Consider this. In my IRC game, the heroes have been in play for about three
days of "in-game" time. That's from the first scene of one of them arriving
at the colony where the action is happening, to the last scene played last
session. Nine sessions total, so that about three sessions per in-game day.
And I give out five or six HP a session. That's every session, not every
adventure (which is how the rules read - I can't use this because I don't do
"adventures.") So I'd say the average character has gotten about 45 HP total
in those three days.
Note that in those three days, there's been only one real event you could
call a "combat" (in the last session a giant serpent crawled out of the
swamp). Other than that, there's been little that could really be called
"challenging" or something that the characters can learn much from. In any
case, they haven't had a lot of time to learn.
But that doesn't matter to me at all. It's a completely "unrealistic" rate of development, in theory. Which simply means that for in-game plausibility sake, that the characters may already have been as good as the new ability levels describe, but just were "off" those first two days. Or perhaps the events have unlocked latent hidden ability inside of them. Or however we'd have to describe it if somebody asked.
But maybe it just doesn't matter at all. We just don't discuss it at all. Nobody cares whether or not it's "plausible" because nobody spends any time lingering over anybody else's character sheets, or worrying about how their character has "learned" what they've "learned." The players are largely unaware of the ability levels of the other characters. Oh, they understand their capabilities in gross terms pretty well, just not in specific detail. And none of the additions that anyone has made have ended up with a character that's really at all substantially different from how they started.
I mean, let's take a player who doesn't spend much on bumping, and say that they've spent 40 HP on their character so far - I think one PC is at this point at least. There's so much to spend on that nobody has done anything like "stacking" so far. That is, theoretically some character at this point could have a two mastery ability in something. But I can't think of any character, actually, who has anything over 8W.
Put simply the changes seem plausible anyway. And that's all I require. I don't need HP to be a measure of "learning" or "challenge" or any of that. I simply need them to be a reward for playing well, and an indicator of what interests the players. When they spend HP, they say to me, "Hey, I want to play more about this ability."
In the last phase of the IRC game, 19 sessions, the characters probably earned about 70 HP each over the course of the whole thing. And they didn't come out substantially different than when they'd started, really. Part of this is because they know that stacking in my game will do them no good. High ability levels just don't mean anything a lot in my game - you have about the same chance to win or lose in a contest, because I tailor ability levels to the character, for one, and because I hit people with all sorts of contests - there's no garuntee that their highest ability level will even get used. So why stack? (Note, I don't ever tell people what to spend points on, they "fail" to stack on their own).
What's interesting is how playing this way, that the plausibility comes automatically. That is we don't see huge increases in ability in a short amount of time, not because the player can't stack if he wants, but because he's given no particular reason to make such an unrealistic decision. Also, a lot of what gets added to is relationships. Because everyone buys that a relationship can come into existance in short order, and that they can grow by leaps and bounds in short order. Still, I'll admit that the overall number of abilities that are going up don't particularly match reality in any particular way.
I'd postulate that, for the style of game that I run, that a "realistic" number of HP would be dread dull. Because we want to see the character change in terms of these numbers. It's fun to do the exploration that's involved in the expenditures (or saving for heroics). So I give them out in big heaps. Hasn't hurt a thing yet, and I think play is the better for it. Players still hem and haw over whether to bump this contest, or not, and they still do a lot of thinking about what to spend the HP on. To (subconsciously) send that message to me about what's important to them. All the "fun" of HPs that I'm looking for is there in spades.
"Realistically" people "advance" in experience only over time in any
substantive way. This is why I like the Saga System. Because in raising
keywords, you get characters who have learned "everything" about their
trade, or their homeland, or whatever is raised. That is, the Saga System,
in fact, "protects" the ratio between character breadth of knowledge and
their highest abilities. Otherwise what you get are characters that have
this very low broad base of knowledge, and just a few relatively high
abilities. While I agree that this is realistic to some extent, that
everybody specializes, they don't just stop learning their broad base of
ability at one point. They continue to advance.
Basically, there's no drama to "downtime" (if there were, then it should be played instead - we assume that downtime is "dramaless.") As such, development during this time should merely be to model the character. As such, a few HP don't hurt, but what's really a good modeling tool is advancing keywords. In part because of the simplicity. Let's see, you stayed at home, and farmed? The split the points between homeland and occupation keywords. Now update the sheet quickly, and we can move on. There was nothing dramatic to consider, so no need to spend more HP to indicate the new interest.
Note that, similar to how the experience of a character is dramatically
unimportant during downtime, where they start is similarly unimportant.
Which is why, as Jane says, one can take the idea of starting as newbs out
and shoot it. Basically the narrator can consider the character to be
starting after as much "downtime" as he deems fit. From another POV, even a
"starting" character per the normal rules can be seen to have obtained all
his keyword levels from the saga system if you like.
Now, this POV is all predicated on a style of play where you deliberately put drama into play when and where you want (instead of just "playing out" a scenario), and in which even the numbers on the statistics are considered to be more for the players than they say anything about the in-game situation. Just guages of liklihoods of dramatic outcomes, not some model of how the gameworld "physics" work. So it probably won't work for everyone.
But, again, happily HQ doesn't say that my version is right, or that the
"realism" version is correct. It says give out HP at a rate that makes sense
to you for whatever makes sense to you. So if realism is your thing, and you
think you can work out some realisitic rates, and that's what's going to be
fun for you, then great. But the game doesn't say anything on the subject,
and I think that the game is still young enough in terms of how much it's
been played, that there are likely to be few coherent thoughts on this at
this point.
Which isn't to say that some people here haven't had cogent thoughts on the subject. But to explain, rather, why people who play like myself will not be able to help. My advice would be "Just give out whatever you feel like at the time. Which may not be helpful, unfortunately. (And Chris, Darren, et al, we should consider that perhaps we can't help here - this will certainly be my last foray into the subject unless directly querried).
Whatever the case, as Rory (or was it David?) has said before, the fortunate thing is that it's self-balancing in this regard. Without giving out even way more HP than I do, I think you can't break the system. And it would even work if you gave out very, very few, too (or, perhaps restricted their use to only bumping). So I don't think it's worth worrying about too much. But then again, that's just my own perspective.
Mike
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