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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6440286" data-attributes="member: 42582">A lot of people think that a character is unaware of hit points. (And that is the general tenor of Gygax's writing on the topic in his DMG and PHB.)It's also very unclear what initiative means in turn-based combat systems (3E, 4e, 5e). It doesn't mean "who is faster", because a person with higher initiative doesn't get more actions than one with lower initiative. It's a metagame device for assisting in the rationing of actions, and for flavour reasons it is linked to DEX to give a general vibe of reaction times. (But it's not really about reaction times, because having better initiative doesn't in itself help dodging, AC etc.)Gygax tends to write as if AD&D PCs aren't aware of XP. He strongly implies that, in the fiction, killing monsters and looting treasure isn't what is making you a better fighter or cleric or magic-user.I don't think that any of this makes D&D a storygame. It just shows that D&D has metagame mechanics. Which was already obvious in the history of RPGing - if D&D didn't have metagame mechanics like hit points and XP, there would have been nothing for ultra-simulationist games like RuneQuest to react against. (RQ still has the puzzle of initiative, although it does try to link it more closely to reaction speed via a "phases" system; and initiative in AD&D is actually less blatantly metagame than in the turn-based systems, in part because of the overall greater degree of abstraction in the combat system.)There are other examples that could be given too.In the original Oriental Adventures, most classes have a ki ability that is rationed (N per day) and represents a dedicated effort.When the player declares the ki ability, this represents the character trying really hard.When, playing Fate, you spend the Fate point to have your PC charm the chamberlain, that represents your character trying really hard/I].It's true that the character in Fate doesn't know that the more s/he gets into trouble (via you, the player, accepting compels) then the more s/he will be able to cast powerful magic (via you, the player, earning fate points to spend). But the character in Oriental Adventures probably doesn't know that s/he can try really hard, and succeed, only N times per day.The same thing happens with hit points. Imagine an unarmoured AD&D fighter with 21 hp fighting a creature which deals 1d8+2 damage on a hit. The fighter doesn't know (does s/he?) that in two minutes of fighting s/he has no chance of being killed by that creature (worst possible case is 1 hp left), but that a third minute of combat actually creates a real risk of death (the likelihood of three hits against AC 10 could well be one-half or better if the creature has more than a few HD, and the average damage on 3 hits is 19.5, which means the prospects of doing 21 or more are pretty good). Getting around this contrast in player and character knowledge is one reason why crit-based games, which eliminate the player's certainty to bring it into line with the character's, were invented.That's my approach to D&D hit points also.The single biggest violator of this principle, in the typical D&D game, is the decision to go and explore this location/problem, with these people, with an expectation that success is a real prospect. In other words, the basically protagonistic orientation of the PCs in most D&D play.This is based on information that the character doesn't have, but is hugely salient to the player - namely, that I am here, at my friend's house, playing a player character in a FRPG where the GM opposite me has prepared some sort of gameworld or scenario or whatever for the rest of us to engage with via our PCs.</blockquote>

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