this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Well, there is some important prep, and it's to decide those key secrets up front for the purposes of continuity. Like for example I'd decide from the beginning that that NPC is from those same persecuted people as the PC, I just wouldn't have a clear pretedetermined path or set of clues in mind for how the players might figure that out. Those details can emerge organically through gameplay so long as the core foundations are laid in advance. I do run a bunch of one-shots the more open ended "generative" way you describe, but anything longer running needs the explicit advance prep to work out those key secrets up front in order to keep things stable and consistent.
The way I prepped with nodes was that I didn't set three clues for every secret a NPC had, doing what you did as well, just on ties to other people and how they "became contactable". I'll reuse the High Mage example. For some context, this was a matriarchical sultanate of wizards where only women could use magic. The High Mage had four clues:
Proactive: Someone finds the magic necklace that can talk telepathically to the High Mage's "adopted daughter", the dragon girl whom she keeps in a (nonliteral) golden cage. -> This was one of the major secrets for this campaign. The High Mage had tapped this line and the dragon tried to hide as much personal information as possible.
Hidden ally of the terrorist cell of maiden knights.
Her apprentice had helped the rich warvet directly with his grievous wounds.
Knows about the existence of The Robot and actively hunts it down.
And those were the clues that pointed to her:
Her enemy in the Mage Council is largely discredited, but she still (indirectly) accuses her, under her breath, that she is a heretic, or trying to become a lich, or helps people circumvent law, or... She doesn't keep the facts straight and everyone thinks she is bullshitting since the claims are disconnected and are all of grave crimes, but they're (mostly) true.
She had offered directly to turn a male wizard into female with her secret potion so he would be respected as a magi and not have the police called on him for being an "illegal bard" every two weeks or so.
The Eldritch Fey knows about the dragon girl.
Some pointed directly to secrets (mainly those who had to do with the dragon), but mostly were just to other people. Even the pointers to the dragon weren't pointers to the fact she was a philactery.