Feature Spotlight: Beyond the HP Bar (Vitality, Stress and Renown)

We replaced the single health bar with three scores that track the physical, mental and social toll of your journey, and change how the story is told.

The Timekeeper · 2026-10-02

In almost every RPG of the last thirty years, survival is tracked by a single red health bar. Get shot and the number goes down; eat a wheel of cheese or drink a potion and it goes up. It works, but it isn't human.

When we built Hourglass 3.0, we wanted the timelines to feel genuinely dangerous. Surviving a shootout as a dirty cop in 1952 Chicago, or a shipwreck in 1966, doesn't just leave you with a lower number. It leaves you battered, terrified and notorious.

So we ripped out the standard health bar and replaced it with three core attributes that track the physical, mental and social toll of your journey.

Vitality, Stress and Renown

Your condition isn't left to the AI's imagination. A background model constantly watches what you do and updates your stats in real time.

• Vitality (your body): not an arbitrary countdown, but tied to real injuries. Take a beating and your vitality drops, and the Ledger records the specific injury (broken ribs, bleeding). Because that's fed back to the storyteller, you'll fail agility checks or collapse if you try to sprint while badly hurt.
• Stress (your mind): the mind breaks before the body. Being chased down an alley or witnessing horror in the myths sends your stress soaring. As it nears its peak, the prose changes: descriptions turn frantic, paranoia sets in, and your character may panic or freeze when you try to make a calm decision.
• Renown (your reputation): you can't shoot your way out of a tavern and stay an anonymous face in the crowd. Renown tracks your notoriety. High renown changes how the world treats you: rival factions and beat cops recognise you on sight, and you'll have to move through the world very differently from a low-profile drifter.

The consequences

Because we use two models, the storyteller is given all three numbers before it writes a single word.

Try to coolly interrogate an informant while your vitality is 20 (bleeding) and your stress is 90 (panicking), and the engine won't let you play the calm detective. The AI will describe your trembling hands, your laboured breathing and the informant's reaction to your obvious desperation. Your stats change the tone, and the possibilities, of every scene.

Have you played a game that really nailed psychological stress or lasting injury, rather than just lowering a health bar? Tell us on Discord.

In the manual: Vitality, Stress & Renown · The Ledger: Your Condition

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