How to run mystery RPGs with dark secrets | RPG Review

Get Ember Forge metal dice on Kickstarter now!
bit.ly/EmberForgeAtlanteanYgg...
▶️ Get Vaesen in PDF at DrivethruRPG ▶️
Purchases support the channel at no additional cost to you.
Vaesen Core rulebook: bit.ly/VaesenCore
Vaesen: A Wicked Secret: bit.ly/AWickedSecret
Vaesen: Seasons of Mysteries: bit.ly/SeasonsOfMystery
Vaesen: Mythic Britain and Ireland: bit.ly/VaesenBritainIreland
▶️ Get other Free League games in PDF at DrivethruRPG ▶️
Alien RPG: bit.ly/AlienCoreRPG
Alien Starter Set: bit.ly/3rDak1T
Alien Destroyer of Worlds scenario: bit.ly/3ugK534
Alien Colonial Marines supplement: bit.ly/39nykzi
Coriolis: bit.ly/corioliscore
Forbidden Lands: bit.ly/ForbiddenLands
Tales From the Loop: bit.ly/TalesFromLoop
Things From the Flood: bit.ly/ThingsFromTheFlood
Symbaroum: bit.ly/SymbaroumRPG
Mork Borg: bit.ly/MorkBorgRPG
Twilight 2000 (4e): bit.ly/Twilight2000
The One Ring (2e): bit.ly/TheOneRing2e
Ruins of Symbaroum Player’s Guide: bit.ly/RoSPlayer
Ruins of Symbaroum GM’s Guide: bit.ly/RoSGamemaster
Ruins of Symbaroum Bestiary: bit.ly/RoSBestiary
Mutant Year Zero: bit.ly/MutantYearZeroCore
CY_BORG: bit.ly/CY_BORG
Blade Runner: bit.ly/BladeRunnerCORE
📦Get Free League games on Amazon📦
amzn.to/3rvWKDp
📦My Amazon Shop📦
(purchases help the channel!)
www.amazon.com/shop/davethaum...
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
Patreon Supporters
Regnant Thaumavorians
hypnoCode -- bit.ly/gaslandsdice
Lordship Thaumavorians
William Davis
Savant Thaumavorians
Targrus
Art Basler
Allen Varney
Karel Doleček
Nick Louie
Daniel Goupil
Kai Wloka
Iron Mandarin
Nawid Ayobi
Patrick Herr
Ian Rugg
OddCore
Shane Ruman
4bstr
Nick Enquist
Nathan
Padde
-----------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------.
Support the channel
Patreon: / thaumavore
.
Thaumavore Community
Newsletter sign-up: bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter .
Dave’s Publications
Fluxfall Horizon, a parallel Earths RPG bit.ly/Fluxfall
Age of Snakes, an Index Card RPG expansion bit.ly/AgeOfSnakes
The Turnip Knights, a D&D 5e and Index Card RPG one-shot bit.ly/TurnipKnights
A Book of Witches, a rules-agnostic guide to all things witches bit.ly/ABookOfWitches

[@DaveThaumavore]

Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Sign up for my newsletter! bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@qarsiseer]

This video really proved to me there’s a lot of space for session recap videos on youtube. I understand way more about Vaesen with just this video than any review I’d seen. I love it!

[@DaveThaumavore]

That’s great to hear. That was one of my objectives for sure.

[@ReneRunsRPGs]

I've always called these "Knives" that I ask players to provide me with at character creation. They're connections to the wider world or information about their PCs that I can use to "twist the knife" when narratively appropriate to ratchet up tension or make certain moments within a session or campaign more meaningful.

[@DaveThaumavore]

That is a great metaphor for them.

[@St_M_]

I really like these "how I planned it, how it went, what I would change next time" type of recaps because it definitely shows useful approaches that differ from the one(s) the viewer may be familiar with. That super-dark secret idea was a neat impulse to achieve more player buy-in. Regarding sourcing AI artwork for a VTT, unfortunately Midjourney's free trial was canceled only two days ago... but perhaps you might to another video detailing your approach for finding / generating suitable character art and such anyway? Like, how do you come up with your prompts and how do you tweak them based on the model's output?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Glad you appreciated the format. Yeah, a lot of folks are asking about an MJ tutorial.

[@burningcal]

My friends and I used something similar back in the day. We used a system where we passed around an index card with our character name on it, and the cards would be passed clockwise. Each person got to write something on it about the character that could potentially be something true about them. Everything else could be false rumor.

