Roleplaying your Secret Identity

[Michael Hopcroft]

I somehow get the feeling that in the supers gaming genre, Secret Identities are not as popular as they once were. They seem to be a lot more trouble than some players think they are worth, in between maintaining the cover and the constant neccesity to be less-than-truthful with friends and loved ones to keep up the charade. And in games with licensing or government sanctioning of heroes or teams, the character's identity is available somewhere, an an open secret to any sufficiently talented hacker (or anyone rich enough to be able to hire one).

So how do you make Secret Identity worth the points but not a license to screw up the character's life at whim? And how do you roleplay the character maintaining essentially two lives, especially if both identities have significant public personas?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I've never been happy with how I have handled secret ID's.  Part of the problem is that while in Secret ID, the characters are almost always separated and off doing their own thing.  And if there's one thing that is tough to work out its splitting the party up.  Doing it a lot is even harder.  

[sinanju]

I've never been happy with how I have handled secret ID's.  Part of the problem is that while in Secret ID, the characters are almost always separated and off doing their own thing.  And if there's one thing that is tough to work out its splitting the party up.  Doing it a lot is even harder.  

 

This. Very much this. It can be difficult enough to get all the players working together if one or more is playing some kind of Batman/Dark Avenger type and tends to go haring off on his own in pursuit of some villain. It gets worse if they have secret identities, especially if they haven't (yet, one hopes) shared them with one another. And if they _have_ shared their secret identities, then you a team of superheroes and a suspiciously similar-looking team of ordinary people, who tend to hang around together.

 

And if you think it's awkward how Peter Parker always disappears when there's trouble, consider what it looks like when Peter, Johnny Storm, Bobby Drake and Kitty Pride (who all hang out together) always vanish just before Spider-Man, Human Torch, Iceman and Whatever-Her-Name-Is-This-Week all show up to fight the bad guy(s).

[Christougher]

"Volunteer Fire Department" is a phrase my group used to throw around in discussion of this point and how to assemble the heroes.  

 

Almost worse than Secret IDs everywhere is tossing one Public ID / Celebrity into the mix.  Makes single/shared origin look good.  For one government approved team, the bureaucracy created a small office to monitor what the superteam did and costs associated with...staffed by the PCs.

 

Chris.

 

 

Maybe this new Marvel movie will show us how to do out of costume interactions...

[Christopher R Taylor]

The thing is, the secret ID not only makes sense, but is a critical part of genre.  Its just really tough to play out in the game.  I've done it sometimes successfully, but its always been a special event or short scenes.  I'd love to have Peter Parker at college late to his chem lab because he was out stopping Doc Ock from blowing up the Empire State Building.  But that's as far as the scene goes, beyond a brief amount of role playing.

 

I did run a game once of a superhero school.  Half the time the kids were in a normal high school and half at the academy.  The high school scenes I tried to play out and give some depth, and since the kids were all together it was reasonably easy to run.  But it takes a special kind of gaming group to really want to play out those dramatic and romantic moments out of costume.  Most want to get to the face bashing - and I have no problem with that.  After all, why play a superhero game and have large chunks taken up by time not actually being a superhero or using powers.

 

If you read comics you'll note that the secret ID scenes are always pretty short, so ideally that's how to handle them: a quick scene with some RP opportunities.  Explaining to the boss why you missed that meeting.  Explaining to your girlfriend where those bruises came from.  Explaining to the kid why you couldn't make it to their dance recital.

[Basic204]

I really love playing up. I enjoy having my character have to figure out how to help people can keep his loved ones from finding out what he is and what he can do. 

[TheQuestionMan]

I always play up my characters Secret ID's.

 

Funny thing is Public ID's is the GM's problem.

 

It is a Plot Hook for GM's to exploit.

 

IMOHO

 

QM

[DShomshak]

In my gaming group, the GMs now start each adventure with a look at what each character is doing individually, both in costume and in Secret IDs (for those who have them). If you keep switching from character to character quickly, no one has time to be bored.

