Ye Olde Inn

This might be something for anyone trying to come up with custom spells or other cards.
Where the original cards refer to "any one Hero" or "...monster", the wording could be altered to "any one figure".
I did this. Here's why:

- The caster can cast a spell on a monster OR a hero OR a companion of whatever kind, regardless of whether the spell is offensive or defensive or what have you.
- The spell/card can be given to any NPC or Hero if/when a quest/you require it without grammatical and semantic fuss.
- If the Hero group wants to play competitive instead of cooperative, they can. Of course they don't have to.

Just thought that this is so general that I might as well post it.

I did that in HQR, since by the time you get to the US quest packs and the White Dwarf quests, there's all sorts of effects that can bounce/redirect spells.

I too would prefer more of a generic wording for spells. Lifts the limits of "heroes" and "monsters" and I can totally see some of my players using Ball of Flame on each other.

Only down side is the word itself... Figure!!! it takes away from the imaginative value.

That is true*, but that counter-argument is too little for me.
In my rulebook and in all texts in general, I also do away with the differentiation between "player" and "Hero".
The Evil Wizard player is referred to as Morcar, the hero players as Heroes.

This helps the fluff on its feet just reading the text and adds that tiny tad of RPG. You know, "you are your character".
It and the "figure" wording helps (in fact, forces) the players to really get into character and look through the eyes of them. I've even get the impression that it helps in things like Line-of-Sight. I always refer to "you" or "Insert name here".**

I guess I could even go so far as to use "character" instead of "figure", but I wanted to convey the difference between that board game and something trying to be an RPG. That, and the plastic Orcs are simply not characters.***

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* "miniature" would have been the worse choice...
** I guess I should mention at this point, that I let players freely swap heroes between quests among themselves or even play new ones (choice from 16 in 4 classes, all of which have to be represented in each quests), even if no-one died.
*** Now I can't even make a post without footnotes.****
**** Then again, I love Terry Pratchett's style.

*** Now I can't even make a post without footnotes.****

WTF, followed by a lil chuckle, wasn't expecting to read that line.

Perhaps individual in place of Hero and monster. It has less attachment to the game piece than figure and places the definition in-game. Since its a board game, I personally don't mind figure. But I'm a rulesy guy.