Alternatives for Hit Points

I've been thinking about the idea of hit points in games.

They appear in computer "RPG" games, and they've been a staple in tabletop games since the beginning of the hobby. I've discussed them a few times in old posts, and ways that they might be looked at. Alternate suggestions in other games have included a standardised range of "health levels", or penalty levels incurred for different degrees of damage.

But what I'm more interested in today are the alternatives for damage. In a social game you might look at political penalties that make it harder for you to accomplish social activities, or a pool of reputation points that absorb the insults and treachery of your opponents. In a digital "Tron"-style setting, you might have a pool of energy points that fulfill the dual purpose of absorbing incoming effects while being used to fuel attacks of your own (a precedent for this might be blood points in Vampire: the Masquerade/Requiem).

I'm trying to think of some other alternatives that might more closely link this absorption pool into a specific setting or genre of play.

Comments

Unknown said…
Freemarket links your "flow" (which represents social credit, basically, and directly corresponds to an in-fiction numerical quantity) to your right to remain on the space station. If you run out of flow, you get "voted off" and can never return.
Monday, 20 December, 2010
Dan said…
I like the idea of Luck points, representing lucky escapes from receiving serious damage. As they go down your luck is 'running out'. You could also expend them to alter rolls of the dice and other chance happenings in your favour eg finding clues.
Monday, 20 December, 2010
Vulpinoid said…
I guess the "flow" concept is also reflected in Metropole Luxury Coffin with its "Minutes", and that really links the core resource of the game to the setting. That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm thinking of.

As for "Luck" I've been toying with a system like that...or maybe a karma type of system. It might make a comeback when I get back to work on Quincunx, with this core resource being a measure of how characters and their antagonists push the boundaries beyond reality and how likely they are to get pushed back.

Thanks for the ideas.
Tuesday, 21 December, 2010
Wordman said…
The original black box Traveller used a system I'm surprised doesn't show itself more often: damage was tracked by directly reducing ability scores. Since ability scores usually feed into a number of other things, damage yields reduced effectiveness, as "penalty mods" would. But the system gives the user some other (tactical) choices, like "do I take this in the Agility or in the Endurance".
Tuesday, 28 December, 2010
Wordman said…
More to the point of your post, you might track something like a "concentration pool". That is, any action requires some quantum of concentration to pull off. Various types of negative outcomes (damage, stress, loss of face, etc.) "disrupt your concentration" by costing points from the pool.

Such a system might also allow for a slightly different approach to multitasking, where concentration points get spread around to various tasks at the same time. Might also allow for "reclaiming" concentration, where concentration is revoked from some task (causing the task to fail) in order to reinforce some other, more crucial, task.
Tuesday, 28 December, 2010
Dan said…
Your karma idea reminds me of Paradox in Mage: The Ascension, which is one of my favourite concepts/systems for limiting use of magic.

Talking of paradox, it could also be an excellent hit-point substitute in a game about time travel.
Wednesday, 29 December, 2010
Jared Sorensen said…
Also check out Lacuna Part 1. which uses the character's heart rate as a kind of reverse hitpoint system. Raise it a little and you do better. Raise it too much and you die!
Saturday, 01 January, 2011
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