Between hidden roles and sandboxes

I've played two games this week that involved secret information.

First was my regular Mythic Bastionland game. The company of knights had planned to visit a town where one of them grew up. Although he's from there, this was our first session in that town. Before the session, I chatted with that player about his character's history. We decided, among other things, that when he left the town twenty years earlier to become a squire, he abandoned his fiancée. The fiancée character appeared in this week's session as a member of the town's council. We roleplayed some tension between them, but he chose not to share the background information with the other players until near the end of the session. It's was a fun note to add, but it didn't change the direction of the session.

Second was Cluedo Conspiracy. It's a hidden role board game which involves some players trying to stop a murder plot while others secretly try to execute the plot. We played with five players, so there were three good guys and two conspirators. In our first attempt at playing (we were all learning the game, and I was reading and teaching the rules) one player misspoke early on and revealed their role. We decided to reset the game and played through on the second attempt. (I quite like the game, incidentally. It's like a simplified version of Battlestar Galactica, much quicker to play.)

I think it's interesting to compare these experiences because they both involved hidden information, but they are at two ends of a scale:

• In the RPG, some information was hidden which informs roleplaying. When the information was revealed it didn't have much impact, except as a dramatic beat.
• In the board game, the hidden information is at the core of the gameplay. Much of the strategy of the game is based on concealing or trying to reveal that information. When it's revealed, it shifts the focus of play and impacts what choices players have afterwards. If the secret is revealed too early, because of a simple mistake, it diffuses a lot of the fun of the experience.

I'm curious to consider what might lie between these two ends of the scale, so I've been trying to deconstruct them a little.

In the Cluedo Conspiracy game, there is a binary division: Some players are tasked with killing Mr Coral and some with protecting him. It's adversarial and all-or-nothing. After the secret is revealed you have no common ground with the other team.

In the Mythic Bastionland case, you're playing in a sandbox so there aren't strict goals. Revealing that a knight once ghosted his partner could conceivably lead to some new objective, or influence how the group respond to a problem, but it is less likely to redirect the flow completely. Rather than the binary, team A or team B, it's team "here is some new information, do whatever you want".

One way to extend this is to have more than one strict objective. In the Cluedo case, you could have kill/protect Mr Coral and also steal/protect Mr Coral's treasure. You go from two opposing teams to (potentially) players with four different objectives:

• Kill the guy, steal his money.
• Kill the guy but because of another motive. Leave the money for his heir.
• Protect the guy, steal the money (I'm a thief not a murderer).
• Protect the guy, protect the treasure (we're trying to have a society here!).

In this extension, a secret could be revealed about a player without necessarily breaking the game into a completely adversarial contest. When you have some goal in common with another player, there is room to negotiate and coordinate.

Another extension, into the space between the two ends of the scale, is to make the secret information itself more complex. 

• I want to kill Mr Coral because his true identity is a war criminal.
• I want to protect Mr Coral so that he can be put on trial for his crimes.

This idea (more complex information) seems to tend towards play where players choose their own goals. But I'm trying to find the middle ground, not going as far as a sandbox, so maybe it looks a little more like this:

Your character has beliefs / alignment / bonds. Initially, you work with the information you have, and work towards the goal that fits those. As hidden information is revealed, you filter that through the beliefs / alignment / bonds and it updates your objectives. (This is very like roleplaying in a sandbox, but I'm imagining it as a little more mechanical / board gamey - character traits overriding player choice.) That might mean you switch from team "protect the guy" to team "kill the guy", when you get more information.

I had some more thoughts about why bothering with secrets at all, but that's kind of a tangent. Wrapping it up here!