D&D 5E ludonarrative dissonance of hitpoints in D&D

[FrogReaver]

Abstraction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

this is the definition of abstraction, which is what i said abstraction means, so yes an abstraction about balls is an abstraction that includes soccer balls, it is assumed that when an abstraction about balls is used then if its use is correct it can always be applied to soccer balls, otherwise the use of the abstraction of balls is an improper use because the abstraction is to general for the use where a specific that fits into the abstraction would fit better.

so how does it relate to hitpoints? hitpoints is an abstraction, a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group field, or category, what subordinate concepts do hitpoints act as a common noun for and what related concepts does hitpoints connect those subordinate concepts to as a group field?

the subordinate concepts of hitpoints and the related concepts that hitpoints connects these subordinate concepts to as outlined by its definition in the srd (Damage and Healing :: 5e.d20srd.org) are as follows (subordinate concepts highlighted in bold related concepts highlighted in underline)



so how does this relate to what you think about my statement? i haven't conflated the idea that hitpoints as an abstraction is the same thing as physical durability as an abstraction, what ive done is argued that because hitpoints does not argue to what extent physical durability is a subordinate concept to hitpoints and thus as a dm whom the entire purpose of hitpoints as an abstraction is ment to serve as a tool for narrative, i have a valid use of the concept of hitpoints to be any measure of physical durability when compared to the other subordinate concepts of hitpoints.

furthermore my entire thesis argument is arguing that the related concepts in the game which hitpoints connects physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck represent physical durability almost exclusively because of hitpoints relationship with damage as a related concept, and specifically within the further narrow interpretation of damage a character takes in the form of injury. this is because the subordination concepts to hitpoints abstraction are not the only qualifications which dictate hitpoints best use as an abstraction, the related concepts that hitpoints connects its subordinate concepts to give context to how specific the abstraction should be, and that's my argument.



except the definition the game gives for what hitpoints are and what they do disagrees with your assertion that they are purely abstract in that they do not represent anything specific, and if they were purely abstract and do not represent anything specific then i would be correct to use any method of specifying what they represent that i as a gm want to.

and its weird that you make this specific argument ive even highlighted in bold exactly what im talking about you saying because i also underlined you saying something that completely refutes your argument which you say not more than a sentence later. you can NOT have purely abstract, do not represent anything specifically, and lack factual meaning and still have traits of abstractions at the same time, traits of abstractions would imply meaning otherwise they wouldn't be there.

all meat would not be an equal abstraction, but because the quantities of the abstraction arnt given then any quantity of meat i want i can have as a gm while being consistent to the idea of what the dominant concept of hitpoints is. regardless of what other subordinate concepts exist within the abstraction of hitpoints, meat is in there, and without defined quantities it can be any quantity less than 100%.



my appreciation of the difference in hitpoints is due to what assumptions ive brought in, not a fundamental requirement of the RAW. the RAW fundamentally requires me to consider the will to live as a subordinate concept of hitpoints (not even counting other subordinate concepts throughout the games history that fit) and yet provides no basis for this requirement other than a throw away line in the definition of the statistic. as an abstraction the game requires me to make assumptions about what hitpoints are based on what the game tells me literally and what the game does mechanically, the game literally tells me that "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" which does not even account for how hitpoints are related to a creatures experience as though its not specified in the definition of hitpoints its clearly a related concept to hitpoints because gaining experience increases a characters hitpoints without ever explaining why.

this game REQUIRES assumptions about what its mechanics mean in order to be played, thats the central theme of this entire threads arguments, what i did was took what the game defines as subordinate concepts to hitpoints and related concepts to hitpoints, dissected and analyzed what those concepts own subordinate concepts and related concepts are, and came to my conclusion about which proportion of hitpoint's subordinate concepts best reflect what it actually means as an abstraction.

if you want to tell me that ive brought anything outside of the fundamental requirement of RAW, prove it.



hitpoints and damage arnt the only mechanics in this game, i think everything you dont think fit into the concept of hitpoints as a measure of a characters durability (even if its supernaturally high) are covered by other mechanics. and if there are class features in the game or feats that grant hitpoints as a result of some other subordinate concept or related concept of hitpoints not mentioned in its definition then i dont know of it, however then for the instance of that ability that class feature or feat just happens to push the quantity of hitpoints that is defined by supernatural durability a few percent lower. your welcome to share all the mechanics in the game you think fit this.

When you have to write 3 paragraphs to everyone's single paragraph then you are doing something wrong. Also while we are at it, why the heck don't you capitalize?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Also while we are at it, why the heck don't you capitalize?

e e cummings had to re-incarnate someday

 

[FrogReaver]

e e cummings had to re-incarnate someday

i'mgoingtotrypostingwithoutspaceswhoneedsspacesorcapitalizationorpunctuationanyways

 

[Arch-Fiend]

One question is whether it is right to envision such dualism? We do often read accounts that talk about it as something that is happening, and yet when we play we are engaged perhaps in a unified activity. A kind of rule-following acted narrative. I think cannot imagine that RPG play instances two separate universes, the first containing the story and the second containing the gameplay. Instead, there is one universe in which occurs a weave of story-game activity.

