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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9223510" data-attributes="member: 8461">I don't think that he's saying that it's never physical injuries either; just that the alternatives he outlines are supported far less than the injury presentation, in terms of what the game's mechanics tell us.All abstractions necessarily conglomerate things, at least in terms of how D&D works; it's why you're never going to get (as noted before) an abstraction that perfectly models everything it represents. Hit points as an injury representation necessarily conglomerate a very wide range of injuries. That said, I'm of the opinion that greater precision in what's being represented (i.e. the more clearly the abstraction informs us as to what it's representing), the less work is required of the players to make the connection.Obviously, there's a trade-off there, as this precision narrows the range of abstraction, and so requires more operations (i.e. rules) to be used to model what's happening. That allows for greater representation of the in-game circumstances, but can slow down the course of play; it's why D&D doesn't use hit locations or wound tracking. Where the happy medium lies will vary from person to person, but that doesn't mean we can't at least try to come to an agreement regarding the degree of abstraction that certain paradigms are using.D&D is absolutely built to model those old stories, but by that same token, it doesn't mandate that they unfold in the same narrative manner. Conan wouldn't catch sight of a ghost and be aged into decrepitude in an instant, or fail his save against a charm person spell and think that Thoth Amon was his best buddy, or die from being poisoned and be reincarnated as a kobold, etc. I can understand wanting things to go the way they do in those old stories (I do too!), but narrativism has always been an area where D&D has placed <a href="https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/10/picaro-and-story-of-d.html" target="_blank">the least importance.</a></blockquote>

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