Yah, I've been through this before, dontchano. Time to look at it again. For brainstorming purposes, if people want to propose outlandish stuff, go ahead. But I've got some specific goals:

1. I want a non-arbitrary means of HP distribution. Right now I just throw out a pile of HP at the end of each session and hope it's about right.
2. I'd like it to reward something positive, of course. Something that doesn't already happen, that is. Otherwise I don't really need it.
3. If possible it should address what I'm going to call the IRC rate of play (ROP) problem.

I'll give what I'm currently thinking, and why I think it's right.

I had proposed an idea like Fan Mail in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17538.new;topicseen#new

Basically I'm thinking that each player gets 2 HP at the beginning of each session, including the GM. These are not for their own use, so let's call them what they are, Fan Mail points. Once you give fan mail to another player, however, these become Hero Points. That is you can't use them yourself, they soley exist to give to other players to indicate what you like to see in play. No other criteria on what to reward, give them out for anything that pleases you from another player's play.

Now, this addresses point one, in that no longer is HP distribution arbitrary, it comes from player decisions about what they want to see. As for point two, it's positive reinforcement, and while that happens now in play, I think that some mechanical reinforcement would be nice.

As for point three, it would be very bad - acutally less than the standard I give out now, which is about 4 HP. Before I get into potential solutions, let me lay out the ROP problem in more detail. Essentially given IRC play, there are few contests. Actually that might be a cop out, I find that I don't have enough contests even in FTF play, to keep up with the rate of HP distribution that I like to see. That is, HP distribution has to be proportional to two different things:

- The rate of contests - if you have far more contests than HP, then players have a "why not?" attitude towards bumping on occasion. Depends on how they spend, too, of course. But generally if you have a large pool, and you know you'll get more before you have to spend, there's little disincentive to bump. I'd prefer if HP were scarce enough that there was a disincentive to bump not only based on spending, but based on worries of running out of HP.
- The rate of development - you want HP distribution to be such that players are satisfied with their rate of development.

Interstingly I think that the one for one that HQ has set up right now may simply be wrong for the style of play I'd like to see where characters change dramatically. That is, I find downward pressure on HP from contest rates, but I find upward pressure from development rate needs. I have three potential solutions for this:

A. The players haven't complained about the rate of development, so just give them less. In fact, I worry that they're encountering the GURPS/Hero System phenomenon of having more points than they know what to do with for development purposes. This could be ameliorated, however, I think, by taking away the rule that says that it costs increasingly more to increase abilities in the same shot (double for second point, tripple for third, etc). I think that informs players that development should be realistic or spread out, and often they don't know what to increase as a result. So I get players with big piles of unspent HP. Barring doing this, however, option A, reducing HP might be the right thing to do. It's just that given the scale of HQ, I personally would like to avoid this one.

B. Reduce costs for development. I'm thinking right now of making everything cost one third of what it cost, or even one fifth. That way I can have few HP, but they can go a long way. And spending each is that much more of a consideration. I like that. But it assumes that the players have a desire to see their characters change as much as I do. How odd is that? The GM wants the players to go up faster, and the players want slower? Go figure.

C. Go with low amounts of HP, but have them be about changing characteristics, not about buying specific amounts of them. That is, instead of one HP making something go up one, it can either be renamed, or it can go up (or down) as far as you like. This could be applied to flaws, too, making them more viable in many ways.

Thoughs?

Mike

Hm.

You're proposing changing the (total) HP awarded from 4P (four times the number of players) to 2P+2 (two per player plus two for yourself).

I can tell you right now that under that scheme... I would certainly bump less often... and at this point I've bumped, what, twice in the whole campaign?
As for costs of development, I would need to see an actual proposed system before I could rate it.

Mike wrote: C. Go with low amounts of HP, but have them be about changing characteristics, not about buying specific amounts of them. That is, instead of one HP making something go up one, it can either be renamed, or it can go up (or down) as far as you like. This could be applied to flaws, too, making them more viable in many ways.

Here's one of the problems I've had with the HQ system so far.

One of Okhfels goals is to obtain a tethium sword.  Under the existing system, it would cost LOADS of points, as I understand it.

So how would that change under the new system?

Vaxalon wrote:
Here's one of the problems I've had with the HQ system so far.

One of Okhfels goals is to obtain a tethium sword.  Under the existing system, it would cost LOADS of points, as I understand it.

So how would that change under the new system?

I'd like to add an option D Stored HP Taxation.  At the beginning of each session, yank 1/3 of all stored HPs.  In some ways it changes the least while incenting the behavior you want, I think.

