Day 10 Prompt: Secret
Week 3 Prompt: Associates
Weekday Prompt: Fair of Face
And we start off with the prompt of “Secret” for Day 10 of the RPGaDAY 2026 Challenge. We also moved to a new week prompt of “Associates” while circling back to the line in the poem with “Fair of Face”.
Drums fingers on the desk. There are a lot of possibilities with this prompt. Probably one of the most RPG like of the month. I already had a good article about Secret Tunnels, how they could be made and kept a secret. I passed secret information to players using notepads, but I’ve already mentioned that in a previous blog post. How do I keep this about RPG locations? The Village entry from day 9 is in a secret location.
Keeping secrets is keeping information hidden. Obtaining this information is the job of spies and secret agents. Even during this time of the internet, obtaining information for governments, corporations and other organizations is a big business. It reminds me of the only novel that I have ever read that scared me. Robert Asprin’s The Cold Cash War. His first novel.
Long story short, an independent contractor that buys and sells information to various clients in a proto-cyberpunk world. During the course of the book, this broker discovers that large corporations have become so powerful, that they are taking over countries in the name of the almighty dollar. What scares him the most is that he can’t do a damn thing about it. Even when he tries to keep himself out of the way of the mega-corp train running everyone over. He knew before anyone else what was happening, that secret seemed like money at first, but then came back and could bite him in the ass.
I don’t mind corporations; I just hate it when the lust for money takes precedent over lives and the world we live in. Had I known the secrets that the independent contractor knew by the end of the book, I would have been just as worried. I look back at that book and some of the things seem dated (again, pre-internet of the 70’s look at the future). But then sometimes I have to wonder.
Now, could this level of belief in this type of story be used in a sit-down RPG? It would probably be more cyberpunk than presented in the novel, but if I could get my players to react at the reveal that I had when I first read this book, then I would count that as an accomplishment in my career as a gamemaster. Slowly revealing the different clues. Letting the players put the clues together. Watching them realize “Oh shit!” as the big-bad guys have all the pieces in place.
Sometimes this is why real life scares me more than horror movies. And it’s probably why the thought of playing a horror game doesn’t appeal to me. The things that I fear are not slasher blood and guts. It’s knowing what man can do to each other. I can see the sense of drama in an TTRPG, but I just can’t see the feeling of horror. Perhaps the secret could be the true horror.
Am I too personal on this one? Beyond the book, seeing what corporations have done to myself and others makes me distrust them. And I realize that this post has become more about my feelings than about gaming. For that, I apologize to the organizers of this challenge as they wanted to focus on the positivity of gaming. But that may be the point. I play games, so I can feel joy. The laughter around the table last Friday night (report coming soon) was infectious. The players were even talking about our fun the next day. And perhaps, that’s the secret… of gaming. Feeling joy.
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