 

Thing is, those of us who GM find we spend most of our prep time thinking up these short solo vignettes. The group adventure only requires a few scribbled notes and the character sheets for the antagonists. We're so likely to send the story off in unexpected directions that any more prep is a wate of time.

 

Dean Shomshak

[ghost-angel]

I almost always assume my characters have a Secret ID, but I only put it on the character sheet if I want it to be part of the character's story. Otherwise it's just a piece of off-screen that rounds out a character.

 

Game Time is On-Screen Time; it should focus on the story you want to tell, the important parts. If you have out-of-game pieces (like blue booking sessions) it can show up there. But because it doesn't show up all the time, or even more frequently than a one-sentence "what do you do to pay rent?" conversation, doesn't make it unimportant to the Character, just to the story being told.

[sinanju]

I almost always assume my characters have a Secret ID, but I only put it on the character sheet if I want it to be part of the character's story. Otherwise it's just a piece of off-screen that rounds out a character.

 

Game Time is On-Screen Time; it should focus on the story you want to tell, the important parts. If you have out-of-game pieces (like blue booking sessions) it can show up there. But because it doesn't show up all the time, or even more frequently than a one-sentence "what do you do to pay rent?" conversation, doesn't make it unimportant to the Character, just to the story being told.

Yes, very much this. The Secret ID (any limitation, really) should be taken as an actual Limitation only if you want it to affect the game. Otherwise, yes, you have a secret identity but you don't spend all your time explaining why you're always late to your boss or your girlfriend, or hiding bruises (or costumes) from people.

[bigdamnhero]

Part of the problem is that while in Secret ID, the characters are almost always separated and off doing their own thing.  

I agree this is a critical point. If the PCs have some common link in their SIDs - like they all go to the same school or whatever - it's easier. But if they don't have much reason to hang out together in civvies, then it's very difficult. There's a reason the old Avengers comics spent very little time on the heroes' SIDs.

 

It can be difficult enough to get all the players working together if one or more is playing some kind of Batman/Dark Avenger type and tends to go haring off on his own in pursuit of some villain.

Don't EVEN get me started! I usually include something in my campaign introduction along the lines of: "Avoid Lone Wolf types, this is a team event, don't make us come get you every week..." I compare it to early Defenders comics when every storyline had to waste a couple pages on "How do we get Namor to play nice with us this week?"

 

In my gaming group, the GMs now start each adventure with a look at what each character is doing individually, both in costume and in Secret IDs (for those who have them). If you keep switching from character to character quickly, no one has time to be bored.

I like this. Hit it & quit it.

[bigdamnhero]

Looking through notes of the last campaign I ran where Secret IDs were a thing, here are some of the more memorable ways their SID came up:

• The first adventure was a radiation accident origin story, which brought the PCs together as civilians before they all got powers. IMO this really helped solidify both who the characters were under their masks, and helped them "bond" in their SIDs.
• Based on that origin, some of the Big Bads attempted to track the PCs based on their SIDs' involvement in that accident.
• Several PCs had Contacts in their SIDs (reporter, social worker, occult book store owner, crazy homeless guy...) that wouldn't normally talk to them in costume.
• One PC found out the father figure that had raised her...had a crush on her Hero persona. Ick!
• A PC once let herself get kidnapped in her SID so the other Heroes could track her to the Bad Guys.
• One PC's SID worked for PRIMUS as a civilian researcher, which gave him some useful access.
• One PC's backstory was that he had been raised by an apocalyptic cult...that really wanted back the power armor he stole. So he was Hunted in both IDs.
• Some of the PCs shared their SIDs with a few Heroes from other teams, which led to some fun character interactions in and out of costume.
• The PCs spent a week in Faerie...but returned to find out they'd been gone for two months! How does that impact your civilian lives?
• An NPC hero got in trouble with the government, and her only alibi was that she's dating one of the PCs; but they can't reveal that without giving away both their SIDs.

And the Crowning Moment of Awesome...

