Quote from: jibbajibba;643692Actually I think that is his entire point.
How can I hit you with a sword and not wound you.
I have bypassed your armour and landed an effective blow behaps even landing the perfect blow the rules allow, with a 3 foot length of sharpened steel but you are still not wounded.

Yes indeed.

John Morrow did an excellent post on very same subject in another thread located here. It would be difficult to do a better presentation of the issue than what he outlines there.

Quote from: TristramEvans;643689Well, its his "pet peeve" in that everything he's wrote leads me to believe he doesn't understand that hit points =/= wounds.

It's the second most important pet peeve, right after the fact that you are not as you ought to be, as a lesser being, on your knees and pleasuring him. 35 pages of finest Aspero-bot comedy.

Quote from: gleichman;643685While you did well for explaining why you prefer hit points systems compare to other more well known RPGs, there are two serious flaws that effectiving mean you weren't talking to the point of this thread.

Of all the posters here, I believe Myself and John Morrow may be the only ones who actually play in this style. Neither of us were able to do so using a published game. In my case I had to create a whole new home grown ruleset, while John uses a modified and heavily optimized of FUDGE.

So using RuneQuest as an example to refute my "pet peeve" is dodging the issue and refuting your own strawman.

I don't think there's any refuting peevishness; you dislike what you dislike for your own personally sufficient reasons. I merely tried to point out the utility of the technique in solving a problem, where some other approaches are insufficiently flexible.

If your design is Age of Heroes, and it is not just coincidental use of the same title as that of the system I have in mind, it is I think a good design (based on memory from some years ago).

QuoteThe second point I have to make is even easier, if you want a game where characters don't die- don't have them die. The concept is called script immunity, a half way measure are things like Hero/Fate/etc. points.

That can indeed be a fine approach -- but excluding the middle is the straw man you are raising!

It is not necessary for us to restrict ourselves to either "can happen at any moment" or "can never happen." We can also have boundary conditions that mark changes from certain non-death to increasingly probable death, and thence to certain death.

That you disapprove carries no more water than it should, and you might (or might not) be happier if you were to accept that fact of life.

Quote from: Phillip;643695I don't think there's any refuting peevishness; you dislike what you dislike for your own personally sufficient reasons. I merely tried to point out the utility of the technique in solving a problem, where some other approaches are insufficiently flexible.

And I pointed out that not *all* other approaches are insufficiently flexible in return. Something you failed to mention.

Quote from: Phillip;643695If your design is Age of Heroes, and it is not just coincidental use of the same title as that of the system I have in mind, it is I think a good design (based on memory from some years ago).

You must be thinking of a different game...

Quote from: Phillip;643695That can indeed be a fine approach -- but excluding the middle is the straw man you are raising!

People love that phrase on this board. Here it's misapplied, especially in my response to you that noted 'half-way measures' specifically.

No cookie.

Quote from: gleichman;643693Yes indeed.

That's easily solved with semantics. Pick your nomenclature, all that's going on is that to fell a Hero takes on average 4 times as long, and a Superhero 8 times as long, as to make an ordinary soldier a casualty.

Obviously, if you want dice rolls and tables to tell you more, the D&D set and its ilk will not satisfy. The people who created it, and those who continue to enjoy it, pleased and please themselves.

A Puritan Is Someone Who Is Deathly Afraid That Someone, Somewhere, Is Having Fun.

Quote from: Phillip;643699That's easily solved with semantics.

Sorry, I'm very much interested in what's actually going on.

Also I think you're in the wrong thread, a better one for this exchange is the one John Morrow posted in. It was spun off this one specifically to talk about HP under the Simulation of Process concept.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26166

Quote from: gleichman;643698And I pointed out that not *all* other approaches are insufficiently flexible in return. Something you failed to mention.

I have yet to see any evidence as to what other approaches you have in mind. On the other hand, my RQ reference is substantial, and the matter of damage increasing more rapidly than ability to take it is even more commonplace.

Quote from: Phillip;643701I have yet to see any evidence as to what other approaches you have in mind. On the other hand, my RQ reference is substantial, and the matter of damage increasing more rapidly than ability to take it is even more commonplace.

I would have a problem with that as my personal example is a homegrown set of rules. John Morrow has the same problem but at least his is based on FUDGE and thus would be easier I think to explain (but you'd have to ask him). Have you read John's post and the other thread btw?

I could also use HERO for a limited example I suppose if you're familar enough with it to understand the effect of using a character build standard different than their published one.

But again, I think this belongs in either the other thread or a new one.

Quote from: gleichman;643704I could also use HERO for a limited example I suppose if you're familar enough with it to understand the effect of using a character build standard different than their published one.

I'm familiar enough to note that it not only has "hit points" but has several kinds of "hit points": Body, Stun, and Endurance!

Quote from: Phillip;643715I'm familiar enough to note that it not only has "hit points" but has several kinds of "hit points": Body, Stun, and Endurance!

