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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9065496" data-attributes="member: 6799660">In all the discussions in which I've participated regarding playing BitD, the one constant is the acknowledgement that there was no consistency. Few people played completely by the book, nor how the devs intended/expected people to play (which, honestly, do not perfectly overlap). It almost had to be the case. Dave and Gary successfully intuited that the exploration, encounter-resolution, and reward structures which people would find engaging; but all the rest (not just lethality, but pace, novelty, realism, and how much role-play alongside treasure-hunting) is going to be wildly divergent across a large player base.Look, I'm not going to come down too hard on this because, honestly, we've all been this guy (so much so that it's a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenIWasYourAge" target="_blank">trope </a>and an SNL <a href="https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Drunk_Uncle" target="_blank">fixture</a>). That said, no -- I fundamentally dispute the whole tropish 'kids these days with their bike helmets and participation trophies' middle-aged self-congratulatory-ism. Likewise, I have never found an issue where it is only one side of a position that is the one that "whines and cries."Everyone plays the game differently. Some prefer higher or lower lethality. However, in a game where death means you roll up a new character and are back to playing within the hour, one style is not more... correct, adult, manly*, badass, whatever positive spin term one wishes to use... than  another. I think we're a long way from the days where the notion that playing elfgames makes you some kind of wuss**, but at the same time playing elfgames -- much less how one plays them -- also isn't how one shows oneself to be a cut above.*or gender neutral equivalent. I'm still looking for the perfect term for this.** I'm the only non-VFW member of one of my gaming groups, or example.As to new generations, I manage a mid-sized team inside a ridiculously large corporation. I have watched careers develop from entry level programmers to principal positions. Kids these days just entering the workforce are honestly coming off as real badasses. They are doing more, with less, with unbounded energy and ambition and honestly a whole lot less whining over their life situation than previous generations despite objectively worse projected prospects. They took those participation trophies home and threw them in a box and treated them like we might a polaroid picture of a prior event ('proof I was there,' as opposed to, 'I got an award, yay me!'). More to the point, they knew they would be on point to adult right out the gate and under incredible scrutiny to perform (and any sign of weakness or prevarication seen as proof that they were lessor). I've noted that <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/" target="_blank">movies</a> and <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye" target="_blank">books </a>about <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheGraduate" target="_blank">how </a>hard <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SaturdayNightFever" target="_blank">it </a>is to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110950/" target="_blank">grow </a>up (with aimless characters that maybe blame the previous generation too much instead of actually do something, Holden) don't seem as prevalent in this crowd, despite them having every reason to do so. No, the kids are alright, watch them go out and do things we could only imagine.Anyways, yes, I think TSR-era D&D was, by the book (minus things like reaction tables and morale checks and such), quite a bit more lethal. I don't think it is true that people generally (at a general and demographic level) played them all that much more lethally. At least in terms on unrecoverable lethality (resurrection magic throws a wrench in all of this). People kitbashed the heck out of A/D&D, and raised or lowered the threat as they saw fit, just like today. I certainly do not know of any real evidence that modern players are more likely to object to character death (when it does happen) moreso than BitD gaming. Complaining about the potential for absurd, arbitrary, or out-of-nowhere character death in TSR-era A/D&D was so common that <a href="https://comic.nodwick.com/" target="_blank">various </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Dinner_Table" target="_blank">comics </a>made it their bread and butter. The more things change, the more they stay the same; and there were people who played in all sorts of ways back then, and similarly now. Likewise there were sore and gracious losers at all times, whiners and non-whiners on all sides of all issues, and so on.</blockquote>

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