Secrets & Schemes: PC vs PC Conflict in RPGs

I recently wrapped up a short Urban Shadows 2nd edition campaign using its quickstart rules. This isn’t a review of that game. If you’re interested I can assure you that it's good, and you can pick up the free 40 page PDF and give it a go yourself. 

This post is about situations in which PCs end up in direct conflict with other PCs, something there’s always potential for in party based games, but particularly so in a game like Urban Shadows that encourages players to have individual agendas.

It should go without saying that if PC conflict is looking possible at your table, the group should discuss and agree upon whether its ok, and what it should look like. When I use safety checklists in my games, it's on the questionnaire so that players can express their feelings on it. In my experience, the majority of tabletop RPGs play out without PCs directly opposing each other, so it's reasonable that a given player wouldn’t expect that when they sit down to play. In our Urban Shadows game, everyone had expressed that they were not only happy to accept the possibility of PC conflict, they’d happily have themselves double crossed or screwed over because of the dramatic potential it would offer. 

Going into the final session where a dramatic betrayal was looking likely, myself and another player (hereafter ‘the Betrayer) acknowledged that there was a potential issue, given the way our game was handling hidden information. Even when I’m running a game where PCs are often not in the same scene together, and potentially working against each other, we conduct all game related conversation out in the open, and trust players to successfully separate player knowledge and character knowledge. I call this the ‘dramatic irony’ rule. There are a couple of reasons that I play this way. The first is simple practicality; if I’m trying to GM for one player while another player is sending me private messages or passing me notes, my attention is split and the game is likely to suffer. If we handle private conversations by having myself and another player go to a separate room (or Zoom breakout room in the era of online play) the other players are left to their own devices, potentially splitting their attention to something non game related or sitting in awkward silence. You could try and overcome this issue by having a specific ‘scheming phase’, a short break in conversation specifically designated as the time in which players send the GM private messages. I think this has potential, but it breaks up the action, and potentially scuppers players secret schemes as the ‘out in the open’ play moves past their point where they could successfully plot. The issue of practicality was exacerbated in our Urban Shadows game because I’d never run the system before, and I was confident that the game would suffer if I was juggling running a good session, getting to grips with the rules, helping the players do the same, and then also trying to stay on top of the players secret schemes. 

The second reason that I avoid secret messages or conversations is not a practical issue however, but simply a way I prefer my games to play out. I dislike the feeling that there’s secret play related conversation going on in a given game, it feels like some of the players are having a private joke that others aren’t privy to. If you’ve ever been in a session with a group who have played games without you before and they spend too long making in-jokes about their previous game, secret conversations feel like that to me. I want RPGs to be a shared fiction that gives everyone as equal a share as possible, and I’d prefer that our playstyle doesn’t specifically risk that. This is definitely a personal preference, and it’s not even a hardline rule. I might experiment with it more in future. However, for our Urban Shadows game we’d agreed that the dramatic irony rule was our preference. 

This approach worked well for most of the game’s run. A couple of players did express that it was sometimes challenging to remind themselves what their characters knew and what they knew themselves, but they were able to handle this, in no small part because the game was moving quickly; there were always more obvious issues to deal with, or agendas to be carried out. I’d recommend that in a game like Urban Shadows you constantly try to introduce new problems and developments, because it's a great way to avoid a situation in which the players hunker down and try to concoct the perfect plan. This goes hand in hand with not punishing the players for failing to see every angle or accounting for every eventuality; if you want to introduce drama or downsides to their actions, look to the blowback or sacrifices they themselves have acknowledged. 

