Dirty Secrets describes itself as “a game about crime.” It is that, but strictly within the film noir genre. If you do not enjoy noir, don’t even think about buying this game, because it’s very tightly designed around emulating that particular genre. Press the back button, and read some other review. Really. Go.

If you’re still here, it means you like film noir at least as much as I do, perhaps more. Good for you, because you’re in for a treat. Dirty Secrets is what some would call an indie game. The game describes itself as “a game for one player and many GMs,” and it is that. Still, you really should read on even if you feel iffy about the whole non-traditional RPG design movement. This might still be a game for you. I’m not anywhere near a die-hard fan of those type of games, yet my playtest session for the purpose of this review pretty much convinced me that this is a game I’ll be pulling from my shelf to play it again at some point, for sure.

You can tell this is going to be a very positive review, right?

Style – An overall impression

The game’s front cover is both simple and very evocative: a dirty white cover with a red fingerprint. It basically yells the game’s premise to you whenever you look at it, which is exactly what the front cover of a book should do. The back cover sports the same dirty white background, with a greyscale version of the conflict track, which I’ll explain once I get to the mechanics. The inside of the book looks just as nice. The font used is plain and easily readable, but has a slight typewriter look to it. The illustrations within are photographs; some of them were taken from iStockphoto.com, while others were taken by the author and his wife. Diagrams, grids, and tables of all kinds are also provided throughout the book. Overall, the visual scheme of the book’s interior still says noir, although it’s not as evocative as the front cover.

The game’s prose also works very well. Instead of flavor text, Dirty Secrets relies on a multitude of quotes from the genre’s greatest authors. This is a wise choice, because any flavor text would’ve been compared to their works anyway. This said, the game prose throughout the book exhibits the author’s solid understanding of noir, and his passion for it. Moreover, this passion comes across soberly, without any of the gushing conversational prose that I’ve sometimes read in other games. This pleases me, but it’s more a matter of personal taste than anything else. The game’s rules – which can feel complex at times – are explained very clearly. Numerous examples are provided, and about half the book is dedicated to advice on how to best use the rules. The end result is that, despite the relative complexity, I had a very good grasp of what the game was going to be like in play once I read the book cover to cover. Finally, all the information is very well organized, and easy to find.

One thing I’d like to stress out about the prose is how much it stands on its own. I haven’t read that many “indie” games, but something I noticed in some of the ones I did read is that they seemed to require prior knowledge of Forge theory in order to get the most out of them. Not being a Forge luminary in the least, I was somewhat bummed by this. When I buy a game, I expect it to stand on its own, not require me to read essays and basically buy into a very specific view of roleplaying games in order to understand how they were designed or how to play them. Thankfully, this is not the case here. You can buy Dirty Secrets and understand exactly how it works and what it does without having ever heard of Forge theory. Moreover, even the way the narration is shared can be paralleled with a traditional RPG experience (more on this later), which makes even the concept of a shared narration easily approachable for gamers who are unfamiliar with anything even remotely indie.

Overall, the physical components, the illustrations, and the prose all fit together to support the game’s actual content almost perfectly, from the genre’s tone to the clarity of the game’s mechanics and their impact on play.

Content – The parts and their sum

Trust thy reviewer

I can’t very well do that, can I?

Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll begin by giving you a rough description of what each mechanic is like, and what effect it’s meant to have on the game. Then, I’ll move on to giving you a short portrait of how those various parts are meant to interact, thus forming that “sum” that is Dirty Secrets. You won’t know exactly how the game does what it does, but you’ll know what it’s trying to do. Since this is a playtest review, I’ll add indented comments along the way to share my impressions of how the mechanics worked in play. That won’t give you a complete picture, but it should be enough for you to have a pretty good grasp of what the game is like… if you trust me. If you’re still reading my ramblings on the challenges of being a reviewer right now, it probably means you do. Thanks, I guess.

The parts

The first area of gameplay that Dirty Secrets covers is narrative control. The structure for sharing the narrative provided by the game here is fairly simple. One player takes on the role of the investigator, who is the main protagonist of the game. The role here is very similar to that of a regular player in a traditional RPG. The other players involved each take turns having narrative control; one player has control of the first scene, then another one steps in for the second, and so on until everyone had their turn at narrating. While one player controls the narration, the others act as advisers to both the player in charge of the investigator and the player in charge of the scene.

