Obviously this is only for RPs that have a Hogwarts or other school that could count points. XD Personally, I don't. The ways to get House Points are too difficult, complex, or redundant on the forums I've seen utilize them. It's usually something like "Gryffindor gets 5 points for every 20 IC-posts" (which requires counting/keeping track of other's posts) or "the most helpful members get 5 points added to their House!" (which is just... IDK, weird, kinda bring the OOC to the IC).

So, do you utilize house points? And how do you do it?

Most of the boards I've seen don't actually compute house points. Generally they have a section for it, but the counter is blank. :/

^ Yup, I see that a lot too. It's because those boards don't usually last long enough to give house points. :[

I don't... but I plan on adding that function for a specfic plot (where it revolves around the school). My plot happens outside of the school, btu apart of it happens inside of it... so when I do that, I plan on adding a fun thing for members to see... then removing it when the plot is over.

We had a house point forum with 4 threads (one for each house). There were OOC and IC points. People posted whenever they lost or gained points IC, and you got a certain number of points for completed threads/plots OOC. As well, people got points for starting threads and doing (in character) events. Was simple enough as long as people logged their activity, which they did. ^_^ Always worked out in the end. because, generally, the house with the most points had the most active RPers who go points for doing OOC and IC things.

Sounds confusing, but it worked for the 2 + years I did it. ^_^

Naaah. I don't think I've ever had House Points. It's just a degree of work that I can't be bothered doing when I just want to RP on my board. There aren't enough benefits that I can see in doing it.

If I was a member of a site which had them I'd participate because I do like to do them, as long as they work.

Once Upon a Time when I ran a game that used housepoints, it fell short because we had a set of OOC criteria for getting people points for character's houses, but it relied on the members counting themselves. The other issue really, was what was the incentive. I realise they're a part of the Potter world and that's great and they can still be used as a prop for professors looking to punish a student but I found it hard to find something that people wouldn't require an incentive for--or rather, much of an incentive. People got along fine without paying them much attention. I think the intention is good, but your timing has to be right, depending on your board's time frame, if you're going to squeeze in making a big deal out of it.

Thankfully the game doesn't have any functioning schools these days so house points are a thing of a past, lest they be an incentive for kids in a family home.

My board does house points.

All points are awarded for ooc reasons only. We don't do IC points lest someone be less creative to avoid losing points for their house or something.

People get points for participating in plot threads, opening prompted threads, competing in contests, etc. My board seems pretty receptive to it but it's not a huuuuge part of our game. It's just an extra little perk to someone's day when they see they earned that extra 20 points for Hufflepuff.

We have house points.

They have their own subforum, which has four threads. One for each house. Professors can go in, post the point addition/subtraction totals.

Then, SW, Vlad or myself do the calculations and update the thread description - which is the overall house total.

It's a pretty decent system, I think. Even if we did end up with Sturt at -140 at one point. But, uh... that will happen when one of your students decides she likes to pull knives out...

I think its far too much hassle really - unless its an automated system (which I'm looking into releasing a phpbb mod for) I don't have a system for house points.

We have it set up like Mousie described. Rather than leaving all of the work for one person to do, all professors or staff characters can give out points for IC stuff- answering questions in classes, finishing their potion first, really creative charmwork, etc.

We also have a stickied thread where students can post a link to a thread they just finished, and if its interesting then all the characters involved earn points for their house (assuming, that is, that it's just a handful of chars).

And either myself or me co-admin goes through and updates the points on the Timeglass Board, as well as in the Side-Bar. =]

I like housepoints. :] It makes it more like Hogwarts. I've done the housepoint system on past forums before in various ways. On my new board that I am working on we are going to do housepoints based on IC stuff. Like Prefect Duties, Quidditch, Classes, Detentions and so on. We are going to play out that stuff. Trying to make it as Hogwarts-like as possible. I shall see if it will work out.

But the times I have done it in the past have worked out. The staff and the actual members kept track of the points.

The incentive for bothering is that the winning house would get special things. So yeah people always joined in. And everyone told me they liked it.

We do House Points, we used to base it on homework turned in and such. It was very difficult because some of the houses were a lot more active than the others so we tried to have people earn points by doing ooc stuff, like advertising. That seemed to help a little bit but mostly the same people did the tasks. So I figure the next time around we won't have House Points.

What kind of special things, if you don't mind me asking? =]

honestly i've considered this but in truth I haven't been able to think up a good system that would work, if i were to do it i'd want it to be based both on IC and OOC. Though at present my current community is only just starting out and strangely we currently have all Slytherins, so i think it'll be awhile before my community is ready for a house point system if i could devise one.

The Hogwarts Four used House Points, but it was only IC oriented - helping professors or students out, doing classwork/homework, anytyhing that you could do in the books and get points, we pretty much did. One of the incentives that we came up with, but never really had the opportunity to employ, was to make all those students of the winning house (who had colors across the board) be bold and glowing; possibly find a skin in the House's favor until the next competition; and have a Feast in their honor.

I just added the House Point system a few days ago, so I have no idea if this actually works or not...it at least sounds good to me in theory.

Maybe it'll work once we actually get everything moving again. <_<

I've run 4 HP RPGS and I have never included the house points feature. My earlier RPGs ran on Boards2Go which obviously had no support for scripts or hacks of any kind. If I wanted the house points feature I would painstakingly have to count posts and assign points. If points weren't based on posts, but were based on behaviours and actions as they are in the books... on what grounds would the points be awarded? I just found it way to difficult to maintain, even when I actually had a board that could support the feature. My last HP RPG ran on XMB and a coder I knew had a house points hack in the works but he backed out. Oh well.

We (will) have house points. Just a forum in the Entrance Hall with a thread for each year, that has each house's current standing and that gets updated by whoever's changing the tally.

I'm going to guess that most points will be for classwork. People who actually post the requirements in lessons.

And then you get points lost for bad behaviour and added for good behaviour and so on.

For out of character stuff, I've got a rule that non-modly types aren't allowed to answer the Q&A thread on pain of losing house points.

I really think whether it works or not comes down to the members, though.