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<blockquote data-quote="TerraDave" data-source="post: 6031871" data-attributes="member: 22260">Yes, its quite a sweeping essay.You could spend some time on your CoC character, and (earlier) WHFRP has very interesting chardev options. And then there is GURPS or Champion/Hero, where you could spend more time making a character then playing one. Back to D&amp;D. The mechanics of character death didn't really change from 1E to 3E. In some ways, 3E is deadlier.&nbsp; And 3E seemed to coincide with a push to let the dice fall as they may, making it potentially very deadly. But Treebore is right, a DM could always run a harsh game, or a more forgiving one, and all sorts in between. Largely independent of mechanics.But lets set aside things like complexity (tangentially related), story (somewhat related), and balance (less related then you might think). Lets look at 4E. 4E was designed to take out any fudging by making characters very robust. What happened? An arms race. Even in the first module, some super tough encounters that could lead to a TPK. All sorts of house rules, and eventually an official escalation of monster capabilities, especially damage. Gamers wanted the deadly back.People like to pretend to risk death. Thats why it permeates drama, and not just action-adventure. Its a core part of the RPG experience: risking death without actually dying yourself. You don't have that, you have just got candy-land.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TerraDave, post: 6031871, member: 22260"] Yes, its quite a sweeping essay. You could spend some time on your CoC character, and (earlier) WHFRP has very interesting chardev options. And then there is GURPS or Champion/Hero, where you could spend more time making a character then playing one. Back to D&D. The mechanics of character death didn't really change from 1E to 3E. In some ways, 3E is [I]deadlier[/I]. And 3E seemed to coincide with a push to let the dice fall as they may, making it potentially very deadly. But Treebore is right, a DM could always run a harsh game, or a more forgiving one, and all sorts in between. Largely independent of mechanics. But lets set aside things like complexity (tangentially related), story (somewhat related), and balance (less related then you might think). Lets look at 4E. 4E was designed to take out any fudging by making characters very robust. What happened? An arms race. Even in the first module, some super tough encounters that could lead to a TPK. All sorts of house rules, and eventually an official escalation of monster capabilities, especially damage. Gamers wanted the deadly back. People like to pretend to risk death. Thats why it permeates drama, and not just action-adventure. Its a core part of the RPG experience: risking death without actually dying yourself. You don't have that, you have just got candy-land. [/QUOTE]

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