• The PCs were all attending a fancy dress party, when VIPER starts shooting the place up. Started out as a standard "How do you react without giving away your SIDs?" scenario...until one PC's girlfriend got shot in the head and was dying. Without hesitation, the PC "powered up" and used his healing power to save her on live TV, instantly transforming his Secret ID to a Public ID!

[Michael Hopcroft]

For Peter Parker, the Secret ID is integral to his character. His life would be fundamentally different if everybody knew he was Spider-Man. In fact, part of the point of Spider-Man is that his life is complicated, difficult and confusing, and he can only be really alive and in control when he's wearing the tights. As Peter Parker he has to kowtow to authority, put up with the abuse it dishes out, and endure poverty and social awkwardness without complaint. But when he puts on those tights, he gets to be the person he wants to be -- confident, independent and able to stand up not only to authority but to the powerful people he's ticked off -- even if they are substantially more powerful and influential than he is. Peter Parker almost never tells a joke, but Spider-Man always has a scathing quip on the tip of his tongue to infuriate adversaries. Peter Parker is never more alive than when he gets to be Spider-Man. It's a shame that being Spider-Man has complicated his life in so many ways,

 

Then there's the often-repeated quote here about Batman "putting on his mask and becoming Bruce Wayne".

 

Replicating that sort of thing in a team game is a bit of a challenge. And you don;t want Secret IDs to be an unmitigated burden. Ideally there will be times when the "civilian" identity can do things the superhero can't that advance the story (There are times when it's a lot easier for Clark Kent the journalist to charm vital information out of Lex Luthor than for Superman to try and intimidate him into spilling the beans, and Bruce Wayne can get into all sorts of places Batman can't.)

 

Public IDs, of course, come with their own challenges. The Fantastic Four for the most part have to be superheroes 24/7. Ben Grimm believes he has to wear that bulky trenchcoat everywhere he goes because people will reject his hideous form. Reed Richards can't travel the normal circles of academia because everyone knows him as a mercurial super-genius so far ahead of the bleeding edge that even sending him e-mail is an intimidating prospect. (I have very rarely seen people actually call him Mr. Fantastic -- he's always Reed Richards, the dimensional explorer and genius inventor who just happens to be really stretchy and flexible).

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm not at all fond of the movies Marvel is putting out totally ignoring the entire concept of secret IDs and superhero names.  Iron Man doing that was fresh and fun, but having every superhero basically just be a dude with powers?  No.  Hawkeye and Black Widow I don't even think are called that through the entire Avengers movie.  In Agents of Shield they refer to "Romanoff" repeatedly, but never Black Widow.  Now Mockingbird is around and she's just Bobbi Morse.

 

I don't like it, not even a little bit.  These people have family and friends to protect, but that's completely ignored in the films.  They have no personal lives, no identity at all outside their work.

[Michael Hopcroft]

In the most recent Spider-Man movies, isn't Peter Parker trying to date the daughter of the cop assigned to track down and arrest Spider-Man? Now that's the value of a good secret Identity plot. You have to deal with a guy socially that's eager to kill you once you put on the tights.

[Hermit]

I somehow get the feeling that in the supers gaming genre, Secret Identities are not as popular as they once were. They seem to be a lot more trouble than some players think they are worth, in between maintaining the cover and the constant neccesity to be less-than-truthful with friends and loved ones to keep up the charade. And in games with licensing or government sanctioning of heroes or teams, the character's identity is available somewhere, an an open secret to any sufficiently talented hacker (or anyone rich enough to be able to hire one).

So how do you make Secret Identity worth the points but not a license to screw up the character's life at whim? And how do you roleplay the character maintaining essentially two lives, especially if both identities have significant public personas?

Been awhile since I gamed Champs, but it felt to me the other way around. Gaming still had lots of Secret ID opportunities, but movies were always taking masks off or having heroes go public . I can tell you that the Registration act in the Champions Universe has gotten a big 'HELL to the No!" from 90% of the PCs in the last decade. Seriously, some characters like PRIMUS, or at least individual agents, but they do not trust the security of the federal government one bit and the perks aren't worth it.