Yes (except for Endurance). But that tells you little as to how they're used. Make a new thread and we can talk about HERO with non-standard builds.

Quote from: Phillip;643695That can indeed be a fine approach -- but excluding the middle is the straw man you are raising!

It is not necessary for us to restrict ourselves to either "can happen at any moment" or "can never happen." We can also have boundary conditions that mark changes from certain non-death to increasingly probable death, and thence to certain death.

Can you give a specific example of a system (published or homebrew) that effectively captures this middle ground and some detail of how it does it and handles a transition, specifically, from one shot kills always being possible to never being possible transition to a number of hit points where it will never happen?  The examples I can think of (ranging from the very fragile nature of some starting D&D characters -- the housecat killing a 1st level Magic User example -- to special mechanics that bypass HP entirely, such as save vs. die or coup de grace rules) all either require special rules for special cases that bypass the HP mechanics or have their own strange effects on the results (e.g., if you escalate both HP and damage).

I'm curious what you have in mind here.

Quote from: Phillip;643715I'm familiar enough to note that it not only has "hit points" but has several kinds of "hit points": Body, Stun, and Endurance!

In my experience, they do not generally escalate exponentially with experience and any increase in "hit points" in Hero generally represents an actual physical increase in the durability of the character, not what people claim hit points represent in D&D, which is a non-physical ability to avoid damage such that both "hits" and "damage" that is "healed" don't actually represent physical "hits" or physical "damage" that need to be physically "healed".  If you are taking Body in Hero, you are actually taking physical damage.  If you are taking Stun, you are being physically stunned.  And if you go down in Endurance, you are actually getting more physically worn out.  If they worked that way in D&D, then they'd be representative mechanics that simulate process rather than a non-representation abstraction, and I wouldn't be complaining about them, and doubt Brian would be, either.

The problem with D&D is less that it abstracts all damage down to a single number but that the number is said to include things that aren't physical damage.  This made even worse by the fact that all of the language surrounding that number (e.g., hit points, damage, and healing of wounds) conflict with what the apologists claim that those things mean in D&D such that we have hit points that mostly measure misses rather than physical hits, damage that mostly isn't physical damage but a failure to do physical damage, and healing of wounds that isn't actually healing physical damage like wounds.  We might as well call those things Apple Points, Pandas, and Washing using a Wash Slightly Soiled Clothing spell and the names would have about as much of a relationship to what apologists say Hit Points represent as the names actually used by D&D.  Those names might even be less misleading because they don't imply the opposite of what apologists say they represent.

Quote from: jibbajibba;643692Actually I think that is his entire point.
How can I hit you with a sword and not wound you.
I have bypassed your armour and landed an effective blow behaps even landing the perfect blow the rules allow, with a 3 foot length of sharpened steel but you are still not wounded.

Well, originally, coming from Wargamming as they did, Hit points represented one part of a combat system that was abstracted overall - 1 minute rounds, etc. The loss of Hit points was not "someone hits you with a sword", it was, someone has gained a combat disadvantage over you and worn you out parrying and making last minute twists of the body to avoid a blow. It was a "timing" system, determining how long a combatant lasted before taking a wound, individual hit points at best representing small cuts, bruises, and fatigue. Probably would have been better if it was denoted as "stamina" or simply "defense" rather than something .

I'm not claiming it was an ideal set of affairs for the game, but t the same time, I think any criticism should be engaging the game on its own terms.

Quote from: TristramEvans;643845Well, originally, coming from Wargamming as they did, Hit points represented one part of a combat system that was abstracted overall - 1 minute rounds, etc. The loss of Hit points was not "someone hits you with a sword", it was, someone has gained a combat disadvantage over you and worn you out parrying and making last minute twists of the body to avoid a blow.  It was a "timing" system, determining how long a combatant lasted before taking a wound, individual hit points at best representing small cuts, bruises, and fatigue. Probably would have been better if it was denoted as "stamina" or simply "defense" rather than something .

I don't think that's entirely accurate.  From what I've seen, with the exception of a few heroic characters that were treated as if they were multi-figure squads, a "hit" killed a figure in one shot and there was no wounded state.  And the multiple hits that a heroic character needed to die were less a matter of any conscious attempt to model anything like endurance and dodging and were simply a crude way to make one figure N times more powerful than another figure.  That's how it was a "timing system" as you claimed. I think all of the attempts to rationalize them as a conscious attempt to model something specific like dodging or small cuts are after-the-fact rationalizations.  

Remember that wargamers were controlling armies, not adventurers, and most simply worried about whether a unit could keep going and fighting or not.  Similarly, they didn't model what being hit and out meant, either.  It could have meant dead or simply wounded and unable to fight.  Maybe if people spent more time considering that part of the simulation, script immunity mechanics would focus less on keeping characters from getting hurt or knocked out and more on letting them survive if they do, perhaps with some long-term scarring or disability, something largely lacking in modern RPGs.

