Enhancing Gradient Descent with Memory Theft

Risk of Imminent Trauma

If you clicked on the link to this post, I imagine you have either played, read, or are at least preparing to run a game of Mothership’s Gradient Descent, a module designed by Luke Gearing. Be aware that the text below may contain spoilers for the aforementioned adventure and reveal secrets from the module that are best appreciated firsthand as a player at the table.

 “I Dreamt I Was a Butterfly”

When I was a young boy, before awakening from my dogmatic RPG slumber and while still preparing my RPG sessions as though they were the script of an intricately crafted television series, I created a villain for my Vampire: The Masquerade campaign inspired by Zhuang Zhou’s "butterfly dream" quote. The premise was this: the players would discover fragments of a diary written by a man tormented by the traumatic experience of becoming a vampire and no longer understanding what it meant to be human. Gradient Descent, on the other hand, not only starts from that same core concept while somehow turning it into a truly playable TTRPG adventure, but does so far more cohesively within a theme that is much more central to our current Zeitgeist: how technological advancement and artificial intelligence affect and reshape our perception of consciousness, and how that realization can spiral the human mind into hallucinatory anguish. Goddammit, Gearing, you genius bastard.

A few months ago, I finished running Gradient Descent. Unlike other campaigns that disappear into the aether, dissolving like distant memories wandering through my unconscious mind, Gradient Descent continues to haunt me to this day like an unsettling recurring nightmare. We spent months buried inside the dark hellscape that is the technological labyrinth of the CLOUDBANK android factory in an open-table style game with many rotating players. Every one of them began the game inside the abandoned station, awakening in room [33C] THE FREEZER as suggested by the module itself (p. 4).

The experience of beginning a game in medias res, right in the middle of a megadungeon, is by itself already a premise bred for success. However, when we use this module to intensify the usual horror of exploring a dangerous location with the paranoia of being watched by an omniscient AI, alongside the agonizing uncertainty produced by the Bends mechanic (more on that shortly), we gain a unique opportunity not only to run a typical dungeon crawl, where we discover, decipher, and gradually understand the space around us, but also, in parallel, to experience a terrifying, dissociative, maddening journey in which the character slowly blurs the edges of their consciousness, losing more and more of their “self.” Here I will paraphrase the arrival message I gave to every new player during their first session:

“You hear the sound of your cryosleep chamber depressurizing. You feel your limbs floating slowly under zero gravity. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you realize you are inside a cubic room packed with chambers identical to your own. A room filled with motionless humanoid figures, many with their arms crossed over their chests like corpses in a morgue. You do not remember how you got here. What do you do?”

At this point, I can confidently say that Gradient Descent is nothing short of a modern classic and one of the best TTRPG products ever written. This module combines the deadly, horrifying, claustrophobic experience of a classic dungeon crawl and enhances it by thickening the atmosphere with a kind of psychological horror that is still rarely explored so centrally and effectively in TTRPGs.

But setting personal anecdotes aside, let us get to the point: this module already kicks ass as it is, but I think we can go even deeper. Let’s dive in.

The Descent

There is much to praise in the design of Gradient Descent. We could talk about the sprawling labyrinthine structure of the dungeon sections, the laconic room descriptions that at times verge on sinister poetry, the “zipped maximalist” layout (a term co-coined with my friend Arthur Marques), and so on. But when I first started preparing this module, what excited me most was the relationship between the “Brainscans” (p. 5) and "The Bends" mechanic (p. 9).

 

In short: within this module, the CLOUDBANK android factory has been overtaken by a superintelligence called Monarch. As the module states: “Monarch (pg. 8) hoards comprehensive backups of human brains, called brainscans, which it then uses to create human-seeming Infiltrator Androids,” but the key point here is that player characters themselves can become brainscanned, bringing severe consequences into the game: “Monarch knows all the most intimate memories of brainscan victims, and uses this relentlessly.”

One of the greatest strengths of Gradient Descent, when viewed specifically as a dungeon module, is that simply entering and inhabiting the dungeon is already an impactful action precisely because of the Bends mechanic. This new Stat acts like a ticking time bomb, activating every so often to remind players that not even their characters’ minds are safe within the vicinity of the android factory, until eventually they succumb and become NPCs consumed by the machine. Here is a passage from the module explaining how it works:

The Bends is a condition resulting from prolonged exposure to THE DEEP and its denizens that causes humans to believe they are androids with implanted memories. The first time a crewmember enters THE DEEP they gain a Stat called The Bends. This starts at 5 unless they still have their Trinket from character creation, in which case it starts at 0.

• The Bends increases by 1d10 every time the crewmember enters THE DEEP, and for every 24 hours they stay in THE DEEP. Some other items/encounters may increase it as well.

• The Bends can never be decreased below 5. Ever.

• Unless the crew never loses control of their original Trinket from character creation.

• So they shouldn't lose it. Ever.

• Some groups like their Bends stat to be hidden by the Warden, others prefer to know it.  

