Because I was teaching the game I took first Authority. For the opening sequence I narrated how young Stanislaw over hears Lidia complaining to Branislov that the “coward” Konrad came around accusing her of stealing his scroll. I then immediately rolled straight into a Violence sequence in which I created a new Character, a German SS officer named Carston. Carston was attempting to haul Konrad and Ludweka away. But in the end the Violence was minor and the SS officer was chased off with minor injury.

Authority passed to Will and we got our first conflict that I think setup the entire (really sad) theme of the game. Stanislaw wanted to convince Konrad that he needed stand up and join the fight. He succeeded and added that Ludweka wanted to join the Grey Ranks.

Colin wanted to take the Revelation mechanics out for a spin and low behold on the walk to military headquarters Ludweka reveals that Carston is her uncle whom she thought was dead.

At the military encampment Santislaw gets into his first (of many) conflicts with Lidia who wants sole jurisdiction over looking into this mysterious SS agent. She wins and Stanislaw goes back to his Grey Rank duties. Patrick really set the tone for Lidia in this scene to the point that people kept wanting him to play Lidia when he wasn’t the Authority. Most of us came to really not like Lidia I think.

Authority passes to Laura who proceeds introduce the most brutal element of the whole game. She narrates that Stanislaw is out with his cousin and fellow Grey Rank “Zeta” and they’ve been sent to check up on Ludweka who has not returned from her first mission of delivering some important documents. They arrive to find that she’s been brutally tortured and killed and her documents have been stolen.

At this point we have all three Crimes for our novella in play: The Theft of Konrad’s scroll, A Collaboration against Konrad (i.e someone leaking information that gets him in trouble), and finally the Murder of Ludweka. Actually at this point we knew the Perpetrator of the Collaboration was Carston which introduced a bit of a problem. How can a German SS officer be a…. German collaborator…… we tried to introduce a Mistaken Identity but the rules state that only swaps the name of a Victim not a Perpetrator…. You’ll see how this worked out in a bit.

It should be noted that it became a really big deal that Ludweka died before she received her official Grey Rank name. That she died for her cause, “nameless.” This became an oft repeated and very sad meme.

Things got rapidly complicated from here… Turns out:

Konrad and Lidia are moving valuable art objects out of the country using Ludweka as a go between.

Carston has a fraternal twin brother named Merek and the two can be confused. Merek is Ludweka’s father. He impersonated Carston in an effort to extract Ludweka.

This has put much animosity between Carston and Merek as Merek’s actions have jeopardized the fact that Carston is really working with the Russians exchanging valuables for information

But! Carston is really a double agent passing secrets back to the Germans passed in the valuable objects. Secrets placed in the valuable objects by Branislov covering his deliveries as just part of Lidia’s profiteering scheme.

In particular these are Jewish artifacts that are being passed so that the Germans may frame certain non-jewish individuals and have grounds to arrest them.

How it all ends….

Lidia forces Stanislaw to swear allegiance to the people’s army but when forced to choose between his new communist comrades and his Grey Rank peers he sides with the Grey Ranks.

Stanislaw manages to prove to Lidia that Branislov is a traitor and indeed is the one who tortured Ludweka for her secret documents.

However, it turns out that Ludweka committed suicide after her brutal treatment from the pain and the guilt of the activities she’d participated in. We nudged the rules a bit here and decided that another Grey Rank was there who put Ludweka out of her misery but that it was at Ludweka’s insistence and decision.

Stanislaw exposes Lidia’s profiteering and other shady dealings to her fellow People’s Army members who jeer her out in humiliation.

Merek eventually shoots and kills Carston largely in self defense.

Merek tries to commit suicide shortly there after but Stanislaw stops him (barely, Merek is still critically injured). Note: This was an interesting scene because Colin called for a Conflict and set his Goal as: “I want to care enough to stop him” which was brutally tragic.

Notice at this point that all the crimes have been solved except the original Theft which was rapidly seeming trivial. I was the Authority over a scene between Zeta and Stanislaw where Zeta had to urge Stanislaw to go on if only because, “Truth and Justice are Truth Justice regardless of the state of the world” and so that he could, “Sleep at night.”

Stanislaw goes to interrogate Branislov whose been arrested by the People’s Army. Branislov is shot and killed when he attacks Stanislaw. Sanislaw finds the stolen scroll on his body.

Stanislaw returns the scroll to Konrad who is fleeing the country (after being shot and injured by Branislov earlier in the story). Stanislaw wishes him well on his journey (a total turn around from his absolute patriotism on the matter earlier on in the story).

The final scene involved the Grey Ranks raiding Branislov’s apartment and finding a ledger of all the various artifacts he had stolen. There in the ledger is listed Konrad’s scroll. Zeta brings the ledger to Stanislaw and just says, “So you can sleep at night.”

What I really enjoyed about this story was Stanislaw’s slow transformation from a one-note idealist patriot into a more complex individual. A good chunk of the conflicts involved characters co-opting each other into their person agenda under the guise of patriotism. It was really sad to see Stanislaw slowly realize that all these people who are supposed to be on the same “side” aren’t really all on the same side after all.

Jesse

In terms of accomplishing Grey Ranks with Dirty Secrets I think I would rate the whole thing as a solid 7. It did tragic war story very well but I think it lacked some of the romantic texturing you would get out of doing Grey Ranks straight. I've listened to 10 minutes of a Grey Ranks game totally out of context and felt like crying before. Unless you count "Patriotism" as "A thing held dear" we didn't see Stanislaw sacrificing much of himself or what he cared for as the game went on to accomplish his goals.

But just as a game experience in general I rate it much higher closer to a 9 or even 10. It was a great time and I think it demonstrates that Dirty Secrets can be used to create compelling narratives in any setting where human betrayal and deceit is at the forefront of the conflicts.

