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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arch-Fiend" data-source="post: 7843438" data-attributes="member: 7016641">gameplay is the common noun for all the mechanical properties of a game which make up its subordinate concepts. abstraction does not mean abstract.where is the narrative part? probably somewhere you chose to omitthe idea that the gameplay represents anything outside numbers bouncing off numbers is narrative. the game explicitly states things that count toward this. if you chose to omit what hitpoints represents you are actually going from minimal narrative to zero and removing parts of the game that the game establishes definitively.[HR][/HR]what i saidyour responsegiven that the subordinate concepts of kill, healing, and damage are not as vague and i am implying they better define hitpoints when used in context to hitpoints, what does a lower level of abstraction mean? does it mean more defined? if not can you explain why?[HR][/HR]what i saidyour responsean abstractions function is to be able to be a general noun for all subordinate concepts under it and connect them to any related concepts. if the abstraction of "ball" does not relate all of the subordinate concepts it has to all of its related concepts then what purpose does the abstraction "ball" serve for those subordinate concepts? now individually those subordinate concepts can have their own related terms that dont connect with the abstraction "ball" or other subordinate concepts within the abstraction "ball" but it must be able to be connected to related concepts to the abstraction "ball" to be under the abstraction "ball".this word were using has a definition, im surprised youve been using it so much without knowing it. thats going to frustrate people you argue about it with. i know i sure am[HR][/HR]what you saidmy responceyour responseyour consistantly missing the point here. IRV (just going to use that acronym) is a related concept to creatures, its something creatures possess, when IRV is relivent is when a creature takes damage, what hitpoints are is a measure of a creatures distance from death which is reduced by damage. when a creature with IRV takes damage, IRV effects the damage for hitpoints. thus the damage translated through IRV to get to hitpoints says something about the creature that has IRV, and what it says has to be about the 4 subordinate concepts of the hitpoint abstraction. How can any creature lose hitpoints due to this damage type? = AWithin context of the rest of the games mechanics what can immunity, resistance, or vulnerability represent? = BWhat subordinate concepts of a creatures hitpoints do the representations that immunity, resistance, and vulnerability apply to given this damage type? = Cwe dont know what A is. we know that B means something because IRV applies regardless of context, a character can be blind and deaf and still have IRV, C is actually an examination of B. if IRV applies regardless of context but we KNOW that any damage a creature takes alerts them to taking damage even if they dont know what kind of damage they take is, then we have to ask, what subordinate concepts of a creatures hitpoints can be reduced without a character knowing its about to take damage, my answer later is "physical and luck" but then we must account that any damage will make the player aware of it, and unless characters are inherently aware of metaphysical effects on their luck, the only remaining option is physical. a character cant react mentally to something happening to them they have no awareness of until it makes them aware of it, and the only way it can do that is deal physical damage.i kinda say all this but technically a character now that i think of it doesent need IRV for any attack they are completely unaware of before being damage to be physical, IRV is just there to tell us that mechanically the type of damage matters in this instance, but it also means that you cant take the blindfold off and unplug the ears and change the IRV into anything else but an effect on physical durability.[HR][/HR]what you saidmy responceyour responcecolor coding, my editing is improving? maybe.  (#666666 and #999999)at any rate its clear that you chose to write your first part of your responce to my entire paragraph cutting it up into 3 peaces because your first response is a clear missing the point of my arguement which i give context later to. technicly yes you would be wrong also because you wernt counting save or die if that even exists in the game, but it wasent really the point of my arguement.hitpoints of damage done by a fireball HAVE to be those things, because it cant be anything else, theres no other way to lower your hitpoints besides a reduction in the 4 subordinate concepts of damage, thus any damage must be defined in a way that lowers a characters hitpoints related to those 4 subordinate concepts, no other possibility is granted by the game unless you grant that the game implies you can add or subtract subordinate concepts of hp as you please. again your objectively wrong because of the definition of abstraction, whenever a related concept applies to an abstraction it MUST apply to all subordinate concepts that the abstract describes, this is what an abstract is and what an abstract does, meaning damage applied to hitpoints is damage applied to all subordinate concepts that hitpoints represent.[HR][/HR]my statementyour responselets try a different color (#660000 #990000 #CC0000 #FF3300 #FF6600)mostly just did this color coding thing here specifically to show everyone just how much you cut, most of what you get wrong here is based on your lack of understanding what an abstraction is as explained a few times so far. theres no "levels" of abstraction, abstraction is just a representation for a group of concepts in relationship with other concepts that all apply to them for the purpose of that abstraction. you can use this entire thing i just wrote to learn how abstraction work, though im sure you know by now if youve read this far down this response. however others might find it useful. but basically if you understand how abstractions work then you understand how those 4 concepts that hitpoints have which are seemingly meaningless and just there for flavortext can actually be contrasted to what the rest of the game says damage is and the relationship between damage and hitpoints in various contexts.[HR][/HR]what i saidyour responsesame color this time but different (#660000 #CC0000 #FF6600)so how do you know youve been stabbed? is the amount of hp you lose a combination of physical and the rest because you then react to being stabbed and thus the rest of the damage from being stabbed comes through with your reaction? how do you know what kind of damage was dealt? but how does your resistance apply to your mental durability if you dont know what kind of damage it was? this kinda implies that weapons actually do less physical damage than is implied but somehow weapons of greater damage potential have the ability to damage the mental durability more even if the one who is damaged can not see it. or maybe the implication is that there is always mental durability loss associated with physical durability loss, and they are perfectly proportional in every way regardless of what the player knows, and thus the IRV applies to the physical durability thus also by extension applying itself to the mental durability. so everything i said about will to live applies here too, generally because will to live is a mental response. going to take the time though to just say how stupid will to live damage being applied to all damage is though, it flies in the face of being afraid to die, and the more your at risk of actually dying you should be more afraid to die. sure some characters might not be this way, some people arnt that way, but this is the one subordinate quality out of the 4 that make up health that tells YOU what your player thinks. now certainly some effects in the game should be able to drain the will to live from a character, thats thematic and cool, ive suggested necrotic damage for that, but its not good to create a narrative that takes the control of a characters mind out of the hands of the player except rarely, for will to live to be a concept of hitpoints means its always being messed with outside the players control. thats another reason im against the idea that hitpoints are an even blend of the concepts that make it up, because that would require will to live to always drop to zero along with hitpointshow would a character know they have lost luck from an attack they have no idea even occurred unless it did damage to their physical durability? im sure your saying all 4 subordinate concepts are applying at the same time so long as any physical durability is reduced, but if a character's physical durability being reduced means that all other subordinate quantities that make up a character's hitpoints are reduced an equal measure, then whats the point in having them? they are all connected evenly, that means that if you divided a characters health by 1/4, divided the damage they took equally and said it was only physical durability then except the few rare cases that a class feature of spell grants hitpoints in a way that could only be interpreted as the other 3 subordinate concepts, the game would work just the same. if its all the same then its meaningless. there's no point in describing hitpoints this way and its of no use to a gm if they have to all be equal measures of the same concept.</blockquote>

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