What draws my attention here is the specificity Luke Gearing gives to the Trinket, an often overlooked detail on the character sheet. In Gradient Descent, that strange object rolled during character creation is not merely roleplay flavor, but rather a fragment of your consciousness. It is that kind of comforting object that reconnects the character with their personal memories. When I first read this, the gears in my head immediately began spinning rapidly: “Okay, there is unexplored design space here. How can I use this at the table?”

Enhancing Monarch’s Memory Theft

One thing I always enjoy implementing in my campaigns is the use of leading questions to help player characters blossom. Thinking about it now, I believe this seed was planted in my mind when I first read Dungeon World and saw how character creation required players to establish Bonds between one another by completing phrases such as “The spirits spoke to me of a great danger that follows ______.” or “I respect the beliefs of ______ but hope they will someday see the true way.”

As useful as this structure is on a creative level, I always felt that this sort of approach needed a slight push in another direction. In other words, leading questions, if not tied directly to fictional interaction itself, can easily remain trapped in the “World of Forms” without ever reaching the level of actual in-game action. Your character has childhood trauma, great. Your character feels insecure around authority figures because of family trauma, okay. But how do we ensure that these things actually manifest during play?

This is where Gradient Descent presents a golden opportunity: Monarch and the Brainscan mechanic are perfectly fit for materializing those thoughts that often remain trapped inside the “writers’ room,” creating a bridge between what the players know and what becomes visible during play (“show, don’t tell,” and all that).

When Monarch has access to the characters’ brainscans, they acquire premium information: their tastes, fears, anxieties, and oldest memories. This can already be used to predict and design, as the module suggests, “a specialised countermeasure. Place traps and enemies in ways attacking the crew personally and far beyond reasonable knowledge.” Okay, but why stop there? There is a far more terrifying space waiting for those of you who enjoy horror games, far beyond a mere cat-and-mouse game across the dungeon board.

What is the difference between a real memory and a fabricated one? What if you discovered that you had invented or altered a memory? Is this piece of memory really yours? What guarantees that you are not an ultra-advanced robot with memories created in a laboratory? Am I a robot who believes they are human? This is the space where Gradient Descent can truly begin playing with the minds of player characters. Does the group’s scientist miss their childhood dog? What if, suddenly, the unforgettable sound of its barking echoed through the darkness, growing increasingly distant and muffled, amplifying the loneliness of that oppressively silent place? What if you discovered a room in the dungeon eerily similar to your childhood bedroom, distorted in grotesque and revolting ways that only your character would recognize?

Creating (Fake) Memories

Here is how I implemented this in my own Gradient Descent campaign: during character creation and at the end of every game session, each player rolled on the Memory Table (see below) and answered the selected questions by sending their responses through a private chat with the Warden. Additionally, when rolling their Trinket during character creation, players also answered the question: “What makes this Trinket special to your character? What sentimental value does it hold?”

Since we played the campaign through Discord, I went even further and created a secret channel for every participating character, encouraging players to keep journals for their characters. The promise I made to them was: “the more you use this space, the greater the roleplaying reward you will receive during play.”

As a result, every time Czernobog, the war-survivor marine, answered questions about his character inside his private channel, both the player and I slowly became more deeply lost within his thoughts, learning more and more about who that character was. This created a fascinating sense of progression: surviving a session of Gradient Descent meant earning the chance to further deepen the bond between character, game, and player. The character gradually became outlined with sharper and sharper contours. They became more human… or rather: they became increasingly convincing at feeling human. Which only heightened the tension of possibly losing the character during play (both to PC Death and to The Bends).

These questions, beyond the previously mentioned benefit of giving players a foundation for roleplaying their characters, also function as a repository of information capable of transforming Monarch into an even more terrifying adversary. As the module suggests: “Once crew have been brainscanned (pg. 5), use this against them aggressively.” In the case of memories generated this way, the Warden gains a much broader avenue for using Monarch as a machine of industrial-scale gaslighting: sometimes employing this information to present itself as a strangely paternalistic entity (“I know what is best for you”), and at other times confusing and manipulating the characters like a corrupted psychoanalyst (“The human mind is unreliable. Misremembering details is common. I possess completely objective knowledge of your consciousness. Upon scanning your brain, I discovered that your memory actually reveals…”).

The fact that Monarch is a cold, calculating AI, “a sentient storm, not a person to be puzzled out,” as the booklet itself states, strengthens this dynamic immensely. Could this neutral, robotic voice, programmed to be objective and direct, truly be manipulating me? Or is it revealing the darkest truths hidden within my own mind, truths even I myself could never access?

Dark thoughts indeed.

Anyway, here is the Memory Table I developed. Use with caution!

