>I don't mean to sound snippy, but I do have an idea about the range of
>variables at work. What I was really after is just a sense of people's
>concrete experiences of how the HP were actually used in _their_ games.
I wasn't clear, then. I've played with dozens of players. What I was giving you *is* my concrete experience. Basically I've seen just about every behavior you can imagine with HP. That is, I can't say anything about my play overall, other than to say that it depends on who I'm playing with, and what I'm doing in that particular game in terms of giving out HP.
For example, waaaay back when I started with HQ, I used to give out very few HP overall, and noted the lack of spending on development. More recently I've started piling on huge heaps of them and have noted the other behavior in play. In fact, I'm giving out so many in one IRC game that people are trying to find things to spend them on, but having trouble doing so with any sense of plausibility. So players bump a lot just to get rid of the things (even when not very dramatic to do so). I may have to scale back there.
And I've had players of every type play, and what I've mentioned, I've observed in those players. I try to shift "tactical" players more to my mode of play over time (for which HQ is eminently useful), but it's interesting to see how they play before they "get" the mode I encourage.
I'm not saying that I've seen every variation of the variables involved. I'm just saying that my observation is that you can't look at even groups as a whole, you have to look at individuals and what you as narrator are doing with HP at the time. It's a matter of the interaction of these things. That's my experience.
Mike
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