To talk about a conflict then is maybe more to talk about what is entailed by the rules, versus what people say is entailed by the rules. This is not a ludo-narrative dissonance, but rather an analytical one: the claim would be that people are making a mistake in what they say the rules are doing, because looked at objectively the rules entail something concretely otherwise. That does often occur: my point is only that the idea of ludo-narrative dissonance isn't the right lense to look at it. The fault occurs in analytical claims about what the rules entail... i.e. that they fall short of capturing what the rules analysed more carefully do entail.

ludonarrative dissonance is more often used in video games because that media does not require an interpreter to interpret in order for you as a player to then make interpretations from. a dm in some ways acts both like a game designer being given the idea of what the basic ideas of the game thats going to be made is going to be, while also the hardware that is used to run the game they create.

that being said, the main ideas that the gm has to draw from are viable for criticism on the grounds of how well they relate to other mechanics in the game and what it tells you to create when you are generating the rest of the games content from the main idea.

PHB196 has "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile." PHB12 has "Your character’s hit points define how tough your character is in combat and other dangerous situations." DMG248 has "...if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down."

What is described is that hit points are heterogeneous. And seeing as characters function mechanically unimpeded while hit points are positive, the rules in that regard sustain the above descriptions. That said, I like your argument that for damage types to matter, it might seem as though any hit point loss must be corporeal. Which I think goes in the opposite direction: it implicitly claims that hit points are homogeneous... all one substance.

i think that ultimately what my thesis actually is criticizing though is not the in game definition of what hitpoints are, ive learned that in the process of arguing with people who are arguing about what the in game definition of what hitpoints are, and the in-game definition doesent really represent what i decided to argue against in my thesis. so your correct to say that there is no ludonarrative dissonance from the game itself outlined in my thesis because im not arguing with a game, im arguing with an interpretation of the game. however i think if that interpretation replaced the definition, then it would be the case, and maybe that interpretation is the definition of some edition of the game.

to be frank im quite surprised how no one has yet pointed out that what im arguing against in my thesis is technically a strawman, though ill admit its an accidental one. i didint realize that until about page 10 of this thread. i should probably create an errata for my thesis to state that it does not argue accurately against the real definition of hitpoints in the game.

i still feel strongly that i did however define and analyze damage well in the game, and while the definition i desired to argue against as the official definition of hitpoints isint what hitpoints are defined by in the rules, its an interpretation you can make if you narrow it down to "physical durability" plus the silent mechanic that hitpoints relies on but doesent actually tell you in its definition it relies on, which is experience points.

I think this comes from what I'll dub a simulationist or realist stance. One might feel that it's more plausible that for resistance to fire to matter, the fire must reach the body because that would chime better with one's knowledge of the real world. One could resist that feeling by taking a fabulist stance: hit points are a chimera that describes whatever is necessary to be described to facilitate play. Resistance to fire may then include a propensity to get out of fire's way.

[/QUOTE]

the issue with taking the fabulist stance is a question of why it is necessary, if the rules of the game never define reasons to take the fabulist stance, and you and your players both read the rules, heck you and millions of people all read the rules, and the rules point in one direction, while you can adopt a broader perspective on what it can mean, if you act on that broader perspective especially as the gm you are then lible to present an interpretation to players who depend on you that runs counter to the way the game described itself without that wider perspective having any grounds to base it on. human imagination is naturally simulations, even when we imagine the fantastical we imagine it in relation to something we can understand because of our experiences. the mind seeks to rationalize what we experience, any game then becomes a simulation of some interpretation of a compromise between the real and fabulous by very nature of having any grounding at all.

i still think its valid to interpret the game any way you want to mind you, but its worth keeping in mind how other people interpret it or dont interpret it and there reasons why, there reasons can be VERY valid.

 

[pemerton]

hitpoints is an abstraction, a concept that acts as a common noun for all subordinate concepts and connects any related concepts as a group field, or category,

<snip>

my entire thesis argument is arguing that the related concepts in the game which hitpoints connects physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck represent physical durability almost exclusively because of hitpoints relationship with damage as a related concept, and specifically within the further narrow interpretation of damage a character takes in the form of injury. this is because the subordination concepts to hitpoints abstraction are not the only qualifications which dictate hitpoints best use as an abstraction, the related concepts that hitpoints connects its subordinate concepts to give context to how specific the abstraction should be

<snip>

the RAW fundamentally requires me to consider the will to live as a subordinate concept of hitpoints (not even counting other subordinate concepts throughout the games history that fit) and yet provides no basis for this requirement other than a throw away line in the definition of the statistic. as an abstraction the game requires me to make assumptions about what hitpoints are based on what the game tells me literally and what the game does mechanically, the game literally tells me that "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" which does not even account for how hitpoints are related to a creatures experience as though its not specified in the definition of hitpoints its clearly a related concept to hitpoints because gaining experience increases a characters hitpoints without ever explaining why.

