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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4101738" data-attributes="member: 58197">We appear to be using different definitions here.  What you consider "abstract," I consider "undefined," and what you consider "ambiguous," I consider "abstract."Regardless of what you call them, I find "undefined" (or "abstract," if you prefer) elements to be a major issue with my ability to imagine the game world as a coherent, if imagined, reality.  Player characters routinely demonstrate that they know about hit points--they don't have a digital readout in their heads, of course, but a PC knows when he's in danger and when he isn't.  How do I know that?  Because he's making decisions on that basis!  A fighter with full hit points is apt to stand and fight, where a fighter in single digits may decide to turn and flee.  If hit points are purely metagame, and don't describe anything in the game world, that decision has no basis.You can shove that decision-making back to metagame level, too; maybe it's the player making the decision, and the low-hit-point fighter is just experiencing a sudden sense of his own mortality.  But the more you do that, the more of a gulf you open up between the player and the PC, and the harder you make it to get into character.  A system that pushes players to this level of metagaming is a system with problems.There will always be some undefined elements, but I'd prefer to minimize their impact.  Experience points are undefined, or at least extremely ill-defined, but they seldom have much impact while the game is actually being played (and to the extent that they do have an impact, it's usually bad--PCs seeking out fights they could have avoided, for no other reason than to push them over the threshold for the next level).Hit points are something PCs deal with constantly during play.  They affect every aspect of combat.  Something so pervasive should not be a purely metagame concept.</blockquote>

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