Quote from: CRKrueger;769534Point taken, Raven drew first blood, but to be fair from reading posts from the people he's actually talking about, he's right, they will never understand the playstyle, because they've never done it.

In my experiences and even in the article the David admits that it's based on the DM, a Game can be deadly or have that level of "next roll determines if we all die or save the day." It's a play-style that's rather edition-neutral. Sure, some editions do have a cushion (say, 4E or Next for requiring 3 Death Saving throws) but to get to that point, some risks were certainly taken and lost and coming back from that is still as exciting and rewarding as only having 1 chance too.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769534If you think you're painted with that brush and it isn't true, then argue why not.

Ok, I'm a character optimizer and I love to delve into the numbers of the game and all that jazz (we'll leave if I'm good at it for another discussion) and I find such scenarios like gritty games and "the die fall once.." and playing with "gimped" characters require MORE Char_OP and Balance and running a LOT of theory craft so that I give my character the BEST opportunity to survive.

In the wake of this article, I decided to do some rolling (3d6, in order of Str - Dex - Con - Int - Wis - Cha) and came up with 10, 5, 10, 12, 16, 15. Now looking at the game from a v3.5 perspective (it's the system that I can pull from my brain the quickest) I think that could serve as a commendable Cloistered Cleric of Pelor (or Lathander of the Forgotten Realms). My mind instantly starts going through options and feats and spells that will accommodate these stats and the class decided upon.

If, instead, I were to roll 4d6, drop the lowest and place where ever I want then things like Character_Optimization and Theorycraft and trying to find Balance is less of a character-death / deal breaker. I don't have to delve into char-op to find out the best combo or stat match or Min/Max stuff.

So to me the article, as I read it, would make me want to do MORE character optimizing and theorycraft because it's far more "required" (IMO) to have a surviving character than if the reins of character creation weren't as strict.  
To complain about sneering by countersneering is...an interesting take.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769534Frankly "One True Wayism" is beneath you, you've come up with much better and comedic ways to mock everyone here.

I have to agree that articles like Davids do more "harm" than good when discussing the game. It's one thing to say "I remember the days when such-and-such" but it's when that person paints THOSE times with those games as better than recent times with recent  games. It puts a value to it, something that isn't shared or experienced by all.

So for one person it reads as just an opinion piece of Nostalgia and "Back then, games were intense and crazy...lots of fun" while to others it reads "Back then, games were intense and crazy and were much better that way than the way games are today because player's are coddled".

If you're not coddled then why are you taking offense?  

CR, magic wish lists, removal of "save or suck", easy recovery energy drain.  If you're arguing 3 and 4 are not inherently more safe then 1, & 2, I'd like to see the argument, frankly.  However, the article isn't talking about any of that.

Where in the article does he say "Those new players are whiny little bitches!"  He said in the old games, frequently a single roll could spell Doom or success beyond any reasonable hope, and that outlook, and the experience it brings has value as is evidenced by a return to a more old school sensibility.  

• He does not express frustration for newer systems like Schwalb did.
• He specifically says the newer versions have had hardcore options as well.
• What he is doing is, as a game designer, expressing appreciation of the danger of AD&D and the games it has inspired.

Where's the beef?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;769600But TSR D&D is very good at creating its own unique fantasy experience. It's sort of 'psychotronic' in that way, at least using the definition from Lucha Libre Hero.

Psychotronicness: That quality to which many big budget, Hollywood films have aspired to yet only low budget, independent horror films and Lucha Libre movies seem able to achieve.  In other words: throwaway cinema filmed for no money by maniac directors without any viable concept of what a movie ought to be to guide them.  Art that contains legitimate Psychotronicness should combine at least three or four genres in some previously undiscovered, highly psychedelic manner.'

Quote from: CRKrueger;769696Where's the beef?

  Well, the article does comment on "the masochistic appreciation of "low level" gaming, something we have undervalued up until relatively recently in modern games. Those first few levels where you’re struggling to off a goblin and you have one copper to your name and you can’t afford rope ... fun! " and uses a comparative when it says that "the game was arbitrary and sometimes random, but this made for more dynamic scenarios."

