Design & Inspiration: Heat, Endurance, Health

Heat, endurance, and health are the core representations of a player's vitality in North. I've already mentioned these in an earlier post, but I figure I should make sure everything is explicit, since most of the other game mechanics key off of these attributes.

Heat represents a player's body warmth. It's cold outside, and keeping warm is the first concern for survival. Heat loss occurs at the end of every night - also known as the end of each round of play. The amount of heat lost depends on where the player is located: 1 in the green zone, 2 in the blue zone, and 3 in the black zone, since it gets colder the further north you travel. Some items and encounters will prevent heat loss, while others will replenish heat. If a player would lose heat but they have none left, they lose endurance instead.

Endurance is... well, kind of self explanatory. It represents your character's stamina - if you're full on endurance you have a lot of energy, and if you're low you're tired. Some encounters will drain your endurance, and you also suffer endurance loss when you're out of heat. You can also willingly spend endurance to increase your movement speed for a turn - run instead of walk, allowing you to move one extra tile per endurance spent. But you'll want to use this wisely, since if you run out of endurance your health is vulnerable. 

Health represents your physical state. Health loss occurs when you suffer an injury, or from frostbite if you're out of both heat and endurance. If you run out of health, you're forced to retreat back to town to recover (the town being one of the unique tiles in the green zone). This can be a major setback, especially if you've already made your way to the black zone - you'll have to make the hike north all over again. Regaining health is harder than regaining heat or endurance, so this is the attribute you'll want to be the most careful with.

For the first playtest I'll use a character with 3 heat, 3 endurance, and 3 health. I already feel like this is too low, since heat loss per turn in the black zone is, well, 3. There are items (coats) that reduce heat loss per turn, with the best one giving a 3-point reduction - in other words, entirely negating the black zone penalty - but I'll have to tinker with item rarity and acquisition if I want that to be a viable goal rather than a nice but rare occurrence. If it doesn't work out to well, I'll try 5 heat / 5 endurance / 5 health and see how that goes.

Once I get the core working at a satisfactory level I'd like to have multiple character options with different stats, but that'll come later. For now, I want to get things working well on a basic level before adding complexity.