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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 4101767" data-attributes="member: 20239">A fighter PC doesn't decide to turn and flee because of his HP total, the player controlling the fighter decides that the character turns and flees because of the HP total (a metagame decision).  The rationalization behind the character fleeing can be anything the player imagines.  Characters don't make decisions in D&D, players make decisions and then (if they want to) come up with in-game reasons why their imaginary character made that imaginary decision in the imaginary gameworld.I'm sorry, I'm not understanding this.  How can a set of game rules make it more or less likely that the realworld player is making decisions rather than the imaginary character?  I'm not aware of any game system that somehow endows imaginary characters with their own volition which allows them to make decisions independent of the player controlling them.  The player is always making the decisions and the ability to "get into character" may very well depend on how well the player likes the rules being used, but any perception that the rules are making it possible for the character to control his own actions while the player simply goes along for the ride is, at best, a delusion voluntarily entered into by the player.By making them a metagame concept, you eliminate the need for PCs to deal with them at all.  That's the whole point.  The player is free to imagine the narrative however he wants within the bounds established by the metagame results of HP gain and loss.  It seems to me that taking a weird amalgam of gameworld concepts, mashing them all together, tying them to living and dying but without any impact on the ability to function between full health and death and then trying to impose that construct on the consciousness of a PC (to whom it would obviously make very little sense) would be more immersion-averse than simply understanding that PCs are detached from HPs and their only concerns are the narrative established by HPs (am I still able to go on) and the narrative established by the player's imagination (everything else).</blockquote>

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