[cross-posted with Johnstone]
So, here's an example of a harm move that eliminates the need for hit points, while retaining the "script immunity" feature. I'm just typing this off the top of my head, so the implementation sucks. This is not even a "first draft". But I could see improving this with some thought and turning it into something that works well.
Hypothetical Harm Move
When you take harm, roll+harm taken.
* On a 6 or less, nothing major happens: choose one minor effect and keep on going.
* 7-9: choose one minor effect, MC chooses one minor effect
* 10+: choose one major effect, MC chooses two minor effects
* 12+: choose two major effects, MC chooses one minor effect
Minor effects
o You lose your footing.
o You lose your grip on whatever you’re holding.
o You lose track of someone or something you’re attending to.
o You miss noticing something important.
o You are bloodied/bleeding (not life-threatening, but shows you've been in a fight, attracts sharks, that sort of thing)
Major effects
o Out of action: unconscious, trapped, incoherent, or panicked.
o Bleeding heavily/mortally wounded
o The damage won't heal naturally
o A limb is broken/maimed/disabled
o Shattered (-1 Cool)
o Crippled (-1 Hard)
o Disfigured (-1 Hot)
o Broken (-1 Sharp)
So, you take harm, then you start checking off these things on the list. Once a thing is checked off, you have to a different thing next time. (You could add "dead" as an option on the list, if you want.)
You take a gun shot, roll 10+, and it turns out you're bleeding heavily, you're knocked down and you drop your gun. The next shot, you roll a 12+: now you have to choose "mortally wounded" or "out of action" or something similar unless you're willing to take a debility or lose the use of a limb or something similar.
This particular implementation would suggest some possible changes to the AW rules, like expanding the harm scale from -1 for relatively harmless things, to +5 to seriously deadly stuff.
I would probably also add a new category to make it more deadly:
15+: choose two major effects, MC chooses one major effect
Again, the details suck here: I'm just making this up off the top of my head. But something like this could work, yeah?
So, let's chat about the potential benefits of abstract hit points! They're a resource, right?
"way" suggests at least one, which is the ability to mark something off that's meaningful to gameplay (even if it's not directly meaningful in the fiction) without slowing down the game. What else?