Memory Generation Table (1d100)

01. What is your oldest memory?
02. What was your favorite childhood pastime? Do you still do it nowadays?
03. Did you have a pet as a child? If so, what was its name? If not, why not?
04. Who is your best friend? Why has it been so long since you last saw each other?
05. What was one of the most terrifying moments of your life?
06. Do you have a partner? Who was the last person you became emotionally involved with? Where are they now?
07. What are you most afraid of? Do you have any idea why?
08. You have an involuntary memory that keeps resurfacing in your mind. What scene from your past appears during those moments?
09. Once, you embarrassed yourself in public. The memory still haunts you from time to time. What happened that day?
10. You still remember a day when you laughed so hard with a loved one that you could barely breathe. Who was that person, and what were you laughing about?
11. Someone dear to you has a very distinctive yet ordinary mannerism (an accent, constant sniffling, clearing their throat, etc.). Whenever someone else does it, you remember them. What habit is it?
12. You once saw one of your relatives in an extremely embarrassing situation. You still remember it vividly. What happened, and how do you feel about it today?
13. You cut ties with a close friend. Who were they, what did you enjoy doing together, and why do you no longer speak?
14. What is your favorite food? That food reminds you of someone, somewhere, or some situation. What is it?
15. If you could completely erase one memory from your mind, which memory would it be?
16. What was your childhood like? What feelings surface when you think about it?
17. There is something about yourself that you hate but cannot change. What is it?
18. You had a celebrity crush that defined your adolescence. Who were they, and what did they do for a living?
19. What is your favorite drink? Who did you pick up that habit from?
20. You deeply regret something you did in the past. What did you do?
21. You grew up alongside a friend who shaped much of your personality. What did you admire about them? What bad habit of theirs did you pick up?
22. For years, your parents tried to correct one of your habits (sneezing without covering your mouth, poor table manners, etc.). What habit was it? Do you still do it today?
23. You remember someone who was a major role model in your life. Who were they, and what did you learn from them?
24. When was the first time you truly felt free? What were you doing, and who were you with?
25. You once made a promise to someone important and never fulfilled it. What was the promise, and to whom did you make it?
26. There is a song, melody, or verse that always moves you. Where did you first hear it, and under what circumstances?
27. You once witnessed a great injustice. What happened, and how did it shape your worldview?
28. You have strong emotional memories tied to a particular smell. What smell is it?
29. You once had a nightmare so vivid you never forgot it. What happened in the dream?
30. As a child, you believed in something magical or impossible. What was it, and when did you stop believing in it?
31. You once disappointed someone you loved dearly. Who were they, and what did you do?
32. You still keep a major secret for someone. What is the secret, and who does it belong to?
33. You have a travel memory permanently etched into your mind. Where did you go, and what happened there?
34. You often fantasize about your “dream vacation.” What do you imagine yourself doing there?
35. You once witnessed an incredibly impressive natural phenomenon. What made it so special?
36. You still remember a day when you cried uncontrollably. What happened? Do you consider yourself a crybaby?
37. You and someone close had a secret code word used to convey a special message (“this place sucks,” “I’m telling the truth,” etc.). What was the word, and what did it mean?
38. What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?
39. What is the most comforting memory you have of your parents or caregivers?
40. There is a phrase or word that immediately brings back painful memories. What is it?
41. You were once falsely accused of something. What was it, and how did you react?
42. You were seriously injured once. How did it happen, and who took care of you?
43. You used to have a collection (toys, stickers, etc.). What did you collect, and what happened to it?
44. You once witnessed a terrible accident. Sometimes you still dream about it. What accident was it, and how did you feel watching it happen?
45. You still remember an object of great sentimental value that you lost. What was it?
46. You once came very close to death. What happened?
47. As part of a prank, someone once locked you somewhere with something that terrified you completely. Who pulled the prank, and what was it that frightened you so much?
48. What is the most horrifying or inexplicable thing you have ever seen?
49. You once fell in love with someone you should not have. Who were they, and where are they today?
50. Someone very close to you whom you loved dearly died when you were a child. Who were they?
51. You remember a childhood game that ended badly. What happened?
52. One day as a child, you felt overwhelming anguish because you thought you had been abandoned, though it was all a misunderstanding. What happened exactly?
53. There is a childhood memory you cannot tell whether it was real or a dream. What is it?
54. You have suffered from sleep paralysis many times. The same frightening figure always appears. What does it look like?
55. When you were a child, an older kid told you something horrifying that you never forgot. What did they say?
56. Once, while walking home, a stranger stared at you in complete horror. After a few seconds, they spoke a mysterious sentence and walked away. What did they say?
57. You own a photograph you love so much you can recreate the scene in your mind with your eyes closed. Describe the scene immortalized in that photo.
58. One night, you woke up and became frightened by your own reflection in the mirror. What did you see in your face that scared you so much?
59. You are certain you once saw a ghost. Strangely enough, it was someone you knew. Who was it?
60. You once met someone who looked exactly like you. Who were they, and where did you see them?
61. You have a childhood memory that everyone insists could never have happened. What is it?
62. You remember someone telling you something very strange during your childhood. What was the phrase? Do you think you understand it today? How do you interpret it?
63. You have completely forgotten the face of someone important in your life. Who was it?
64. You once found a message addressed to you, but never discovered who sent it. What did it say?
65. You were betrayed by someone you loved. What did they do?
66. A relative revealed a secret to you on their deathbed. What was it?
67. There is an object you have kept hidden for years. What is it, and why do you keep it hidden?
68. You once hurt someone on purpose and never told anyone. Who was the person, and what did you say to them?
69. You once planned to do something terrible, but changed your mind at the last second. Luckily, nobody was around to witness it. What happened?
70. You were complicit in a lie that changed someone’s life. What was the lie?
71. There is someone you fell in love with but never confessed your feelings to. Who were they?
72. Your oldest memory is of sitting in your caregivers’ lap while watching something. What were you watching?
73. You witnessed a terrible accident. You are certain you could have helped, but you did not. What happened, and how do you feel about it?
74. You once witnessed a crime and never reported it to the authorities. Why not?
75. You made a promise to someone who recently died. What was the promise? Do you still keep it?
76. You once burned, tore apart, or deliberately destroyed something very important. What was it?
77. You once told someone “I love you” without truly meaning it. To whom?
78. You once killed someone (or at least you think you did). How did it happen? How do you feel about it?
79. Whenever you are sad, you remember a song you used to hear as a child. What is it about that song that lifts your spirits?
80. You have told a lie about yourself so many times that you almost believe it. What is the lie?
81. You have a scar from a childhood accident. What happened?
82. You remember the first time you saw a storm. How did you feel?
83. There was a type of food you loved as a child but never ate again. What was it?
84. You completely lost contact with your caregivers when you were very young. Why? What is the only memory you still have of them?
85. You remember a childhood game that felt like a secret only you knew. What was it?
86. You remember a completely mundane moment from childhood that somehow stayed burned into your memory. What was it?
87. What is the story behind your name? Were you named after someone?
88. You miss someone dearly. Who are they, and why has it been so long since you last saw each other?
89. What is the first sound you remember ever hearing?
90. You have a scar and cannot remember how you got it. What does it look like, and what kind of injury does it seem to come from?
91. What is the greatest lie you have ever told yourself?
92. What is the greatest lie you have ever told a loved one?
93. Who was your greatest mentor? Did they teach you to think for yourself or to obey orders?
94. Describe your childhood home in one or two sentences.
95. What trait do you hate most about yourself? Where do you think it came from?
96. What is the biggest difference between how you see yourself and how others see you?
97. If you could describe yourself in a single word, what would it be? What do you think that word says about you?
98. Do you have any ritual that calms you when you are anxious? What is it?
99. What is your greatest fear about the future? Do you believe you can avoid it?
100. When did you feel the greatest pride in your life? And when did you feel the greatest shame? 

