Killing Hero Points
Why Principia Canonica Removes Meta-Currency from RPG Design
The most drastic change you’ll find in Principia Minima, our functional preview of the forthcoming Principia Canonica, is the removal of hero points. That design decision goes deeper than a small tweak. Hero points are one of our favorite mechanics, going back to our long-standing obsession with the James Bond 007 Role-Playing Game. They can deliver cinematic resilience and allow characters to lean into decisive moments without fear. For years, they felt inseparable from any sort of story-forward play.
Tabletop roleplaying descends from wargaming traditions. Early systems assumed that characters could be removed from play (read: killed off) through a single bad die roll or player decision. As campaigns (another term right out of military simulation) lengthened and characters became central to the game, designers looked for ways to preserve continuity with those traditions. Hero points answered the call. They gave players a way to bend probability at critical moments, while shielding characters and story arcs from total collapse.
That solution made sense inside of that architecture. It let narrative persistence continue to exist within a lethal frame. But hero points also revealed the underlying assumption: survival required intervention. The mechanic sat above the core rules, offering a form of relief from it. Players earned a currency they could use to overrule the fundamental ideology of play.
Principia Canonica had to start elsewhere. Roleplaying is story. You’ll see us lead with that so often we’re concerned you’ll get sick of hearing it, but it matters. Roleplaying is collaborative authorship shaped through traits that define Archetype, Identity, Strength, Weakness, and Drive. You don’t need to spend points to buy agency when you need it most, hope you have enough when you need them, or make decisions based on what might earn you more. Agency is built into the structure of your character and your interpretation of outcomes. Death operates as a narrative event, chosen when it carries weight, not a mechanical outcome you hope to avoid. Conflict arises from pressure inside of a story beat, not the constant threat of erasure in combat, combat, and more combat.
[Pause to explain that we’re not negating that style of play or saying it’s not fun or somehow wrong. Like what you like. We like it, too. We’re talking about something different, not attacking you personally.]
Playtesting has confirmed what the foundational ideas of Principia produce. Characters succeed more often, most of the time actually, because success exists on a spectrum rather than behind a single gate. In fiction, protagonists rarely stall at a binary checkpoint. They scrape through, succeed at a cost, or complicate the situation in ways that intensify what happens next. Our system is designed to reflect that pattern directly.
Consider how rolling dice works in practice. A character rolling 3d6 against a pressure rating of 5 doesn’t face a pass-or-stop barrier. A total of 5 yields one success, or specifically, a successful outcome rated 1. It nudges the situation forward, barely, with limited leverage. A total of 10 yields two successes and shifts the balance more decisively. Even the lowest totals for 3d6 range from 3 to 18, which keeps outcomes interpretable and never immediately catastrophic. Every multiple of the pressure rating deepens the possible change in the fiction.
At the table, a narrow success might secure access to a guarded installation but tighten scrutiny, increasing pressure for the next action. A higher outcome rating might secure access and expose a hidden connection that redirects the context of the scene. A failed roll increases the pressure, complicates the characters’ position, or hands momentum to their opposition. The arc keeps moving. Players respond to consequences, rather than reaching for a mechanical override.
Within this structure, a hero point becomes redundant. The system already scales outcome and turns failure into forward motion rather than a stall point that jams up the game. It treats mortality as a narrative decision rather than a stray, unpredictable statistical event. Adding a meta-currency like hero points shifts attention from interpretation to resource management, and moves players from considering consequence to mechanical correction.
Removing hero points reinforces the philosophy that animates our design. Agency lives in traits, declared intent, and how the table interprets outcome ratings. Pressure rises and falls in response to the ongoing shifts in the fiction. What remains at the center is conversation shaped through consequence. That focus defines Principia Canonica more clearly than an auxiliary mechanic.