[@DaveThaumavore]

That’s a really cool idea.

[@burningcal]

@@DaveThaumavore Thanks man c: I appreciate your ideas here too!

[@gddion]

My group just ditched 5e for Vaesen and we've been having a blast and my players are all leaning way into their dark secrets.

[@DaveThaumavore]

This is the way.

[@cosmiccowboy9358]

Ok I’m definitely gonna recommend Vaesen to my group.I’ve long had a similar idea but to take place around the civil war.Great content as always

[@DaveThaumavore]

Civil War would be an awesome backdrop for this kind of mystery. 🤌🏼

[@WookieeRage]

Regarding clues, I'm sure you may know this, but in addition to floating clues, multiple clues is another method I learned that works. Instead of one clue for each link in the chain, have multiple, and if not too complicated let there be different ways to discover each.

[@MarioReischer]

This kind of videos is what I need more of! I love it, that you did it for Vaesen because I am planning a campaign atm. I would love more videos like that for different RPGs. Great video as always!!

[@timothyyoung2962]

Player secrets, as well as character flaws, can be fun . I have a homebrewed horror RPG our group plays called They Came from the B-Movie. It emulates horror films of all kinds and in it there are character drawbacks and secrets that the Director (GM) can utilize to add drama to the game. I used this to my full advantage when I ran a game based on John Carpenter's The Thing. Most of my players were younger, so they had never seen the film (bonus). I changed it up enough to hide what it was initially. Every character had a secret and a flaw. One was an alcoholic for example, while one man was hiding that he had been sent to the research station by his rich, influential father who was a US senator to avoid murder charges for the killing his girlfriend (which he was 100% guilty of). Another person was a plant by an eco terrorist group, another was secretly selling research data to a corporation wishing to capitalize on the groups' discoveries. And of course, one player was a monster, which happens after the creature gets free into the facility. As the game went on, everyone was trying to find the creature and hide their secrets, which I left info about for other characters to discover (like learning about the murderer through his personal records in the commander's office). And the player who was a creature in disguise had the ability to turn the others into creatures, so they kept trying to ratchet up the tension and get people alone. I would regularly split the players up into different rooms as their characters split up in the game and they would return after their scenes were over. This meant no one knew everything going on and had to just trust the other players about what they were told. I also passed notes to players, with the rule being they could not reveal said notes to anyone else during the game. All of this built a TON of tension. And then once a player was accidentally revealed as a creature, attacked the other characters, and was put down with the liberal use of a flamethrower, the paranoia exploded. I have never seen a table of players turn on one another so fast. Several characters were killed who were not creatures because other characters thought they were. The killer murdered another character to cover up his secret, and a scene later, was flamethrowered because the others assumed he was a monster since he killed someone. In the end the players failed the game as a creature, in the disguise of a character everyone at the table thought was an actual human, managed NOT to get killed and was picked up by the rescue team that was contacted earlier in the game.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Wow, you managed to recreate the magic of The Thing. Although to be fair, that’s not a B-movie, it’s a masterpiece!

[@timothyyoung2962]

@@DaveThaumavore It is by far one of my favorite horror/sci-fi films. I even have the short story it is based on, Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell. It worked so well for the game. Once the session started, it was easy to GM. The players did most of the work in causing drama and action. I've found that if you want to have a lot of tension and sort of P v P with secrets, etc., it's best to have a pretty straight forward plot you can wrap all the PCs baggage around and make that a major part of the overall game.

[@emberforge]

Happy you enjoy Ember Dice so much Dave and thank you for the great content! Awaiting all metal dice-curious adventurers at our Kickstarter!! :)

[@jasonandkrishandy-kraus123]

Sounds like a great session and very well run, Dave. I've played Vaesen a few times and have enjoyed it but I like the idea of adding a Super Dark Secret that can shatter the narrative. In fact, in the RPGs I've played that have utilized that "deep personal secret" idea (thinking Aliens, Yellow King, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Keys, Mutant City Blues, even 5e's Rime of the FrostMaiden off the top of my head), both the narrative and roleplaying has improved by the big reveals, secret tensions, and hidden motivations/agendas. Another great episode, Dave. I look forward to your show.

[@willmendoza8498]

I love player character secrets. I fell in love with them when I played a one-shot of Mountain Witch a decade ago. An amazing time. Vaesen looks cool.

