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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9796330" data-attributes="member: 7035894">I want to push back on the supposedly lethality of old school games. I've played since early 1e, and we had characters who lasted for years. In fact, even if a main character did occasionally die, raise dead-type spells were quite obtainable. And it wasn't just my group; campaigns running for ages with the same characters was routine, and characters often played in different campaigns. Many of the spells in D&D to this day are named after characters who were played for years in Gygax's original campaign.Tournament-style play was its own thing, but a typical game of 1e did not involve high lethality. I would say the lethality wasn't much different from 5e, or really any edition of D&D. Obviously there are groups that are the exception, but generally speaking, no edition of D&D has been a high lethality RPG.Hirelings were way more of a thing back then, and they did die, but that wasn't remotely the same as character death, as the whole point of hirelings was that they were disposable.</blockquote>