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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8957783" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think it might be close to a tautology that contented D&D players shove aside concerns about hp and AC and what they might imply about the fiction if treated as other than metagame devices. (I say close to a tautology because a small number seem to embrace "hp as meat" and treat high level D&D PCs as literally non-human in their physiology.)In the late 1970s through to the early 1990s FRPGers who enjoyed some of the basic tropes of D&D but didn't accept hp and AC tended to move to other games with more "realistic" combat systems: Chivalry & Sorcery, RuneQuest, RoleMaster and the like.These systems also tend to have other features that increase "realism" - eg their skill systems - and hence, at least as I've experienced them (primarily RM, secondarily RQ, and C&S only by reputation) tend to shift play away from the notorious D&D-ish cycle of combats towards more "grounded" or "realistic" or (as the advocates of these systems would say) "sophisticated" concerns.For my own part, I began this trajectory playing the original OA in the mid-to-late 80s before moving to RM. Today, I regard the premier RPG for this sort of play as Burning Wheel. Prince Valiant is a lighter system that can also fill this niche to some extent. But there are many FRPGs now that completely eschew the trapping of realistic combat, skill systems etc but can still fill this "sophisticated alternative to D&D" niche.There may also be D&D play that fills the same niche!, although I think there are some features of D&D - starting with the default emphasis on the cycles of combat - that can make it tricky to do this, or that can cause obstacles to doing this that can easily be tripped over.I think that if you want your game to produce something that is recognisably a story, you are going to need to use techniques that will support that. (Though those techniques need not be ones that take production of a story as their direct aim. It is possible to have a game that reliably achieves X although its techniques of play make Y rather than X salient to the participants - this is a special case of a more general point about institutional design.)One thing that all stories depend upon is contrivance, in the sense of non-random concatenations of events. For instance, characters turn up "at the appropriate time", or sequences of events unfold so as to provide interwoven opportunities for realisation, catharsis etc. How RPGing produces these contrivances can vary - eg it can be GM side, player-side, both (independently of one another) or both (cooperative). It can be linked to resolution mechanics, or left "free-floating". One element of these contrivances is the endurance, despite sometimes even severe physical suffering, of the protagonist at least until some sort of climax occurs.As far as I know, hit points weren't invented to support storytelling contrivance, except in the thinnest sense of ensuring the endurance of the protagonist. The only version of D&D I know of to adapt them to this end is 4e.Therefore, when I read a post from someone who is happy with hit points but rejects metacurrency and/or story contrivances, what I infer is that they are playing a RPG in which story and drama do not figure prominently, in which PCs are not thought of first and foremost as protagonists, and in which the main goal of play, from the player side, is to struggle against obstacles which have little meaning beyond "being there", and which pose no profound threat other than having to start over (eg with a new character). In the case of posters like [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] and [USER=6684958]@bloodtide[/USER], this impression is reinforced by the suggestion that players won't care about the fiction as long as they still have their playing piece available to them.This goes, at least in part, to the issue of "obstacles" that I mentioned above.Every time the play of the game makes the table care about and focus on some bit of fiction that does not speak to what is at stake, and every time it makes the table engage in a mechanical process whose connection to what is at stake is opaque at best, it distracts from the stuff that we (ostensibly) care about and therefore makes it harder to maintain our caring about it.Here are some things that D&D tends to make participants care about, even though it typically won't speak to things that are at stake: how much time has passed (spell durations, recovery cycles, etc); how much distance has been traversed or how far things are from one another (movement rates, spell ranges, etc); whose turn it is (initiative cycles in combat); how frequently an ability can be used (spells are the stand-out here); tallies of numbers (eg hit points) whose connection to the fiction is often tenuous at best; etc.D&D also tends to have many player-side abilities whose impact on the fiction is independent of what is at stake. This can mean that stuff that is high stakes resolves very easily (anti-climax) or stuff that is low-stakes is very challenging (at the table, in the fiction, or both) to resolve.(It's not a coincidence that 4e D&D tackles all these things, in various ways and with greater or lesser degrees of success.)Prince Valiant has basically none of the above. This makes a big difference to the play experience.</blockquote>

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