Secret communication with the master

[gilbertocarlos]

Make people think is someone else.
So, there would be 5 players, 3 standard, 1 you, and 1 target.

The GM should call the target to another room once per game and simply stay there for 2 minutes talking about the weather, meanwhile, you go to the bathroom, or drink a glass of water, or pick up a snack, and write a secret message to the GM and hide it somewhere previously agreed, when he goes to the bathroom, he'll take up the note.

Now you are communicating with him, and at the same time, the target will be blamed.

If you think it's not a good idea to have just 1 target, alternate between you 5.

[Miles]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

So will pulling out your phone in the middle of the game to text the GM, or having your phone go off when the GM texts you. (It would be just plain rude to send non-game-related texts while you're sitting at the table.) Technological note-passing isn't any different from physical note-passing. You'll still need to use the same chaffing techniques, sending occasional notes to all players with contents meaningful or not, as well as having all players send the GM notes occasionally. Otherwise the traffic analysis makes it too obvious that something secret is going on, whether that's bits of paper changing hands or beeps and boops and people looking at their phone.

This is something that's going to depend a lot on the mores of your gaming group. With the people I play with, there's enough casual phone and computer usage (during lulls in play, asides, and moments where a given PC is off-screen), to allow for pulling out a phone. Then it's just a matter of setting phones to silent.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Miles

Then it's just a matter of setting phones to silent.

If the phones are silent, how does anyone know that someone just sent them a message? Perhaps the GM's busy with a scene, and he won't notice your secret action until it's too late. The phone needs to alert for incoming messages (or equivalently, you get the physical activity of dropping a note in front of someone to alert them).

My point was just that technology doesn't really change the dynamic if we're talking about face-to-face play. If the players are all remote, in an online game, then you can get truly secret message-passing. (Just don't get the whisper address wrong!)

I certainly agree that groups can do whatever works for them, and that in most cases it's going to involve some degree of firewalling the OOC knowledge that (at a minimum) something secret is going on.