 

How I handle it is similar to how I've seen others handle it here. Romantic and familial stress can be a norm (Though Secret doesn't mean secret to EVERYONE in my games, so some eventually come clean), and I play some of the 'How can I be two places at once' stuff up in a slightly comedic way. Come to think of it, I tend to do things tongue in cheek and play freely with comic book coincidence now and then. In a solo game,  One heroine met a 'nice guy/boy next door' type in her secret ID, and then met the 'dashing cocky thief with a heart of gold' type in her hero id... and was attracted to both. The player had suspicions, but she had fun as her character went through some angst about her romantic attractions only to find they were one in the same. To say the poor NPC was soon doomed after that would be putting it mildly, as she spent her every effort (and skill rolls) to get him on the straight if not so narrow path and make him into a fellow hero.  The Player enjoyed it a great deal.

[bigdamnhero]

For Peter Parker, the Secret ID is integral to his character.

...

Then there's the often-repeated quote here about Batman "putting on his mask and becoming Bruce Wayne".

Agreed. But in both cases, that's much easier to pull off in their solo titles. We don't see much of Bruce in Justice League; maybe a panel now and then. Same with Peter during the times Spidey's been an Avenger. There's just not enough time to showcase every hero and their SID.

 

I'm not at all fond of the movies Marvel is putting out totally ignoring the entire concept of secret IDs and superhero names.

...

They have no personal lives, no identity at all outside their work.

Yeah. I kinda see why they're doing it. I think a lot of people feel the Secret ID trope has been done to death over 60+ years of Superman & Batman, so it's Marvel's way of setting themselves apart. And it all makes sense within the story they've built: Cap's real name was released after his "death" in the war; Thor is just Thor full time; Stark is a raving ego-maniac; Widow & Hawkeye are SHIELD agents first and foremost; Hulk is...actually it's never been clear to me if the Hulk-Banner connection is publicly known in the MCU? Obviously the military & government are aware of it, but I don't if it's common knowledge or not.

 

But I do agree with you it removes a level of complexity from the characters.

 

In the most recent Spider-Man movies, isn't Peter Parker trying to date the daughter of the cop assigned to track down and arrest Spider-Man? Now that's the value of a good secret Identity plot. You have to deal with a guy socially that's eager to kill you once you put on the tights.

That dynamic is actually straight out of the original comics, tho IIRC in the comics Capt. Stacey became more of Spidey's ally.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Even in Spider-Man he's not exactly trying to hide his secret identity.  He's out of the mask more often than he wears it, even while in costume.

 

Its true that in group comics, the secret ID thing doesn't come up much because you have 22 pages to tell a story in, and with so many characters, devoting much time to peoples' secret ID would take up too many pages.

[Tigereye]

Secret ID has become a bit less important to my character Deuce in a social sense (nearly everyone who could do him harm based on his identity is dead or quite decrepit, or so powerful that it really doesn't matter whether or not they know his identity) but it is still a powerful need in a personal, psychological sense. Having been a secret agent for so long, he can't give up the habit. Fortunately, most people don't associate obscure medically retired Royal Navy personnel with superheroes, and he has the ability to teleport to and from his personal quarters to his group's headquarters, so he can maintain his secret identity quite well.

 

Casey has a real problem in terms of his visibility and lack of disguise (how many sentient, gold 1969 Chevrolet Corvairs do you know, even in superhero universes?)

Fortunately, he's invisible to Mental Group senses, so he can normally hide in plain sight. His "owner", Nimisha, has also rigged up a camouflaging device of sorts that he can imitate up to four other air-cooled, rear-engined cars, of almost any other shape or color (so long as they're approximately the same size). He's chosen models that are broadly different enough from him that when he acts in his "superhero" guise, his enemies can't really know what they were attacked by, only that it was some kind of car!

[ghost-angel]

One could argue that Spider-Man's story is About the Secret-ID/Heroic-ID paradigm... making it more important than what his actual powers are.

 

Again, making that part of the On Screen Story, the very important bits.

 

And yeah, it's much harder to do extended Secret-ID scenes with a whole group, especially if their SIDs aren't part of a common group thing. Making not so much unpopular and untenable in a gaming situation.