Jesse

Do I get bonus points for coming in first?

Dirty Secrets is getting a lot of play. It may have to go on "the list" - the list of games I should buy, that is.

I knew this combo would be powerful from the get go. There is a lot to chew on at both ends - Grey Ranks and Dirty Secrets.

In games focused on tregedy how well does your group dole out the pain? Were there any dissappointments with plot twists or the way things went?

Thanks,
- Don

Hey, Jesse. Great writeup! This is really exciting. I don't have time to comment right now, but I'll be back with more comments.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: Jesse
Laura also was a little shocked by the direction the Lidia character took. But I don't think that was "disappointment" per se.

Ludwika, not Lidia. L-name, L-name -- yeah. When Ludwika originally hit the table, I envisioned this Innocent caught up in the roiling terrors of a besieged Warsaw. And then I think it was Patrick? Who suddenly introduced the plotline that Ludwika was actually in on the smuggling/profiteering operation. And by that point Lidia was already A Villain, so then that suddenly coloured my entire perspective of who/what Ludwika was (which prompted the outburst you're no doubt remembering of "No, wait, what? Not Ludwika, no!")

In the end, it still worked out for me: Lidia was blackmailing Ludwika to do her bidding, which the guilt of drove Ludwika to commit her suicide. She remained the innocent if tainted girl, the catalyst that drove Grom to realize that there is more to war then Nationalistic unity.

I was disappointed when she turned out to be in it more for herself than for her cause, true. Don't get me wrong: I was disappointed in A LOT of the moral choices the Authority Characters made and the actions they took. I mean, hello, 22 year old Lidia gave 15 year old Ludwika as a "gift" to an SS Officer to bribe him. That's some karmatic bad news bears, right the hell there.

I just meant that, as far as radical reinterpretations of how I originally perceived a character to be by my fellow Authority players, Ludwika's story and past really spun me around. Didn't everyone else see her as I saw her?! She couldn't -possibly- be caught up in Lidia and Konrad and Branislov's scheming! She was just too Inherently Good! And stuff! I bet! Which is why the end cap of her being blackmailed into it "fixed" that for me. Lidia I had less firm belief's in, so when she went Bad, it was a surprise but didn't wholly rock my worldview.

Posted By: Jason MorningstarNow we're talking! Laura, have you played Dirty Secrets straight? I'm wondering how much of this is setting chocolate and how much is system peanut butter.

No, I haven't played straight Dirty Secrets and I'm not entirely sure I really want to. The conceptual setting for DS is "your home town, last week". And I'll be dead frank here: I roleplay to -escape- my home town: this week, last week, next week -- escape period. I really liked and enjoyed the specific crimes-driven focus DS brought to the table, but for me - much like Will said - this was very much a Gray Ranks game I played with Dirty Secrets rules.

I'd be completely down for doing a mash-up like this again, using that crime-driven Dirty Secrets focus in another setting, but the idea of playing Costa Mesa Noir doesn't really appeal to me.

Posted By: JesseHowever, it turns out that Ludweka committed suicide after her brutal treatment from the pain and the guilt of the activities she’d participated in. We nudged the rules a bit here and decided that another Grey Rank was there who put Ludweka out of her misery but that it was at Ludweka’s insistence and decision.

Assuming that the other Grey Rank wasn't a Character, this is kosher by the rules. Er, at least with the spirit of the rules. In this case, I'd see the other person as the instrument of Ludweka's will, but Ludweka's moral agency is primarily in view.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: Great Wolf
I can understand that others might not see things this way. If you really don't like the default setting, you could easily hackDirty Secretsinto being a period piece (e.g.L.A. Confidential) or mix it with another genre (e.g.Dresden FilesorBlade Runner). Honestly, your experiment right here proves that this is easily done.

I have this back burner project called Grimmnoir. It was conceived from a combination of a off hand comment made to me by Laura one day and my personal disappointment with Fae Noir. It's supposed to be hard boiled detective fiction set in a fairy tale world. You know, the knight in shining armor uncovers the corruption behind prince charming kind of thing.

My first step will be to play Dirty Secrets with a Fairy Tale veneer just to see what I what out of Grimmnoir that just doing that exercise alone won't provide.

Jesse

Good stuff, guys. Laura's answers was what I was looking for in my question. Collaborative characters seem to be the new sliced bread for many story games. I certainly did it for my horror game.

You'll see in my Psi-Run game and soon in the playtest of my Contenders "variant, Survivors! that my wife is struggling with shared ownership. A few of the folks that I play with have the same concerns in many of these games, where the character goes off in a direction you really don't expect - the key there is that they are expecting instead of "holding lightly." I was wondering if anyone in Jesse's game ran into that problem for games like Dirty Secrets.

I love it. Even before I drank the SG koolaid I always encouraged my players to leave swathes of backstory open so we could explore them and I could fill in complicated details. In a traditional game I had always seen my role as the PCs subconscious, their baser drives, inclinations, inuitions, etc while they played the character's conscious mind - I do this and I think that. This was motivated also by my bucking against the idea that players almost always had their characters be perfect - they always did the right thing, they always viewed their actions as flawless. It bugged me so I tried adding some humanity (assuming they were human). Others in my play groups REALLY didn't like that.

But I am dangerously close to derailing so if anyone is interested in exploring this stuff more by all means start another thread. I was just into discussing correlations to other games, like Dirty Secrets and Psi-Run that share character space.

Thanks,
- Don

The GM playing the PC's subconscious??? Blasphemy!!!

The subconscious is there so that the PC can go into on on berserker rage and get a +2 attacking bonus!!!

And Jesse, didnt everyone tell you that your not allowd to post AP to sessions i cant make?
--with increasing envy, james