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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9376580" data-attributes="member: 7635">Wooo, omnibus reply time. This was something I missed in my first brainstorming. The DM is a player just as much as the others, but he's the facilitator and narrator moreso than the referee. He stands to make sure his players are having fun, even if things don't go great for their characters. TPKs are unfortunate events created by bad planning as much as bad dice and considered more of a failure state than a badge of honor. Combat can be a factor, but its combat with purpose rather than combat for combat's sake. Which is why you get the whole "epic boss battle" situation where players feel cheated if a fight is too easy as much as if it is too hard. Killing a boss in one round is anti-climatic. It becomes a balancing act. The seeds were planted long before the garden was in bloom. Hickmanesque storytelling in both Dragonlance and Ravenloft certainly point to a play style which is proto-NS in its thinking. The 2e settings and metaplots certainly moved the game towards one where the PCs are heroes rather than mercenaries. GDQ was the proto-AP. NS didn't appear overnight, it was a reaction to elements of OS play where people asked "but why IS the vampire in the dungeon?"Minigiant sums it up below: OS challenges the player, NS challenges the character. The OS DM rewards clever play, strategy, intuition, and tactics. The NS DM rewards connection, bravery, conviction, fidelity to concept, and getting into character. Which is an interesting point I hadn't fully considered. I don't say "I (player) beat the Tomb of Horrors" I say "Remathilis (character) beat the Tomb of Horrors". Its HIS accomplishment as much as mine, and I did it with a combination of his skills and my play. There is no sharp dividing line that separates when OS becomes NS. Its not like you can say "3e is when D&D became NS" because thats not remotely true. 3e moved the needle along (and I feel for the first time, the rules began to reflect NS elements in D&D worlds and adventures that had existed prior, but were at odds with AD&Ds OS roots) but there is no clear line where you have completely abandoned one for the other. Nor I guess should there be. I have played the OS style modules. I remember them fondly. There are some OS elements I still prefer, you do not have to be 100% one side or the other. This ain't politics or cola-wars, you don't have to pick a side. <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=":)" />I would phrase it "The campaign" revolves around the characters. I find one of the traits of OS play is that specific characters aren't important; the world persists regardless if your particular characters live or die, succeed or fail. Which is why OS can be far more cavalier with PC death; the death of any given character doesn't matter at large. But in NS play, that particular character DOES matter. He has goals, destinies, allies and enemies and whole narrative strands that fall apart if they leave or die. A TPK in NS is usually the end of the story, a TPK is OS means the next set of PCs might stumble upoin the same quest and pick up where the others left off. Obviously, there are exceptions, but the general trend is that setting serves the story and story serves the characters.</blockquote>

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