Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arch-Fiend" data-source="post: 7843163" data-attributes="member: 7016641">So ludonarrative dissonance is when the story of a game is describing something to you the player that the narrative the gameplay would imply is contradictory to without the game's narrative presenting an explanation for this.I may not be using the traditional use of this term but i am trying to describe something i think is very close to it. What my initial thesis seeks to examine is if the narrative about what hitpoints represent that i presented as being argued to me is accurate when compared to what the mechanics of hitpoints informs us. I did this somewhat incorrectly by not just going to the definition of hitpoints and saying "look its more abstract than that" but i was working from the idea that the arguments being made to me were on good faith rather than just what was thought by other people with no bases in the game.I then went about explaining what can be interpreted about hitpoints by what related concepts mechanics has in constitutions and leveling, i argued that those elements could be used to reinforce the interpretation i was arguing against. I then went to examine damage, from what i found in damage i dont think i need to reexplain, but i found that damage did not very well reflect the interpretation i was arguing against when you take damage in its full context.I've sense created an errata that explains how i was arguing against an unofficial narrative.So wheres the ludonarrative dissonance in the argument i initially made? If hitpoints are told by one gameplay element to mean one thing in narrative form and then another gameplay element contradicts that then we have conflicting narratives. through the gameplay there is a dissonance in the narrative.Your right though, abstractions themselves arnt dissonant by definition, they just are when they must relate to one another. Abstractions do have meaning, otherwise they would be purposeless as a conceptual tool. when you say hitpoints you either mean something, or the game tells you that you can mean whatever you want, if its the latter then once you assign it meaning, you have the expectation to be consistent up until the point a new element is added. my main question tends to be why hitpoints mean all these things other mechanics in the game that arnt hitpoints mean when we create narratives around what losing hitpoints means for a character? The answers to these questions matter, because confusion occurs when a mechanic can represent anything, is used to represent something thats already represented, and now a distinction must be made between them.If on the other hand abstractions do have meaning specified in the game, then that meaning is expected to stand the test of comparison between how its association is used in relation to other abstractions. If hitpoints are "physical durability, mental durability, will to live, and luck" (all abstractions themselves btw) and the game tells you that hitpoints are lowered via damage, then that means hitpoints can only be those 4 things, but also that those 4 things have to relate to damage, which itself is an abstraction that has meaning and its own relationships to other abstract concepts and its own subordinate concepts.Abstractions when defined are no longer arbitrary.This thread is examining how the abstraction of hitpoints can be picked appart and figuring out what associations between hitpoints and damage are possible in a narrative world while also sharing some of our rationality (as perspective can simply disagree with what is possible or not). The analysis works when there are things defined by the game, and they ARE defined by the game despite your insistence to minimize the degree of definition it has and maximize the degree of abstraction it has.</blockquote>

Verification