How many hit points do you have?

[Celebrim]

I played the original Temple of Elemental Evil way back. My character captured and charmed a cultist and I wanted to use that to our advantage (instead of an endless mindless dungeon hack n slash) but I was frustrated by what I would've tried to do in that situation vs second-guessing what D&Disms would allow me to do. So in a sly way of breaking the fourth wall, my PC asked the charmed cultist where did they sleep? (IIRC, there weren't any beds or barracks for his company of cultists.) The DM was stumped, didn't expect that, and blurted "Oh, we go back to Hommlet." I asked if truly every night, there's a mass exodus of cultists leaving the temple at night and commuting back in the morning from the village. The NPC confirmed this, as the DM was stuck to this story detail he had inadvertently committed himself to. So my PC wanted to ambush the commuting cultists (fighting on our terms, rather than keep walking into their dungeon traps) but the DM was pissed, and the players knew that this wasn't "supposed" to be part of the adventure, and I knew that, so after making my point (out of temporary frustration) about the ridiculousness of it all, I gave up questioning the adventure setup and reverted back to roleplaying non-self-aware hack-n-slash mode.

Whereas I probably would have either pushed it, or quit after that session and found a different DM. I've had to say, "Had fun. Thanks for the game.", but think, "But I won't be back.", several times. It happens. If it's a group of friends and you are gaming for that reason, you probably should get the DM 1 on 1 and talk about how you aren't fully satisfied because you as a player are having to be too self-aware about the fact that it is a game and its ruining the RP.

Then again, I'd probably never play ToEE as written, either as a player or a DM. I agree with you about endless mindless dungeon hack and slash, and as I've noted elsewhere, ToEE is a fairly terrible module.

Your general tactic of ambushing commuting cultists rather than fighting them on their terms is something Gygax himself would have approved of, encouraged, and probably even designed for. It is IMO the sort of thing you are 'supposed' to do.

 

[Lanefan]

That can work, it just doesn't seem to me to be the kind of game the D&D rules typically suggest.

Which is part of why I for so many years have been largely treating them as guidelines...

I generally apply this principle: if it will never kill you, or will always kill you, it shouldn't do HP damage. If falling into lava deals HP damage, it's something you want some folks to sometimes walk away from. If that isn't what you want, don't use HP damage -- just make it deadly. If a housecat scratching you deals HP damage, it's something you want to be able to kill someone.

Another solution is just to have these things do so much (or so little) h.p. damage that death is either automatic or extremely unlikely. Jump into lava - OK, you're taking 100 h.p. damage per segment; nice knowing ya. Fight with a housecat - OK, it's doing d4-3 damage per attack and fails a morale check on anything higher than a 5 on d20; a housecat could kill you, but it's extremely unlikely. (that said, I've seen what my cat can do when it's of a mood to; and it ain't pretty!)

Lanefan

 

[Argyle King]

I voted for the first option. That is by far not my preference, but that is the option which seems to make the most sense in the context of D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

From my view he's talking about D&D, period.

Then I'm not sure that you understand what he's talking about. Either that, or we've had very different experiences of D&D... which the rest of your post would seem to argue against.

I take mild offense to this.

I approve. Mild offense is the best kind. If its less than mild offense, there is nothing to talk about it. If it's more than that, the emotion gets in the way of learning anything.

You're seeking "justification" where none is really needed; and if someone insists on it it's easy enough to dream something up. But part of the fun is wondering *how* that dragon ever got in there (or did it just hatch there and never leave?), and why it hasn't eaten the tasty goblins just down the hall...

This is only fun if there is actually an interesting answer.

And to me economics is the root of all evil in real life...

Well, on that you are just wrong.

; I'll be damned if I'll let it get in the way of a fun D&D game!

I'm not suggesting that an economics simulation is necessarily a fun game. But I am suggesting that everything needs a certain economic plausibility, because smart players - like the great generals of history - will seek to attack the weak points of everything they encounter, and that includes the supply lines. They'll also question the motivations of everything they encounter, and that will include envy, greed, and power. If there isn't at least the basis of well thought out gloss on the economics of why the goblin tribe is occupying this cave somewhere, you don't have much of a setting to build on. Economic considerations might not be useful in and of themselves, but they do provoke thought about the setting which will lead to deeper and more interesting stories.

