OSR Must OSR = Deadly?

[EzekielRaiden]

No. But a significant portion of OSR-interested players have an affection for the "whole nine yards," as it were, of early-edition play. This includes both tournament modules being treated as ordinary dungeons to run through, and overt DM/player arms-race mechanics (cursed items, cloakers and earworms, trolls weak to cold and lightning just to mess with the players, etc.) It's sort of like how there's a subset of people that want to bring back very classic gaming styles (such as arcade platformers) with most/all of the associated brutal, quarter-sucking difficulty.

Note that I say this as someone who is pretty well outside of both communities, so this is an outsider looking in. I could be wrong about the internal workings of things. But it very much seems to me that there's a perception even within the OSR community (which is a very mixed group!) that the "full" or "proper" OSR experience requires brutal, deadly challenges.

 

[embee]

AD&D as a puzzle to be solved remains my favorite way to look at the game, and a reason why I‘m still cursed in modern systems to focus on building jacks-of-all-trades with nonsensical toolkits over anything optimized!

I'm teaching tricks to my current party via the NPC.

What's in his pack?

A bunch of iron and wooden stakes and some hammers. Twine. Several small bells. Flour. Pouches of soot and dust. A lot more rope that you think you'll need. Multiple poles.

Going to sleep out in the woods? Take the stakes, wrap twine around them to make a perimeter around camp. Hang bells on twine. You have an early warning system.

Don't want to get lost in a maze? Use the twine.

Is there a monster with invisibility? Dust, soot, or flour. It's invisible, not intangible.

Want to cross a chasm? Three ropes and some stakes. One to walk on, two to use as handrails.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I ask the other question: must death be unheard of in 5e?

I would like some middle ground but don’t know the best rules for that (that could be used with 5e that is).

 

[Sacrosanct]

I ask the other question: must death be unheard of in 5e?

I would like some middle ground but don’t know the best rules for that.

Indeed. Nothing wrong with character death. They are adventurers after all. If there is never a risk of death, then why roll dice at all?

But it's also no fun to have too much character death. There's no badge for having a character survive to 9th level in AD&D (or character generation in Traveller). No bragging rights cuz no one cares. Find what works and go with it.

 

[embee]

I ask the other question: must death be unheard of in 5e?

I would like some middle ground but don’t know the best rules for that (that could be used with 5e that is).

Another part of the problem is gameplay tactics and psychology. Many 5e groups are kind of rest-happy. Short rest gets you a hit die worth of HP back. For 1 hour of in game time. And a long rest gets you full HP and half your hit dice back.

 

[BacchusNL]

Short rest gets you a hit die worth of HP back.

Hit die PLUS CON MOD

Sorry. Playing with my group has conditioned me that way.

 

[Ace]

While the mechanics are more unforgiving, you have to remember that back then (well from 1981 to 2012 for me and those who didn't stop playing 1e when the other editions came out lol), that you played more cautiously. You didn't just run into a room and roll initiative like so many people do now. You also weren't really rewarded for killing monsters. You were rewarded for getting treasure. So you avoided encounters when you could.

Then you also had larger parties back then. Either more PCs, or henchmen were pretty common, which I haven't seen since 3e came out.

I agree. IME Six players or more were common and often with more fighter types than anything other class There were sometimes war dogs (I used them a lot) a henchman or two and often in smaller groups two characters per player. You also had to play smart at times though.

Also even back in those days while it was possible to get way over your head the OSR assumption seems to be "You ARE over your head most of the time." This was not how we ran. We eyeballed challenge ratings and sometimes morale if we didn't bother with the rules. So enemies could flee, surrender or use tactics. We even fudged die rolls now and again.

It wasn't adversarial though as too many deaths gave a DM a bad reputation (yes rep mattered) as a killer DM so no one wanted to play under you or made players lose interest which by 2e times mattered. We didn't have X-Box or Internet but finding another group or playing another game was an option.

Now the party of four came about I don't know maybe in the 90's when the hobby had become less popular and was supplanted by Vampire and other games and was cemented in the 2000's when classes became more capable and the burden shifted from player skill to class abilities a bit more.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"That only works once. After that, you get a reputation for using hirelings as cannon fodder and no one wants to work for you. "

Not if you keep moving. There's a reason "hobo" is part of "murderhobo"!

It didn't have to work forever. It only had to work until the survivable PCs were pushed out of the Play-Do Death Factory of the early levels.

 

[TwoSix]

I ask the other question: must death be unheard of in 5e?

I would like some middle ground but don’t know the best rules for that (that could be used with 5e that is).

In general, I'd want to know what the expectation is for the number of sessions a PC should average without dying. Then you can figure out a rule set to try to hit that number.

 

[Ace]

"That only works once. After that, you get a reputation for using hirelings as cannon fodder and no one wants to work for you. "

Not if you keep moving. There's a reason "hobo" is part of "murderhobo"!

It didn't have to work forever. It only had to work until the survivable PCs were pushed out of the Play-Do Death Factory of the early levels.

Not always an issue but a calous disregard for the lives of those you employ is the fast track to evil alignment for many DM's.