  But I think we're all just a bit shell-shocked and trigger-happy after the past decade or so of edition wars, and prone to see any praising of one edition as denigrating others, especially if they make word choices that seem to tread too close to some of the terms favored in the Wars. This article doesn't intend to say '1st Edition was for Real Hardcore Gamers, unlike you New School Wimps!', but it seems to me that it uses some similar phrasing to people who have said that, which can set off reactions.

  So I think we all need to be calm and patient with each other, especially over the next few months, until we can establish some level of comity and peace.

   If we can ...

Quote from: James Gillen;769704Psychotronicness: That quality to which many big budget, Hollywood films have aspired to yet only low budget, independent horror films and Lucha Libre movies seem able to achieve.  In other words: throwaway cinema filmed for no money by maniac directors without any viable concept of what a movie ought to be to guide them.  Art that contains legitimate Psychotronicness should combine at least three or four genres in some previously undiscovered, highly psychedelic manner.'

  Yep, that's the definition; thanks for pulling it out.

  Does anyone want to contend that old-school, Gygaxian D&D does not fit within that description?

Quote from: James Gillen;769704Psychotronicness: That quality to which many big budget, Hollywood films have aspired to yet only low budget, independent horror films and Lucha Libre movies seem able to achieve.  In other words: throwaway cinema filmed for no money by maniac directors without any viable concept of what a movie ought to be to guide them.  Art that contains legitimate Psychotronicness should combine at least three or four genres in some previously undiscovered, highly psychedelic manner.'

So if you use the same definition but the movie costs over 100 million dollars, then it's a Michael Bay movie.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;769706Yep, that's the definition; thanks for pulling it out.

  Does anyone want to contend that old-school, Gygaxian D&D does not fit within that description?

It doesn't, but Arduin sure as hell does.  Way more Heavy Metal sensibilities there.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769711It doesn't, but Arduin sure as hell does.  Way more Heavy Metal sensibilities there.

  I would think that any game that has Bilbo Baggins, Conan the Barbarian, Holger Carlsen, Aragorn, and Cugel the Clever teaming up to fit orcs, giant apes, mushroom people, Fafnir the Wyrm, Hammer vampires, Arabian djinn, Japanese oni, pagan demons and Christian-inspired devils while hopping between Christian, Greek, Buddhist, Native American and other afterlives would certainly count as 'psychotronic'. And that's before you start adding in the sci-fi elements that were around from nearly the beginning, or the Blackmoor train ...

Quote from: cranebump;769604This is why OSR supporters catch a lot of shit. The good thing is, most of us can admit 1E is a massive load of minutiae and still play it. Wouldn't be me, though. If I was gonna actual old school (and not a retroclone), it'd be BECMI and all ITS minutiae.:-)

On the real improbability of actual character death: I always hated it but I forgot that it used to be better the other way. Over the last six months I've reintroduced that hardcore ethos to my kids and they love it.

Every recently published game I can immediately think of are pretty hard to die in. 4E is pretty iconic in this respect at this point, but there are others. You have to just about go out of your way to commit character suicide. I'm a little worried about the extent to which this remains true in 5E. It seems likely that the only way a character can even be knocked out of action for more than 8 hours is a total party kill.

Quote from: The Butcher;769632For so-called "cinematic" low-lethality stuff I generally skip D&D and BRP in favor of Savage Worlds. And I still wish I could get FATE to work for me, but there you go.

Savage Worlds is surprisingly very deadly. In the game I'm running, I've lost a player character every session for the past ten sessions. Hell, my players are considering the edge "Hard to Kill" near mandatory.

Quote from: Larsdangly;769754Every recently published game I can immediately think of are pretty hard to die in. 4E is pretty iconic in this respect at this point, but there are others. You have to just about go out of your way to commit character suicide. I'm a little worried about the extent to which this remains true in 5E. It seems likely that the only way a character can even be knocked out of action for more than 8 hours is a total party kill.

