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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8518449" data-attributes="member: 42040">Oh, I understand now. It's not that there were perceived expectations, it's was what my perceived expectations were and how I phrased them. Thank you for clarifying.So my perceived expectations of play are certainly only my perceptions. Maybe no one else had the same ones, and I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong by saying they have another perception of what the edition was like and what style of play it seems to promote. I wasn't at anyone else's game.I'd say that the tournament modules (such as Tomb of Horrors) definitely have a "git gud bro" tone to them. I don't think I'm reading anything into the text that Gygax didn't intend.For me, the climate in online forums and in published works at that time was an ever-expanding library of player-facing options, which necessitated in an arms race between GM and players. To challenge players with access to the latest splats, with characters tooled by the online think-tank into impervious superheroes, GMs had to create encounters (and share them) to "stop" their players. So I had ones like an underwater Evards black tentacles trap to grapple characters, trying to drown them, while shadows flew in and sapped their Strength, compounding the danger from the grapple. You had extraordinarily deadly encounters in published adventures, calling to mind the Roper and Black Dragon in Forge of Fury (which any GM could wipe out a party with that encounter). And there would be blocks of text describing tactics for the GM to obliterate the party. So my takeaway was definitely learning how to be a Killer GM. Maybe it wasn't what everyone else learned, but that was the lesson it taught me.If I had my library handy, I could cite the adventure modules that do this. I do remember the Shadowdale adventure specifically had Elminster appear and accidentally cast heal on the adventurers (while trying to train his puppy) so they wouldn't be injured. I remember others (not by name, but I could find them) that tells the DM to "stop the attack before killing any characters" and things of that nature.</blockquote>

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