Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Information can be landmark, or hidden, or it can be secret.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Landmark information is automatic and free.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
You don’t have to ask to be told these things - being told them is what defines a context in which you can ask meaningful questions.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Hidden information isn’t automatic - players have to ask to learn it. And it often isn’t free - there is often some fictional cost that must be paid to learn hidden information. However, unlike secret information, there is no chance of failure
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
There are two costs to learning hidden information. The first cost, which is possible but not mandatory, is time.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
The second cost is risk.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
To learn secret information, players must roll the dice and win. That extra risk, not just of injury but of failure, is what makes secret information more costly than hidden.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Whether players can even learn the existence of secret information is something I think judges disagree about
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
I would say that the existence of a secret should be hidden information. I would say that players should be able to prove there is a secret by asking a question and taking a risk. Actually learning the secret should require rolling the dice, but discovering that there IS a secret there to be learned should not be a secret unto itself.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
You discover hidden information by examining landmarks. You learn secrets by examining hidden information.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
A player can always suspect the existence of secret information, even if their character can’t prove it. This is more or less what some judges mean when they talk about “player skill”.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
The difference between landmark information and hidden information isn’t just the difference between what you say when players first enter a room and what they have to ask you to find out. It’s also the difference between information that is free and information that comes at a cost.
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Created: 2026-03-05
Something can become secret simply because there’s not enough time to find it.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
For there to be not enough time there has to be some kind of time pressure, some kind of countdown or deadline, either narrative or mechanical, some kind of reason the characters can’t just spend all day. Remember, for the players, that search only takes as long as they need to say they agree to it.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Knowing how to solve a problem like that quickly is a skill. It’s special knowledge that not everyone - not every character - possesses. And even if a character has the right skill, there’s still a chance that they’ll fail. So roll the dice. Roll the dice, because the alternative is to make the players try to act out their characters’ searches. Roll the dice because while the characters might have all day, the players don’t, and their time, your time, is worth more than trying to devise and explain the correct search algorithm.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Having to explicitly request to look closer is already a barrier to discovery. The additional barrier of a dice roll is appropriate in some situations, but not every situation
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Created: 2026-03-05
before rolling the dice, decide if the information is secret or just hidden - decide what it would mean for the characters to be able to fail in their search. If you don’t think they even could fail, then it’s not really a secret, and you don’t need to roll the dice.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
I think how difficult it is to gain information should be based on its importance to the game.
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Created: 2026-03-05
If the players have to know some information, it should be landmark.
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
If information is really important, it should probably be landmark or hidden. No player wants their judge to “fudge” and lie about the result of a dice roll, or to “railroad” and seize control of the characters to make them do something
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
Information can safely be made secret under one of two conditions. The first is if that information is truly optional
See in context at Landmark, Hidden, Secret
Created: 2026-03-05
The second condition is if there are a variety of ways to learn the information. If there are at least three ways to learn a piece of information, and the characters botch every attempt, then perhaps it’s okay to let them fail.