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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7750937" data-attributes="member: 996">They're (avoiding getting)hit points, in EGG's treatise.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />&nbsp; At least, in large part.It works for boxing. &nbsp;They were, in the very cogent sense that abstraction has meaningful definition that applies.&nbsp; But, those arguments were prettymuch settled 40 years ago.&nbsp; I mean, we were still having them back in the day, but between appealing to the authority of the DMG, and the treatise not being a terrible rationalization, things were mostly OK.&nbsp; If someone really couldn't handle the abstractions of D&amp;D combat - taking a minute to make 'one' attack, Armor causing misses instead of absorbing damage, damage not even necessarily being physical injury anyway, etc - they'd eventually find RuneQuest or something).&nbsp;&nbsp;The rules for combat are a profound abstraction and pretty poor model of medieval combat, which was at least a concrete thing that happened centuries ago (and gets studied re-enacted today).&nbsp; The rules are disconnected from that - that's abstraction, afterall, the profound disconnect from the concrete.&nbsp; OTOH, the setting isn't concrete, it's imagination working within the idioms of a genre.&nbsp; to the extent that the system models the conventions of the genre, it helps with that, to the extent it doesn't, there can be an impediment - but setting, genre, &amp; rules, all are abstract concepts to begin with.Saying there's a disconnect between the reality of character/setting and the abstraction of the rules is mistakenly assigning concrete qualities to an abstract product of imagination.&nbsp; The disconnect is as imaginary as the character &amp; the setting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7750937, member: 996"] They're (avoiding getting)hit points, in EGG's treatise. ;) At least, in large part. It works for boxing. They were, in the very cogent sense that abstraction has meaningful definition that applies. But, those arguments were prettymuch settled 40 years ago. I mean, we were still having them back in the day, but between appealing to the authority of the DMG, and the treatise not being a terrible rationalization, things were mostly OK. If someone really couldn't handle the abstractions of D&D combat - taking a minute to make 'one' attack, Armor causing misses instead of absorbing damage, damage not even necessarily being physical injury anyway, etc - they'd eventually find RuneQuest or something). The rules for combat are a profound abstraction and pretty poor model of medieval combat, which was at least a concrete thing that happened centuries ago (and gets studied re-enacted today). The rules are disconnected from that - that's abstraction, afterall, the profound disconnect from the concrete. OTOH, the setting isn't concrete, it's imagination working within the idioms of a genre. to the extent that the system models the conventions of the genre, it helps with that, to the extent it doesn't, there can be an impediment - but setting, genre, & rules, all are abstract concepts to begin with. Saying there's a disconnect between the reality of character/setting and the abstraction of the rules is mistakenly assigning concrete qualities to an abstract product of imagination. The disconnect is as imaginary as the character & the setting. [/QUOTE]

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