Dungeon World: Harm vs Hit Points

#21

That’s totally fair! I think it’s absolutely remarkable how much the D&D hit point model has influenced the whole gaming world. I often wonder how things would have gone had the “original” RPG been designed with a deck of cards and visual flowchart resolution (or any other divergent way!). What if we didn’t start with hit points, character abilities, and experience points? How different would RPGs and video games look today?

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#22

Neither of these is great for Dungeon World, but I had a discussion with Vincent a while back about why he chose to use “hit points” for Apocalypse World, and he told me that the “plot immunity” feature was important - that getting hurt still matter, but that PCs get to take some harm “for free” before it actually hurts them.

It occurred to me that this could be done without hit points, and rewrote Apocalypse World’s rules for harm in a way which feels much more in-line with the rest of the system, to me. I still use these rules!

Here’s what player-facing harm looks like:

This was for first edition, so I don’t know if some updates are needed for second edition (I don’t think so, but I haven’t checked).

And here are the rules for NPCs:

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=9103.0

Just some food for thought!

I have an optional set of rules for Dungeon World, but I haven’t typed them up fully or playtested them (I never ended up playing regular Dungeon World!). I should post them sometime! But I need to type them up fully, first.

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#23

You could rip this option straight from Fellowship. When a character or creature would take “harm”, the characters temporarily lose a move and the creatures lose a tag or a move. When you have no character specific moves left, you are down for the count

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#24

The thing is, DW gives you so many more ways to hurt the PCs besides HP damage. Swords break, innocents are imperiled, buildings catch on fire, all sorts of dire options. Plus, the debility mechanic gives additional choices - break an arm, chop off a leg, etc. HP damage is only one option for making a hard move. I suspect you could never touch their HP and leave a party feeling utterly beset.

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