Secret communication with the master

[Lyonid]

Good afternoon everybody;
A friend of mine and I are planning a particular 5-players campaign. It will be setted in a universe similar to the one of Warhammer 40.000. The particularity will be that one of the players (me) will secretly be a Chaos Agent, infiltrated in the party.
Now, it seems obvious that I will not be able to freely tell the master everything my PG is going to do, because this would reveal his identity to other players. So we need a way to communicate secretly. Any idea?????
Thank you all in advance!!!

[starslayer]

Passing notes always works. But for a bit of humor you could say that you character had the disadvantage 'airways makes terrible what if statements' and clear a hand signal with the gm for when a what if statement is actually something your PC is doing.

Play example you rib your nose 'what if the engine breaks down while we are in warp?'. Gm secretly rolls your skill tobsabotage the engine.

[Gedrin]

In 40k you might want to avoid making any "prophetic statements" or the like in character, particularly if they're bad. It would be perfectly in character for people to decide you're chaos tainted/psychic/mutant/weird/heresy of the week, and cause all manner of problems. I'm pretty sure people with free time are executed in the Empire on the grounds of "Idle hands are the devil's playground".

Passing notes is probably the easiest way to go, but you might want to ask the GM to pass occasional notes to all the players. I've found this to be an ideal solution when group paranoia and masking a particular note passing is called for.

[Apollonian]

You could also trust the other players to keep OOC and IC knowledge separate, and just say, e.g., "Marco sneaks away for a quick confer with his Secret Masters via subspace radio."

But maybe that's just my group.

[Litvyak]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

You could also trust the other players to keep OOC and IC knowledge separate, and just say, e.g., "Marco sneaks away for a quick confer with his Secret Masters via subspace radio."

But maybe that's just my group.

That would be how I would handle it. I'm all for PC vs PC strife and treachery, but prefer such machinations be out in the open at the OOC level.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Litvyak

That would be how I would handle it. I'm all for PC vs PC strife and treachery, but prefer such machinations be out in the open at the OOC level.

Ditto.


Unless I'm running Paranoia or Amber. Then the it's more about player's paranoia and [friendly] rivalry than character's paranoia and rivalry. ;)

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Unless I'm running Paranoia or Amber. Then the it's more about player's paranoia and [friendly] rivalry than character's paranoia and rivalry. ;)

With games like Paranoia these days, it's better to "pass notes" via texting or IM (if players bring laptops or phones).

[Puppetminion]

Wibo220 reported as probable spam

[SiLent]

This is 2014, use whatsapp, sms or anything like that. Passing notes will just get the other players thinking "wtf is this guy being so secretive about" and call unwanted attention upon you. Use ur cellphone and no one will give a ****.

That's just my 2 cents.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by SiLent

Passing notes will just get the other players thinking "wtf is this guy being so secretive about"

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.

Secret messages work on virtual tabletops because the players aren't co-located, and so can't tell whether or not there's any extra traffic. They're closer in face-to-face play where you're still using the software, because at least everyone already has their computer out all the time and you're using the same interface to pass the secret data along with public game-related data. The extra typing is still likely to be a problem, though.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

You could also trust the other players to keep OOC and IC knowledge separate, and just say, e.g., "Marco sneaks away for a quick confer with his Secret Masters via subspace radio.

There's a useful intermediate state of firewalling where the players can manage not to react to the occurrence of some unknown event, yet still don't have to know exactly what that event was. You can still enjoy the mystery and lack of complete knowledge. Even though you know OOC something's up, you don't have to know OOC exactly what that something is. Also makes firewalling that much easier.