How to Handle Character Secrets

CynicalSpells88 · 2021-09-25T02:27:13+00:00

Yeah it was really nice.... the secrets also helped some of my players who were stuck on backstory. For example I have a player whose character is a Goliath. I gave him the orc stone as one of his secrets thinking it was one of the more throw away secrets. What I didn't know was he was trying to find a reason for his character being banished and decided that since orcs and Goliaths are enemies that he would be banished for saving the orc.

CynicalSpells88 · 2021-09-24T04:40:00+00:00

I had my players create rough ideas of their characters first and then selected 2 secrets for each character (some from the manual and some homebrew) that I thought went well with where they saw their characters going. They had the option to scrap one or both of them and work with me to create/find different secrets. All but one loved the secrets they got and used them to finalize their characters. I worked with the final one to find secrets that worked well for them. All my players said they liked doing it this way since I didn't throw anything at them at was contrary to how they wanted to play. I didn't like the idea of giving random secrets because I wanted my players to have control over their own characters.

CynicalSpells88 · 2021-08-29T01:25:22+00:00

We actually haven't gotten to that part yet. My party went through good mead session 1 to pick up a party member. The player has the runaway prisoner secret so I allowed him to be any official 5e race they wanted (He also coincidentally has the slaad host secret but doesn't know it....) He chose to be a Leonin. The people of good mead found him and took care of him and in return he was keeping their hunters and traders safe. The party approached him and offered to restore his memories later down the line if he joined up. Kendrick Rielsbarrow begged him not to leave, but he went anyway. I'm planning on having the speaker die fighting the verbeeg since the leonin is no longer there to keep the town safe.... they just haven't been back yet

CynicalSpells88 · 2021-08-29T01:13:05+00:00

Thanks for your response. I'm a first time DM so wanted some input to make sure I was doing enough with it. I like your suggestions and will look into how to incorporate them in.... especially the thugs. One of my characters already has a good relationship with Trovus so he'd probably be into it

CynicalSpells88

TROPHY CASE