Getting Rid of HP as a Meta-Resource

So my narcissism finally got the better of me and I made a blog. This way I can spew my nonsensical blather into the ether and still feel the satisfaction of assuming I have a rarefied audience that pontificates over my profound nuggets of wisdom. I also want a place to keep records of games, random tables, and whatever other nonsense appeals to me at the moment, so I might post those here too.

Me IRL

Anyways, this post is a ramble on a thought I had recently about how getting rid of HP as a meta-resource would work. I got the idea from a game I recently discovered, Tales of Mordhearse (also check out their blog, Vile Cult of Shapes, which I also have listed in the sidebar). This game ironically uses a single stat, HP, to determine class and saving throws, alongside a classic inventory system and basic abilities.

Stripping things down to one stat got me thinking about the very point of even having an HP system to abstract an individual's hardiness in the world. What if you could strip the game down even further and bring it down to a purely item based system, in a sense, where your "HP" is directly determined by the items within your inventory?

I don't think such a system would be a stretch, given the fact that in most of the games I play in already focus on gaining resources in the forms of both items and people that can be used in the game world.  There already exists an interaction between HP and inventory systems, with items and tools acquired in the game world being vital to preserve this primary resource (alongside combat abilities, magic, and so on - Lungfungus describes the resource drains and renewals better than I ever could over here).

But I think this resource drain/resource renewal cycle could be optimized even further if meta-resources like HP were eliminated entirely - or rather, eliminated as their own entities and integrated directly with in game resources. Your likelihood to survive shouldn't be based on an arbitrary measure that you determine by a dice roll, but how long you've invested and been part of a game. Your "HP" should be a measure of the items you've acquired, connections you've forged, and knowledge you've gained over time. Losing those items, connections, or knowledge should be the real penalty you incur over the course of play, based on the context of whatever actions you are taking. Itemizing these into a list or record of some form, and gaining and losing relation to these aspects of the game world should be prioritized over keeping track arbitrary meta-resources like HP alongside these in a game. And without these tools that you've built up over time, there shouldn't be any innate protection against the cold cruel universe which can snuff your life out on an off day.

Ha-Ha-Ha, Classic Comedy

Of course, the big thing HP has going for it familiarity, simplicity, and a means of objectively keeping track of life and death in the game. Barring the migration to a purely narrative based format in determining life and death (which I feel robs a degree of tension), all of the above resources don't mesh nicely in a unified system compared to a single, simple meta-resource that accounts for objective survivability while allowing space for a narrative approach to resources and connections. Combining all the above resources earned in game into a cohesive system would probably require either copious note taking mixed with unnecessary complexity, or a simplification to the point that it would make the whole exercise moot. I might think more about how this could maybe be achieved satisfactorily someday, but for now - ain't nobody got time for that.