In the case of a disagreement, the rules are also fairly simple. Anybody can try to veto a decision, forcing the person in charge of the narration (or in charge of the investigator) to make another choice. The veto is applied unless another player steps in to uphold the original decision. Clean and simple.

In play, the rules governing narrative control strikes a nice balance between a shared narrative and giving the person in charge enough space to narrate the scene he really wants to narrate. Since the veto only forces the person in charge to change the narration, it still leaves the narrative control squarely within his hands. The end result is that all the non-investigator players have a role very similar to that of a traditional GM, albeit on a short term basis. They’re free to frame a scene, portray characters, and generate conflict mostly as they see fit.

The second area of gameplay covered by the game is framing. Rules are provided on how to create important characters (what details must be taken into account, like ethnic background or social status), how to create crimes important to the story (crimes must be blackmail, murder, or theft), and on what type of scenes can be framed. As the latter play a large part in how the game unfolds, I’ll go into more details in just a bit.

In play, the various details required for important characters are a great source of inspiration to generate scenes or hypotheses about who did what, and why. The restrictions to what constitutes an important crime keep the story squarely within the realm of noir, by making sure that the crimes involved – which are the focal point of the story – stay within the staple crimes of the genre.

Basically, the investigator gets to propose a scene, which the person in charge of the narration to come is most often free to accept or refuse. If he refuses, the person in charge then has to propose a scene of his own. Four different kinds of scenes can be framed. The main bulk of them will be “investigation” scenes, where the investigator searches for the truth and sometimes run into opposition. “Revelation” scenes are scenes where the investigator discovers a secret relationship between two characters, which is determined semi-randomly. You can have some influence on the secret that comes out, but most of it is left for the system to decide. “Reflection” scenes are scenes where the investigator broods over the harshness of the whole situation. The person in charge of the narrative cannot refuse reflection scenes, and the player in charge of the investigator is responsible for the whole narration, as that type of scene deals with the investigator’s inner dialogue more than anything else. The person in charge of the narration does not lose his turn, however, and gets to narrate the next scene. Finally, “violence” sequences can only be proposed by the person in charge of the narration, and are scenes where somebody just attacks the investigator without much context.

In play, the various type of scenes possible enforce the noir genre like an iron hand in a velvet glove. On one hand, when you think about it, they constitute somewhat severe restrictions on the narration. On the other, they make the framing of a scene very easy even for people who are not used to coming up with things on the fly. In the end, what makes those restrictions a good thing is the very satisfying impression that the scene you just played was very much in line with the noir genre. One would have to try very very hard to stray from the genre. That makes it a strength, because shared narrations tend to be most satisfying when you feel like everyone is working in the same general direction – something that the four types of scenes most definitely facilitate.

Interestingly enough, two of the four type of scenes are meant to help the story whenever you’re at lost for inspiration. “Revelation” scenes do so by generating a new story element without any of the players having to think it up, while “violence” scenes do so by following Raymond Chandler’s advice of having a man with a gun burst in whenever the story has lost its momentum. Both work very well, and did indeed jumpstart the story again when we were at a loss about where to go next.

The third area of gameplay the rules cover is conflict. The conflict resolution system is a slightly modified version of Liar’s Dice. If you don’t know the rules, I strongly encourage you to follow the link, read the rules up until the variants, and to come back here. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

Are you back? Good.

What you need to know is that the rules are slightly different for “investigation” and “violence” scenes, and that each bid corresponds to an action or reaction in the conflict. Only two players can participate at any given time. Violent acts can be narrated, but the actual violent results that come out of the conflict are determined semi-randomly, meaning that you can try to influence how much violence comes out of the conflict, but that randomness also has an impact. When conflict erupts during investigation scenes, another consequence of conflict is the loss of dice. Whoever loses the conflict looses part of his dice, thus affecting how well he’ll perform in further conflicts. (I’ll cover how players can recover lost dice later on.)

Remember the conflict track on the back cover I mentioned earlier? This is what it’s for. You can use it to keep track of the current bid, which is very helpful when you’ve got your mind already occupied by thinking up a new bid and a narration to go along with it.

In play, the Liar’s Dice mirror the conflict within the story quite nicely. The tension inherent to a bidding war is similar to the tension in a noir genre confrontation, which kept us immersed in the scene even though Liar’s Dice has a strategic element to it that requires you to pay close attention to the dice.