[@SockPuppet80]

Some good advice here, but I didn't like how the ultimate answer ends up being, "Write your own mystery, personalize it to each character, and run those in parallel with the main plot, because the published mystery is kind of bland and won't keep the players interested for long." I've done that myself, but it took *a lot* of work and the rewards were anything but guaranteed. These "dark secret" subplots can easily grow out of control to the point where each player wants to focus on their own thing, neglecting the plot that's supposed to provide them with a unifying purpose. The one time it worked to a tee was when I ran a mystery game for a single player, stereotypical hard-boiled detective trying to solve a missing persons case while struggling with their own demons. As they progressed, I had them questioning what they thought they knew about their own character's background, memories and character sheet entries turning out less than reliable, etc. It ended up being sort of a journey of self-discovery, where they solved the case but then decided to go back and rescue the previously missing person from their own client. The point is, I can't imagine being laser-focused on a character's secret background working well _unless_ 1) the whole premise of the mystery is written to accommodate that, and 2) there are no other players involved to drag the plot in alternative directions.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Hmm. I guess I got lucky.

[@kidneythief6227]

What a great video! Id love to see how you set everything up with owlbear rodeo.

[@Messoppolis]

Running Vaesen this weekend for the first time. 10/10 timing.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Have fun!

[@RobertKaucher]

IMO, if you are playing any RPG with adults where this could be applicable, this should be an aspect of player character creation. Maybe even for major NPCs.

[@artistpoet5253]

Great video. I've been hearing a lot about Vaesen especially after Fria Ligan announced their gaming liscences and SRD for YZ engine. I'm excited to try this out. And people should lighten up on the whole AI art sourcing thing. It's a great tool for those without time, skill and/or money and the output has been improving quite steadily so long as users don't keep settling for eight-fingered figures/portraits. Arthur Rackham is an excellent style choice, by the way. I reference his and Brian Froud's work for quite a bit of my own fantasy illustrations and paintings though to be genuine, Rebecca Guay is my idol for this style. Yeah, I'm an old M:tG dork.

[@darkwar25]

great video man would love if you did this for aliens

[@DaveThaumavore]

Absolutely.

[@kalleendo7577]

Awesome!

[@Acmegamer]

Curious, are the Ember Forge dice loud? What I truly dislike about metal dice in general is how loud they are. I've become more sensitive to loud noises as I've gotten older and we've had players at the table who love to roll really loud larger metal dice without a dice try to boot. Makes for a distracting, stressful game for me personally. I love the way these Ember Forge dice look as an aside. Now to go back to watching the video, I love Vaesen so I'm looking forward to your video, Dave. Edit: Now that I've finished watching, what a great review and break down. I love the concept of the super secret to ratchet the mystery and potential drama. Nice video Dave.

[@DaveThaumavore]

They aren’t as loud as solid metal dice. I actually feature the sound of the dice in the video where you see me rolling on the vinyl leather. It’s sort of a harmonic tinkle. If you don’t let the dice touch each other, there’s almost no sound at all.

[@Acmegamer]

@@DaveThaumavore Very nice. I love the look of a lot of the metal based dice and these dice look stunning. Makes it easier for me to back now.

[@manuelgafgen2265]

The player secrets are fun, but have the tendency to split the party

[@Number01]

Great video! I'd love to see a video treatment of a Call of Cthulhu adventure from you. Or perhaps this could be a video series. Thank you. :)

[@DaveThaumavore]

Great idea!

[@malchitos]

Yeah I like Owlbear Rodeo too. Simple and easy to get in and running. She is a bit buggy...I recommend exporting occasionally.

[@DaveThaumavore]

I export pretty frequently 😄

[@jeroenvandersteen8593]

The superdark secrets is a great idea. But how do you weave this into multiple sessions or a longer campaign? If their secrets get revealed in the first session, how to keep the narrative drama up in the next sessions?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Have you ever met a person with just one secret? But seriously, secrets just take a life of their own.

[@PersonMan000]

Could you possibly give a tutorial on how you used Midjourney to create your art? The art you showed is amazing, and I've started testing out Midjourney for my games, but I have no idea how to make such a well unified art style like how you did here.

[@DaveThaumavore]

I revealed the phrase seed here in the comment responses. I can’t copy-paste it on my phone right now for some reason but you can find the seed I used here.

