>From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
>
>Or at least, meta-game and story-world should come up
>with the same answers. Yes, I know Gloranthans don't
>know the numbers, but when your gamist head and your
>story-telling head are pulling you in opposite
>directions, it hurts.
I wouldn't use those terms, but you have the right of it. The HP, not being known to the characters, or being about something as "hard" as "experience" seem to me to represent a player resource to use to manipulate their character (for whatever reason). When you make one rout more difficult for the player than another, you're informing him that he shouldn't go there, unless he's willing to pay a cost. That cost is in terms of other abilities not purchased, or abilities not raised.
The question is whether or not it balances in terms of the resulting character being interesting to the player. I have seen cases where players decided not to go the easy rout, so I can't say that it's unheard of. That said, it's rare.
But then one could counter, "But that's the goal, to make these sorts of characters rare." To which I can only reply that I don't want the system to decide what sort of characters my players should play. Again, I can't think of the HP as some sort of simulation tool, they're far too abstract for that. Given that, I see them as a tool to induce creativity in the player by putting on general constraints (and I think they do that pretty well). But if the system pushes in one direction or another? Well, that's not creative constraint, that's the system getting suggestive.
And, well, that's not what I want from it. Some might like it doing this. Just not me.
Mike
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