Sure, it can be useful sometimes to know why each monster is where it is, and what it's doing, and to what end; but sometimes it's just as much if not more fun to just go with the gonzo!

Gonzo is a muppet. I love him, but he has no real place being in a game that isn't self-consciously roasting D&D tropes and featuring players attacked by demonic clowns wielding +2 red sausages and pink dragons spraying caustic bubbles and farting rainbows. Even that gets old quickly, but at least it knows what it is. With the sort of attitude that I just need to 'go with' things, I'll probably have a brittle smile on my face at the end of the session when I say, "Had fun. Thanks for the game." Fortunately, as a DM I've learned to be a pretty decent actor.

 

[Dungeonman]

From my view he's talking about D&D, period

Then I'm not sure that you understand what he's talking about.

Based on the back-and-forth, I think I'm talking about:

Gonzo campaign, un-self-aware PCs:
Hit points as purely meta or not is irrelavent, since PCs probably aren't rational characters and aren't self-aware of why they do what they do. Such a character would jump off a cliff and keep going, without ever wondering how that was possible.

Gonzo campaign, self-aware PCs:
Hit points are indirectly observable in-character. PCs can be roleplayed *as if* they "know" their hit points. The rationales could be gonzo: "Look, I've fallen 100' several times before and didn't die, so trust me, I'm not being suicidal. I can probably grab one of those jutting rocks on my way down."

Gritty campaign, self-aware PCs:
Hit points are purely meta and are not observed in-character. However, PCs are roleplayed as if self-aware rational beings. If the group is cognizant of an anomaly, like being unable to commit suicide if you have a 100 hit points, then the DM and players might:
a) avoid introducing such anomalies into the storyline (ie., never try to commit suicide)
b) introduce a satisfyingly rational story element ("by the gods, any attempts at suicide will fail until the Raven Queen is done with you")
c) evoke Rule Zero (ie., extra hit points by level are a gift, not a right, which is negated when trying to commit suicide / suicide by cliff jumping causes maximum damage)

Gritty campaign, un-self-aware PCs:
As above, but in-game rationality isn't prioritized as much as the players aren't questioning in-game events through their characters

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not suggesting that an economics simulation is necessarily a fun game. But I am suggesting that everything needs a certain economic plausibility, because smart players - like the great generals of history - will seek to attack the weak points of everything they encounter, and that includes the supply lines. They'll also question the motivations of everything they encounter, and that will include envy, greed, and power. If there isn't at least the basis of well thought out gloss on the economics of why the goblin tribe is occupying this cave somewhere, you don't have much of a setting to build on. Economic considerations might not be useful in and of themselves, but they do provoke thought about the setting which will lead to deeper and more interesting stories.

You must have much different players, in style, than I do. Put a dragon in front of my lot and the first question isn't "what does it eat" or "why is it here", it's "how are we going to kill it" quickly followed by "where is its lair".

As for setting-building, I build on the game world's history rather than its economics.

Gonzo is a muppet. I love him, but he has no real place being in a game that isn't self-consciously roasting D&D tropes and featuring players attacked by demonic clowns wielding +2 red sausages and pink dragons spraying caustic bubbles and farting rainbows. Even that gets old quickly, but at least it knows what it is. With the sort of attitude that I just need to 'go with' things, I'll probably have a brittle smile on my face at the end of the session when I say, "Had fun. Thanks for the game." Fortunately, as a DM I've learned to be a pretty decent actor.

Gonzo (the concept) has every real place being in any game. Gonzo the muppet is a different story, and not very relevant here. But gonzo dungeoning doesn't have to involve demonic clowns and pink dragons, just an all-round attitude of let's get out there and giv'er; kill the monsters/bad guys, take their stuff, and if we happen to learn something as a side effect so much the better. Internal logic is useful, yes, but much more important for play is that whatever internal logic is present be backed up by rock-solid internal consistency.

Lan-"if you want that thrill you gotta pay the bill, and it'll cost your life to visit Danger Hill"-efan

 

[Ahnehnois]

I really can't express how silly I find the idea that a character would have knowledge of their HP or that such a thing like hp could have a physical, provable existence.

