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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5755317" data-attributes="member: 42582">The most immersive system I've played is Call of Cthulhu. Rolemaster and Runequest are a bit clunkier in some parts of their mechanics, and Rolemaster also requires players to make choices that are capable of being metagamed, and hence are vulnerable to non-immersive wedging.I tend not to find AD&D immersive whenever its action resolution mechanics (mostly combat) come into play, because I'm often not very sure what's going on in the fiction.I'm a big fan of realism (or, at least, verisimilitude and genre consistency). I like to know what's happening when my PC takes damage. My experience with playing classic D&D is that I generally didn't know until my PC got dropped. That's probably correctable with better GM narration. In 4e, if it's not obvious what a given bit of damage indicates (sometimes it is - for example, if a giant hits a PC and pushes him a few square, everyone can envisage the fist or club connecting and the PC going flying, action movie style) then I will narrate it as GM.Agreed, but this is the sort of narration that it is being suggested in this thread (if I'm reading right) is at odds with immersion.I personally don't see the contrast here between 4e and classic D&D.As long as the GM does the narration, I also don't see (from the players' point of view) any obstacle to immersion (other, perhaps, than having to write down a change of status).The reason that I think hit points are at odds with immersion isn't because of how they are tracked in combat. It's because of the effect they have on player decision making. Players make decisions about what sorts of risk to take with their PCs, for example, based on the current distribution of hit points (and, in 4e, surges) in the party. This is a constant feature of D&D play, at least in my experience. But what does it correspond to in the fiction? What are the PCs talking about when the players are saying "I'm nearly at full, but the thief is pretty low, and the wizard will pop if s/he gets hit one more time?" This, for me, is the immersion-breaker. It doesn't come up in RQ or RM, because talking about injuries in mechanical terms is just like talking about them in fictional terms (eg "I've got a -30 penalty to my right arm, so I don't want to do another fight" is, in fictional terms "My sword arm is badly hurt - cut and bruised - and I don't think I can fight very well like this").I challenge anyone to tell me how the conversation about hit point levels in making party decisions in D&D play is consistent with immersion. What can it possibly mean, in the context of the fiction? And if - as I believe - it's purely metagame, then immersion is per se ruled out, at least during that portion of play.</blockquote>

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