D&D 5E ludonarrative dissonance of hitpoints in D&D

[Tony Vargas]

I would also add that it injects (demands really) narrative dynamism in that it broadens the prospects of outcomes (rather than contracts them). In the course of that, you get a requirement of proactive participants (all of them) and a cognitive workspace (both collectively and individually) that you wouldn't have otherwise.

In English?

 

[Arch-Fiend]

errata

after long discussion and debate in the comments that follow this post i have come to realize that my initial premise on what hitpoints actually represents was presented incorrectly in this thesis. allow me to explain, the following is an excerpt from the srd of D&D 5e

Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile. A creature’s current hit points (usually just called hit points) can be any number from the creature’s hit point maximum down to 0. This number changes frequently as a creature takes damage or receives healing. Whenever a creature takes damage, that damage is subtracted from its hit points. The loss of hit points has no effect on a creature’s capabilities until the creature drops to 0 hit points.

now an interpretation of this rule could lead one to the one i presented in this thesis, however that requires further interpretation, what i will add is that the definition of hitpoints in the srd never mentions anything that clearly resembles the effect that experience by the way of a characters class has an effect on hitpoints, perhaps one or all of these qualities of a character grows as they gain levels though the discrepancy between the classes isn't really explained either, surely a spell-caster should have great mental durability, and will to live is often attributed to other statistics rather than constitution. luck can be contentious but i think luck is easily explained, almost every instance of dealing damage in D&D 5e requires the roll of dice.

but where does that leave my thesis? well i still believe i made strong points about how different stats and mechanics in D&D reflect health such as diving into the best interpretation of what role constitution plays even if the ultimate interpretation of what role the abstract concept of physical durability has to the abstract concept of hitpoints. even more i believe i analyzed damage and what the best reflections of the mechanics behind damage can be interpreted as even if they were used to attack a false argument. finally this interpretation of hitpoints while not being made by the game as written is an interpretation of hitpoints i have had countless people push as the correct interpretation of hit points, not by everyone, but by many, and of all walks of life, including popular D&D youtubers such as Matt Colville, who's opinions on dungeons and dragons has a lot of clout within the greater D&D community.

there for the final conclusion is that i have argued against a false interpretation of the rules, i at least hope that my inspection into the details of D&D's rules may be useful to constructing your own thoughts on these mechanics.

 

[Manbearcat]

In English?

MOAR stuff happen!
MOAR different kind of stuff happen!
MOAR different thinking about the different stuff happen!

STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFF!

 

[Tony Vargas]

MOAR stuff happen!
MOAR different kind of stuff happen!
MOAR different thinking about the different stuff happen!

STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFF!

Thanks, that's much clearer, now.

 

[DND_Reborn]

MOAR stuff happen!
MOAR different kind of stuff happen!
MOAR different thinking about the different stuff happen!

STUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFF!

Thanks, that's much clearer, now.

Ok, it is definitely time for me to stop watching this thread. It's been fun ( ) y'all.

 

[clearstream]

ludonarrative dissonance is more often used in video games because that media does not require an interpreter to interpret in order for you as a player to then make interpretations from. a dm in some ways acts both like a game designer being given the idea of what the basic ideas of the game that's going to be made is going to be, while also the hardware that is used to run the game they create.

My line of argument includes that it may be being used mistakenly in videogames.

that being said, the main ideas that the gm has to draw from are viable for criticism on the grounds of how well they relate to other mechanics in the game and what it tells you to create when you are generating the rest of the games content from the main idea.

That is what I meant when I said I liked some of your argument. I think one can justifiably ask if the rules governing the interaction of damage types with hit points match with descriptions of hit points contained in the same rule books. That is not in fact what you asked, hence I included quotes from those books.

i think that ultimately what my thesis actually is criticizing though is not the in game definition of what hitpoints are, ive learned that in the process of arguing with people who are arguing about what the in game definition of what hitpoints are, and the in-game definition doesent really represent what i decided to argue against in my thesis. so your correct to say that there is no ludonarrative dissonance from the game itself outlined in my thesis because im not arguing with a game, im arguing with an interpretation of the game. however i think if that interpretation replaced the definition, then it would be the case, and maybe that interpretation is the definition of some edition of the game.

to be frank im quite surprised how no one has yet pointed out that what im arguing against in my thesis is technically a strawman, though ill admit its an accidental one. i didint realize that until about page 10 of this thread. i should probably create an errata for my thesis to state that it does not argue accurately against the real definition of hitpoints in the game.

Did I not just point that out? I'm glad you noticed

the issue with taking the fabulist stance is a question of why it is necessary, if the rules of the game never define reasons to take the fabulist stance, and you and your players both read the rules, heck you and millions of people all read the rules, and the rules point in one direction, while you can adopt a broader perspective on what it can mean, if you act on that broader perspective especially as the gm you are then lible to present an interpretation to players who depend on you that runs counter to the way the game described itself without that wider perspective having any grounds to base it on. human imagination is naturally simulations, even when we imagine the fantastical we imagine it in relation to something we can understand because of our experiences. the mind seeks to rationalize what we experience, any game then becomes a simulation of some interpretation of a compromise between the real and fabulous by very nature of having any grounding at all.

i still think its valid to interpret the game any way you want to mind you, but its worth keeping in mind how other people interpret it or dont interpret it and there reasons why, there reasons can be VERY valid.

