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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8741284" data-attributes="member: 12731">One I think I couldn't immediately see in your list is how the game and its players are supposed to deal with character death.One strong draw, to me, of OSR games in general and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Crawl_Classics" target="_blank">DCC</a> in particular (since it's the only OSR game I've played/GMd extensively) is how it eschews the implied "social contract" between player and judge/DM that "your character is basically safe".Put in other words, a huge net negative for me in late-era games such as 5E is how many safety nets there are to minimize the risk of something bad happening permanently to your character, and you the player having to deal with this.One aspect of this you might not think of is system mastery. If the game is set up in such a way that a determined and reasonably competent player can plan out his character's "career" all the way from level 1 to level 10, 15 or wherever he or she thinks the campaign will end, then it's possible to say that the game encourages such behavior, since you unquestionably do get "better" results (minmax-wise) if you plan ahead and avoid making off-the-cuff decisions that easily are suboptimal.After a player has done this homework, he can - and this part is entirely reasonable - expect to not let it all go to waste because he rolls one bad roll and his character is killed or permanently cursed or something.More generally this is the rollplay vs roleplay discussion. The more mechanical bits the game offers for you to engage with, the easier it is for some players to "forget" about actually role-playing a fictional personality as a living breathing person, and just consider what "moves" yield the best outcome, basically treating your character as a collection of numbers and buttons to press to trigger abilities.DCC is not that type of game.It definitely is not a game where (most) monsters are markedly inferior compared to heroes, unable to do what the PHB gives player characters, and often entirely unequipped to deal with these abilities. It is not 5th Edition.Neither is it a game where the publisher spends an enormous amount of effort on providing as many choice points as possible, giving you several character design opinion at each level, even if the vast majority of your decisions end up not significantly changing your character's abilities. It is not Pathfinder 2E.Instead it is a game which celebrates heroes by putting them in real danger, so any accolades feel truly earned, rather than basically given to you unless you truly frak up. Behind every successful hero is at least one more now dead or diseased hero that paid the ultimate price.At basically any time you can meet an evil necromancer or trigger some ancient trap, making your eyes melt or give you a tentacle instead of a leg.The mindset of player entitlement, which basically says "since I've shown up, I can reasonably expect my hero to grow up to level 20 without needless interference, and I get to make any long-term decisions about his or her future", is replaced by a mindset where the players all cooperate with the Judge to write a novel or screenplay, and then play it out on stage or on screen, where one hero's downfall might be tragic for him or her, but overall a net positive for the story that is told. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Basically, when your character loses 6 Strength points, or your skin turns green, or you unceremoniously die in a gutter despite being level 7, you're supposed to take comfort in how you help write a memorable and affecting story, rather than throwing a tantrum because the DM and the game dared to "ruin" your carefully constructed plans for your hero! It's supposed to be good that these things happen, because it shows true courage from the heroes that despite real risks go forth and do heroics!</blockquote>

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