However, the Betrayer and I did recognise a downside to the dramatic irony rule in the face of a dramatic double cross. This wasn’t an issue of the Betrayed using out of character knowledge to make contingency plans for an eventuality their character wouldn’t suspect; everyone in the game had been mature about wandering into danger or exposing themselves, and had already expressed that they’d be as equally happy to see their character fail or succeed, provided it was interesting. The issue here was for the dramatic irony rule to undermine the drama, particular for the Betrayed. It’s a bigger, more impactful moment if you as a player learn that you’ve been double crossed in the moment that the gun is pointed at you, or the trap is sprung, than in a scene where the Betrayer makes a deal about it with an NPC. You want that moment to be a sudden left turn that changes the action for everyone, instead of something that everyone knew was coming. This is challenging when the treachery is going to necessitate practicalities. Even if you’re willing to assume that a PC smuggled a weapon into a seemingly friendly meeting, or spent time rigging a booby trap, a game like Urban Shadows is likely to require a conversation with an NPC. In our particular case, the Betrayer wanted to hand the Betrayed over to a powerful NPC as part of a deal, but the scene in which they made that deal would likely undermine the delicious drama that we want as much of as possible. 

I mulled over this, and decided that the cost of changing how we do things was worth it for the excitement of a sudden twist in the action. I’d have to agree to such a change with the players of course, but provided everyone agreed, the new system would create tension from the off. Now everyone knew that a scene with another PC might suddenly go sideways. I did simply consider instituting the ‘send the GM a private message’ system outlined above, but in the end I decided that it would be better to introduce a flashback mechanic.

Perhaps most famously a rule in Blades in the Dark, a flashback mechanic is designed to give players the power to reveal actions taken in the past that haven’t been shown in the game yet, to benefit themselves right now. The Gumshoe games have a Preparedness skill that functions in a similar way. In this case, what I wanted was a flashback rule specifically for letting PCs establish and prepare a deception that targeted another PC. 

I do always think twice about trying to solve a potential issue at the table by adding rules; adding rules always adds complication, and if your main goal is to encourage or discourage particular behaviour at the table, you might be better talking to your players. However, in this case I was confident this was something the rules could handle, and was solving a structural problem in our game, not a way the players were acting. 

Because Urban Shadows is a  Powered by the Apocalypse game, the obvious thing to do was write a move:

When you betray another PC for your own gain, say what you’re getting out of it and Roll  with Corruption. If you issue a heartfelt apology as you do it, take +1 Forward. On a 7-9 choose 1, on a 10+ choose 3. This may require a flashback scene at the GM’s discretion. 

• You’re getting everything you want out of this, if you don't pick this, the GM will say what you’re getting instead

• You’re not going to have to do more than this betrayal to achieve your aims. If you don't pick this, the GM will tell you what the additional requirement is

• You brought backup

• Your Patron is there to assist you (Tainted only)

• You’ve prepared the perfect trap. Say what it is (Veteran only)

• You negate your foe’s magic (Wizard only)

On a 6- choose one:

• You tipped your hand to the other PC before this. Say how

• This is a desperate attempt to stay afloat, and even if you’re successful it won’t solve the larger issue

If the person you're betraying owes you a debt, you can spend any debts one-for-one to pick an additional option from the first list, even on a miss

This move isn’t pretty, it certainly isn’t elegant, and I don’t expect clout in PbtA design cycles for writing it. It has a lot of moving parts, two different lists that you might need to pick from, and options that you probably need to read more than once to parse what they do. I also needed to make sure I pointed out to the players one of things that this move was doing; it gave them the power to skip through procedural or setup scenes and jumped straight to the high tension moment. Also, while it might give them the advantage in the ensuing scene, its remit wasn’t to let their plan go off without a hitch; they’d still need to overcome their opponent with force, or make them agree to surrender. 

I think it's worth the word count though. While it might take a little longer to implement at the table than most moves, it was likely that it would be rolled either once or twice during our session. I was introducing it during our finale, where big moments with mechanical weight are to be expected. It gave the Betrayer a lot of power, but with a lot of potential for problems, downsides or costs. That’s perfectly in genre for a game like Urban Shadows. 

I’d definitely be interested in hearing how people think I handled what I saw as a problem with our dramatic irony approach to Urban Shadows, and what they might have done. Maybe I should have allowed secret messages in a game like this? Perhaps I should have written a much simpler and more straightforward flashback rule? How do you handle PCs breaching each other’s faith in games? If you’ve got this far in this probably-too-long article, please let me know, either in the comments below or on Twitter.

Art credit

All art is taken from the Urban Shadows 2nd edition quickstart rulebook, illustrated by Mirco Pagn