After last week's discussion, I was thinking that everyone earns two HP and gives two others away is a pretty good compromise between either extreme.

I want to go on record as not being in the "have more HPs than I know what to do with" camp.  Not by a long, long stretch.  I've been thinking seriously of retiring Egani but I keep coming back to the fact that I've spent so many HPs on development and I'm still so, so far from my goals, that I want neither of: wasting the accrued "experience" represented by that development, quitting before reaching any goals at all.  I feel like HPs are really scarce as is -- and I understand that you're awarding them at a fantastic rate compared to what my reading of the rules suggests is normal.

As for the Tethium Sword, I don't know what it's supposed to do, but why not buy it at 1:1 -- 1 HP for "Tethium Sword 13" (or 15 with a bargain) but have it provide situational modifiers as appropriate?  I've been assuming (perhaps quite wrongly) that that's how the "Sword of the Planes" that Egani stole would work if and when it were used that way.

If you went with option B would one HP be divided among raising three or five abilities one point, or would it raise one ability three or five points or would it just be a value multiplier but the extra-point-in-the-same-ability surcharge would still exist?

Seems to me that incremental change is your problem. Throw that overboard and you'll have lots of different options on how to go about it. I'll outline one:

Instead of spending points on incremental improvement, have abilities improve based on instructive challenges. Whenever a character faces an instructive challenge of level at least equal to the level of the ability to be improved, improve the ability rating based on the degree of success: +1 for a minimal success, immediate raise to the challenge's level +5 on a perfect success. Something like that. As for what is an instructive challenge: whatever the player wants to be one. You could have setting such a challenge cost a HP, if you want to stick with resource limitations. Or all challenges could be such (but then you'll probably want some permanent dangers, too). Instructive challenges can happen during play, but the player can set them freely between sessions, when the characters go on all kinds of out-of-play quests and stuff.

The above has several benefits: characters change interestingly and dramatically, but the players still retain ultimate control. HP spending for ability improvement is handled by the bumbing mechanic (because bumbing in an instructive challenge will give you a larger increase). Character change is fully integrated in play, and the players will have to invent situations for their characters to faice superior challenges. The trainwreck that is the HQ experience system is fixed, because something like getting a magical sword is handled exactly like anything else, with no room for "cementing" or other foolishness.

How I did it in my game: Well, I used the "used HP are XP" mod, for starters. But I also had a fractional surcharge: whenever HP were awarded, players removed one fifth of their HP. Kept the massive stocks under control.

Hi

In my game I have at time loaded the characters with HP. For example, I gave 50 Hp each in one hit when they defeated the Crimson Bat, and 20 hp at the end of the cradle scenario. I have a rule that you cannot spend more than 3 hp a session. This is to make sure folks always have some to spend on experience.

I don't like the 'fan mail' system for HQ. Maybe for a convention game, but not for general play. I feel that it could lead to gamist play and/or dysfunction. That maybe because I am a Brit and thats how my mind works, and we are playing a hybrid sim/narratavist experiment.

I think 'fan mail' would work best in a mature, almost exclusively narratavist game. I think it is also less suitable to games engaged in traditional party play.

Just my two pence (cents) worth.

Regards
Rob

My first reaction is that option C is the one that excites me.  Option A wouldn't bother me, but I also don't usually feel as if I have too many hero points, just that sometimes there doesn't seem much point in adding just one point to an ability that will only be used as an augment, so they occasionally build up for lack of something significant to do with them.  Option B would address that problem, but feels like a half-way measure towards giving players full control of their character concepts.

Option C, on the other hand goes all the way, gives the players a lot of responsibility, but feels freeing.  I might well have used it just last week, for example: Chris' character, Egani, spent the whole session patching up my character's, Archelaus', body, then returning his soul to it, but I only raised Archelaus' relationship with Egani by three points, seemingly a lot, but in practice not enough to raise that augment by even +1.

Exciting as option C is though, there are some possible problems with it.  Janus mention one, but there might also be an issue with not wanting to raise an ability a small amount, feeling under pressure to make big dramatic changes every time, just because you could.  I almost think I'd want to get as many hero points under option C, as we do now, just to tinker with abilities and change their names from time to time (I do the latter for free now, though, admittedly, sometimes only for humourous effect).

I also suspect that option C would work best in a face to face game where players spend hero points in public while everyone's there.  This would control the possible problem of people making dramatic changes to their characters that seem wrong to the other players.  Okhfels, for example, started with a special ability of Strength 5W2 (or something like that), if I suddenly raised one of Archelaus' abilities to that level, it could reduce Okhfels' specialness.