And yet, over 80% of the poll respondents apparently found the idea intuitive enough to say that this is the case.

 

[Celebrim]

You must have much different players, in style, than I do. Put a dragon in front of my lot and the first question isn't "what does it eat" or "why is it here", it's "how are we going to kill it" quickly followed by "where is its lair".

I couldn't tell you how different my players are, because I don't have a habit of dropping dragons into areas where it couldn't find something to eat. However, if the question of, "What does it eat?" or "Why is it here?" came up, I'd probably have an answer.

For example, the only dragon they've fought so far was a Sea Dragon. The answers are: "Sea turtles, mantas, dolphin fish and tuna which are abundant in the warm currents flowing north along the storm coast. The occasional sailor, merfolk, or sea elf when it gets the chance." and "Nuati called it up from its lair near Tip-of-the-Tongue because he hates one of the PCs."

As for setting-building, I build on the game world's history rather than its economics.

The two aren't completely separable. Without something like the Silk Road, a lot of European history from the 13th century to the 17th century
isn't really explainable. It's worth knowing things like that Sweden was dominating the copper trade, or that Austria's wealth was driven by the fact that water wheels made silver mining profitable, which in turn happened because the collapse of the Roman slave based economy made it essential to utilize mechanical power. It's worth considering that Spain's rise to world power was done by filling the huge void in European currency relative to its economic power, and that despite being in a rivalry with England it never could stop consuming English craft goods. And so on and so forth. But I wasn't even talking about such macro scale economics. I was talking about, "What does the goblin tribe over the hill do when they aren't sitting around waiting to be slaughtered by adventurers. They've got metal weapons but no mines or forge, so they are darn well doing something of economic value or they'd not have anything to trade. And if they only equipped themselves by raiding their neighbors, why haven't they become such an burden years ago that some other far higher level and better equipped party didn't kill them and take their stuff?"

Because really, if you aren't answering those sort of questions, you aren't building a world and you are depriving yourself of an imaginative dungeon. Instead you'll just have basically empty 20'x30' rooms with 1d6 goblins in each room.

Gonzo (the concept) has every real place being in any game. Gonzo the muppet is a different story, and not very relevant here. But gonzo dungeoning doesn't have to involve demonic clowns and pink dragons, just an all-round attitude of let's get out there and giv'er; kill the monsters/bad guys, take their stuff, and if we happen to learn something as a side effect so much the better.

Perhaps we'd do better if we were sharing a common language.

gon·zo [gon-zoh]
adjective
1. (of journalism, reportage, etc.) filled with bizarre or subjective ideas, commentary, or the like.
2. crazy; eccentric.
noun
3. eccentricity, weirdness, or craziness.

So that's as far as I'm concerned what Gonzo means. Gonzo does mean things like being attacked by ice cream sundae monsters, tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, 'hub'goblins biker gangs, and the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise. It means having the deities be Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Andy Warhol. It means bizarre, wierd, and eccentric. Gonzo is Weekly World News. A lot of the first decade of RPGs had a lot of that - TSR even published several gonzo modules and there were tons of the original Greyhawk in the gonzo style. I'm familiar with the style. It's a style of gaming were what's important is the immediate problem, where comedy and bad puns are expected, logic is thrown out the window, and no one really worries about whether there is a story, a backstory, or a forestory. I have no idea what giving a world a history means to gonzo gaming, other than you are evolving out of it. Nor have I ever heard it defined as ' let's get out there and give'r', but I guess - to the extent that means 'carpe jugulum', I understand what you mean.

Nonetheless, I'd like to think it's possible to game with a larger emotional range and more substance. If it wasn't, I think I would have gotten bored a long time ago. I enjoy the idea of a straw golem, tin golem, were-lion and a witch with ruby slippers and a terrier familiar as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't play that game for 4 hours a week for 3 years. By the mid-80's, gonzo was passé. People wanted more and I think have a right to more.

What would be worse is creating a gonzo game that wasn't aware that it was a gonzo game but thought it was actually serious.

