Anyone else misses Hero Points as XP from HeroQuest 2e?

[Hellhound Havoc]

I'm preparing for a QuestWorlds game. Really like this system, but I keep coming back for HeroQuest 2e in a lot of things. The first is magic, I just really like how magic is structured in HeroQuest and I always adapt it to my other games.

But the other one is Hero Points as XP. Just the idea that the player can control his character advancement, and can use these points to create new abilities and signal to the GM "here, this is what I'm interested in, these are the things I want to be core to my character" is just really much cooler for me than the PbtA inspired advancements list.

Anyone got some insight on why this was removed?

[Joerg]

One possible reason why the dual purpose in-game-aid and XP may have been removed is that this rewards the players who spend less XP on the narrative rather than the ones who spend their XP on the narrative but then having no reward left.

[g33k]

Yeah, I *really* dislike conflating character-advancement "XP" points with spending in-play "Hero Point" narrative/dramatic bennies/metacurency.

I rather like the systems where your "Hero Points" are derived from (but separate from) your earned-XP:  more-experienced characters have more spendable Hero Points, but aren't short of spent-XP's.

[jajagappa]

23 hours ago, Hellhound Havoc said:

But the other one is Hero Points as XP. Just the idea that the player can control his character advancement, and can use these points to create new abilities and signal to the GM "here, this is what I'm interested in, these are the things I want to be core to my character" is just really much cooler for me than the PbtA inspired advancements list.

Anyone got some insight on why this was removed?

There was a natural conflict between use of Hero Points in-game for dramatic events vs. saving for XP. If you used to save yourself and succeed in the scenario, you had none left for XP, but if you held off for use in XP, you had a good chance to dying as you didn't use to succeed as the critical moments.

Now, some folk in my games still had 1 or 2 left for XP, while others had none left. I'd usually let the characters pick up experience in the abilities where they had either applied their Hero points, effectively roleplayed a new breakout, or gained a Major/Complete Victory. But even so, it detracted from the ability to tailor their character's advancement.

[Hellhound Havoc]

On 10/21/2023 at 9:03 PM, Joerg said:

One possible reason why the dual purpose in-game-aid and XP may have been removed is that this rewards the players who spend less XP on the narrative rather than the ones who spend their XP on the narrative but then having no reward left.

That does sound like an issue, but the game moves so fast and the characters are so competent from the get-go that, to me, it doesn't feel like "no reward" because you're kinda choosing your reward. Like, the purpose of having bigger skills is to win more checks, so if you spend the point to win the check you've just abridged your character development temporarily.

On 10/22/2023 at 11:59 AM, g33k said:

Yeah, I *really* dislike conflating character-advancement "XP" points with spending in-play "Hero Point" narrative/dramatic bennies/metacurency.

I rather like the systems where your "Hero Points" are derived from (but separate from) your earned-XP:  more-experienced characters have more spendable Hero Points, but aren't short of spent-XP's.

That does sound interesting, but it's not in the new QuestWorlds is it? I've never read HQ 1e though, maybe it's from there.

23 hours ago, jajagappa said:

There was a natural conflict between use of Hero Points in-game for dramatic events vs. saving for XP. If you used to save yourself and succeed in the scenario, you had none left for XP, but if you held off for use in XP, you had a good chance to dying as you didn't use to succeed as the critical moments.

Now, some folk in my games still had 1 or 2 left for XP, while others had none left. I'd usually let the characters pick up experience in the abilities where they had either applied their Hero points, effectively roleplayed a new breakout, or gained a Major/Complete Victory. But even so, it detracted from the ability to tailor their character's advancement.

I understand that tension and your point, but to me the QuestWorlds approach just outsources the blame to the GM, because instead of "gosh darn I spent too many points being the cool guy back there and now my guy has stagnated" it becomes "damn it dude you didn't put enough checks for me to fail in this session!"

I wouldn't go so far as to kill a character without explicit consent from the player though, and besides, the issue here is that your tailoring of the character gets limited. However, with Hero Points as in HQ:G, you could get a new skill on 13 basically every session. With QuestWorlds, it's very much possible that you take 2 or even 3 sessions to get an advancement, and then you'd have to use that to get one new skill at 10.

In my HQ:G game what happened was that the players spent a lot of Hero Points very early on to flesh out their characters, and then when they hit around 5 or 6 abilities it slowed down dramatically, with them focusing on either getting better or passing rolls. I'll admit that I probably should have given them more Hero Points and even some free abilities, like you said, for effectively roleplaying new stuff and things like that.

The main thing to me, though, is the magic system. I very much prefer the magic in HQ:G, especially Sorcery, because it feels different. It really does feel like you're hacking reality, and you spend Hero Points to add new spells because they're new abilities. Without that, you either have a very broad keyword to use, or you get like 2 new spells total due to how advancement works, neither of which is too satisfying to me tbh

[Akhôrahil]

On 10/22/2023 at 2:03 AM, Joerg said:

One possible reason why the dual purpose in-game-aid and XP may have been removed is that this rewards the players who spend less XP on the narrative rather than the ones who spend their XP on the narrative but then having no reward left.

Agree, that's a terrible design for the reasons you mention (Tribe 8 first edition did the same thing). The good fix is making it dual-purpose - if you spend a Hero Point for success it also gets spent as XP on that ability only.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Hellhound Havoc]

40 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Agree, that's a terrible design for the reasons you mention (Tribe 8 first edition did the same thing). The good fix is making it dual-purpose - if you spend a Hero Point for success it also gets spent as XP on that ability only.

That's a pretty elegant solution tbh, and it makes sense because it's not an either / or situation.