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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5171829" data-attributes="member: 21169">This is a very intelligent analysis, imo. OD&D takes a significant step away from wargames with the idea of one figure per player, instead of each player controlling many figures. But, with henchmen and hirelings, it's still not that removed from wargaming. The party is large, almost a small army, as described in Greg Svenson's account of an early Blackmoor session. As in wargaming, figures die easily. Which works, as you say, because it's also very easy to generate a new PC and each player is expected to have a stable of characters.D&D has continued to move away from the wargame model throughout its history, characters becoming more complex, and PC death becoming rarer. AD&D 1e has death at -10 hp instead of 0 and mentions fudging to save a deserving player's PC. I believe that in this period there is now a stronger culture of starting at higher than 1st level, which is also mentioned in the 1e DMG. 3e has max hit points at 1st level, as well as death at -10. It has more mechanically detailed PCs with skills and feats. However there are now criticals, and damage is higher. Imx, death was fairly frequent in 3e, probably too frequent given the increased complexity of char gen. 3e had, I think, not gone far enough in terms of keeping PCs alive, considering how complex they now were.Which brings us to 4e, which has characters equally as complex (maybe a little moreso) as 3e, but a lot less fragile. Much higher hit points, particularly at 1st level, while damage is about the same as it was in 3e.Addendum: With the acquisition of a stronghold and a small fighting force at name level in OD&D and 1e it almost seems the idea is to start off as a rpg and become a wargame. You start the game controlling a single figure and end it controlling hundreds. Dave Arneson seemed to play a rpg/wargame hybrid. His First Fantasy Campaign is mostly about a literal military campaign with armies of thousands invading the land of Blackmoor. I believe this was the culmination of his Blackmoor campaign. Maybe it's the LotR-esque idea of starting with a group of individuals and ending with mighty armies clashing and the fate of the world at stake. It just works as a story - rising tension, increasing scope.Very early on, characters in Arneson's game seemed to start as men-at-arms, the equivalent of 1st level characters. But in the manuscript he first sent to Gygax, he has the PCs starting as Heroes, Chainmail's equivalent of a 4th level character. (Gary altered this for OD&D.) So even prior to the publication of OD&D Arneson seems to have moved in a similar direction to that in which D&D later moved, having PCs become less fragile.</blockquote>

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