As for fan mail, I like the idea, although it has had mixed success in my FtF game, mainly because people forget about it in the heat of play.  I also think that a hybrid between fan mail and a base award (of say 2 hp) would be more to my liking.  Some people are simply better at playing for the Ooohs and Aaahs and sometimes even they are tired or distracted.  I'd like to think, if only for selfish reasons, that the less stellar players should be given something to develop their characters with.

I'd suggest playing for a couple of weeks using a fan mail system in which each player still gets, potentially, on average, 4 HP per session and see how that goes, before introducing another change, i.e. option A, B, C or ZZ.

Charles Wotton

wrote: I also suspect that option C would work best in a face to face game where players spend hero points in public while everyone's there.  This would control the possible problem of people making dramatic changes to their characters that seem wrong to the other players.  Okhfels, for example, started with a special ability of Strength 5W2 (or something like that), if I suddenly raised one of Archelaus' abilities to that level, it could reduce Okhfels' specialness.

I think everbody gets this but, just to be sure, I meant that reducing Okhfels' specialness would be a bad thing.

Charles

Why not make bumping and advancing the same thing?  In other words, if you bump a roll during a conflict, you are increasing it by one permanently as well.  Clearly, this makes bumping extremely common, and it might make sense to lower the bonus a little or lower the rate of acquisition (or both).  As for how HP are acquired in the first place, I'm not sure I care overly much.  I suppose that it could work like the fan mail model.  You get a set number of HP per session, and you spend them on OTHER characters' actions.  I suppose this goes into push/pull territory that's the big craze on the big blogs right now.

Perhaps fan mail HP in the push/pull system are generated by losing conflicts.

Or perhaps it's a closed economy.  If you spend an HP on someone, it gets put into your personal HP pool for next session.  That makes courting HP from the other players especially desirable as not only do you get the bump and the advancement, you also get to spend that point of HP on their characters next session.

Well, if I already hadn't mentioned this, I don't like the general idea here, because I like a tension between bumping and spending on abilities. So as to incentivize not bumping as a viable option.

Given that, does your second post still make sense? I'm not sure I get it.

Mike

I like Kintara's idea a lot.

Let me see if I understand it right.

I've got (let's say) four tokens in front of me.

Thomas does something I like.

I hand him one of my tokens.  I have one less.

He gets a bump on the conflict where he's doing something cool.

He gets a +1 he can throw on his character.

He adds the token to his pool.

Have I got it right?

Right, Vax, perhaps with one tweak: the spending player decides where the advancement goes. I suppose that's optional, but I think it would be cool at least as an exercise in player co-authorship.

The cool thing about it is that all the GM needs to do is keep track of how they are spent to get an idea of what interests who, as well as who is getting the most attention.

Oh, and also the tokens, once traded, couldn't be spent again in the same session.  Otherwise the economy would get all messed up.  But I suppose that's obvious.

Hi Mike,

I've been thinking about this recently too. There is a tension between giving players enough hero points to advance and increasing their propensity to bump. Some of my thoughts so far are:

• Changing the advancement costs. I agree this is a viable solution. Ultimately the rate of advancement is a campaign decision. How comfortable are you with players who exceed normal folk in ability? This works both ways. Foks who want less-advancement can increase costs, those who want more advancement increase costs. Some people like the idea of +1 point of increase is 1 hero point for everything apart from affinities/broad abilities which are 1 for 3. You need to decide on off-camera on camera costs still and concentration./li]
• I have already used the saga rules (narrators chapter) which allow keyword increases at year-end. I am now toying with the idea of allowing keyword increases with each year. So one answer I am toying with is just to cost Increase Occupation/Homeland Keyword by +1 at 3 points  and Increase Magic Keyword by +1 at 6 points. The large costs but high reward hopefully gives players a better spend points vs. get a big boost to advancement trade off. I also like the idea that you get better overall at all your abilities over just one specific skill. Curiously thought this would almost be a move back from skills based advancement to character class. However I think traditional problems there could be obviated by a Buy New Keyword at 13 with a cost of 4 points. That allows people to buy those advanced occupation keywords too. I would double for off-camera and non-concentrated too. The former because it stops abuse, Buying a New Keyword at 8 points looks unattractive for mini-maxers and concentration is still a good choice to quicker magical advancement[
• Linking spending and advancement to goals/passions. Under this idea, much less formed, I was thinking it would be good to tie both the distribution of rewards and the expenditure of points to things you declare that you care about. So you could only spend points to bump in certain key story areas, and only gained points when you played in a way that explored certain goals/passions. This is a really formative idea as yet

If I end up doing anything, I'm most likely to end up with the second, because it is the simplest, just a new cost to add to the chart.