<snip>

what i did was took what the game defines as subordinate concepts to hitpoints and related concepts to hitpoints, dissected and analyzed what those concepts own subordinate concepts and related concepts are, and came to my conclusion about which proportion of hitpoint's subordinate concepts best reflect what it actually means as an abstraction.

<snip>

hitpoints and damage arnt the only mechanics in this game, i think everything you dont think fit into the concept of hitpoints as a measure of a characters durability (even if its supernaturally high) are covered by other mechanics

I think your argument is pretty clear. Even in 5e, however, there are features of the system - related concepts in your terminology - that support a "will to live" sort of interpretation rather than durability. Fighter's second wind is one.

It's true that 5e, like 4e, uses multiple mechanics to represent the same thing (eg there is the Frightened condition which seems to overlap, in repsect of the fiction, with psychic damage and the will to live). But as I already posted D&D has always had this sort of thing as an aspect of the system.

Hit points work the same, mechanically, for PCs, NPCs, and monsters, that last category of which includes noncorporeal entities, macroscopic single-celled organisms, plants, animated lumps of stone or clay or dead flesh and/or bone, fantastic machines, swarms of much smaller things working in concert, conjured forces, whirlwinds & conflagrations from their corresponding elemental planes. Heck, in 3e objects had hit points (in 1e they /generally/ didn't, but made saving throws, but some did, too), and in 4e traps often did (5e, I forget, see above).

So, abandoning my self-appointed role as Gygaxian apologist for whom it's still 1979, I'd have to say that, hps are, necessarily an abstraction, representing many different things that stand between a specific creature and defeat - death for most monsters, destruction for many monsters & objects worth the trouble, banishment/dispelling for a few monsters and spells effects, and unconsciousness & death saves for PCs and those NPCs worth the trouble - so while a 'standard' interpretation that makes sense for PC races might be viable (and couldn't reasonably include supernatural durability without /actually/ getting into the wuxia/anime/Exalted paradigm so often presented as unthinkable when the possibility of giving martial concepts some cool toys comes up), it couldn't ever be universal.

I don't think this is any sort of departure from Gygax. From his DMG, p 61:

Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. With respect to most monsters such damage is, in fact, more physically substantial although as with adjustments in armor class rating for speed and agility, there are also similar additions in hit points.
​

 

[Arch-Fiend]

When you have to write 3 paragraphs to everyone's single paragraph then you are doing something wrong.

when william shakespear wrote "brevity is the soul of wit"; which is so often tossed around as a proverb that denotes the quality of ones intellectual statements, do you think what is intention was to say that everything should be of a certain length? being concise isn't strictly about being short, in a way its about being as short as you can for what you are trying to achieve, and what im trying to achieve is getting my point across and sharing my ideas, and if they take this long to share then this is precisely as long as they must be to be concise

 

[FrogReaver]

when william shakespear wrote "brevity is the soul of wit"; which is so often tossed around as a proverb that denotes the quality of ones intellectual statements, do you think what is intention was to say that everything should be of a certain length?

What a strawman.

being concise isn't strictly about being short, in a way its about being as short as you can for what you are trying to achieve, and what im trying to achieve is getting my point across and sharing my ideas, and if they take this long to share then this is precisely as long as they must be to be concise

The point was that you are being about as wordy as humanely possibly in trying to get your point across.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

I think your argument is pretty clear. Even in 5e, however, there are features of the system - related concepts in your terminology - that support a "will to live" sort of interpretation rather than durability. Fighter's second wind is one.

It's true that 5e, like 4e, uses multiple mechanics to represent the same thing (eg there is the Frightened condition which seems to overlap, in repsect of the fiction, with psychic damage and the will to live). But as I already posted D&D has always had this sort of thing as an aspect of the system.

thank you for pointing that out, you would be correct in bringing that feature up in its connection to hitpoints as a related concept. and i think i would probably agree as a cursory thought. i actually mention room for these kinds of mechanics in the game later in my rebuttal of ovinomancer

if there are class features in the game or feats that grant hitpoints as a result of some other subordinate concept or related concept of hitpoints not mentioned in its definition then i dont know of it, however then for the instance of that ability that class feature or feat just happens to push the quantity of hitpoints that is defined by supernatural durability a few percent lower. your welcome to share all the mechanics in the game you think fit this.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The point was that you are being about as wordy as humanely possibly in trying to get your point across.

Hey, at least he limits his wordiness to the /humane/.

(I tell ya, I don't remember what we did for fun before autocorrect-induced typos)

I don't think this is any sort of departure from Gygax. From his DMG, p 61:

So, because Gygax, in his trademark torrent of words, used 'certain' at an :ahem: certain place?

Cool. I can stay in 1979. Thanks.

 

[Arch-Fiend]

The point was that you are being about as wordy as humanely possibly in trying to get your point across.

the point was that how "wordy as humanly possibly" can be is subjective, im as wordy as necessary no more no less, id like you to prove otherwise.