Headconomics

A Minecraft datapack + resource pack that turns player heads into a living economy, and turns the fear of falling behind into a survival mechanic.

Headconomics replaces physical head drops with a digital wallet. Every cycle, each player starts with 32 of their own heads, then hunts, trades and collects heads from others through transfer vouchers, racing against a personal, playtime-based timer to reach a collection goal. Fail, and you pay the price: your max health is cut in half until the end of the next collection period.

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💡 Inspiration & Credits

This project is inspired by the concept presented in the video:

▶ Original video — by Mo Van de Sompel

Huge thanks to the creator for the original idea. Headconomics is an independent, fan-made reinterpretation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original author.

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✨ Features

• Digital head wallet – heads are never stored as items. They live in a per-player wallet you can open at any time with a command.
• Stackable heads – a wallet can hold several copies of the same head.
• Transfer vouchers – trade heads with other players using temporary voucher items that expire after 1 minute.
• Death vouchers – when a player dies, a voucher for their head appears where they died.
• Configurable goal – admins choose how many unique heads each player must collect.
• Configurable collection time – admins choose how long each player has to reach the goal.
• Per-player, online-only timer – each player has their own countdown, and it only ticks while they are connected.
• Non-lethal sanction – no ban. Players who miss the goal have their maximum health halved until the end of the next collection period.
• Automatic cycles – when a cycle ends, a new one starts automatically with a fresh wallet.
• Custom resource pack – EN and FR translations for the wallet interface and the voucher item.

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🎮 How It Works

1. Cycles

Everything in Headconomics happens in collection cycles, tracked individually for each player.

At the start of every cycle:

• Your wallet is reset to zero.
• You receive 32 of your own heads.
• Your personal timer starts counting down.

When your timer runs out, your cycle ends, your result is checked, and a new cycle starts automatically.

2. Collecting heads

Heads are not items in your inventory; they are credited directly to your wallet when you redeem a voucher. There are two ways heads change hands:

• Death vouchers – when a player dies, a voucher for their head appears at the location of their death. Anyone can pick it up and use it to claim the head.
• Player-to-player vouchers – players can send heads to each other on purpose (trades, gifts, deals…).

Your wallet can contain multiple copies of the same head. The objective, however, counts diffetent heads: the number of different players whose head you hold at least once.

Example: holding 5× Steve and 2× Alex counts as 2 different heads. If Steve's heads are all debited from your wallet, you lose that head in the counter, but not before your last copy of it is gone.

3. The wallet

Open your wallet at any time with:

/trigger hc.wallet

From the wallet you can:

• Check your current stock of heads, by player.
• See your different head count and your progress toward the goal.
• See your remaining collection time.
• Request a transfer voucher to send heads to another player.

4. 🧾 Transfer vouchers

Vouchers are how heads move between players.

1. The sender requests a voucher from their wallet for specific head(s).
2. The voucher is given to the sender as a temporary item, which they hand to the recipient.
3. No heads are removed at this stage.
4. When the recipient uses the voucher, the corresponding heads are deducted from the sender's wallet at that moment and credited to the recipient.
5. A voucher expires after 1 minute.

⚠️ Because the deduction only happens on use, a voucher can only be redeemed if the sender still holds the required heads at that moment.

5. ⏳ The collection timer

• Every player has their own timer, independent from everyone else's.
• The timer only runs while the player is online. Logging off pauses it; logging back in resumes it.
• When a player's timer runs out, the collection period ends for that player.

6. 💔 The sanction

If a player has not reached the different-head goal when their collection period ends:

• Their maximum health is reduced by half.
• The penalty lasts until the end of the next collection period.
• The penalty does not stack: failing several cycles in a row keeps you at half health, never lower.
• Players are never banned — they can always keep playing and earn their way back.

Players who reach the goal in time are not penalized.

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⚙️ Configuration (Admins)

Admins can tune the game without editing any files, using in-game command:

/function #hc:config

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📦 Installation

Headconomics ships as two packs that work together.

Datapack

1. Download Headconomics_Datapack.zip.
2. Place it in your world's datapacks/ folder ( <server>/world/datapacks/).
3. Run /reload or restart the world/server.

Resource Pack (optional)

1. Download Headconomics_resource_pack.zip.
2. Place it in your resourcepacks/ folder and enable it, or set it as the server resource pack in server.properties.

The resource pack is required to display the wallet interface translations (default to English).

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🧩 Compatibility

• Minecraft Java Edition 26.3
• No mods required (vanilla datapack + optional resource pack).

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🗺️ Roadmap

• Core wallet system (stackable heads)
• Cycle system (wallet reset + 32 starter heads)
• Transfer vouchers (deduct on use, 1-minute expiry)
• Death vouchers
• Per-player online-only timers
• Configurable goal and collection time
• Half-health sanction (non-stacking)
• Resource pack (translations)

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports and ideas are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

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🙏 Acknowledgements

• Mo Van de Sompel for the original concept and video that inspired this project.