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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7768472" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I find that the lethality of older editions is often vastly overstated. Yes, characters could die, and it could be fairly easy to kill them off....a first level Magic User could cast Magic Missile once per day and then started throwing darts at monsters, after all.Those first few levels were dangerous. Then you got into Raise Dead territory, and a huge amount of risk vanished from the game. Today’s D&D is largely the same. Although PCs are overall more durable, they’re still mostly vulnerable for the first few levels, and then the Raise Dead spells start. I think the game is slightly less deadly mostly as a side effect of making it less boring at lower levels. I never once played a Magic User in 1E....it just didn’t seem fun for the first couple of levels. The modern iterations have taken that into consideration. As a result, the game is more fun at lower levels. And also a bit less deadly.I’d also argue that losing a character that you didn’t really grow attached to because the game was so lethal isn't really something I’d consider risky. If you simply crumpled up the sheet and wrote up a new one, then who cares if you failed or not?But so far, it’s all about D&D. What about other games? Blades in the Dark springs to my mind. It’s a storytelling game, but there is great risk to the characters, and they fail pretty often. They also suffer pretty strong consequences, which are (ultimately) unavoidable. Eventually, your character will accumulate enough Trauma that they simply cannot keep adventuring. They have to retire. The game gives players great influence over if/when their characters are harmed, and also how much. That’s probably something that most “old school” GMs (as described in the article) would not be okay with. But the game is that dangerous to the characters that even when a player has mechanics that allow them to resist or avoid harm, eventually they’ll die or be forced out of action. So in that sense, maybe what Lew is really trying to get at is the “player focused” aspect of his old school games, versus the “character focused” aspect of many modern games? Because I really don’t think that lethality is as big a deal as stated, and chance of failure I don’t see as a factor at all.</blockquote>

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