The fourth and final area of gameplay covered by the rules is resolution. After all, what’s a game of whodunit without any mechanics to help you figure out exactly who did indeed do it? In Dirty Secrets, the culprits are determined – you guessed it – semi-randomly. Prior to starting a game, you select a “crime grid” based on how long you want the game to last. A crime grid is an empty grid meant to become a random table as the game progresses. The size of the grid varies from 3x3 to 6x6, depending on the length desired for the story.

For my playtest, I chose the novella format, which uses a 3x6 grid. The book estimated the duration of a novella to somewhere between four and six hours. It took us five hours to play the scenario through, excluding the explanation of the rules.

The way the grid works in play is that after each scene, someone gets to write a name on the grid, and move a pawn a certain number of spaces. If the pawn ever gets stuck with no legal movement possible, it means a crime is about to be resolved. Two dice are rolled (one for the X axis, one for the Y axis), and the result determines who committed one of the crimes. Concretely, that means that the names you choose to write on the grid have an impact on how likely any given character is to be a culprit, but that the game itself determines who exactly that is. Of course, you’re expected to put in the name of a character you find especially suspicious, and/or that you wish to see become guilty of a crime at some point. Once the guilt of a character is determined, the players are free to decide which of the previously established crimes they committed, and to include the discovery of that fact in the coming narration.

In play, the random resolution of who committed a crime added a nice noir-like level of suspense, where none of the players involved knew exactly the end of the mystery. The fact that we wrote on the grid names of characters we could see being the culprit ensured that the end result made sense within the context of our story, despite its randomness.

Overall, each of the areas of play covered by the mechanics show how much the author understands the genre. You can feel a lot of thought went into making sure that each mechanic helped the players build a noir-like story. My only issue with the design is the fact that the game is made up of completely independent sub-systems, which makes learning to play feel like a daunting task at first.

Before we started playing, I explained the rules to the other players. Everyone felt like the game was very complicated, and was kind of insecure about playing the game. In play, however, the rules made sense very quickly. Once every player had a chance to narrate one scene, everyone around the table had a very good grasp of how the system worked.

Dirty Secrets has a steep learning curve out of context, but a very soft and easy one in play. Once you’re aware of that, it’s not much of a flaw, but I think it’s still a problem for the game. I suspect some people might finish reading the book, but refrain from playing because the game looks so complicated. Hopefully, the fact that you’ve read this review will keep you from making that particular mistake.

The sum

The narrative control area relates to the other three areas in the exact same way: they ensure that the game remains cohesive. The huge majority of the narrative decisions can be appealed, from the creation of a meaningful character to the name written down on the crime grid. At the same time, the fact that any decision made by the game mechanics cannot be appealed ensures that a certain level of cohesion and/or non-biased randomness are still involved, thus providing a sense of suspense which is essential to the genre.

In play, nobody felt that the story was sent off track by one player or another, despite the fact that we all wanted to tell very different stories at various moments during the game. Much of that cohesiveness came from the fact that certain details could be appealed, while the basic structure (the types of scenes, the level of violence in the conflicts, when and how crime resolution takes place) of the noir genre were etched in stone.

The conflict area relates to framing and resolution by having an impact on who has the most control over the narrative. First, conflict relates to framing by way of consequences. If you’ve been paying attention to this review, you remember that some conflicts can lead to a loss of dice. The way to regain those lost dice is via the framing of scenes. When certain scenes are framed, or when a player in charge of the narrative does not oppose the player in charge of the investigator as he proposes a scene, dice are regained. In essence, lost dice mean losing some amount of control over which scenes to accept, and which scenes to refuse. Likewise, whenever a conflict erupts, the winner of that conflict gains a wider control over the rest of the narration where that conflict took place. That wider control extends to resolution, because whoever won the conflict decides in which direction the pawn moves at the end of the scene (influencing how soon crime resolution will happen) and what name gets written on the crime grid (influencing the likelihood of one character being the culprit of a crime).

In play, it became very obvious to me that this relation between conflicts and framing also enforced a more subtle convention of the noir genre. Most times, the central struggle of noir is control – the protagonist struggles to gain a measure of control over the situation, sometimes merely by understanding it better. Conversely, the antagonists want the protagonist to have as little control as possible, because that keeps him from getting in their way. This struggle is very much mirrored in the game via the fact that winning a conflict allows the winner to control the narrative better both in the short term (greater control over the current scene) and the long term (more latitude on which scenes to impose or refuse and/or increased chances of winning latter conflicts.)

