New Secret- need opinions

[alexandro]

Secret of Privileges
You are nearly always acompanied by allies, underlings or slaves and you are very skilled at directing them to do all the heavy-lifting for you. You may use a non-physical Reason-based ability in place of a physical Vigor-based one. Cost: 2 Instinct.

What do you think?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

That seems like a perfectly reasonable Secret. I like it!

[Eero Tuovinen]

I like it too, going to use it soon! This is just me, but if I were to use it in Near, I'd make having the Secret of Wealth (from the Finnish version) or Secret of Nobility a prerequisite; I like to establish social supremacy in stark colors when playing that setting.

[shadowcourt]

Eero, how does your Secret of Nobility work? I've been cribbing notes from the TSOY "Shadow of Empire"/Roman setting I've seen online, and would love to see how it compares. We've been doing a *lot* of court politics in my current game, and it can be tricky to figure out how best to outfit the noble folks sometimes.

We've been using a Wealth ability, effectively added to the Innates, and its worked surprisingly well. It mostly ends up providing bonus dice for certain situations, such as representing flashy items people have bought (i.e. fine clothes for court) or bribes given to people to influence social ability checks. It's been fairly useful, sort of as the "legitimate" version of Freeload (though at least one of the noble players uses that to sponge off of his family, instead!). I'd love to see your suggestions for a Secret of Wealth, though.

alexandro, we also have tweaked the Secret of Animal Companion to reflect a Secret of the Retainer, which tends to represent people's bodyguards, valets, personal assistants, or whatnot. It's been handy in some respects, but I really like your Secret of Privileges, as well. That's a great twist on that idea.

-shadowcourt (aka josh)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Wealth as ability: I've tried that once, too, but it quickly ran into a bit of a problem when ran through the elven filter: we really had to stretch to use the Elven polymath ability to explain the character's wealth. Other than this kind of minor problems wealth as ability works fine, too.

Wealth and Nobility as Secrets: this is just my take, but the way I've used these has been to make them both Secrets that do not have any actual mechanical effect. Like this:

Secret of Wealth
The character has more wealth than he could ever use. This comes up in a multitude of ways in the manner of scenes the character faces and means he has in his disposal, but has no mechanical bearing. However, the Secret of Wealth is a prerequisite for a series of other secrets. If you lose this Secret, you also lose any other Secrets that have it as a prerequisite.

Secret of Nobility
The character is of noble stock proven by history. This mainly comes up as a social and magical quality, as well as a certain refinement applied to describing the character, but has no mechanical bearing. However, the Secret of Nobility is a prerequisite for a series of other secrets. If you lose this Secret, you also lose any other Secrets that have it as a prerequisite.

Now, the trick is that those "other secrets" mentioned are generally a degree better than you'd get if they didn't have the prerequisite. In case of Wealth it has usually been obvious, like you'd get 1+(pool spent) instead of  (pool spent) from a given Secret (and you name it "Wealthy Secret of X" instead of "Secret of X"), that kind of thing. Wealth hath it's privileges. Nobility, on the other hand, works more like a Secret stating that the character belongs to this exclusive extra culture that gives him a series of cool stuff. In practice this depends on play, but I've had swords that burn in unnoble hands, ancient Maldorian cities that open only for the noble of blood, and that kind of thing.

I also have some special rules for gaining and losing these secrets in the Finnish version to emphasize the difficulty and specialty of belonging in these exalted classes, but that's really just a specific application of the normal rules of play.

The idea here is that the very lack of mechanical meaning emphasizes the wide gulf between a rich and a poor, or a noble and a mudborn. Whatever you do and whatever you achieve, you still lack that one ingredient that would really make you fit. (Of course, in case of heroes, they tend to gain and lose these Secrets a couple of times per evening, but still...)

[shadowcourt]

The Polymath option works *brilliantly* for Wealth in our game. The immortal elf discovers a cache of worldly goods that he'd all but forgotten-- "So that's where I'd hidden all those gems! I've been trying to remember that for centuries..." And, of course, he has to spend his next available advance to increase his Wealth ability, so it all flows perfectly logically.

The real sticking point for me is Wealth-based Transcendence. I can certainly imagine what it looks like, but talk about "all your base are belong to us"...

I really like your use of the Secret of Nobility as a "trigger Secret" (i.e. the swords and doors and such you mention). I'm definitely on a similar path, myself, with certain gateway Secrets that provide some minor benefit (or none at all) but open up delicious character options for those who are really interested in them. Thanks for posting them.

-shadowcourt (aka josh)

[Eero Tuovinen]

The Polymath option works *brilliantly* for Wealth in our game. The immortal elf discovers a cache of worldly goods that he'd all but forgotten-- "So that's where I'd hidden all those gems! I've been trying to remember that for centuries..." And, of course, he has to spend his next available advance to increase his Wealth ability, so it all flows perfectly logically.

That's how we used it too, and it is a fun interpretation, certainly. In this particular game it just felt like a constraint because of the particular way the fiction was composed at the moment. Particularly, it was a pacing thing: instead of getting to use his wealth right away, the elf had to go on this subquest to travel to his wealth, and then he even ended up wrassling for it with his descendants (we were in Maldor, so theme-wise "wealth" was really just land ownership; nobody was interested in the golden treasure option). So instead of just getting to use the ability right away like he should, he had to work for it, which feels a bit weak. It was a fun scenario (ended up stealing the show, actually), no doubt, but as the GM I was uncomfortable with having to create adversity: enough to make it feel like a big deal when the character obtains his old domain, but not too much, considering that it's something he's entitled to by his abilities. (Certainly one could just tell it as a flashback so "I've already done all this a couple of days before this exact moment, so I already have that gold in my pocket. It's just one more layer of abstraction.)

So yeah, I'm the last to say it can't be done, it's just an advanced option suitable for those who want to play around with the formalistic definition of what "Ability" means. Fun, but can be confusing if you get stuck on the fiction.