(While jammed with the playtest) I found a new possible confirmation on the KUP model

I'm probably overwhelmed with too many to-dos and topics to follow and I'm getting stuck in the mud in too many topics and activities. I have to review priorities to try to refocus on my project and avoid getting lost in a thousand streams of discussions or thoughts.

During these weeks, the most tiring ones for me, I had to spend nearly all my efforts on  'marketing' the game... As a summary, I had a wide range of feedback, from purposely destructive (hopefully for no reason since I don't know the people who wrote me) to truly encouraging. Among all, I feel like leaving a tip to Jamie Hardy, a veteran of this industry who has provided me with his invaluable advice. Jamie wasn't artificially positive, far from it: he wrote in a serious and straightforward way what's wrong with my marketing approach. I sincerely thank him and now I will try to put into practice everything Jamie suggested. Now, what is making me stuck is my natural marketing ineptitude: although the suggestions are clear, I am striving to make all the advice my own. I am a person who needs time to 'digest indigestible matter'.

While waiting for the 'right inspiration', I read some very interesting articles I recently found online. The most interesting is this one: Why D&D has Hit Points per Level for the Acquisition of Gold by Tom Van Winkle. It is a recent essay with a well defined topic, I don't think it is necessary to explain its contents: I simply recommend this reading.

I am more than sure that everyone will think that I am going to talk about the fact that my game is not working with HP and therefore I am cooler than Gygax... Well no, it is not about that! Let me say that this post is interesting in any topic discussed in it: it has an extremely reliable historical backbone and very clever thought about how HP developed into the concept any D&D player knows. I reccomend the post this reason as well!

What made me jump off my seat is a short passage from the long text:

Hit points (rather than a capacity to take a fixed number of unqualified hits) introduced a new layer of uncertainty into combat, and uncertainty is one of the prime sources of fun in games (See Peterson, Playing at the World, p. 338, and Costikyan's, Uncertainty in Games).

Now, I would like to point out the words "uncertainty is one of the prime sources of fun in games" ... this is the mantra of the KUP model! This is the main concept I used to build the rules of VI·VIII·X KUP RPG! Of course my approach had a different starting point from D&D: in that case the starting point was the wargame set of rules, in my case the starting point was D&D... I had a huge advantage in that sense!

Although it is bizarre that when speaking of one of the elements that I removed from my rules I found a common factor on a conceptual level, the most important thing is how important it is to think and be consistent with a basic idea: we play RPGs to have emotions and, in case the game is obvious or trivial, we fail in our intent and we do not enjoy the game.

Wrapping up:
  • Please read Tom's post if you find interesting this post, that it is even more interesting!
  • I have ordered Greg Costikyian book and I am eager to read it!
  • The HP concept was a revolution starting from wargames, the dismissal of HP concept could be a relevant change compared to traditional FRPGs
  • I have just realized that I have never done a post or a dedicated deep-dive on the fact that in VI·VIII·X there are no HP and a different approach to injuries is present (needless to say, in line with the KUP model!)... I need to fill this gap!

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