Quote from: Spinachcat;1112091Post the link! That's a great story!

Ask and you shall receive.  First some music to set the tone for this tell of woe.

[video=youtube;t0CR1IJKMPo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0CR1IJKMPo&list=FL7-IcXEWoFVCBWfjzGEqdsQ&index=9&t=0s[/youtube]

Now for the tell to begin.  Sit around everyone because you will see a actual role playing game.

Hell yeah its fun.

For OSR games deadliness is a strong feature.

Especially when deadliness is applied to non hit point situations. When you have avenues to death that bypass and ignore hit points, you promote more varied style play. If you are facing save or die poisons or save or level drain undead, you have to approach these creatures differently than you would against an ablative hit point threat.

When everything has to go through hit points, you run into the weird issues where Constitution defends against incorporeal touch or spells and abilities that pump hp or grant temp hp have universal benefit.

If I got save or died or save or level drained, I'd learn from it. Darn it, I died, I'll try to do better next time.

I once ran an AD&D game where the halfling thief died because he got a little too enamored with the ring of invisibility that he'd recently acquired.  To make it short:  Decided that he was 6' tall and arrow proof with the ring.  Scouted everything.  Worked very well to keep the party from getting surprised.  Decided to disable a trap without reporting back to the party first.  Was incapacitated.  Happened to be in a room that saw a lot of enemy traffic.  Meanwhile, party decides something has gone wrong (players didn't know what had happened) and start looking for him.  They find the room the same time a wandering group of monsters show up.  The fight attracts more, including some big ones.  In the back and forth fight, with each side gaining the upper hand and losing it, morale breaking, rallies, and several charges, the poor halfling is tramped to death 1d3 hit points at a time.  

He was 7th level and uninjured before the trap.  They never did find his body or the ring.

Quote from: ffilz;1112370A carnivore that has downed it's prey is going to try and drag it to a safe place to eat if it can do so. Of course carnivores that take down a larger target will expect the rest of the herd to flee. Really most RPG combats with animals are probably not very realistic...

You havent been around many animals then.

Animals can be as unpredictable as people. Sometimes moreso as they can and will act in ways that are not the norm. Or at least not the expected norm.

Not all of the heroes or villains will die in a given fight...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV8YXCGFh8I

Just the 0-level men-at-arms perished there. Of course, then the DM was an arsehole and sent a poisoned snake in a bow after one of the players. "Forty hit points, you say? I'll show you what your forty hit points are good for! Save vs Poison!"

The scenes in these movies have inspired many in my games over the years. After all, who doesn't want to fight the villain while he's in the middle of a cannibalistic orgy?

At the end of the day though the answer to the question is, as allways...

Varies from table to table, group to group, campaign to campaign, player to player.

And one players deadly might be another players exciting and another players really boring. Same really with campaigns where death, or its equivalent, is rare. For some thats fine, for others its deadly boring. Everyone has their threshold as with all else in gaming.

Wow! I got quoted by a spambot!

BTW my 12 year old son was complaining today that 5e D&D is too easy, and he prefers Classic D&D or S&W. He's pretty Old School.

Quote from: S'mon;1112728Wow! I got quoted by a spambot!

BTW my 12 year old son was complaining today that 5e D&D is too easy, and he prefers Classic D&D or S&W. He's pretty Old School.

New kid, old school. There goes the nostalgia canard people like to trot out when they talk about why OSR games are so popular.

Spotted on the K&KA:

Quote from: FlambeauxHosting another game session for my kids and their friends. Currently 15 players are confirmed. After sending their exploration of the Withered Crag, without having discovered most of its secrets, they're answering the call of the Keep on the Borderlands. The last party these players had were all eaten by owlbears during a previous misadventure in the vicinity.

If that doesn't make you go "Hell yes! I want this game!", I am sad to say you may be better off doing origami. :cool:

I think that lethality isn't the problem, I think that the way it is expressed and the GM's interaction with lethality is the problem.

I had a GM for awhile who had a bunch of skull-and-bones stickers, and everytime a PC died, he would write the name and date on one, and stick it on the whiteboard. I'm sure some of you think that's a good idea, or at least funny, but honestly the message it sends to me is "I enjoy killing characters and find it amusing, regardless of how you feel about it."

Now obviously the GM is running team monster, which means he necessarily has the goal of killing PCs, when in that mode. But there is a world of difference between RPing team monster, and generally just being an assclown about PC deaths.

If the game is just some throwaway dungeon crawl fare, then sure, I can just "make a dude" and roll with it if he dies. But in that context, don't expect me to come up with a backstory or personality - shit, you're probably lucky if said character has anything past a first name. But in my mind, that's not a character, it's a pawn. That kind of game isn't really my speed.

But if you want me to get invested in the game, actually give a damn about the setting, and think about the consequences of actions? You need to tone down the "viking hat" bullshit and actually communicate with players. If I'm going to invest time and effort into putting together a reasonable character concept, I'd expect that you respect that enough to not pull crap like "you die, no save."

Yeah, it's great to see Flambeaux running for all those kids.  He's an avid homeschooler who has a podcast about using gaming in homeschooling.  

http://played.podbean.com/

Kids simply don't care about all the RPG conventional wisdom dedicated hobbyists are convinced is important.  They just want to have fun.

Yeah, I don't get that sort of pleasure, even if it is done in the spirit of competitive fun or even comedy.

I see myself as a fan of the players' PCs, hence they get my spotlight attention. Which reminds me, whatever cool stuff I may be doing in my world, my players' PCs take priority -- a way to keep me on task instead of "showing fresh-eyes/victims my lovely stories."

However I am also a neutral arbiter of an ideally self-coherent fictional world. I won't play favorites, and actions do have consequences -- as does luck! So I do find myself sad as PCs, to whom we at the table have become attached, die.

That's part of the fun and challenge for me. Characters who deliberately court danger and eventually get their ticket punched have a full living cycle. They end up 'breathing' by 'living on the edge' with what time they have. It's not the death or killing, it's the cheering on as players rev the PCs into life's curves. :cool:

Lethality is fun in OSR games because it means there's more skin in the game. When you have a character that makes a really good run it actually means something.

As a player I prefer it because it helps me become more invested in the character when I'm nervous that he might actually die. As a GM I think high lethality helps keep players grounded, it's been my experience that players in these sorts of games treat the game world more seriously.