The best way to prosper in my game is to realize that you need to learn something, and if you have to kill monsters and take their stuff to do it, so much the better. My characters haven't completely figured out that asking questions and then killing things is the preferred order, but they are learning.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've seen attempts to hide the hp totals of PCs in games before, and personally I thought the experiments were failures that didn't really work and made lots of work for the players and especially the referee. Either people got super cautious with their PCs, or they abandoned all caution and their PCs died a lot. And in most games the referee will give some indication as to your health level.

Interesting. It's an odd artifact of the game that players have character sheets with hit points and other information on them. In truth, those are all really the DM's purview, but the game has put some of the mechanics where the players can see them. In my eyes, this is largely to save bookkeeping, but I suspect it contributes to the people who think that players have certain rights pertaining to narrative control.

It's also part of what raises this thread question. In most games, the DM will narrate damage in the context of health, and it could be argued that the players really shouldn't have any information other than that narration, which would reflect the hp mechanics, but not on a one-to-one basis. Instead, the players have the exact numbers, and we're left with the question of what that means.

Frankly, I find the question "How many hit points does that PC/ NPC/ Monster have?" to be a more interesting question. Can a player or PC find out by any way other than killing them? Risk assessment is very important for decision making, and I've seen a huge variety of opinions on the topic on all points of the spectrum from "you know nothing" to "you know everything".
...
(I'm not intending to threadcrap here, let me know if this is too off topic.)

Yes, this is also an interesting and distinct topic. At some point it would be great if someone started a thread on assessing these types of things in other characters. In this case, by and large, the player and the character are in the same boat, because they will only glean knowledge from the DM and cannot see the underlying mechanics.

I have visions of a mad wizard/scientist experimenting on identical siblings of various different levels to discover the mystery of hit points.

Reminds me of a post I made a while back about how in a d20 Modern world, I think Joseph Mengele and his ilk could be seen as people who were trying to understand hit points with some of the experiments they did. In a way, the idea of understanding life and death is tied to the idea of people going too far in the pursuit of knowledge and committing horrific acts. In reality, there are laws that govern these things (though they're a good deal more complicated that D&D rules), and they often can't be determined within the bounds of ethical and moral science.

(This is my own off-topic diatribe).

 

[pemerton]

If hit points have no real relationship to bodily injury and other observable effects, then isn't perforce the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge to be complete? It won't merely be true that there is some gap between player knowledge and character knowledge, but there will be an absolute gap between reality as the player knows it and reality as it is possible for the character to know. So the consequences of me being wrong aren't less of what you complain about, but far greater of what you and Hussar complain about.

I'm not sure what you think I'm complaining about. (I'll let [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] speak to his own complaints.)

I can't say that I have a strong working model for classic D&D hit points - after all, I was dissatisfied with the play of combat in that system, and hence mostly abaondoned it to play a system (Rolemaster) which uses a wound/debuff approach to character health. And when playing Rolemaster, I certainly take for granted that a character knows his/her injuries, just as the player knows them.

But in 4e, I regard hit points as roughly a victory/momentum marker. The lower the character's hit points, the more the momentum of battle is turning against him/her. Hence a rousing word from a battle captain, or a word of blessing from a cleric, can re-invigorate the character and restore momentum, turning the tide. I assume that the PC's emotional and cognitive state corresponds to that of the player - for instance, if the player knows that his/her PC is low on hit points but is relaxed because s/he can see that his/her PC is in no danger because the other PCs have the situation under control, then I take it for granted that that player's PC is feelingthe same thing: s/he is in no real position to contribute to the fight, but is content to stand by while his/her allies clean things up.

Conversely, when a PC is bloodied and is confronted by multiple enemies any one of whom could render him/her unconscious with a hit and a lucky damage roll, I assume the PC's state of mind corresponds to that of the player: anxiety, a degree of desperation, a readiness to give it all and do whatever it takes to survive (mechanically, that correlates to daily powers, and at the metagame level to scouring the sheet for possible life-saving combos, etc), looking around to see if fellow PCs can provide any aid or reassurance, etc.

Hence my comment, either upthread or on another of these healing threads, that 4e healing works the same way in the metagame as in the fiction: it provides comfort and reassurance both to the PC and to the player.