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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5599143" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not strongly tied to a notion that hit points are primarily simulationist, although I would accept that they are a sufficiently robust system that they can be tweaked to simulate certain sorts of literature.  However, the problem with the statement that hit points are too consistent to represent fiction is that it probably could be broaded to say that no single RPG system is capable of representing all fiction and some sorts of fiction may not in fact be reproduced within a game because they depend on heroes behaving in ways that gamers are highly reluctant to act.   In some sorts of fiction, heroes fall for certain cliched tropes where gamers will be reluctant to accept failure.  Even if you promise via the system that the protagonists will enjoy the same sort of plot protection enjoyed by literary heroes, the result is still likely to be a gamer that balks at accepting failure as something he must do or else balks at accepting that the game must procede along predictable lines.Its hard to escape the problem that in literature things happen solely because the author wants them to and that very few authors have a game like desire to make their story have internally consist rules rather than the mere gloss of versimilitude.   It's equally hard to have a game maintain the necessary lack of linearity people enjoy in a game and have the plot come out in a predictable literary like arc, especially if it is a particular arc that you want to simulate.So while your objection is true, I'm not sure that it is that big of an objection nonetheless simply because I'm not sure that its possible to completely transfer the rules by which stories work over to game rules.  Hit points are I think a comprimise between simulating a diverse set of stories with different rules (wherein the protagonists seem to enjoy very different levels of plot protection) and maintaining an interesting game.   D&D simulates some sorts of literature and fights of attrition generally very well.   D&D simulates some others - notably highly visual cinematic literature like you get from movies or to a lesser extent comic books - very poorly in the details less because of the hit points themselves than the fact it pays little attention to the concrete details of the fight.  It's the granularity of a round (or lack of it) that is most responcible for D&D not simulating cinematic combat, and not hit points in and of themselves.   After all, its easy to imagine to system with both lots of parrys and dodging and also hit points (either a few or many as appropriate to the fiction) which would better simulate cinematic combat than D&D.</blockquote>

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