D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TwoSix]

I'm becoming more empathetic to the stance we should avoid labeling mechanics with agendas. They end up serving as synecdoches for the design goals they try to implement, which might be aimed at an agenda. I'm not sure they can have any real valence in isolation.

The whole understanding of challenge implicit in 4e style encounter building could as easily be read in opposition to a gamist perspective. If outcomes are sufficiently predictable that player decision making isn't rigorously tested, does it provide gamist joy? I think you could certainly use the mechanic that way, something like Fourthcore, how PF2 can play, or maybe a modern decorative like Trespasser. I don't think you have to though, and that makes me question if ascribing an agenda to the mechanic is useful. You need context, some of which send to be necessarily meta.

That’s fine.

I’m not overly attached to the terminology. I just don’t think it’s strictly a “narrative” concept. What it definitely is, though, is oppositional to sim play.

 

[Deset Gled]

I'm becoming more empathetic to the stance we should avoid labeling mechanics with agendas. They end up serving as synecdoches for the design goals they try to implement, which might be aimed at an agenda. I'm not sure they can have any real valence in isolation.

Yeah, people have agendas. Mechanics either support or don’t support the agendas.

I respect that people have agendas. I have little respect for people who try to pretend they don't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Your particular desires really can't be something anyone but you can focus on in these discussions.

Sure, but the relative popularity of different approaches isn't a better argument.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Eh. That just means the people in the world don't know the physics and processes.

There's nothing weird about that - most humans don't know the physics that drive their smartphones, much less the actually mysterious stuff.

No, in some cases people literally think there are different rules than there are, because the places the rules work differently are very much more specific fictional tropes. The reason they work as they do has nothing to do with the physics or other science of the world at all.

As an example in point, while post-Iron Age this is more inconsistent, in superhero stories the same attacks (usually energy beams) that will blow through a wall, will just knock-out or injure humans (or at least people who's non-human nature has nothing to do with their durability). Sometimes there's some handwaving about them just being clipped or the like, but often its just accepted and people move on, and its a bit too consistent to wave off as "well, this time it was just a bad hit." Its a convention.

That doesn't even get into the practical difference in psychology of characters in both genres who do not in many cases act as you'd expect people to do, at least in any consistent fashion, and again, this is not routinely acknowledged as being a thing until you start getting to deconstructionist stories.

 

[Thomas Shey]

D&D, being the first, is thus based on the least learning about how to do simulation in a role playing game. The fact it does it poorly should surprise nobody.

Arguably, it was trying to serve multiple masters on the game/story/world axes, and it shouldn't surprise people that the net effect of that was that it doesn't really do any of them well, either.

 

[Lanefan]

When you're 3 your cat has 25 hit points, when you're 15 your cat has far less hit points.

As perceived, sure. But perception isn't what matters here. In reality that cat (let's assume the 3-year-old and the 15-year old are siblings so that we're talking about the same cat at the same point in time) has 2 hit points, period. That's what it comes with.

It just takes the 3-year-old a lot more effort and luck to do anything to those 2 hit points.

In broader terms, a creature's max hit point total is a constant intrinsic to the creature rather than a variable set by external perceptions. This way, the fiction can more easily remain consistent with itself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's worked well enough for tens of millions of people over the past half century. There are plenty of options for people that want something else.

I'd suggest that's because very few of those people particularly care or cared about simulation except in the broadest sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, people have agendas. Mechanics either support or don’t support the agendas.

I respect that people have agendas. I have little respect for people who try to pretend they don't.

Often they're somewhat muddy, though. Trying to serve multiple purposes isn't something just games try to do (and is often something that trying to do in general isn't trivial).

 

[TwoSix]

In broader terms, a creature's max hit point total is a constant intrinsic to the creature rather than a variable set by external perceptions. This way, the fiction can more easily remain consistent with itself.

Except in 4e, that isn't true.

You can't automatically extract the meaning out of any one game mechanic and apply it more broadly to a larger subset of games. A game mechanic only has meaning in the context of the game system itself.

 

[Lanefan]

Simple.

The system does not, in any way, produce a single NPC that you would fight at 1st level and then again at 15th level.

Bob the Ogre never has any HP. HP do not exist in the game world. They are not diegetic in any shape or form.

Disagree. Toughness and resilience are very real things, and hit points are their abstraction.

A typical horse has more toughness and resilience than I do. A typical MMA fighter has boatloads more toughness and resilience than I do, plus is trained in how to avoid taking debilitating blows. Hit points, though not perfect in other ways, actually do a reasonably good job of simulating that.

The only time Bob the Ogre needs HP is if you are fighting him with a PC. In which case, he would have HP that make sense in context of the scenario.

Gamist. Bob the Ogre has hit points all the time, whether or not there's any PCs around.

Broader scale: the setting and its inhabitants are more than just what the PCs interact with.

When Bob the Ogre fights his buddy Joe the Other Ogre, the DM decides who wins.

Or the DM plays it out (and has to, if say it's a gladiator fight and someone has bets on the outcome).

Same as every other version of D&D. The whole, "Bob changes HP" thing was a completely fabricated line of garbage that fueled edition warring.

Except it's not fabricated at all. It's just gamism triumphing over in-fiction consistency.

The only difference is, 4e was actually honest about things

It was honest about its gamist-first design, sure; but that doesn't mean I have to like that design, or agree with it, or give any respect to the parts of it that are crap (while at the same time giving respect to the parts of it that are good).

while, as we've seen repeatedly in this thread, traditional gaming wants to obfuscated and bury the lede in order to pretend that some sort of magical simulation is going on.