Thinking a lot lately about HP systems- the stuff that tells you how much of whatever kind of damage your character can take before beefin' it. Most of us have probably had conversations or thoughts about how HP isn't just meat points or the amount of physical harm your character can take. If you've been in the RPG trenches for a while, you've seen plenty about that!

What I'm really thinking about is the language around HP itself, in any given game. You can learn a lot about a how a game wants you to treat injuries by how it describes HP, yeah, but you can also learn about the world itself!

As an example, if "an overnight rest heals all your wounds and you fully recover", then you can infer that the game doesn't want you to describe major bodily injuries, or that it gives your characters some kind of way to re-grow arms. Spinning off of that, if a game has you track more-intense injuries separately, you know that in not just the game but also in the world they're a big deal, not so straightforward to solve.

How does your game talk about HP and healing?

-Nevyn