It seems to me likely that a fabulist stance is the only stance that is viable for RPGs, given our limitations.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

My line of argument includes that it may be being used mistakenly in videogames.

so to be honest you use a lot of words i cant exactly understand what you mean when you put together in your first 2 paragraphs in response to me, so im going to have to try and interpret them as best as i can. what i think you are arguing is if we should put the owness on the game for our interpretation of narrative elements in gameplay, essentially the idea being; and this is where its fundamental to the definition of ludonarrative gameplay, while we may interpret a narrative from the purely story elements of a game and a narrative from the purely gameplay elements of the game, we have no way personally of knowing if what inconsistencies given when comparing the 2 together are intentional inconsistency to ultimately form the narrative of the story or the result of the designers accidentally creating such inconsistencies due to poor forethought on how the narrative to their story and the gameplay reflect each other.

ei: the game's story is telling you one thing while the games mechanics are clearly telling you something else, but you as the player are suppose to realize this is the story of the game acting as an unreliable source of narration.

the first instance of the use of the term ludonarrative dissonance in game critisism comes from this article. Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock now i havent read this article because ive never played the game in question, however what i do know off the top of my head is a more recent instance of it in videogames from the 2013 tomb raider where your character struggles to self defend herself by killing another person and is very emotionally distressed by it to an uncomfortable to watch degree (many people react this way when they have to defend themselves to this extreme) then seconds later the game expects you to go around like a typical FPS shooting hundreds of people with no effect on gameplay by what the story just presented to you.

either the story narrative and gameplay narrative are intentionally inconsistent in order to formulate a story under-narrative, the story and gameplay narratives are accidentally inconsistent due to poor oversight by game design, or we inject our own interpretations of story narrative or gameplay narrative when it isint even there. the last option would be the folly of the critic and i think that if the critic is going to be at folly they are just as valid a target of criticism as the game.

i do think it is valid to use the concept of ludonarrative dissonance in game critique however because while game may create intentional inconsistency in the story in relation to the narration of the gameplay its undoubted that that there will be games that do this unintentionally, and if we dont question it at all we will never know for sure. our general knowledge about the world will have been less if we choose to stifle our questioning of the world around us simply because we might be wrong about what we think is consistent

when i say "these 2 mechanics tell different narratives about what is happening yet the game requires them to depend on each other and thus their narratives must also align as the mechanics themselves are abstractions of a narrative event" im also asking the game to provide an answer for how they might not be inconsistent, and if it has a good answer then my criticism is defused even if what is posed is information i couldn't have had before the answer was given.

ill say now i could have constructed this argument better but for the life of me i have no idea where to start if i were to reorganize it, so i tried my best, i hope im understandable.

That is what I meant when I said I liked some of your argument. I think one can justifiably ask if the rules governing the interaction of damage types with hit points match with descriptions of hit points contained in the same rule books. That is not in fact what you asked, hence I included quotes from those books.

Did I not just point that out? I'm glad you noticed

you did point that out, its why i liked your comment and why i ultimately wrote an errata which is on my first post now

It seems to me likely that a fabulist stance is the only stance that is viable for RPGs, given our limitations.

why do you think the fabulist stance is the only stance that is viable for rpgs?

 

[Garthanos]

i'mgoingtotrypostingwithoutspaceswhoneedsspacesorcapitalizationorpunctuationanyways

Totally readable by the way. I know strange brains we humans have.

 

[clearstream]

why do you think the fabulist stance is the only stance that is viable for rpgs?

I mean to challenge a possible assumption that a human DM with a handful of players can simulate the world - even in part. I suggest instead that we play with hand-waved worlds of rules and symbols, that stand for ideas we have about things. Inspired by, sounding like, accepted as such; details filled in (and more often ignored) by players; all that, yes, but not simulation.

I think we just - as humans - do a very good job of overlooking what we overlook!

 

[Arch-Fiend]

I mean to challenge a possible assumption that a human DM with a handful of players can simulate the world - even in part. I suggest instead that we play with hand-waved worlds of rules and symbols, that stand for ideas we have about things. Inspired by, sounding like, accepted as such; details filled in (and more often ignored) by players; all that, yes, but not simulation.

I think we just - as humans - do a very good job of overlooking what we overlook!

im not going to refute your challenge just yet, but something i think you would be interested in reading is this article that was sent to me a few months ago written much more than a few months ago that i think carries gravity on this subject. know that it isint my replacement for a formal argument though, but sharing both this and my wordy response at the same time would be a bit much i think.

D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations

I’ve been working and playing with the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons longer than most. Ryan Dancey sent me a playtest copy of the new Player’s Handbook back in 199

thealexandrian.net

im curious what your response will be to it, showing me a greater detail of why you think that about human limitations.