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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7716301" data-attributes="member: 6688937"><p>This whole thing some old-timers have about how back in their day PCs actually had to work for a living and walk in 9 ft deep snow to the dragon's lair and it was uphill both ways and ....</p><p></p><p>That just doesn't match my experiences with Old-school at all. Mine seem much more in line with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, even when the DM was using all or most of the rules that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned. I don't think I've ever met an old-school dwarf who made it more than a few levels without <em>somehow </em>running into the Franklin Mint Dwarven Heritage Artifact Collection. (For that matter, I was recently playing a 1e OSR revival game and we found them as treasure in a <u>published</u> adventure at about level 4, IIRC.) My High School group played mostly published adventures and my first college group played mostly homebrew in the FR. I don't know how you miss all the treasure. Just put your finger on the wall and never let go until you've mapped and murdered the whole place. The whole procedure is often referred to as "cleaning out the dungeon" for cryin' out loud. I've witnessed 20 minute arguments about whether or not the party should make the effort to take the copper pieces. "Sure, individually they're worthless, but we have 35,000 of them."</p><p></p><p>Were the rules "harder"? Aside from being terribly-edited and occasionally inconsistent, I don't actually think so. Old-School DMs could easily achieve whip-saws in lethality just by switching monsters. You want to increase death in 1e, just increase the number of "save or die" events and vice-versa. Heck, if you're in the upper single digit levels or higher, that might be your only hope, if you want to whack a fighter type. They've just got waayyy too many hp WRT monster damage output and "to hit" numbers. BUT! So what? You've probably got more than one <em>Raise Dead</em> scroll lying around. Because, as I said about magic in the other thread:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Now, could a DM just kill characters through pure arbitrary malice? Sure, but I don't see how that's any different than it is today, other than perhaps culturally being more or less acceptable, and I'll bet that varies a lot between modern groups as well. However, I'm not sure that increasing random/arbitrary lethality makes the game "harder". Its not like we didn't complete the dungeons anyway. Unless you want to count the paperwork necessary for occasionally making up a new character....</p><p></p><p>As always YMMV, and its just my $.02</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 7716301, member: 6688937"] This whole thing some old-timers have about how back in their day PCs actually had to work for a living and walk in 9 ft deep snow to the dragon's lair and it was uphill both ways and .... That just doesn't match my experiences with Old-school at all. Mine seem much more in line with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s, even when the DM was using all or most of the rules that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned. I don't think I've ever met an old-school dwarf who made it more than a few levels without [I]somehow [/I]running into the Franklin Mint Dwarven Heritage Artifact Collection. (For that matter, I was recently playing a 1e OSR revival game and we found them as treasure in a [U]published[/U] adventure at about level 4, IIRC.) My High School group played mostly published adventures and my first college group played mostly homebrew in the FR. I don't know how you miss all the treasure. Just put your finger on the wall and never let go until you've mapped and murdered the whole place. The whole procedure is often referred to as "cleaning out the dungeon" for cryin' out loud. I've witnessed 20 minute arguments about whether or not the party should make the effort to take the copper pieces. "Sure, individually they're worthless, but we have 35,000 of them." Were the rules "harder"? Aside from being terribly-edited and occasionally inconsistent, I don't actually think so. Old-School DMs could easily achieve whip-saws in lethality just by switching monsters. You want to increase death in 1e, just increase the number of "save or die" events and vice-versa. Heck, if you're in the upper single digit levels or higher, that might be your only hope, if you want to whack a fighter type. They've just got waayyy too many hp WRT monster damage output and "to hit" numbers. BUT! So what? You've probably got more than one [I]Raise Dead[/I] scroll lying around. Because, as I said about magic in the other thread: Now, could a DM just kill characters through pure arbitrary malice? Sure, but I don't see how that's any different than it is today, other than perhaps culturally being more or less acceptable, and I'll bet that varies a lot between modern groups as well. However, I'm not sure that increasing random/arbitrary lethality makes the game "harder". Its not like we didn't complete the dungeons anyway. Unless you want to count the paperwork necessary for occasionally making up a new character.... As always YMMV, and its just my $.02 [/QUOTE]
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