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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9179966" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not talking about Gnolls I'm talking about the demonic hyenas in the REH story <a href="https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600961h.html" target="_blank">Queen of the Black Coast</a>:When dawn spread its white veil over the river, there were no men to be seen: only a hairy winged horror that squatted in the center of a ring of fifty great spotted hyenas that pointed quivering muzzles to the ghastly sky and howled like souls in hell. . . . Something moved in the blackness under the trees. Etched abruptly in the rising moon, Conan saw a darkly blocked-out head and shoulders, brutish in outline. And now from the shadows dark shapes came silently, swiftly, running low—twenty great spotted hyenas. Their slavering fangs flashed in the moonlight, their eyes blazed as no true beast's eyes ever blazed. Twenty: then the spears of the pirates had taken toll of the pack, after all.I guess I just don't get this at all. Hit points aren't a concept in any fiction I'm aware of - but their function in a RPG is to mediate and structure the creation of fiction. If the hp rules - as these are spread out over build rules and action resolution rules - don't underpin the creation of sensible fiction, then what are they for?The idea that, when playing a RPG, I would just forget about the fiction for minutes or tens of minutes at a time, and play a board game, and then switch back into the fiction once the board game is finished, is to me completely at odds with the goal of verisimilitude.</blockquote>

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