[@K_E_Robin]

The Swedish rpg Skrômt is what I've understood a game that drives on interpersonal conflicts and dark secrets. I don't think there is an english translation though. 😟 I wish they would because Skrômt deserves so much love.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Ooh that sounds like a lot of fun!

[@himurogentoku7117]

I love Vaesen! I am preparing for a dark investigation in Victorian London myself using the Mythic Britain and Ireland sourcebook. By the by, Dave do you have a recommendation for superhero TTRPG? Do you have any experience with Sentinel Comics RPG?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Sorry, I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of supers games just yet.

[@himurogentoku7117]

@@DaveThaumavore No need to apologize, thank you for taking your time to answer my question. I'm looking forward to your next TTRPGs reviews, Dave. Best regards!

[@konstantinoupianist]

A variation of this great idea we used while playing Heart. In that case the players ( and in accordance to Heart's malleability) forged their "dark secrets" along with the GM *while* playing..

[@DaveThaumavore]

Excellent!

[@konstantinoupianist]

@@DaveThaumavore thank you Dave. My dark secret is that your reviews brought me back into RPGing after a looong while..

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@konstantinoupianist 😁✅ Good to hear!

[@dungeonnotebook3849]

I am confused. Are the dark secrets part of Vaesen or something you added to it. If the latter what resource did you use for generating the secrets, or did they come directly from your awesome brain?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Dark Secrets are a part of Vaesen, but those were shared amongst the players to just deepen their known, public backstories. I had each player come up with another dark secret shared only with me, which thickened the plot and drove a lot of the interesting choices and the intrigue of the session.

[@BenWillyums]

Great tip about the midjourney art with the cards, they look sharp and ultra-professional.

[@shocknawe]

10:52 - What digital editor? Any tips on doing the borders?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Photoshop, Affinity Photo. I made the borders in Midjourney using prompts that included “b&w D&D classic art, card border, head on”

[@shocknawe]

@@DaveThaumavore oooooh. Brilliant! Thank you very much!

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@shocknawe Ah, sorry I thought this comment was for a different video. The prompt I used for the borders in the cards here were more like "ornate chartreuse Arthur Rackham card border art, head-on --ar 2:3"

[@shocknawe]

@@DaveThaumavore thank you! I've been trying some prompts to get this watercolour illustrated look you got, to no avail. Would you mind sharing that one too?

[@D1060D3S0VZA]

Great video! Loved getting to know the Vaesen system/setting. BTW: What prompt did you use to achieve that art style in MidJourney?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Swedish, 1870s, by Arthur Rackham, mixed media, Olive-Green, beige, tan, Chartreuse, Turquoise --ar 2:3

[@johnfreymuth4808]

I would love a tutorial on how you prompted Midjourney to unify your AI generated art. They look amazing.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Swedish, 1870s, by Arthur Rackham, mixed media, Olive-Green, beige, tan, Chartreuse, Turquoise --ar 2:3

[@johnfreymuth4808]

​@@DaveThaumavore You are a river to your people.

[@AkitaTom]

@@DaveThaumavore Thank you very much! Whenever I try these prompts I always get the same image, even if I add additional prompts (Muscular priest etc.). Do you have any more examples that you've used? I love the style and am hoping to use for my game. Thank you for your videos, they're fantastic!

[@plastickhero]

I'd love a quick tutorial for how you make your Character Portrait assets.

[@NoName-lh9xo]

I can see how this would be interesting, I just love D&D because it limited by nothing. If a giant smashes half the tavern, it happens.....I don't have to not have a configuration for that. Code will always be limited 😅

[@akephalos2415]

In this digital hellscape of Mr.Beast aping, open-mouth, teeth baring, bulging eye, face pic thumbnails, I've become the sort of person who chooses videos based on their titles rather than thumbnails. Not having familiarity with Vaesan, I was disappointed to find that the video wasn't more broadly applicable and feature IP agnostic advice, given the name of the setting/system was entirely absent from this video's name. Yes, "dark secrets" alludes to it, but again, if you don't know, you don't know. Bummer. Still appreciate what you do and am grateful for the myriad other videos I've been enjoying over the years.

[@BenWillyums]

Love your videos, but It's pronounced crack - en.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Great thanks Ben.

[@BenWillyums]

@@DaveThaumavore Sorry, I can't help myself lol

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@BenWillyums at least you watch my channel. That’s something.