Finally, resolution relates to framing in a very subtle way. Since the resolution mechanics are what dictate who’s guilty of a crime, no truth about the guilt of this or that character can be brought into the narration. The end result is that every hint or confession that is narrated falls squarely within the realm of suspicion. The person in charge of narrating a scene therefore becomes an unreliable narrator, which is another staple of the genre.

In play, I found that the relationship between resolution and framing negated some issues that usually have the potential to arise from a shared narrative. For instance, nobody worked actively towards a specific endgame, because that endgame was by definition not within our realm of influence. The result of that was that our collective narrative was much more cohesive than it would’ve been if we could’ve dictated the outcome of the mystery. We just focussed on creating good scenes and interesting characters, while the game took care of the rest. As a result, the narrations that were met with a veto were challenged because one of us didn’t really dig it in the here and now, and not because it went against what another player had in mind for the overall resolution of the mystery.

Furthermore, not having to worry about an ending was both oddly liberating and exciting. It was liberating because it meant we could just focus on the current scene without a long term agenda. The excitement came from the fact that none of us had any idea of how the story was going to end. We were all very enthusiastic about the idea of discovering how the characters, crimes, and situations we created would fit together in the end.

I was already impressed with the basic mechanics of Dirty Secrets. The subtle depth achieved by how those pieces fit together to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts is just icing on the cake. The final result is a set of mechanics that are all focussed together towards reaching on simple goal: telling a story within the noir genre, in a way that produces the same kind of fun as a noir story for the people involved in telling it.

Playing it – General impressions

I’ve already covered how the mechanics worked out in play throughout this review. What I will be doing here is sharing some general impressions of the game that came out of playing it. I’ll leave the details of the system aside altogether, and just focus on what the overall experience of playing Dirty Secrets was like.

Dirty Secrets is a pick-up game in the truest sense. All you need to do is print up a crime grid, some character and crime cards (small sheets, really), and you're good to go. No premise, no initial concept, no nothing. All of this is generated in the course of play. That makes Dirty Secrets the perfect kind of game to pull out when you and a few gaming buddies are looking for something to do for a few hours.

I’ve already addressed the learning curve of the system above, but I really want to underline how fast the gameplay was once we each had a stab at narrating a scene. The mechanics quickly faded in the background most of the time, leaving us with nothing but the story and how we told it. At the same time, whenever the mechanics came to the forefront, they were both very enjoyable from a “gamist” perspective and in-synch with the genre’s mood. In other words, our story and the mechanics ended up being seamlessly woven together.

Although it did not scratch completely my traditional gaming itch, Dirty Secrets ended up feeling closer to the traditional gaming experience for me than other non-traditional games I’ve played. Funnily enough, those games featured a GM, while Dirty Secrets does not. I think the fact that the system is very tightly designed provides a sense of strong coherence to the game. When you think about it, the game’s mechanics themselves exert a very strong control over the game that unfolds, not unlike a GM in a traditional game. At the same time, the rules governing how the narrative is shared also provide a lot of breathing room for the person in charge of narrating a scene. The end result was that most scenes were framed and paced with a strong sense authorship on the part of the person doing the narration, not unlike when a single GM is in charge of the story. As it turns out, “a game for one player and many GMs” is really the perfect way to describe Dirty Secrets.

Finally, the story we ended up with after five hours of play was very, very, very impressive. First, I was impressed how true the story was to the noir genre, from start to finish, despite the fact that two of the players were somewhat unfamiliar with the genre. This is the type of game were you can go in with the vaguest knowledge of what noir is, and trust the game to guide you in the process of telling a noir story. By following the structure dictated by the rules, you’re pretty much bound to end up effortlessly with something that fits the genre. Second, I was equally impressed by the complexity of the story we told. It had twists and turns like you wouldn’t believe. Betrayals, secret relationships, violence, the whole sha-bang. Third, I was most of all impressed by the fact that this insanely complex story, told by four people who never talked about where they wanted the story to go, ended up being coherent. Almost perfectly coherent. I’m still befuddled by it, as a matter of fact. Throughout the five hours, we didn’t put any sort of effort into making this into a coherent whole, apart from a few vetoes about obvious details that somebody had forgotten. The game did it all pretty much by itself, which is damn impressive.

I had a blast, the three other players had a blast, and I’ll play it again at some point for sure.

The Bottom Line

Dirty Secrets earns a 5 for style, because of its visual flair, the clarity of its prose, and the numerous examples and diagrams provided. It earns a 5 for substance because of what it achieves as a game, especially considering how tightly woven the mechanics are.

Happy gaming,
Jocelyn

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