>From: Greg Stafford <Greg_at_...>
>
>The intent was that they would nearly impossible to attain.
>Normal means of "growth" were not supposed to allow one to attain a Secret.
This is a conclusion I came to through play a while back. I have characters in my game who have had hundreds of HP thrown at them already (50 sessions of play with about 4 HP given each session, and liberal other bonuses, in addition to starting with more points than normal including slightly elevated keyword levels). What's fascinating is that they don't look all that much different in power level than they did when they started. People doing this analysis of secrets understand implicitly that their analyses are best-case scenarios. That is, it's dozens of sessions if you spend only on the specific ability.
How often does that happen? Never, from what I've seen. HP get spread about over time over bumps and different abilities that after hundreds of HP given to players to spend on characters that I think I have one player who has a 2 mastery ability from this (Symbolic Sight 8W2) and we think of him as very focused on this. The next is, I think, a Leader of Men 15W. Then it tends to drop down to 10W for highest abilities.
Which is not to say that the characters haven't developed. Far from it. That character with the Leader of Men 15W started the game without the ability (would be two masteries if he'd started with it high up). But with augmenting and such, they're still just powerful "journeymen" level characters, coming up on mastery. After 50 sessions of play. Nothing resembling a "Master's Master" or a "Hero" in sight amongst them.
Basically what I'm seeing is a system that promotes development the way you see it in stories. That is, if you want a character to be a hero, he basically starts the story as one. Frodo doesn't become "heroic" in a "Hercules" fashion. Nor does Aragorn start as a lowly farm boy. Luke Skywalker? Well, I'd say that he's actually three characters in three stories. One the farmboy, one the master level (Journeyman Jedi), and one the hero (Jedi *Master*). If you want to have stories like this, have similar dramatic leaps in the game. That is, say that the character advances in "downtime" and simply refactor him appropriately to be the hero that you need him to be for the stories in question.
What HQ probably doesn't do (and I'll get to that probably in a moment), is to provide a D&D-like procession from farmboy to hero using the normal development system over the course of a period of the character's life. This is something that we've come to expect from RPGs, but it's merely a historical antecedent to a sort of play that is different from what HQ supports.
Now, all that said, I'm a sucker for the D&D "cradle to grave" sort of progression as much as most RPG players. So, in fact, I think that HQ can, played long enough, do just this. That is, what I'm doing in my game is playing in chunks of the characters lives, and allowing some characters to go on in the later chunks. These are close enough together that I'm not giving huge "Saga System" advances in between, but some. Combining large numbers of sessions and a few of these little bumps up between "stories" effectively, I think that eventually I will see some of the characters attain heroic status of abilities.
Combine this with Heroquesting as has been mentioned, and the lucky characters will not only at some point be about gaining secrets, but about becoming full-fledged heroes. This will be these character's stories at those times in their lives. That is, a whole story (in my game maybe 60 sessions of play) can revolve around nothing but gaining such a secret. Or becoming world renowned.
Only time will tell, however. Meaning years of play - the oldest characters in the game have been around since they were created using Hero Wars. I think that in five years or so, I'll be able to present you with maybe one hero.
But it'll be well worth it.
If you want to abbreviate the process, then just do so. That is, start characters as "almost heroes" or "almost knowing secrets" and go from there. Sure it's a long road from HQ's "starting character" stat presentations to this point. So if you want to just play that story, start out higher.
If you want to play the character from farmboy to hero, however, either be prepared to do it in stages like Star Wars, or be prepared to play for years and years (which I admit is crazy).
Mike
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