Re: Cheap Secrets?

Greetings and Salutations
2004-10-05-1700.

Jane Williams wrote:
> > > Tenla gained her reprisal sword 'Vengeance' in her 100 words
> > > although she could have bought the ability for 1HP in game.
> > > Not the big bang of the cult secret but her foes will not know
that. ;-)
>
> In one go of that game, nor did her player, nor the GM :(

I do like to give every player character a magical item that is ambiguous but is still related to that character somewhat. The characters I use in my demo games are based on the player characters in my own house campaign with one of the many groups that I play with. The Vingan's was a magical sword called 'Vengeance' not the cult's secret. I can imagine that a few would call their swords that name or something very similar. There has always been a tradition of naming swords and other weapons within groups like this and I always consider any `named' weapons magical in nature. That is why they have them as abilities and have a target number next to them as well as additional bonuses.

> > Of course, it's not *nice* to use the name of a secret as an
> ability name...
>
> Very confusing is what it was. Very, very confusing. As the player
> handed the character, I seem to remember going "whaaa...?", asking
> the GM, and then declining to use the ability on the grounds that I
> shouldn't have had it.

That was your prerogative as a player to chose not to use any ability on the character sheet.
However this character has been played quite a few times at different conventions and most players do not know the arcane rules for each of the secrets.
Most just use the abilities as they would any other. That is something I encourage as most players new to HeroQuest enjoy the freedom away from skill and spell descriptions. They do get very creative with the use of some abilities, especially the ambiguous magical ones that a reprisal sword called 'Vengeance' appears to be. That was one of the reasons I asked for a list of strange and weird abilities to be compiled on the HQ list.

As I said in my earlier post, I do not like the cult secrets. I would discourage any player actively seeking to gain one from doing so. Each secret seems to me to have a separate rule and do come across as a mini-max power gain. Any secret that is used to define the nature of the cult is wasted as the secret. I would allow any character to gain a similar ability [whether having the same name or a similar effect] through play if they so desired. That may involve a contest or doing a deed of some significance to gain the ability but it would remove the bean counting/power level gain that I dislike so much.

Darran.