Hi

How about this for an idea;

Each player has 3 hero points they can spend in a session/ story sequence. You assign experience HP as a seperate mechanism. I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

Thoughts?
Regards
Rob

I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

Bryan_T wrote:

I have often thought that folks who are pro-active and, well, heroic and are engaging the story are burning pints but the guy that sits back and rakes them in, always playing the percentages, is advancing quicker.

I think the idea is that those who insist on winning get in play advantages, while those who accept losing sometimes have the potential to advance more quickly.  So is it more important to you to win the singing contest, or to be able to afford to increase your singing by +1 at the end of the day?

Apologies, yet again for delayed response. A function of years of trusting the email notification system that now seems not to be working for me for some reason.

As for Kintara's ideas, one side of me really likes the idea of players being able to bribe each other with HP. Another says that sometimes rewards should have no strings attached, and should be allowed to be saved for later. This makes me think about two pools...more below.

But, generally, Kintara, I think your play is different enough from mine that I don't think that your ideas are going to work for my game. If you play with them, however, do report how it goes.

Ian wrote:
Changing the advancement costs. I agree this is a viable solution. Ultimately the rate of advancement is a campaign decision. How comfortable are you with players who exceed normal folk in ability? This works both ways.

So one answer I am toying with is just to cost Increase Occupation/Homeland Keyword by +1 at 3 points  and Increase Magic Keyword by +1 at 6 points. The large costs but high reward hopefully gives players a better spend points vs. get a big boost to advancement trade off.

I also like the idea that you get better overall at all your abilities over just one specific skill. Curiously thought this would almost be a move back from skills based advancement to character class.

Linking spending and advancement to goals/passions. Under this idea, much less formed, I was thinking it would be good to tie both the distribution of rewards and the expenditure of points to things you declare that you care about. So you could only spend points to bump in certain key story areas, and only gained points when you played in a way that explored certain goals/passions.

I don't buy that 'incestuousness' is a problem, in your IRC game.  (Unless I'm still not getting it.)  Are you trying to cure it for that game or because you're working on general mechanical implementations?

You cite a worse case as "the person spends a HP on bumping, and then is rewarded for that," but I don't get the problem.  Bumping, not bumping, having your character face danger, having your character engage in romance -- these are tools of drama creation.  Is the whole of the problem that it screws up the decision of bump or develop?  Why does that matter?  You, Mike, are the strongest advocate that I've read for the "100s of HPs worth of development don't substantially improve competence" stand.  If that's right, it seems like 'to bump' or 'to develop' will always be merely and aesthetic choice on the part of the player.  Balance doesn't even mean anything.

There's a principle here that's hard to explain. The "incestuouness problem" does exist for the IRC game, even in the short amount of time that we've played. It's not quite what you think, however. It's not that the Laurel is getting passed simply to always reward every conflict, or ensure that people don't have to worry about HP or anything like that. There's no behavior problem that I'm trying to correct, here or anywhere I'm playing.

The problem is, in fact, that people have noted that such could be done, but aren't doing it anyhow. That is, with each pass there's always this question of whether or not the reward is merited. Sans limits of any sort, it could be theoretically that the reward is being handed out for less than good reasons. As a player, when I play these games, I sometimes even doubt my own motives (for no good reason). What I'm saying is that, if you at least limit the number of moves, then you know that players have pressure to have some criteria in place. This makes the reward worth more, even if it's being passed only the same number of times. People are expending a limited resource, not just passing out more of a potentially infinite reward.

On the recieving end, the question is whether or not it alters people's likelihood to bump. I think that on the spot rewards do change people's behaviors. Not that I can say with any certainty that it's harmful.

I think you conflate the idea of character power with rewards. That is, I think that though they don't largely increase a character's power in any way, that HP are still rewards. In fact, I think that the rewarding part is getting to use them in precisely the sort of dramatic ways you mention. So, no, not power balance, but, yes, balance of attraction of uses. What I often call selection balance. What you don't want is people making decisions based on power, but on drama. That's what the current system does. Put it out of whack, and certain decisions become too easy to make, and you see all one behavior or the other (or simply too much of one).

