My son is not an adversarial DM at all. He pulls no punches though. Rolls in the open for combat and there are death saves. It strikes me a lot of the things I hated about old school D&D are the things I love about old school D&D.
It is certainly true that when the rules are ignored, the game can be whatever you wish. At a certain point, we are all playing Amber Diceless RPG, we just don't know it.
But when I look at old NPC item payloads, they can get pretty crazy by modern standards, too. A big part of advancement back then was getting all those fancy magic items.
Amber has way stricter and clearer rules than D&D-type games from that era, so I guess this is a joke, but it's totally triggering my rules-nerd side. Amber isn't a "do what you want, there are no rules maaaaaan" game. It's precisely the opposite. The same is true for a lot of diceless games re: stricter/clearer rules than dice-based ones.
I would say he is unusual in that regard. He has had a grognard's soul since he was very young. He is much more old school than his old man!I wonder if he'd feel the same way, on the other side of the table. With you as a DM "pulling no punches", and just wiping out PC after PC. At 16, he might be fine with it. Or not. At 12 I suspect he wouldn't have really enjoyed that, unless he is a bit unusual.
We rarely ignored the rules - some homebrew magic and monsters was about the extent - some of those 1e treasure hoards were extreme. We were just kids with unlimited time and we would grind hard, and we sure weren’t alone in the 80’s. I think G1-G3 had a couple of million gp in cash and multiple rings of wishes between them and some judges guild adventures had some pretty crazy gear. Hence my question about what game and what edition the OP was playing. We also played adventures where we lost plenty of PCs but the ones that finished ended up pretty well off. But as I say I think there is a difference between actual 1e and what is classed as an OSR style game. I haven’t played 5 Torches Deep.It is certainly true that when the rules are ignored, the game can be whatever you wish. At a certain point, we are all playing Amber Diceless RPG, we just don't know it.
One of the nice things about 5E is how easy it is to tweak. Double the XP to level, half the amount of XP from monsters, give XP for non-combat encounters (social, exploration, and quest), and this will give a feeling of taking a while to reach those higher levels, while not wanting to fight everything. Reduce the healing from a Long Rest to only Level+Con modifier, and require a Wis/Medicine check to get HP from HD during a Short Rest, which will keep a lethal level, as HP will be hard to come by without spending spells. Damage equal to your Con score while dying kills you instantly, rather than you full HP, and remove the ability of the Healers Kit. Remove Revivify, as that makes death less relevant at a lower level, and don't allow potions of healing to be purchased. Double the damage from traps and poison, and use cumulative falling damage (20ft = 3d6, 30ft = 6d6, etc.) to make exploration risky.Fair enough. We can agree to disagree. I certainly have the occasional fatality in 5e, but the experience feels very different with the older rules to me.
I would say he is unusual in that regard. He has had a grognard's soul since he was very young. He is much more old school than his old man!
One of the nice things about 5E is how easy it is to tweak. Double the XP to level, half the amount of XP from monsters, give XP for non-combat encounters (social, exploration, and quest), and this will give a feeling of taking a while to reach those higher levels, while not wanting to fight everything. Reduce the healing from a Long Rest to only Level+Con modifier, and require a Wis/Medicine check to get HP from HD during a Short Rest, which will keep a lethal level, as HP will be hard to come by without spending spells. Damage equal to your Con score while dying kills you instantly, rather than you full HP, and remove the ability of the Healers Kit. Remove Revivify, as that makes death less relevant at a lower level, and don't allow potions of healing to be purchased. Double the damage from traps and poison, and use cumulative falling damage (20ft = 3d6, 30ft = 6d6, etc.) to make exploration risky.
Using these suggestions, you return to a feel of old school AD&D, where death lay around every corner.
I think this is an oft-ignored aspect of OSR play. It's not that the characters had less power, it's that the power wasn't available as a player-choice driven mechanic. It was acquired through play and mostly random. It helps reinforce the idea of cautious play because if the character dies, there's no guarantee that you'll get anywhere near the same amount or type of power you've already required.Same, definitely. I ran a few of them, to be honest. But when I look at old NPC item payloads, they can get pretty crazy by modern standards, too. A big part of advancement back then was getting all those fancy magic items. Maybe not The Sword of Atomic Annihilation, but really, back then we all had all sorts of homebrew magic items in varying levels of insanity.
Exactly. Take a look at almost every class feature the Fighter gets as they level. In the earliest version of the game... you'd only get those mechanical features through acquiring magic items, not from receiving them as part of leveling up.I think is an oft-ignored aspect of OSR play. It's not that the characters had less power, it's that the power wasn't available as a player-choice driven mechanic. It was acquired through play and mostly random. It helps reinforce the idea of cautious play because if the character dies, there's no guarantee that you'll get anywhere near the same amount or type of power you've already required.
That's a good point. There's also some shades of this in rolling well in a more restrictive environment. If you actually roll well on 3d6 in order it's a big deal. You can't just grab another standard array and cut and paste. I also think that in many cases, some of the best heroic roleplaying is done in spite of fear of character death rather than in it's absence. That's not unique to OSR by any means, but it is a feature.I think is an oft-ignored aspect of OSR play. It's not that the characters had less power, it's that the power wasn't available as a player-choice driven mechanic. It was acquired through play and mostly random. It helps reinforce the idea of cautious play because if the character dies, there's no guarantee that you'll get anywhere near the same amount or type of power you've already required.