Secrecy Within the Campaign (CNH)

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When the DM allows ninja characters within a campaign, he must decide what sort of security to institute. After all, the ninja is a character with a secret, often run by a player keeping the same secret. All these layers of secrecy can make the running of a campaign much harder if not dealt with carefully and intelligently.
There are three types of security for this sort of campaign:
# The ninja's secrets are kept from the other characters and from the other players.
# The ninja's secrets are kept from the other characters but not from the other players.
# The ninja's secrets are known to the other PCs but not to the world at large.
Each approach requires the DM to make different arrangements for his campaign.
==Keeping Secrets From the Players==
The hardest approach is for the player of the ninja character to keep the truth about his character class and goals from the other characters and from the other players. This requires a fair amount of setup work on the part of the player and the DM.
===Redesign Character Sheets===
If the campaign's players use a uniform character sheet format, the DM should change it. In the new format, the only character information that appears in public view should be:
* The PC's name
* A list of the PC's visible gear. This list should indicate only the type of item, such as "longsword," not magical bonuses or special attributes.
* THAC0
* Armor class
It's pointless to conceal the PC's THAC0 and Armor Class, as most players can work out these values without effort by comparing die rolls to results in combat.
The back of the character sheet should include information on class, level, hit points, and saving throws.
If the campaign allows players to choose their own format for character sheets, the player of
the ninja should utilize a format such as this. The DM should encourage other players to do the same, to prevent the players from concluding that the one character demonstrating some secrecy must obviously have something to hide.
===False Character Sheets===
Even with the additional security offered by the new character sheet format, the player of the ninja should work up an alternate, "public" character sheet for his ninja. This sheet should reflect the character's statistics and abilities as accurately as possible while still maintaining the illusion that the character belongs to a different character class (typically a fighter or a thief). This subterfuge will prevent discovery when a player gets the occasional accidental look at his neighbor's sheet.
In campaigns where everyone starts out at 1st level, it will be hard for a ninja character to maintain the illusion that he's a 1st-level thief; his thieving skills just aren't as good as those of a thief. He can help sustain the pretense by learning what thieving skills are mostly likely to be used in the campaign and pouring more discretionary points into them (at the expense of other skills), and by never letting another player see his thieving skill values long enough to add them up.
===Paranoia Notes===
The DM should promote the use of paranoia notes in his campaign. Paranoia notes are nothing more than written communications passed between player and DM to allow them to exchange information the other players don't need to know. The ninja player will have to utilize such a technique in order to communicate privately with the DM. If he is the only player to do so, the other players will become suspicious. But if the DM persuades the other players to routinely use notes, the ninja player's activities will not seem out of the ordinary.
===Solo Activities===
Finally, there's the problem of the ninja character's individual goals. The ninja will have clan goals assigned him by the clan leader. Some of these missions can be carried out while the character is in the presence of his non-ninja allies, but sometimes the ninja will have to go out on his own and conduct private missions of stealth.
The best way to do this is to arrange private time with the DM for the player of the ninja, perhaps before or after the regular game session.
Things become trickier when the ninja character must perform a private mission in the middle of an ordinary run. The DM should avoid such situations whenever possible, allowing the player to do this only when the story's plot absolutely cannot progress until the ninja has done his investigating.
Typically, the DM will have to take the ninja player aside where the others cannot hear in order to play out the event. Such mid-game missions should be kept as short as possible so that the other players do not become bored or suspicious. It also helps if the DM can combine these game events with normal interruptions such as dinner breaks.
For time reasons, these mini-missions should avoid combat—but that should be no imposition, as ninja prefer to avoid combat when stealth will suffice.
Finally, the DM should arrange for other players to have short solo events. If every player gets the occasional interlude of this sort, it will keep suspicion from falling on the player of the ninja. Additionally, it will give each player the occasional opportunity to explore some hobby or interest not shared by the others, which is good for enhancing role-playing in any campaign.
===Multiple Ninja===
In a campaign arranged along these lines, two or more players could run ninja from different clans and not even realize it. Each would probably be too concerned with maintaining his own secret to realize that other players are doing the same thing.
==The Players Know, The Characters Don't==
An approach that is considerably simpler to implement and live with, involving no major changes to campaign structure, requires that all players in the campaign be able to role-play a certain amount of ignorance on the part of their characters.
With this arrangement, the players all know the major facts about characters who keep secrets. Every player will get solo time in which his character can perform individual tasks and missions, but the difference is that this one-on-one time with the DM is conducted in front of the other players.
This is a cinematic approach, with the players not involved in a scene acting as its audience.
==The Characters Know==
Finally, another easy approach is to run a campaign in which all the characters know that one character is a ninja.
Such a campaign can be brought about in any of several ways:
The party could be made up entirely of members of the ninja's clan.
The ninja's secret could be revealed to the party before he even enters the campaign. For example, a party member or NPC patron could hire a ninja for a specific purpose. In such a case, the fact that the character is a ninja would be known to the others, but his real identity—his true name and the name of his clan—would remain a secret.
The ninja's secret could be revealed in the course of the campaign. However, this would come as a modification to an already established campaign rather than the way the campaign was originally set up.