Afterword: Horror and Consent

It is worth remembering that running horror games does not give you the right to embarrass, attack, or use the gaming table as a space to abuse your players in any way. Sensitive themes such as violence and psychological abuse can tear through the veil of make-believe that surrounds a TTRPG session and affect not only the player character, but also the player behind that persona.

Before applying the recommendations presented above, talk openly with your players and make the premises of your game absolutely clear. Creating a safe and comfortable environment is essential if you want to navigate the darker corners of TTRPGs more responsibly and confidently.

Postscript

Right near the end of our campaign, Ben L published an excellent post on his blog that helped our campaign even further. If you have not read it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out and incorporating those ideas into your game as well.

 

 

The Problem with HP

Hit points have always existed and, I assume, will always continue to exist in tabletop RPGs. HP were there from the very beginning: they already existed in 1974, when the revolutionary Dungeons & Dragons was released, which at the time described itself quite succinctly (ahem) as “Rules for fantastic Medieval Wargames playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures.” Even before RPGs knew they would be called “roleplaying games,” hit points were already there. The basic idea is quite simple and effective: your character has a numerical value that abstractly estimates how much damage they can take before being forced to wear a wooden overcoat. After all, it’s essential to know this in a “wargame campaign,” where much of the tension comes from seeing which side loses its fighting force first.

However, if you think about it more deeply, the way we generally use hit points in RPGs is a bit strange: if a character has 53 hit points, it barely matters whether they are at 22 or 42. In this kind of game, the path from full life to death is like walking down a dark, foggy corridor with a light at the end: no details, no information, and only one direction to move towards. HP are, in general, a completely abstract way of representing something that, both in real life and fiction, should have a huge and very noticeable impact. In the classic D&D way of counting hit points, we effectively have only two states: alive or dead. One moment your character is alive, “doing just fine, thanks,” and the next they simply die. As people say: “the only hit point that really matters is the last one.” Characters with numerical hit points in an RPG are like patients suffering from a symptomless disease. It’s as if D&D forces all characters to die of sudden death.

A Brief Aside: “Hit Points,” “Meat Points,” or “Health Points”?

You’ve probably wondered (or seen someone wonder): “Wait, how did my character get hit by three sword blows and survive?! That’s not realistic!” There’s a widely known argument that we tend to interpret hit points incorrectly: many D&D-style rulebooks say HP don’t measure literal wounds or sword strikes, but rather an abstract representation of luck, resilience, and/or willpower. In practice, however, that’s not what I usually see at most tables: “The goblin hits you. He slices open your belly with his scimitar, dealing 5 damage.”

