Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gus L" data-source="post: 9664761" data-attributes="member: 7045072">I disagree.  I played a lot of D&D in the 1980's and there were plenty of different ways the game was played. There were good and bad referees. Moreover, these differences were part of table culture, which was dominant then because there were far fewer means of offical or even inter-hobbyist communication - magazines and conferences were pretty much it. Even TSR referee advice is inconsistent across editions, adventures, or even within the AD&D DMG.As far as recency biases - the Post-OSR idea that early games were intended as some kind of test of spiritual or intellectual test with harsh rules and constant OC death seems to largely be a reaction to many OSR ideas - it's a 2020's reinvention all the way. The rules don't really support it either - while B/X and D&D do have a death at 0HP rule, we know this rule started getting modified fast because the raise dead spell wasn't satisfying. Look at survivability in AD&D ... you get -10 HP before dying! When did this rule really appear in play? I suspect like most AD&D things it started pretty early.  Then consider things like the suggestions in B2 to give players healing potions and extra mercenaries to soak damage. The "sacrament of death" is more a late 90's trad idea then a old school one.  I generally think that the idea that there was a clear and correct way to play early D&D is no more true then the idea that there is a clear and correct way to play modern games.Death saves as used in 5E are are a fairly new idea - though the System Shock roll is in the LBBs and its purpose there is somewhat unclear, and very few OSR and POSR death saves are as lenient as those in 5E (but 5E aims at a different kind of experience - so it makes sense that it's different). As a mechanic the death save is not especially important, a minor variation on the rules that makes a lot of sense in games where raise dead isn't a service you can buy at any village church and party sizes are generally 4-6. How one does them is of course a different subject, but on the whole they make a lot more sense to me then the -10 and you're dead thing in AD&D I mentioned above.This sounds like an issue with low trust tables.  When players and referees trust each other this isn't a concern. I think this is largely because the referee shows that they aren't playing any intellectual dominance games or hiding the ball ... they  are acting to adjudicate the fiction in as impartial a manner as possible.  When the dice fall badly the consequences make sense, just like they do when the dice fall well - the fictional world hangs together with consistency and results while not necessarily predictable are sensible. I haven't met many players who had a problem with this kind of thing.  I have met players who have a problem when DMs start acting arbitrarily, or punitively.</blockquote>

Verification