This pretty much the opposite from my experiences (which mostly include v3.5 and 4E). Over the course of playing 3.5 I've run games where TPKs would happen often (thanks CR!!) and in 4E I've had character deaths in nearly every single campaign I run or have played in (my hybrid Swordmage|Warlord just perished in our Dark Sun campaign).

The difficulty is honestly what's being discussed here, but I feel it's relative to the DM's way of playing a game, the decisions of the players, and how much give any particular system has at "forgiveness". Perhaps we play our v3.5 games and 4E games differently but going up against a lich in 3E was scary (same thing with Ghouls too or spells that just straight up remove you from the fight). In 4E you did NOT want to lose surges....ever due to monsters.

And of course the monsters have effects that can end you in 2-3 turns. But I guess that's it right there, isn't it? The fact that it takes the monsters 2 or 3 turns to kill you outright instead of just 1. But if the end result is the same, such as it adds tension and is fun and can be deadly, does it matter if it's 1 roll or 2? Certainly I feel it's more suspenseful if I've already failed a 2 death saving throws and I'm on the brink of my 3rd and there's this feeling of like "oh man, I have this feeling I'm gonna screw it up." and then that dreaded 9 rolls and you know "crap, I'm dead. Dammit, why didn't I grab that feat that gives me +1 to saving throws!" *shakes fists at the dice gods!!*

New project: I'm going to try like heck never to use the word "roll" in conjunction with dice.

Gonna try to always say "throw."

Totall OT but not worth its own thread, and "throw the dice" just sounds older.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769696If you're not coddled then why are you taking offense?

Who said I was taking offense? It was more or less a reference to the idea that a particular play-style, in this case deadly 1E AD&D, is at odds with people who like to character optimize, theory-craft, or enjoy balance. I'm attempting to establish that the two are not mutually exclusive.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;769534CR, magic wish lists, removal of "save or suck", easy recovery energy drain.  If you're arguing 3 and 4 are not inherently more safe then 1, & 2, I'd like to see the argument, frankly.  However, the article isn't talking about any of that.

First, magic wish lists are just that, wish lists. And they need not EVER be catered to. Ever. I'm not entirely sure what CR has to do with this discussion? Save or Suck are present in 3E and in 4E except it takes more than just 1 roll to take effect (in 4E's case).

But your right, the article isn't really discussing those concepts. It's making a general idea that older games are deadly. Perhaps "deadlier" than modern games. I, personally, don't find that to be true when we're comparing death at the system level. Within the context of it's own game, 4E is deadly when looking at it from a 4E perspective and 1E AD&D is deadly looking at it from a 1E AD&D perspective. The two don't match up enough to cross-reference them. The rules and expectations from the system are to different.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769696Where in the article does he say "Those new players are whiny little bitches!"  He said in the old games, frequently a single roll could spell Doom or success beyond any reasonable hope, and that outlook, and the experience it brings has value as is evidenced by a return to a more old school sensibility.

I never said he made claims that people are whiny bitches, however I said that someone could take his article to imply that. The opinion piece is titled: "The dice can kill you: Why first edition AD&D is king" which can be implied that the dice may not kill you in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th editions. Which is blatantly untrue.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769696Where's the beef?

My beef was to clarify that things like Optimization transcend editions and play-styles

Quote from: Batman;769827It was more or less a reference to the idea that a particular play-style, in this case deadly 1E AD&D, is at odds with people who like to character optimize, theory-craft, or enjoy balance. I'm attempting to establish that the two are not mutually exclusive.

I hear you. No one took to OD&D as quickly as our resident CharOp wizard, but I chalk it up to him being a smart cookie in general.

The GNS, Big Model or whatever it's called crowd did lump player-skill enthusiasts and the CharOp crowd together under "S" and I can see how you might argüe that both reward player skill, although a very different set vof skills in each case. But my game table experience agrees with you that they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Case in point: upon rolling Str 6, Dex 13, Con 8, he picked the Fighting Man class and armed himself with a longbow. "The best class choice for a low Con OD&D character who wants to survive, is Fighting Man." mind = blown