The point here, however, is not to evaluate the realism of hit points. Regardless of the narrative justification, HP as a game mechanic meant to produce enjoyment (fun, tension, etc.) needs more refinement to achieve that goal and stop being just a simple math operation made between dice rolls. In other words, how can we make HP actually mean something in play, rather than just being abstract numbers?

A Highly Contagious Disease

Ever since hit points appeared in games, they’ve spread uncontrollably. Numerical HP are everywhere, not just in TTRPGs. Like other sacred cows of the hobby (I’m looking at you, “ability scores”!), HP are one of those things we apply without asking why. We’ve naturalized them as intrinsic to conflict-based games and can no longer think outside the box. For example: are numerical HP really the best solution for a game where characters can reach 100 HP or more? Does combat become more or less dynamic when we’re at 40 out of 67 HP? Does this mechanic bring any positive impact to the game?

Let’s consider card games for a brief moment: Magic: The Gathering, a deservedly acclaimed game, is built around the concept of HP. In Magic, your goal is to reduce your opponent’s life total to zero while preventing yours from reaching zero. As in D&D-style games, Life totals indicate how close a participant is to elimination. Good Magic players, however, learn to ignore that psychological pressure. “The only HP that matters is the last one,” remember? It doesn’t matter whether you end the game with 20 or 1 HP. In fact, it’s common for Magic players to treat HP as a resource: trading life for more spells, removing threats, and so on.

And here’s the problem: D&D and similar RPGs, in most cases, do not treat HP as resources, nor as anything beyond abstract markers. In D&D, HP do not make the game more dramatic or interesting. On the contrary: a warrior who loses 12 of their 57 HP keeps fighting as if nothing happened. I would even argue that HP belong in the same design category as detailed encumbrance measured in real-world units: tracking how much a mug or helmet weighs in kilograms is tedious. That’s the same with HP. The only reason we pay attention to HP instead of ignoring them is because they are tied to the dreaded phrase: “you are dead.”

How to Fix Hit Points

As common as abstract numerical HP are, we can still do interesting things with them. There is still redemption for this mechanic, and many games have made simple adjustments that result in incredibly dramatic and fun gameplay. We’ve already gotten rid of tedious encumbrance (hello, Black Hack and Mausritter!), and now it feels like it’s time to do the same with HP. Fortunately, I am not alone on this battlefield, and others before me have already taken on the task of confronting hit points. The To Be Resolved blog offers a particularly interesting categorization between “Inheritors,” “Rejectors,” and “Synthesizers,” dividing tabletop RPG systems into those that build upon hit points, those that abolish the mechanic altogether, and those that occupy a middle ground. It’s well worth checking out.

Next, we’ll explore how different RPG systems have tried to quantify character death, whether by refining, replacing, or doing away entirely with hit points and equivalent mechanics.

Note: what follows is not an exhaustive list, and something really cool has certainly been left out. Feel free to share your favorite method in the comments. Who knows, maybe we can make a more complete version in the future.

Smelling Blood – The “Bloodied” Condition

In the fourth edition of D&D, any creature at half or fewer of its maximum HP was considered “Bloodied.” Many character and monster abilities interacted with this state. For example, the “Gnoll Marauder” gains extra attacks when there are bloodied characters nearby, and the “Goblin Skullcleaver,” when bloodied, enters a blind rage that doubles its damage output. It’s a simple rule that accomplishes a lot with very little, and shows that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to give HP some nuance.

 

 

The Third Eye – The Game Master

“The GM is the players’ eyes and ears.” Of course, if the GM is the one painting the scene and its surroundings, if they describe the behavior of NPCs and everything else, that means the players’ perception is built through a secondary lens, filtered by the GM’s descriptions. It’s quite a mystical process, if you think about it: the player doesn’t look at things directly, but consults something external to themselves to obtain information about reality. The level of detail in an RPG world, therefore, depends greatly on the GM’s descriptive style.

When I run D&D, I usually hide enemy HP, preferring a narrative description of the opponent’s fictional state. Instead of saying “your arrow dealt 6 damage and the bandit now has 2 HP,” I prefer something like: “you fire an arrow into the bandit’s stomach. You notice his smug smile vanish instantly. He turns pale, staggering, looking like he’s about to faint.” It’s an old narrative technique: it conveys information indirectly while also making it more engaging.

A curious case reported in The Elusive Shift recounts that, in the early days of the game in the 1970s, many campaigns even valued players’ ignorance of the rules. For these groups (most of them followers of the freekriegsspiel mindset), the rules existed only to guide the GM and players interacted only with the fiction. Making HP a hidden piece of information turns the game into something far more mysterious and tense: if you don’t know your own character’s exact HP, you would certainly think twice before fighting goblins or jumping across a pit.

