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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 5986504" data-attributes="member: 710">My first roleplaying game experiences was Shadowrun (3E) It had a condition monitor, and injuries were either applied as a light wound (1 damage box), moderate (3 damage boxes), serious (5 damage boxes) or deadly (10). If you got 3 light wounds in a row, you would have a moderate wound and so on. If you got to 10 damage boxes, you were dying or unconcious (there was a mental and a physical condition monitor, the first mostly for fatigue and bruises, the second for physical injuries).The system was not without flaws (by RAW, it would be almost impossible to kill someone with your bare hands, since all unarmed damage is non-lethal and thus applies to the mental condition monitor - dealing 20 boxes of damage with a melee attack is not easy to pull off. E.g. not at all .)But it made sense. These were basically "hit points as meat". Then I played D&D for the first time. And I thought I was playing a video game? People had hit points that grew with levels? And hits chopped some of that off? Yes, I knew that from video games, and I found it okay for videogame, but unrealistic/unbeliavable for a real roleplaying game.Ironically of course, D&D was probably the inspiration for hit points in video games, but I didn't know that then. I just knew that this game was rather silly (not to forget the weird magic system. Shadowrun's system made almost sense - spellcasting takes effort, causing "drain", e.g. damage to one of the condition monitors. But if you could handle the drain, you could cast all day. D&D had some weird spell slots mechanic?)As somenoe that did not get into RPGs via D&D ,I can tell you that hit points are a very "dissassociative" mechanic, if you need to use a pejorative term. If you don't find them as such, then you've long internalized the mechanics and accepted them, possibly finding your own rationaliazions. Which is what I did as well, eventually. After all, I became an enthusiastic 3E and 4E gamer...</blockquote>

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