GoT was a politics heavy game. If you wanted your 5th level game to be that. Then focus less on combat and more on role-play and intrigue. As long as you have player buy in to that there should be no problem and fit you bill as fighting abilities and magic doesn't matter so much in role-playing nobles sipping tea while plotting against each other. I personally would not play that style of game. If we don't get a minimum of 4 combat encounters in I feel bad. I like adventure gaming not amateur acting classes. I say that not to be rude as again I do think role-playing is an important element of the game, and if the PCS have fun cool. My point is, GoT is mainly political intrigue and social interaction and in D&D those things are largely independent of class abilities, etc for the most part.
I'm not a fan of amatuer acting classes either.
I was referring to the power level of the characters in GoT vis a vis combat capability and physical capability, not anything to do about the politics of the books. Last time I checked, when Jon Snow had to fight the white walkers, he didn't sprout luminescent wings, fly into the air, and shoot fire beams out of his eyes.
No. If the DM is making encounters and not paying attention to the ECL level and throws deadly encounters on the regular that is squarely the DMs fault. The game is built around a certain default level and to make the Pc the heroes via their abilites and to expedite the number of encounters that take place in a game. Unlike in previoius editions encounters in 5E should move fast at all levels of play. The encounters and monster challenges are designed not from the perspective of how easy the monster is to kill but rather how much damage that monster can do to a PC. Even if a monster has relatively low HP if it puts out a decent amount of damage via abilities like pack tactics, etcetera that monster can very quickly over power a party. The difficulty levels are labeled for a reason. The DM determines the difficulty level. Outside of extremely unlucky rolls if the every encounter is difficult and PC dies due to consistently deadly encounters the fault is rightly the DMs.
This confirms my point relating to the fundamental differences in expectations I often have with 5E.
I don't want a play a D&D game where the default is to make the PCs the heroes via their abilities. That sounds like there is a expectation of the PCs should always win and never fail. It also seems to state an expectation where the character's abilities are what is important.
My character isn't a hero just because I created it. My character might become a hero if it does heroic acts in the face of adversity in challenging environment. My character might also die in a pit trap in the dark dungeon and be forgotten.
How well I play the game will determine which fate will come to pass.
I would say OSR games are more like Pabst blue ribbon. Something that was good enough to get by at one time but still appreciated by a crowd trying to be hip based on nostalgia of what the beer was
. Seriously, I would never completey diss ole Pabst but the hipsters drinking it like they were the Bruce Sprinstein working class cracks me up but on that I will digress!
PBR, really?!? I thought they all moved on to Carling Black Label.
The beer analogy is silly and your dig at nostalgia and that it is a hipster fad is also silly.
The only way character deaths really don't happen that frequently in OSR games if characters are playing it more like survival horror vs fantasy, which is okay in Call of Cthulhu but in D&D I want heroic Sword and sorcery fantasy ie cinematic action, larger than life heroes.
It's all about preference. You prefer heroic larger than life cinematic action. I don't.
I prefer a more realistic approach to the game. I don't want superheroes in D&D, I want mortal level characters. I want to have my success at the game be based more on the choices I make as a player as opposed to the powers my character has on the character sheet.
You call that survival horror and akin to playing Call of Cthuhlu, I call that playing D&D.