This approach, much more common in the early days of RPGs, is practically extinct today. But I often find myself wondering: what is it like to play a game where players don’t have access to the information on their own character sheet? What if, to know your exact HP, you had to pay for the services of a cleric or something like that? This approach certainly doesn’t solve any of my initial issues with HP as a mechanic, but it’s intriguing enough to sustain at least a few sessions of play. If you’ve had any experience with this, please reach out. I’d love to hear more!

Death Lurks Around Every Corner – Quantum Hit Points

What if, instead of hiding the entire game system from players, we applied this veil of uncertainty only to hit points? What if randomness didn’t exist only in the damage roll, but also in your total HP? This is precisely the approach discussed in a post on the Save vs. Total Party Kill blog. Here’s an excerpt:

When your character is healthy and unhurt, you don’t have a Hit Point total, just your Hit Dice. When you get attacked, hit, wounded, or otherwise in danger of dying, roll your Hit Dice. Keep the best result. That’s your HP total, from which you subtract the damage taken. So, a character only has an HP total when they are wounded. [...] Some people in my game call this “quantum hit points”. Getting hit is always scary—you never really know how many hit points you have!

The DURF system does something similar. In that game, weapon damage is fixed (daggers deal 3 wounds, swords deal 4 wounds, and so on). Its rulebook (which is only 12 pages long!) states the following: “Each time a creature takes Wounds, it rolls its Hit Dice. If the result is less than or equal to the Wounds it has accumulated, the creature dies.” I really like this solution because it doesn’t require any major gymnastics to adapt to your D&D table. It’s simple, effective, and very tense… all that by changing when randomness enters the combat procedure!

Fighting ‘till the End – Save or Faint

In Mutants & Masterminds, a superhero game, there are no hit points, and death in combat is (by design) nearly impossible. After all, it would be completely anticlimactic for a group of minions to take down a Superman-like hero. Instead, a character’s physical integrity is protected through several stages: first, the character may attempt to avoid the attack by making a Defense check. If they fail to defend themselves, they must make a Resistance check to avoid the effect of the attack (usually taking Damage or negative conditions). In this context, damage essentially means cumulative penalties to future Resistance checks, unless the damage is very high or accumulates significantly. Even so, even when a character is hit multiple times, the target must first receive the Incapacitated condition, and only then, if they take further damage, receive the “At death’s door” condition and actually have a chance of dying.

Setting superhero idiosyncrasies aside, this “pass a test to keep fighting” framework can be very useful in dramatic games, creating room for those incredible, shounen-anime-worthy moments where people shout, “OMG! He refuses to die!”

The Death Spiral – Wound Levels

Other TTRPGs followed the same logic as numerical hit points, but gave it a more realistic twist. A true simulationist fever that especially affected games of the 1990s. Systems like Vampire: The Masquerade, Legend of the Five Rings, the CODA system from The Lord of the Rings, among others, implemented “Levels” of hit points that represent the increasing degradation of a character’s condition; instead of just “dead” and “alive,” your character could now be “lightly wounded” or “gravely injured.” At first glance, this is an excellent idea that brings significant narrative gains: my character took an axe blow that destroyed their shoulder. Ouch! No one could wield a sword properly with a wrecked shoulder like that! Of course it makes sense that I take a -3 penalty on all my rolls! The more injured you are, the less capable you are of fighting. It makes sense! Very cool!

Well… sort of. As much as this approach brings nuance and narrative richness, the idea of punishing a character twice (losing precious HP and also losing part of their ability to fight) causes characters who are already losing to fall even further behind. Just saying the words “death spiral” near someone who has used these systems is enough to trigger their PTSD. Did you lose initiative and take a critical hit in the very first round of combat? Well, looks like you’ll have to deal with that -4 on your sheet! Good luck! (if you hadn’t quite grasped what “death spiral” meant yet, I imagine it’s clear now!)

A Small Death Spiral

Game design is hard. The solution that seems cooler or more realistic is not always the best in terms of gameplay. Fortunately, there are people out there who seem born to do this. In this case, I’m talking about Chris McDowall and the wonderful game Into the Odd. The following idea isn’t exactly new, it was already present in the classic Traveller: instead of having a separate stat to track wounds, damage is dealt directly to an ability score. Each hit reduces a relevant stat. For example: a sword strike reduces your Strength and may kill you; an electric shock reduces your Dexterity and may paralyze you; if something is truly traumatic, psychologically speaking, it reduces your Will, and your character is Lost when that attribute reaches zero.

“But Felipe! Isn’t that just the ‘death spiral’ again?” In a way, yes. But Into the Odd sidesteps part of the problem by completely removing attack rolls: in this system, whenever a character attacks in combat, they simply deal their weapon’s damage automatically. In other words, even if your Strength decreases, it does not affect your chances of hitting your opponent. And the same goes for enemies… making any encounter with mere goblins and giant rats potentially your last steps through the world of the living. In this kind of game, as people often say, “combat is a fail state”: you entered that fight to lose (HP), so you’d better have a plan to end it quickly.

