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<blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 9087528" data-attributes="member: 7030755">It's hard to take into account the variety of gameplay while also seeing if there are any historical trends--change over time--in that gameplay in general.&nbsp; There's certainly a trend toward a sort of fundamentalism as to the the way things supposedly were back in the day.&nbsp; I see this in discussions of racial ASI, for example, which don't take into account how limited in effect they were in AD&amp;D as opposed to 5e (and then make claims about how its removal ruins 50 years of gaming etc etc).&nbsp; The obverse is also true--a claim that current games are more &quot;advanced&quot; in their design compared to archaic things like xp-for-gold, without trying to take into account what sort of gameplay the latter encourages.&nbsp; Did xp-for-gold really mean that &quot;combat was a fail state&quot;?&nbsp; Probably not in practice.&nbsp; Yet, the fact that it was the default rule might be attributed to something other than a weird old rule that makes no sense.Still, to my read, if you compare a 1st level Basic character with a 1st level 5e character, the latter has a lot more resources at their disposal (i.e. on their character sheet) to mitigate challenges, will level up more quickly, is less likely to die (death saves), and might be playing through a module that focuses on balanced encounters and moving the characters through rather than player skill and lethality.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Malmuria, post: 9087528, member: 7030755"] It's hard to take into account the [I]variety[/I] of gameplay while also seeing if there are any [I]historical trends--[/I]change over time--in that gameplay in general. There's certainly a trend toward a sort of fundamentalism as to the the way things supposedly were back in the day. I see this in discussions of racial ASI, for example, which don't take into account how limited in effect they were in AD&D as opposed to 5e (and then make claims about how its removal ruins 50 years of gaming etc etc). The obverse is also true--a claim that current games are more "advanced" in their design compared to archaic things like xp-for-gold, without trying to take into account what sort of gameplay the latter encourages. Did xp-for-gold really mean that "combat was a fail state"? Probably not in practice. Yet, the fact that it was the default rule might be attributed to something other than a weird old rule that makes no sense. Still, to my read, if you compare a 1st level Basic character with a 1st level 5e character, the latter has a lot more resources at their disposal (i.e. on their character sheet) to mitigate challenges, will level up more quickly, is less likely to die (death saves), and might be playing through a module that focuses on balanced encounters and moving the characters through rather than player skill and lethality. [/QUOTE]

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