 

In the Avengers it's about the team dynamic, not each individual struggle with their alternate lives - look at the Iron Man movies, they are in part about Tony trying to reconcile his identity as Iron Man with his identity as Tony Stark... he's created two different sides to himself and struggles with the other when in one. The movies make it about him having to actually merge the two into one person. You even get a tiny bit of that in the Tony/Bruce conversation in the lab in Avengers, but it's a short scene in a big movie about team dynamics so his PID is glossed over in the movie.

 

In the new Batwoman comic her SID and HID are very much an important aspect of the story, so time is spent on both sides. But in the Wonder Woman comic it's not central at all to the story, so it's glossed over briefly in a few panels just to show she maintains one, but nothing more.

 

To come back to the OP, it has nothing to do with popularity, it has more to do with the stories being told. And you can find equal representation of both sides.

[Michael Hopcroft]

 

That dynamic is actually straight out of the original comics, tho IIRC in the comics Capt. Stacey became more of Spidey's ally.

Even though it was Spidey's actions that got his daughter killed? (He tried to save her, but IIRC the laws of physics came back from their coffee break and thwarted him.)

[bigdamnhero]

Even though it was Spidey's actions that got his daughter killed? (He tried to save her, but IIRC the laws of physics came back from their coffee break and thwarted him.)

George Stacy died before Gwen did. Crushed by falling bricks from Spidey's fight with (IIRC) Doc Ock. With his last words he calls Spidey "Peter" and asks him to look after Gwen. (Yeah, that last part didn't work out so well.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

It was a pretty gut wrenching sequence of stories, for sure.  There's never been a run of Spider-Man comics like that first 50 issues or so.  Maybe of any comics.

[BoloOfEarth]

I somehow get the feeling that in the supers gaming genre, Secret Identities are not as popular as they once were. They seem to be a lot more trouble than some players think they are worth, in between maintaining the cover and the constant neccesity to be less-than-truthful with friends and loved ones to keep up the charade. And in games with licensing or government sanctioning of heroes or teams, the character's identity is available somewhere, an an open secret to any sufficiently talented hacker (or anyone rich enough to be able to hire one).

So how do you make Secret Identity worth the points but not a license to screw up the character's life at whim? And how do you roleplay the character maintaining essentially two lives, especially if both identities have significant public personas?

 

I've always welcomed Secret IDs in any Champions game I've run, and most of the PCs have had Secret ID as a Disad.  My upcoming game will be the first time I've run Champions in 6th edition, and very few of the players have taken Secret ID as a Complication, but most of them have given me background info that makes it clear that each has a secret ID as well as a superhero/superheroine ID.  And I've asked each player to provide me with at least 5 NPCs (note:  not DNPCs) to round out his/her character's "world".  So I'll definitely devote some in-game time to all of their secret IDs, but as ghost-angel pointed out, it will be more of a factor for those who included Secret Identity as a Complication.

 

I've never had a problem bouncing between different characters, both in secret and hero IDs, and keeping the other players from getting bored / drifting off.  Maybe I'm just lucky, but over time my players have started to overlap their non-hero lives -- spending time as friends in secret IDs as well as having mutual NPC friends.  PC heroes became unofficial "uncles" and "aunts" to other PCs' kids. 

 

The whole "maintaining a cover" thing is there, but it's not the bulk of how I use Secret ID.  The heroes in my game sometimes discover useful info or key plot points in civvies that they might not have gotten in hero ID.  For instance, a research scientist PC saw one of his grad students getting roughed up by an obviously superpowered individual.  Now, I suppose he could don his armored battlesuit and question the student -- but he's more likely to get info out of the guy talking to him as a mentor.  One heroine discovered that her fiance's admin assistant was getting involved in a women's empowerment group that turned out to be a front for a supervillainess group.

 

Overall, it takes some effort, both by the GM as well as the players to balance the secret and hero ID stuff. But done right, it adds a whole new level to the game, just as fun for the players as the face-punching stuff (though obviously in a different way).