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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8364343" data-attributes="member: 85555">Regarding lethality back in the day, I started in '86. I can't comment on the very early days. But one thing I will say is I think it is really hard to say what the overall gaming culture was at that time because things really did vary tremendously from table to table. There was no internet, this was a new hobby (even in 86 it still felt new), and going from one table to the next play assumptions could be wildly different. My impression just from reading and playing games, reading stuff like Dragon, etc was things were more lethal and I started seeing a shift away from lethality during the 2E era when focusing more on story became the thing (sometime by the mid-90s is when I first started to hear don't kill players unless they do something really, really stupid, for example). It definitely felt like the system was got less lethal from 3E on to me. My sense was that the GM advice by the mid 2E era was leaning heavily towards being less lethal, and by 3E and 4E the system had caught up with that advice more. Of course the GM is important. If the GM throws a bunch of deadly encounters at the party, even with HP inflation, the PCs can die more easily in a grittier version of the game with a more gentle GM. But I did notice more of a tendency, especially at the early levels for things like characters getting one shotted out of the blue to be a possibility in the earlier days of play. I also noticed more acceptable and excitement around mechanics like level drain (which definitely become much controversial and less powerful over time). There isn't one right way to do it. I tend to prefer more lethal games. Just my preference. Also this is just D&D. There were a bunch of other games being played at the time. One of the reasons I liked Cthulhu for example was it was more lethal and characters could go crazy. I found sessions of Cthulhu were almost always exciting and fun no matter what and generally chalked it up to the 'embrace the mayhem and unpredictably' of it. Can't speak to current editions of Cthulhu.</blockquote>

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