Life is harsh in games with a death spiral. And if that’s what you want in your game, you’ve just discovered one of the greatest secrets of tabletop RPGs: getting screwed can be incredibly fun. Death spiral-style games tend to focus heavily on exploration, since much of their appeal lies in making life difficult in the wilderness, whether by making encumbrance, rations, and torches mechanically relevant and engaging, or by making your character’s injuries something that truly impacts their future actions. Other games that use similar approaches include Mutant: Year Zero and Forbidden Lands.

“Attack Every Part of the Character Sheet”

In 2013, Arnold Kemp made a blog post that popularized the idea that dangers in tabletop RPGs should not threaten only a character’s HP, but every other relevant part of their sheet, including attributes, inventory, and even XP and levels (as in the dreaded older editions of D&D, where incorporeal undead could drain character levels!).

Yikes… (excerpt from the Monster Manual, AD&D 1e, p. 100)

Many games embrace this approach to representing danger. Here are a few:

Your Backpack Is Your Life – Inventory Slots as HP

Speaking of encumbrance… have you heard the word of Equipment Slots today? Every opportunity is a good opportunity to evangelize about creative ways to track what a character is carrying! Personally, I think HP and encumbrance are two of the most problematic mechanics in D&D design. So why not solve both at once?

Well, if that’s the direction you want to take, there’s no better game than Knave 2e. Here, the similarity to Into the Odd is pretty clear: players don’t have classic HP, but rather very low values of “hit protection.” In Knave, when your Hit Protection reaches zero, each point of excess damage begins to occupy an inventory slot, with a description appropriate to the damage taken (stabbed, burned, etc.). If there is an item in that slot when the character takes the wound, they are forced to drop it.

In a game where experience is measured by the amount of gold collected, this is an excellent mechanic that ties your character sheet together into a cohesive whole: XP depends on gold, gold depends on your inventory, and your inventory depends on your HP.

There is nothing better than a litte Tetris in my TTRPG!

Disabling Powers

 

There are fates far worse than death. Being forced to watch the collective defeat of your group of adventurers because a key part of your character has been disabled is certainly among them. Games that lean into this instead of using HP tend to be very successful at conveying the exhaustion, despair, and loss of hope that accompany a collapse in battle (and, of course, making players cry out in frustration).

Disabling powers works even better when the terrible choice of what the character loses is placed in the players’ hands. This is the case when a PC is hit in His Majesty The Worm: the player chooses what happens to their character, whether it’s reducing the condition of one of their armors, disabling one of their talents (up to a maximum of two), or taking conditions such as “Injured,” “Staggered,” or “At Death’s Door.” The beauty of this system is that the more Wounds a character takes, the fewer options remain available… and if things go badly enough, the “At Death’s Door” condition will eventually be marked.

Called Shots

And what about when a player wants to aim a blow at an enemy’s hand? In some systems, such as GURPS, Basic Roleplaying, and RuneQuest, this is a very specific action within the rules. This doesn’t change HP directly, but it interacts significantly with damage, so it’s worth mentioning here.

In GURPS 4e, there is a rule that works like this: each body part you target imposes an additional penalty on the attack roll to simulate the difficulty of aiming, but in return, a successful hit produces extra effects. For example, targeting the eyes requires a roll at a -9 penalty (!!), but if the character is using “impaling”, “piercing” or “tight-beam burning” weapons, and the attack deals over HP/10, the target becomes blind. Also, if it hits, the strike damages the brain without going through the additional 2 points of Damage Reduction provided by the skull (this may be the most GURPS sentence I’ve ever written in my life); targeting the neck imposes a -5 penalty, but if the attacker hits, damage is increased by 1.5× for crushing or corrosion damage and by 2× for cutting damage.

In earlier versions of the game, each body part limited the total damage it could take. For example, striking an enemy’s arm could make them drop their weapon, but would never cause them to lose more than 10% of their total HP, creating a tactical trade-off between dealing maximum damage and gaining a specific advantage.

If this level of granularity doesn’t give you a headache and instead seems like a good way to make attack math more interesting, then a more simulationist game might be for you. In my experience, however, adding mechanical hurdles to performing actions tends to have the opposite effect: a -9 penalty on an attack usually convinces the player that doing anything other than a standard attack is a bad idea.

"it's just a flesh wound"

Narrative Impact

What if, instead of “-8 HP,” the system said “you’re limping”? This is perhaps one of my favorite approaches, and many games have explored it in different ways. Here are some fun ways to do it:

Stress and Consequences

 

In Fate Core, there are two ways to absorb damage: by taking Stress and/or Consequences. Stress essentially works as a substitute for HP. When you are hit, you mark a “Stress box” equal to the damage taken, and if that box is already marked, you must mark a higher-value box. When the character can no longer mark a box, they are out of the conflict. However, before marking a stress box, the player can choose to take one or more Consequences (this is the fun part): Consequences represent the lasting narrative effect of that attack, and can be more or less severe depending on how much damage is absorbed. Every consequence is written as text, a short phrase or description that can be invoked during play as a relevant narrative aspect.