Mike

Mike wrote:

That is, with each pass there's always this question of whether or not the reward is merited. Sans limits of any sort, it could be theoretically that the reward is being handed out for less than good reasons. As a player, when I play these games, I sometimes even doubt my own motives (for no good reason).

Well, I disagree with your analysis. That is, I think that if a person is passing up one opportunity to reward, thinking there might be a better one later, they're doing precisely the sort of analysis that I want done. Sure, they might be wrong, and maybe should have rewarded the earlier action. But at least they're considering it, instead of rewarding any old thing that happens to trigger the idea to do so.

Anyhow, I want that sort of limit to be the "deterrent" because I don't want there to be a real downside to doing this. That is, a limit, hopefully, makes a person discriminate, but if there's no other downside, then there's no reason not to make a reward other than thinking that later actions might be more worthy. In fact, from experience people don't reward often enough, and I'd prefer to reward them for making a well considered reward.

Basically I want to create a rate of reward where I'm pretty sure a person will give out rewards for only the better actions he sees, but gives out all that they have on hand. This will keep the reward rate relatively constant, while also accomplishing the primary goal of such a reward which is to allow one player to communicate to the other players what it is that they like about their play.

Mike

This all seems very complex to me. As a player I want to be able to focus on what is happening in the game, how it affects my character and how I can get involved in the story. Any mechanics that encourage me to monitor, evaluate and express opinions about othe rplayer's play are a distracton. I'd like to think I'd say things like "Hey, that was cool", without also considering how col it was compared to other cool stuff, and how much I wanted to reward it. If anything games generaly need less of this sort of potential inter-player politicking, not more of it.

It's also distracting attention, time and IRC bandwidth away from what's actualy happening in the game to additional game mechanics, and therefore actualy away from the other game mechanics that you say are under-utilised anyway.

Does your game realy need this?

Simon Hibbs

I rather liked Eero's suggestion in this thread, though it looked like no one else replied to it:

Instead of spending points on incremental improvement, have abilities improve based on instructive challenges. Whenever a character faces an instructive challenge of level at least equal to the level of the ability to be improved, improve the ability rating based on the degree of success: +1 for a minimal success, [up to an] immediate raise to the challenge's level +5 on a perfect success. Something like that. As for what is an instructive challenge: whatever the player wants to be one. You could have setting such a challenge cost a HP, if you want to stick with resource limitations.

simon_hibbs wrote:
This all seems very complex to me.

As a player I want to be able to focus on what is happening in the game, how it affects my character and how I can get involved in the story. Any mechanics that encourage me to monitor, evaluate and express opinions about othe rplayer's play are a distracton.

I'd like to think I'd say things like "Hey, that was cool", without also considering how col it was compared to other cool stuff, and how much I wanted to reward it. If anything games generaly need less of this sort of potential inter-player politicking, not more of it.

It's also distracting attention, time and IRC bandwidth away from what's actualy happening in the game to additional game mechanics, and therefore actualy away from the other game mechanics that you say are under-utilised anyway.

Does your game realy need this?

To some degree, I wonder if the reason this seems so hard is because HeroQuest is so easy to play without using Hero Points to advance at all. As has been mentioned, Jane Williams plays without any HP for advancement at all. In the new Firefly-esque game I've started using the system, I've let the players start with their abilities just ranked at what makes sense for the player.

On one level, this seems to work fine, since (as Mike often mentions) the system isn't about "winning", it absorbs such shocks easily.

I'm glad you're struggling with this, though, Mike, because part of me really likes this idea of a trade off on spending HP to look good now vs building stats. Also, many players like the idea of advancing their character through the spending of limited advancement resources. It just seems that debating an advancement mechanic in a game that seems to encourage simply applying ability levels as dramatically necessary becomes prohibitively difficult.

(sorry, I'm tired and rambly)

Huh. Rereading this thread, I see that I have ended up proposing something like option C for my new game, although with costs set by the new Fetish or Charm table.

There's an argument here flowing from an assumption that I don't care to look at:

1. If you play HQ without HP used for advancement it works fine.
2. HP for advancement only makes sense if you don't also allow players to simply rate things at whatever level they like.
3. Therefore, there's no need to use HP for advancement.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the people who play this way are probably having a fine time with the system. But there are elements of the HP advancement system that I like, and I don't want to get rid of. So for my purposes, this line of argument isn't doing much for me.

Anyhow, I've been very irresponsible letting this thread drag on so long, and it's starting to get self-referential. So let's close it, and if anyone wants to discuss a particular topic that's come from this, let's start new threads.

Thanks all,
Mike