Edit – behold a 5e version (not mine) of this idea and in the spirt of Lego builds: LINK

I’m sure like most of you, you get Ben Milton’s The Glatisant news letter (if not, you should).

In Issue #56, I saw this title ‘Thermodynamics for Game Design’ and I was like a moth to a flame.

Let’s just put the scientific explanation to one side for now, and look at one of the core discussion points: Do you rub out too much on your character sheet, in particular when keeping track of hit points. Do we remake the system to fix this (like my hit-points-replaced-with-usage-dice idea) or do something else like use tokens.

This made me wonder if at the table tracker could be used for HPs at the table, and at the end of the game/session the HPs bit of the character sheet was then updated (obvious an electronic character sheet would solve this problem). So at least you are rubbing out only once a game/session.

I did wonder about the use of a Cribbage board (in this case a peg can be moved from 1 to 120 and you can track the HPs of 4 PCs, NPCs, monsters etc:

… but this board seemed a bit on the big side (except for a DM tracking monster HPs perhaps), or an electronic tally counter:

but this seemed a bit extreme (but not that costly) and not much fun.

Then I wondered about if every player simply carried their own strip of 2 x 10 Lego block (like a mini Cribbage board):

The first column represents 10s and the second column represents 1s (like when you were learning addition for the first time).

You just need a pip to move on the 10s column and one pip to move on the 1’s column.

Here are an simple embodiment of this idea:

The red zones is 0 (I should have put a piece on with pips on it), left column is 10s, the right column is 1s,  so in the above case the PC has 28 HPs

Party HP tracker, again left column is 10s, right column is 1s and the top bar is 0 (HPs left to right 17, 14, 9, 6, 9, and 11):

Here’s something a bit extra (and perhaps less prone to being knocked over when reaching for snacks at the table):

The orange zones is 0, left column is 10s, the right column is 1s, and the change in colour show your maximum HPs (just in case you forget during healing). So in the above case the PC has 28 HPs of a 35 HPS.

Of course you could have other fancier versions like this (not great photo) where you blank of the 10’s column until you need it (27 HPs of 35):

I put this together with the Lego I had knocking around.

Overall, I think this idea is kind of fun (forget the eraser rubbing bit), because it is a visual that other players can see at the table as well as the DM.

… or, maybe just keep a tally on a separate piece of paper and update the total at the end of the session.
:O|