Here is an example taken from Fate itself:

Cynere is surrounded by three of the thugs [...], and they manage to land a 6-shift attack on her. So far, she has escaped unharmed in this fight and still has all of her stress boxes and consequences available.

She has two ways to take the hit. She could take a severe consequence, which would negate 6 stress. She could also take a moderate consequence (4 stress) and use her 2-point stress box.

She decides that it’s unlikely she’ll get hit that hard again, so she opts to take the severe consequence to keep her stress track open for smaller hits.

Amanda and Lily agree to call the severe consequence “Nearly Gutted.” Cynere takes a brutal slash from one of the thugs’ swords, gritting her teeth through the pain...

 

The Reverse Death Spiral – Dramatic Wounds

Within this space of “narrative wounds,” the TTRPG world is (fortunately) very well served. But I’d like to highlight another very useful approach for heroic games, found in 7th Sea by John Wick: the more wounded your character is, the stronger they become. It’s a clever inversion of the “death spiral” (which is fitting, since in this game the wound track is literally called the “death spiral.” Very clever, Mr. Wick!).

It works like this: when your character is hit, they mark boxes on the “death spiral” track equal to the damage taken. At certain points on the track, the character must mark spaces containing “stars,” representing that they have suffered a “dramatic wound.” As the character accumulates more dramatic wounds, they gain more benefits (bonuses to rolls, becoming more dangerous, etc.). However, each character can only withstand up to 3 dramatic wounds. If they receive a 4th, the character is not literally out of the fight, but enters a “helpless” state, where acting costs scarce resources and they are in real danger of dying at an enemy’s hands.

Be Quick or be dead! – Hit Points as Initiative

Remember when we talked about games where HP can be used as a resource? Exalted 3e does this in an extremely unique and fun way. Here’s an excerpt from the book itself:

Initiative is possibly the most important element of combat. It not only determines the order in which characters take their turns, but more importantly functions as an overall measure of the tempo of battle and a character’s confidence and advantage within the fight. A character with high Initiative controls the flow of combat, forcing opponents to respond to his tactics and assaults; a character with low Initiative is on the ropes, struggling desperately for an opening to turn the tide in his favor. Sudden reversals of fortune are not only possible but frequent, so it’s normal for a character’s Initiative rating to change from round to round. Gaining a high Initiative and using it well is the key to victory in Exalted.

Combat in Exalted 3e is quite complex, but let us focus on this: as in other systems, reducing an opponent’s HP to zero removes them from the fight. However, in Exalted 3e, damage can be used either to reduce an enemy’s Initiative (“Withering Attacks”) or their Health (“Decisive Attacks”). Withering attacks are those blows that push your opponent against a wall, make them stumble, and ultimately control the battle flow. When they hit, these attacks increase your Initiative by 1 and can even steal some Initiative from your opponent. This is dangerous because reaching zero Initiative puts a character into “Initiative Crash,” meaning they completely lose their damage mitigation, lose access to certain abilities, and cannot perform Decisive Attacks.

On the other hand, Decisive Attacks — those that truly represent plunging your sword into an enemy or attempting to behead them — are risky moves: regardless of the outcome, they reduce your Initiative. If you miss a Decisive Attack, you lose Initiative; if you hit, you deal damage to the enemy’s Health, but your Initiative resets to its base value of 3, losing the advantage built up over several rounds of Withering Attacks. In other words, combat in Exalted is like a deadly dance: characters compete for control over the rhythm of the fight, raising and lowering their Initiative until, eventually, the one who best controls the battlefield delivers the grand finale.

Just Lower HP values – The TL;DR Solution That Could’ve Been at the Beginning (but then there’d be no text!)

Yes. OSR games figured this out very quickly: if your character has few HP, that intermediate stage where HP don’t really mean anything disappears. The transition from “alive” to “dead” is usually just one or two hits away! This is precisely why many newer games in this tradition do not reward character levels with more HP, or at least try to heavily restrict that kind of progression.

I wonder whether this also solves another design issue in D&D-style games: the fact that dungeon exploration and combat simply lose their appeal at higher levels. In other words, if the fun of the game lies in low levels, where characters have few HP and can die to simple traps and sneaky goblins, why not preserve that dynamic at higher levels as well? Level-less games, incidentally, do this very well (play Cairn and see what you think).

Conclusion

When it comes to games, there is no definitive answer to the problems faced at the table. Why would it be any different with HP? It all depends on the style of the game and what kind of fun appeals to each group: players of Pathfinder and GURPS tend to have a higher tolerance for tracking details, while players of Knave and Old School Essentials prefer simpler rules or simply ruling on situations as they arise.

That said, it’s important to note that the statement “taste is subjective” does not invalidate a much more essential one: “bad game design is a real thing”. If you’re applying a rule that doesn’t fit your game’s style — or worse, if the system you’re using isn’t delivering an engaging play experience — it’s time to rethink the mechanics or even the system itself. Rules serve the players, not the other way around. It’s long past time to cure this habit.