously, maintaining the in-character/out-of-character knowledge break is best. Players keeping secrets about their characters from other players is a mess and can be one of the most disruptive issues at the table.

Seriously, as a community of gamers, we should just be past that.

Hey Guys,

Using the dice roller app is an awesome suggestion. I've got it but the player doesn't (and probably wont get enough value to justify the purchase), but I think he'd be cool with me rolling his pool and texting him the results.

And although I appreciate everyone chiming in I'm a little surprised that the general comment has been "wrongfun, don't do it". I've been gaming for almost 36 years (Holmes Basic, Summer of '79!), and that is no guarantee I'm not an ass hat who doesn't know what he's doing in the GM seat, I've got thousands of hours of GMing and I think I know what I'm doing.

That said, I believe that the game should challenge the player as much or more than the character, and things that are a surprise to the players are more fun than things that are a surprise to the characters. This isnt an arbitrary decision and I think the fun of the surprise factor is worth the secrecy. We're not plotting to have the Thief steal from the party here, we're planning a dramatic reveal that is going to be a great moment in the campaign.

-Lauguz

The game culture has changed in the last 35 years. Knowing your background I probably would not have wrote what I did, but it doesn't change my mind. Players keeping secrets from other players is one of biggest time-wastes I've seen in my substantially smaller amount of experience role-playing, only 20 years (more than half of that behind the screen).

If your table thinks that style is fun, then do it, but I'm honestly a bit surprised that they would think that style is fun AND you wouldn't have a system in place to circumvent the issues you're talking about. Also, your OP stated it was the player that wanted to keep it secret (which typically SCREAMS trouble), not that both of you wanted to keep it secret for dramatic purpose. The latter is quite a bit different than the former.

Edit: misspelled "your". I HATE that.

I am really curious, even with the Force rolls happening in advance, what will happen if the player's PC is in a combat encounter and it is time for the PC to act? Or will the Force rolls you do be strictly non-combat? I'm imagining a scenario where the PC pre-rolled Force Move usage, and then during the PC's action...how will that be narrated? The PC stands there while objects fly around? Without the *players* knowing what's going on?

Basically, if these rolls are for combat, the PC's action will be very difficult to mask (for players, not PCs).

You've used your maneuver and now you have an action - what do you do?

I stand here doing nothing!

OK, a metal beam flies past you and knocks out the stormtroopers in front of you.

If they're strictly non-combat, I could see it working, but still clunky, because you decide how to use your Force power after you've activated them and seen the result of the roll. What you do with the result will change depending on the situation. Even if both the player and GM have the results of the rolls in front of them, the usage can't be pre-defined, unless you're on straight-up rails. In which case, how are rails fun?

Regardless, the idea is cool. I don't think anyone is saying wrongfun, in fact, I think there are enough people here who wish something like that could be made to work easily, but most see practical issues with it. If you do manage to pull it off, and think it went well, please post a follow up here because I'd love to know how you guys executed it!

Skills like sense have rather subtle combat functions (upgrade difficulty to hit, for example), but I think you hit the nail on the head: If you're constantly using some non-verbal communication with the GM, regardless of what the form of that communication is, it's pretty obvious something is up to the rest of the players. And, I would think in a Star Wars game the reason should be pretty obvious...

And yes, it's clunky as h*ll in or out of combat.

Hello Gamer Nation!

In my new campaign I have a player who would like to keep the Force-sensitivity of his character a secret from the other players until it is revealed in-game. One idea we had was to have him make Force rolls ahead of time that I keep recorded (so hopefully he will forget them when the session comes around). Any thoughts on this solution, or any other suggestions?

Thanks!

-Lauguz

These sorts of shenanigans are always fun. Plan out a few secret signals in advance. Words or phrases that the player can inconspicuously sneak into what they say to convey things like "use Move" or "do I Sense anything". You can become surprisingly adept with such things and they reduce the amount of note passing. But do note passing as well. Just make sure you pass notes to several players so it's not obvious one player is special. It might not seem viable, all of this, but in a typical session you don't actually make that many Force rolls so it can work well. If the player trusts you to make a few rolls and very low-level decisions on their part, then it should be entirely doable to pull this off.

Nice idea. I've always enjoyed surprising players and it's nice when one of them will actually help you with it.

Honestly, I've done the whole "keep the fact my PC is a Force user a secret" a number of times, and frankly it's generally just a lot easier to do as LethalDose suggested and simply go with "the players know, but their characters do not."

The secret rolls can be either time-consuming or a pain in the arse, and savvy players will be able to suss out that the PC is a Force user pretty quickly.

Now letting the rest of the group be unaware of your PC being in possession of a lightsaber... that's another story, so long as you're willing to keep the lightsaber out of view until the moment comes when you really need to boot some head

This happened in the last SAGA campaign I ran. One of the PCs was secretly trained in the Jedi arts, but the other players all knew. Fortunately, he only waited until the second combat encounter to whip out his saber, and the rest of the table, being good RP'ers, had their characters react appropriately. I think it worked better that way since it gave the other players time to figure out how their characters would react. If the player actually surprises the rest of the table, it may fall flat or set the wrong intra-party vibe.

I'm going to have to chime in with everyone who says that it will work better if the other players know, while their characters do not. In three and a half decades of playing RPGs (and nearly as long running them), I have yet to see an incident of players keeping secrets from one another that didn't either cause party tension or really disrupt the story. The thing is, you want the characters to be surprised, but if the players are surprised, they may not be able to properly act out what their characters would think or do at the moment.

I think the easiest way to really pull this off is for the player to only use powers that require Committing a Force Die like Sense.

In this scenario it's easy for the GM to assume when it is and isn't being used and to adjust dice pools accordingly.

This also fits narratively because uses of the force that require Committing a Force Die are also usually really subtle.