It’s summer, regular-game groups slow down, so I’ll pull a few one-shots out of my hat.
In general, with one-shots I put individual goals/secret for each character, as part of my preparation. It helps create game, and give a way to player to engage without having a character they know.
In the excellent The space between us the secret roles are de-correlated from the public character, which is great in term of replay ability (And TSBU is one of the best (LA) RP experience I had. So play it if you haven’t, I can’t wait an occasion to replay-it)
In 10 candles, the GM doesn’t know the secret of each character as the I’ve seen you are written by your right neighbour
I was thinking about pushing that concept further, preparing the main-character, then the secret-roles, put the secret roles in an envelope, and ask each player to draw an envelope. So as a GM, I don’t know each PC’s secret.
Has anyone ever-tried it ?
I’m a big fan of “secrets and powers” style LARPs that do just this. I had a great experience playing Better Living Through Robotics a few years back that I still remember. Some really profound revelation of secrets.
Hidden secrets are cool, just make sure everyone knows it’s part of the game going in, because some people are not into it. Also make sure you have some alternates and allow people to opt out of a specific secret if it doesn’t work for them for a variety of reasons.