Roleplayer #11, August
1988
Secrets
A New Disadvantage for GURPS
by Craig Russell
A Secret is some aspect of your past that you must keep hidden. Were
it made public, the information could harm your reputation, ruin your career,
wreck your friendships and possibly even threaten your life! In game terms,
a Secret is essentially a set of "latent" disadvantages (usually
Reputations, Enemies, Social Stigmas or reduced Status).
The GM may wish to restrict or even prohibit Secrets if he feels they would
disrupt the flow of his campaign.
Severity
The point value of a Secret depends on the consequences if the Secret is
revealed. The worse the results, the higher the value, as follows:
Serious Embarrassment. If this information gets around, you can
forget about ever getting a promotion, getting elected or marrying well.
-5 points.
Utter Rejection. If your Secret is discovered, your whole life will
be changed. You would almost certainly lose your job and be rejected by
friends and loved ones. -10 points.
Imprisonment or Exile. If the authorities uncover your Secret, you'll
be imprisoned for a long time (GM's discretion). -20 points.
Possible Death. Your Secret is so terrible that you would be executed
by the authorities, lynched by a mob or assassinated by the Mob if it were
ever revealed. -30 points.
Revealing a Secret
If a Secret is ever made public, there will be an immediate negative effect,
as described above, ranging from embarrassment to possible death. Furthermore,
there is a lasting effect as well -- you suddenly acquire new, permanent
disadvantages whose point value equals twice that of the Secret
itself! The points from these new disadvantages go first to buy off the
Secret, and may then (at the GM's option only) be used to buy off other
disadvantages or (rarely) to buy new advantages. Any unused points are lost,
and the character's point value is reduced.
The new disadvantages acquired must be appropriate to the Secret and should
be determined (with the GM's assistance) when the character is created.
Most Secrets turn into Enemies, bad Reputations and Social Stigmas. They
might also reduce your Status or Wealth -- going from Filthy Rich to merely
Very Wealthy is effectively a -10 point disadvantage. Some Secrets could
even turn into mental or physical disadvantages, though this would be rare.
Similarly, if the GM allows you to buy off old disadvantages with the new
points, these too must be appropriate to the Secret. The most common disadvantages
that could be bought off are Duties and Dependents.
Example: Dorene Lewis is a Roaring '20s socialite in the Deep South.
She married well (Status +2 and Wealthy). However, she has a Secret: She
is a member of a pagan coven. Although the rites of her group are not ''evil''
(no blood sacrifices, no ''curses'' cast, and so on), her husband and her
whole town would recoil in horror. Not only is the coven non-Christian .
. . not only does it conduct many of its rites outdoors, in the nude . .
. but two of the members are black. If her Secret became known, she would
lose her place in society -- in effect, she would be exiled from everyone
and every place she knows.
Her Secret is worth -20 points. Thus, if it does become public, she will
acquire -40 points in disadvantages. These will include a -15 point
Social Stigma, loss of her 5-point Status, and loss of her 20-point Wealth
level -- a total of -40 points. The first 20 points of that buy off the
Secret itself. The remaining 20 points could be used to buy off other disadvantages,
but the GM rules that none of Dorene's other disadvantages are appropriate.
Thus, her point total is reduced by 20 points -- if she were a 100-point
character, she would become only an 80-point character if her Secret were
revealed.
Secrets as Patrons
Secrets can also be tied into the character concept in other ways. In this
particular case, Dorene 's coven is a Patron; if she gets into trouble,
she can often get aid from her co-religionists (who turn up in the oddest
places). In some cases (not in Dorene's), the revelation of the secret would
mean the loss of the Patron.
GMing Secrets
In general, a Secret appears in a particular game session if the GM rolls
a 6 or less on 3 dice before the adventure begins. However, as for all
other disadvantages of this type, the GM need not feel constrained
by the appearance roll -- if you think the Secret should come into play,
it does!
When a Secret appears, it is not necessarily made public. The character
must somehow prevent the Secret from being revealed. This may require him
to cave in to blackmail or extortion, to steal the incriminating documents,
or even to kill the person who knows the Secret. Regardless of the solution,
however, it's only temporary -- the Secret will appear again and again until
it is finally bought off. Secrets may be bought off either automatically
through exposure (see above), or with character points over the course of
play.
Example: As a young patrolman, Police Sergeant O'Reilly once accepted
a bribe to allow a woman to see the key witness in a Mob trial. O'Reilly
thought she was just the witness's mistress; to his dismay, she turned out
to be a killer. O'Reilly's involvement has never been discovered, but the
Mob hitman knows -- and, on occasion, she's used her leverage over O'Reilly
to obtain inside help from the police force. When O'Reilly's Secret "appears,"
the assassin could ask him for money, information or even direct assistance
in a hit. Even if O'Reilly kills or otherwise silences the woman, her Mob
friends also know about O'Reilly's Secret, and they too will use
the knowledge to their advantage. O'Reilly would have to buy off the Secret
with character points to be permanently secure.
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