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I like the fact that altruism points should be spent on other players. At the end of the second session, no-one had used Deadening or Lucidity, so there was no need to spend them on oneself.

The mechanic for giving other people points needs a little more intrigue sewn into it. In most friendly groups, the players will pool all the spendable points together and then see who they can improve with them. The optimum build will be found this way and chances are, all the characters will become a sort of medium-level build. Everyone is too polite to say "I WANT MY RANGE TO BE 8, GIVE ME ALL 16 AP".

To solve the problem of niceness, last night we trialed secret applying. I gave 3 or 4 points to and then each player and each made a case for what they wanted to improve and how much it would cost. The players then wrote down secretly who would get their points. The GM totals them up and hands them out. It would have been better if I hadn't read them out 1-by-1, which makes it sort of obvious if you're a player who has give one point to each other (sorry, Byrn).

Still not sure this is the best answer to giving other people points.

I like the AP concept and I think it would probably get less nicey nicey as we progressed through the game, and people either felt they hadn't had any love for a while, or were struggling with something etc. Also we're probably an overly co-operative/friendly group in that sense.

Rob's solution does rather change the situation. To explain a bit more - everyone was asked what they wanted to improve about their character, and then everyone secretly wrote on a piece of paper who they wanted to give AP's to. Rob then totalled up the number of AP's distributed to each character and everyone neatly wrote that number on their character sheet (I'm going to call these xp to make it clearer what I'm talking about). The problem with this is that no-one actually got enough points to do anything useful (or what they wanted). This means that everyone has now written on their character sheet the number of xp the group has given them, with the intention of saving up for the thing they wanted in the first place. Whether that plays out as intended is still up in the air.

The 2 problems are (1) that effectively what the GM's has done is put xp distribution in the players hands not his own, and (2) has removed the sense that other people are buying you your upgrades.

To clarify a little
(1) - I was late for the session for various reasons and therefore only got 3AP not the 4 everyone else got - all fine, no issues with that, however, since my AP were then redistributed as xp to other players that effectively meant that they got stung with fewer points rather than it being me who 'suffered'.

(2) - I now have 3 or 4 xp on my character sheet (can't remember which), given to me by the player group, that were given to me for the stated intention of putting my ranged combat up, but I cannot see any mechanism by which I am restricted to putting my ranged combat up, effectively removing the AP concept and giving a group determined xp pool for each player.

I'm not sure I explained that well, but hopefully you see what I mean. I think actually the group pooling points and seeing what they could do with them would work better in the long run - especially with the option to spend on yourself for Deadening and Lucidity.

It is wonderful to hear the system is so well liked, I was a bit worried about it. Altruism Points are meant to fit somewhere between genre emulation of "that one selfish ass in every horror movie" and the real-life consideration of not making enemies at the gaming table. I didn't want to give carte-blanche to players being "every man for himself", nor to overly encourage the failings we see in movies (hiding infection, hogging resources, running off without helping). However, in the horror genre, the party shouldn't be a hive-mind symbiotic organism either. I feel it is better to err on the side of cooperation than antagonism, however.

Secret ballots sounds like an idea to try in further testing, or for games in general.

An idea that occurred to me over lunch, is to pool the points before handing out, and letting player take as much or as little from the pot - "tragedy of the commons" in action. The pot would be something around 3 or four times the number of players (Or P-1 for brutal games) and then some order is established. You go in one order to take points for healing, and then reverse it to steal points (if any remain) for level up. For an extra twist of the knife - the GM announces how many points each person earned before pooling them all, so everyone knows their fair share, but has a choice to take more or less.

More generically, the group gets a pot, and votes on who gets what. Another possibility is that XP is kept by the person, and put into the group collection for leveling up at certain times (rather than deciding as its given out). As such, others see if they're being stingy in giving back or hoarding.

Speaking of mechanisms to encourage defection, I take it the others didn't come into play much?

I like the Altruism Points concept a lot, it's an interest idea that really makes you think about the team when levelling up.
It is a system that is going to reward the charismatic, though.

We haven't yet encountered the need to spend points on anything other than upgrades, so I'm not yet sure how this will work. Although, like Gilvaniel, I am concerned about uneven points distribution. It does mean that players being penalised (or rewarded) for whatever reason, are actually receiving nothing - instead, it's everyone else who "suffers/wins".

Similarly with the healing thing. I'm not sure whether it's intentional or not (I have a feeling it might be), but if you spend points to heal yourself then give the rest to the other team members then this rewards characters who take stupid risks and get themselves hurt but diminishes the points available for other people to level up. I guess the balance to this is that the rest of the team are unlikely to want to give such a character any of their points in return - leaving that character to be alienated from the group.

I guess that works in the setting.

We have found that, being such a nice group of people, we tend to spread the upgrade points around quite evenly. Even under secret ballot, the obvious solution to avoid making a decision is to give everyone 1 point. I'm not sure that we're gaining anything that way, other than obscuring anyone's chances of an actual skill up (as Gilvaniel also said).

There's also the issue of putting up high skills. We have a sniper who has a Ranged Combat skill of 6. That's pretty good and hasn't failed us yet, but I'm sure he would like to up that to 7 at some point. However, that's going to cost 14 AP, which is a lot to ask. Odds are that the team is more likely to just fill in smaller attributes, or buy skills/specials rather than save up for the bigger purchases. Again, I guess this might also be intentional, in that it means we're not building up these skills unless the group really things we need a top-notch sniper for some reason. But it does mean that we're all likely to homogenise rather than specialise.

I like the idea of a round-robin system: spending healing points first, then reversing the order for upgrades. You're still going to get bartering and so on, but I don't think you're going to avoid that. And I don't think you really want to.

On a system like this, if you really want to avoid the homogenization problem, have the players vote who gets the first lot of points. That player gets half of them (in this case 7-8 I think?). Then vote again, that player gets half (3-4) and again (1-2) until there are no more points.

If healing is an issue in the game, have the players heal first. Then, whoever puts the most points into the pot gets to draw first. Say I got wounded but I decide to go for the upgrade and spend no points, putting it all in the pot, if no one else puts in 4 points, I get the first draw (8 points). If two players put in 4 points they are the only ones that can be voted on for who gets the first draw.

Now what if I already have AP hanging around on my sheet? Maybe I can use those to put them into the pot. If I have 4 and put in one extra and win the first draw, I'd come out with around 11 or 12 in the end. There's a point of diminishing returns but that's okay.

Just an idea to make the points distro more competitive. It could still be negotiated civilly but when people start grabbing first spot or fighting for it, thats when the defection begins. The GM may also narrate how that player hurt the others by hoarding or whatever.