The GM Agenda in Hide & Seek

As I’ve mentioned before in this post, I spend a lot of time thinking about Agendas in gaming and how they can be used to reinforce the core concepts of what the game is "about." Last time I talked about Agendas in Hide & Seek, I provided advice on how to use the Player Agenda to drive home the concepts of the game, particularly what the game should feel like to a player. This time around, I’m taking a look at the GM Agenda and how you can use it at the table to drive an immersive, awesome game session.

Burden Them With Secrets

The players actively want to learn Secrets; they’re the source of adventure in Hide & Seek, the measure of progress and the only advancement mechanism in the game revo…

Burden Them With Secrets

The players actively want to learn Secrets; they’re the source of adventure in Hide & Seek, the measure of progress and the only advancement mechanism in the game revolves around them. It’s up to you to make knowing a Secret a dark and dangerous affair; merely knowing a thing must be perilous to the characters who know it and, perhaps, to the people around those characters. As soon as a Secret is learned, think of it as a lit fuse: that bomb needs to go off.

Chase Them Into Dark Places

By placing something "on the map" of your neighborhood, you and your players are asking for it to be used in-game, for it to be interesting from a story perspective. When the characters retreat from darkness into a new part of the neighborhood, use the opportunity to tie a new location to an existing Secret or use it as an opportunity to introduce a new one.

Call To Them From The Shadows

The unknowable dark places of the world – physical, mental, emotional – are both terrifying and seductive. Those characters intimidated by the mysterious and uncanny must be seduced into plumbing the unknown. Offer glimpses of possible futures, desired outcomes, and how the characters might attain them. Whisper promises no mortal could fulfill. Present inscrutable puzzles whose solutions lie only in madness and corruption.

Face Them With The Results Of Their Choices

The ghost of the child they failed to save. The neighbor whose garage they raided for an item key to resolving a Secret. The teenagers who they inadvertently made enemies of while researching the Secret. During play, keep track of the choices the players make and whenever play slows down or tension lightens, face your players with the results of choices they’ve previously made.

Get Hide & Seek

Hide & Seek

A Suburban Folk Horror TTRPG About Children & Secrets

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Status	Released
Category	Physical game
Author	No Apostrophe Press
Genre	Role Playing
Tags	Creepy, folk-horror, Halloween, Horror, Psychological Horror, Spooky, storygame, Tabletop role-playing game
Languages	English