Interesting... but I'm not quite sure why you'd want to minimise the OTT heroics that HPs facilitate while wanting to accelerate progress. Obviously different groups' dynamics and interests vary, but we find we tend to have a good, fun and escapist evening's play, using a decent number of HP, but advance very slowly. And we're fine with that.
Leaving aside the saga-style play, where each adventure may be the highpoint of a year's normal activity, I suppose I do feel that progression in play sometimes seems rather hectic. Put it this way, if I look at the things I've done in the past year, it has certainly been a busy one and a successful one. I've gained some material assets and incomes (cemented with HP), no doubt got better at some things I do (with HP) and perhaps had some strokes of luck (bumps), but find it hard to think that I have dramatically improved, much less gained a slew of new skills, etc.
Obviously, this is a game. But thinking about the films, TV programmes and above all literature from which we get most of our tropes, they seem to break into three broad categories as advancement goes:
(a) the serial, where there may well be major in-episode upsets, but broadly speaking, there is little major episode-on-episode development. Captain Kirk in episode one is younger than he was in the last one he played, but not especially better.
(b) the saga, which takes the callow youth through to High King/Mage Lord/whatever. Lots of development and, to be honest, lending itself to quite precocious characters who have mastered every one of the secret arts by their 26th birthday.
(c) The stop-go. When necessary or appropriate, and usually through a quick montage, Conan turns from youth into muscle-bound pitfighter or the young monk learns the secret kung-fu art. However, beyond those very specific sudden (and often deus ex machina) incidents, progress is relatively little. Indeed, progress tends to be the sort that is often handled most effectively with directed HPs: gaining relationships or reputations, flaws, etc.
Oviously there are exceptions, etc -- these are very broad categories. Most RPGs implicitly play to mode (b) and one of the virtues of a game like HQ is that one can choose instead, as I suppose our group does, to play a high-energy (a) within the existing rules.
What's the point of all this? To be honest, not a lot, except that it's a warm Friday afternoon and I'm tired of grading exam scripts. Any of these modes are fine, just as it is up to each narrator to allocate HPs and each player to decide how to spend them. I suppose I was wondering, though, whether the quest for advancement gets in the way sometimes of fun and immediacy. Let's be honest? How many of us, _as people_ are minimaxers in terms of our time? If I were, I'd be doing something rather more useful or lucrative that posting on some gamers' yahoogr
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;-)
Mark
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