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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7632540" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>This is a very good point. For all the talk about how challenging Dark Soul is when you die you basically just lose a few minutes of work. Indeed, most of the challenge is stealing yourself against the grind of the game so that you suffer the inevitable setbacks gladly. But the loss of a character is more comparable to playing in a game's Hardcore mode all the time, and can mean losing 100's of hours of emotional investment.</p><p></p><p>Losing a starting character isn't as big of a deal, but it still can be highly disruptive even if you play in a sort of game where you have mounds of dead bards because the DM lets your replacement character show up almost immediately.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, the old school style is there... some of the time. A lot of the time the dungeon crawls are a lot more hard core and a lot more horror themed than was typical of the era, and more resemble (as I've said) the Grimdark school of the 1990's that gave us Kult, Deadlands, VtM, etc. They often strike me more as 'dungeon porn' than any sort of recreation of D&D as I typically played it, as if 1st level characters were repeatedly thrown into the Tomb of Horrors and everyone liked it and masochistically demanded more of the same.</p><p></p><p>The truth is, if you go back and read Dragon magazine through the 1980's, everyone was aware that there were some problems of various sorts with class balance and the game in general and a lot of people were putting forward ideas on how to fix the game or stream line the game or solve common problems. A lot of fantasy heartbreakers ripped the engine out of the game and then I think discovered that the D20 engine with its sacred cows was overall pretty sound and that throwing it out resulted in a different equally frustrating set of problems. </p><p></p><p>But what gets me about so much of the OSR writing I've seen is not that it's trying to do something understandable like recapture nostalgia or the old school magic of Gygaxian play (which I'll still champion), but that so much of it seems to be faithful to things for no really good reason and completely ignores all that discussion in Dragon magazine and everything we've learned since 1982 purely to faithfully recreate orthodox BECMI or AD&D for no apparent reason but that's the way it always was. That, and the 'dungeon porn' of trying to make 'Tomb of Horrors' schtick of 'if you touch it, you'll die' the overall and ubiquitous feel of the game. </p><p></p><p>Oh and that and OSR people seem to always mistake an idea for an implementation as if the idea was the hard part.</p><p></p><p>I'm sure that there are some OSR rule sets out there that are really super thoughtful about this and are trying to keep the best of the old game while suggesting enhancements or replacements for what never did work, but there are so many OSR rule sets I have no way of knowing which to recommend.</p><p></p><p>But I can recommend you drop 4d6 drop the lowest like a hot potato.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7632540, member: 4937"] This is a very good point. For all the talk about how challenging Dark Soul is when you die you basically just lose a few minutes of work. Indeed, most of the challenge is stealing yourself against the grind of the game so that you suffer the inevitable setbacks gladly. But the loss of a character is more comparable to playing in a game's Hardcore mode all the time, and can mean losing 100's of hours of emotional investment. Losing a starting character isn't as big of a deal, but it still can be highly disruptive even if you play in a sort of game where you have mounds of dead bards because the DM lets your replacement character show up almost immediately. Well, the old school style is there... some of the time. A lot of the time the dungeon crawls are a lot more hard core and a lot more horror themed than was typical of the era, and more resemble (as I've said) the Grimdark school of the 1990's that gave us Kult, Deadlands, VtM, etc. They often strike me more as 'dungeon porn' than any sort of recreation of D&D as I typically played it, as if 1st level characters were repeatedly thrown into the Tomb of Horrors and everyone liked it and masochistically demanded more of the same. The truth is, if you go back and read Dragon magazine through the 1980's, everyone was aware that there were some problems of various sorts with class balance and the game in general and a lot of people were putting forward ideas on how to fix the game or stream line the game or solve common problems. A lot of fantasy heartbreakers ripped the engine out of the game and then I think discovered that the D20 engine with its sacred cows was overall pretty sound and that throwing it out resulted in a different equally frustrating set of problems. But what gets me about so much of the OSR writing I've seen is not that it's trying to do something understandable like recapture nostalgia or the old school magic of Gygaxian play (which I'll still champion), but that so much of it seems to be faithful to things for no really good reason and completely ignores all that discussion in Dragon magazine and everything we've learned since 1982 purely to faithfully recreate orthodox BECMI or AD&D for no apparent reason but that's the way it always was. That, and the 'dungeon porn' of trying to make 'Tomb of Horrors' schtick of 'if you touch it, you'll die' the overall and ubiquitous feel of the game. Oh and that and OSR people seem to always mistake an idea for an implementation as if the idea was the hard part. I'm sure that there are some OSR rule sets out there that are really super thoughtful about this and are trying to keep the best of the old game while suggesting enhancements or replacements for what never did work, but there are so many OSR rule sets I have no way of knowing which to recommend. But I can recommend you drop 4d6 drop the lowest like a hot potato. [/QUOTE]
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