If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

So, in my search for simplification, I realise that I want to amalgamate secrets and rumours. These only exist in passing in the text, so I have a lot of leeway. Secrets are just rumours PCs don’t know, so I think we can depart a little from my previous work on rumours here. As the connective tissue of a campaign; without secrets the PCs won’t have hooks into the world. What do we need from a rumour or secret?

• Single sentence
• Enticing
• Never trivial
• Abstract

So, a secret should be short, it should be enticing, it shouldn’t be pointless, and it should be abstract in the sense that anyone or anything might possess it. So, I modify the rumours work we did in the stocking section, and transfer it to secrets, which means we have to identify when a secret is revealed whether it is true, false, or misleading.

Secrets

Make a d6 or d8 (depending on size or population) list of secrets for each area. Secrets are not part of the world until a PC or NPC learns them or acts on them but they are all true once they are learnt or acted on.

Secrets should be a single sentence, enticing or interesting, are never trivial, and should make sense in the possession of most anything or anyone.

When a PC finds or seeks information, roll either fortune or a relevant ability check, where a failure indicates that the secret is false, but leads somewhere interesting, a partial success that is partly true, and leads to further secrets, and a full success that it is true.

Once a secret is part of the world, between sessions, when the PCs don’t follow up on a secret they’ve learnt, roll on the reaction table. Apply the reaction table’s adjective to modify the secret and change how the situation develops, recycling names and problems within the area.

Not-yet-real and real secrets co-exist on your secrets table, but play different roles in your game and your preparation.

So, what this does is give “quantum” secrets, simple enough to be tavern rumours, but flexible enough also journal entries or intel from a spy. One sentence can be expanded or flavoured, easily. Once it exists though, it starts to take on flavour and personality, it becomes less of a quantum fact and more of a changing, living part of the world.

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on quantum and real secrets coexisting, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

26th May 2022