Quote from: TristramEvans;643845I'm not claiming it was an ideal set of affairs for the game, but t the same time, I think any criticism should be engaging the game on its own terms.

I am.  The problem is that the abstraction breaks down horribly when the GM or players try to apply them outside of a very narrow range of interpretation and the situations where this happens (e.g., falling into a pit full of spikes) is common even in the most generic vanilla sort of dungeon crawl that D&D was designed to handle.  This is exactly why HP and AC (along with character classes, for a different reason) are the most often complained about mechanics in D&D, it's why they've been complained about since the earliest days of the hobby (where there is a lot of smoke, there is almost certainly a fire), and why nearly every other role-playing system not intentionally designed to ape D&D or the feel of D&D uses different (and usually more representational simulations of process) to handle those things.

Yes, there are very good reasons for players and GMs to be attached to those mechanics and like the sort of game they produce (primarily the pace of decision and predictability) but it also generates a lot of confusion (which is why we have thread after thread of people trying toe explain that hit points mostly represent misses rather than hits, damage mostly endurance rather than damage, and nobody seems to bother trying to explain that healing spells don't actually heal anything), players overlooking quirks (e.g., how healing spells are essentially less effective on more experienced characters, which can be a big deal in parties where characters have a broad range of levels), and needs special rules to fix the problems the abstraction causes (e.g., 3 different situational AC numbers in D&D 3.5, save-vs-death mechanics, special coup de grace rules).  

And all of that boils down to the fact that plausible results and knowing what things mean has value in role-playing games, so criticizing a system on the grounds that it produces implausible results, produces a misleading impression of what's going on, or confuses people is a perfectly legitimate reason to criticize any RPG system.  In response, you can acknowledge that the system has problems and that you think the benefits of the system outweigh the liabilities, but that's not the same thing as saying the system doesn't have problems and shouldn't be criticized.

Quote from: John Morrow;643853I don't think that's entirely accurate.  From what I've seen, with the exception of a few heroic characters that were treated as if they were multi-figure squads, a "hit" killed a figure in one shot and there was no wounded state.  And the multiple hits that a heroic character needed to die were less a matter of any conscious attempt to model anything like endurance and dodging and were simply a crude way to make one figure N times more powerful than another figure.  That's how it was a "timing system" as you claimed. I think all of the attempts to rationalize them as a conscious attempt to model something specific like dodging or small cuts are after-the-fact rationalizations.

Well, "after-the-fact" in regards to the mechanic being a loan from wargame roots, but thats how Gygax concieved of the mechanic, so I wouldn't call it a "rationalization". It was the mechanic he chose to model what he wanted.

QuoteThe problem is that the abstraction breaks down horribly when the GM or players try to apply them outside of a very narrow range of interpretation and the situations where this happens (e.g., falling into a pit full of spikes) is common even in the most generic vanilla sort of dungeon crawl that D&D was designed to handle.   This is exactly why HP and AC (along with character classes, for a different reason) are the most often complained about mechanics in D&D, it's why they've been complained about since the earliest days of the hobby (where there is a lot of smoke, there is almost certainly a fire), and why nearly every other role-playing system not intentionally designed to ape D&D or the feel of D&D uses different (and usually more representational simulations of process) to handle those things.

Well, yeah, thats been a problem since the beginning, as you say. The abstraction falls apart the minute you apply it to specific purposes out of its intention. I don't dispute this as a valid criticism, and one that was often houseruled out of games (we had it so "actual wounds" were represented by the loss of points from Attribute scores).

The thing where its defendable I think is that one of the other big detriments to IC roleplaying is combats that take too long mechanically to resolve, which is where there's sort of a ctahc 22. A combat that is resolved in 5 minutes, regardless of the specificities of the rules involved, will feel more "real" or "engaging" for most players, than a two-hour combat , no matter how "realistic" the system is. I think the abstraction of Hit points works fine in this regard, especially the more one looks at the mechnics as simply an aid to finding out the answer to a question in the game, rather than a physics model. I mean, basically, one could flip a coin to see who wins in a fight, and all thats mechanically needed with the rest easily covered by roleplaying. I see the abstraction of D&D combat as simply a step up in complexity from this, rather than an attempt at simulation.

QuoteAnd all of that boils down to the fact that plausible results and knowing what things mean has value in role-playing games, so criticizing a system on the grounds that it produces implausible results, produces a misleading impression of what's going on, or confuses people is a perfectly legitimate reason to criticize any RPG system.  In response, you can acknowledge that the system has problems and that you think the benefits of the system outweigh the liabilities, but that's not the same thing as saying the system doesn't have problems and shouldn't be criticized.

I think thats basically addressing the same thing I was just saying: "the plausability of results" is one approach to game design/play, in which the game mechanics are meant to simulate something specific or be "representational". I think D&D though, especially earlier editions of D&D are approaching it from the other PoV, where mechanics aren't primarily about a representational model, rather simply an aid to keep the roleplaying running smoothly without "reality clash".