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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7716710" data-attributes="member: 22779">Look, at the end of the day, the argument over the "sweet spot" of lethality in gaming is as old as gaming.  This exact argument has been hashed and rehashed in the pages of Dragon and whatnot since the 1970's.  This is not anything new.The thing is, the sweet spot is going to vary greatly depending on the play styles and preferences of a given table.  If you want to do really old school style gaming, where you have the Town at X and the Dungeon at Y and your weekly play consists of forays into that dungeon, then, yup, you want high lethality.  It's part and parcel to what makes that type of game fun.  Only problem is, that's not the only game in town and that was recognized, again, virtually from day 1.  In a Hexploration game (which is about as old school as you can get), there becomes very pragmatic issues regarding lethality.  In a Mega-Dungeon game, when your PC dies, your group heads back to town, and you get a new PC.  No problems, it's fairly plausible.  However, in a hexploration game, where you're in the middle of the Isle of Dread, it becomes a bit implausible when the fifth stranger you've met, just happens to be yet another wandering PC who joins your group to replace your latest casualty.  It makes that game less fun for the participants if death is frequent and random.Never minding that more plotzy games have been part of the hobby since very early.  I loved playing the old James Bond 007 RPG.  Tons of fun.  But, it makes zero sense to play that as an old style meat grinder.  Completely doesn't fit with the tone or genre and makes the game very unfun.  Thus, in the 007 game, you have Action Points (Bond Points?  It's been a long time, I forget the exact term) where you, as the player, have a great deal of narrative control over the game.  And this came out in about 1983, so, I'm thinking it counts as pretty "old school".Rolling back to fantasy, there's also the issue of fantasy genre expectations.  Fantasy fiction really doesn't fit (at least of the time) with the idea of a revolving door of dead characters.  It's not until pretty recently with George R.R. Martin and others where you see fantasy fiction with strings of dead characters.  Going back to Tolkien (I hate Godwinning this thread), of the original Fellowship, there's only one death.  That's it.  Rolling even further back to the pulps, your main characters almost never die.  Sure, various red-shirt side characters pop up and get ganked, but, the main guys?  Nope, they suffer and then keep right on rolling.  ((Of course, this makes a lot more sense when you realize that those serial pulp authors wanted to keep making money, so, killing their main bread winner was just NOT going to happen)).  But, when you look at D&D's wargaming roots, frequent death makes perfect sense.  No one cares when their three meeple on the Ukraine in Risk get munched.  You pick up the pieces, and put them right back on the board next round.  Given that all the pieces are identical, who cares if you lose one?  However, that wargaming root ran smack dab into the impulse for theatricalism that is part and parcel to the hobby as well.  Lots of people play RPG's to create a story.  Which means that revolving door PC's don't work very well.  I don't think I'm saying anything controversial here.  Which is why I've had a real problem wrapping my head around the notion that this is something new.  That there's been some sort of change in the way D&D has been played since virtually day one.  Every single one of the issues we've talked about here can be found in the first twenty or thirty issues of The Dragon.  This is not a new thing.</blockquote>

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