I recently watched an interesting YouTube video in which Ben Milton and somebody I have not heard of before called Daði discuss, among other things, OSR lethality:
This apparently stems from another video which Daði, a 5e DM, made, in which he put forward some claims about OSR lethality and how it can lead to player disengagement. The thesis (which has some validity to it) is that high levels of PC turnover can make the entire exercise seem throwaway, and that also - I think this is just implied - there is a phoneybaloney 'I'm really tough because I play a form of elfgame in which characters die a lot' element to the OSR player base that gets very tiresome very quickly.
In this conversation, Ben makes the useful claim that in the early levels (really just level 1) an OSR dungeon expedition is like a heist - the PCs are so fragile they are just trying to get in, get some treasure, and get out again. I had never heard of things put that way before, but it's really an excellent word for describing what an OSR campaign feels like at the table; the 'lived experience' of play at level 1 is, more or less, exactly that.
Ben goes on to point out, however, that as soon as PCs in an OSR game gain levels they become a lot less fragile. And the game indeed very rapidly moves through the gears. Being a murderhobo in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam is a very short phase. Once a PC is 4th level the campaign looks very different.
I think Milton is here hitting on a very important point which OSR enthusiasts tend to undersell. The reason why I like playing OSR D&D is not really because I'm METAL and like PCs dying. (Though I do really like the element of jeopardy that is present during the D&D-as-heist period of a campaign.) It is rather that, if anything, it gives the players a sense of achievement which games which presume plot-immunity cannot match. The feeling of having successfully navigated a level 1 PC to level 4 or so is truly satisfying because it is genuinely difficult and nothing is guaranteed. And this, if anything, I would suggest forges a greater and more geniune sense of connectedness to a PC than those generated by a more 'silver age' 5e playstyle.
That is, the central proposition - that 'your character doesn't matter' in an OSR game whereas it does in a 5e one - is, I think, based on a flawed premise that perhaps results from people not playing OSR campaigns of sufficient length. I have never found that characters 'don't matter' in OSR games. Rather, I have found that they start off by not mattering very much, but quickly become important by dint of how much energy and time and thought has been dedicated to trying to make sure they survive. They come to matter a great deal, and that is what the process of low-level play is really all about.
There is a tendency, in other words, to slightly oversell the difference between people who like playing 'mainstream' D&D and those who prefer the OSR playstyle. No doubt there are important differences and we could, if we wanted to, spend a long time listing them all if it hadn't already been done to death in 2008. But the emphasis on the importance of character is not, I think, one of them. OSR players love their PCs too (once you get past the 'my veins are as cold as ice and I care nothing for your special snowflake character' shtick). It is just that the relationship between player and PC is forged during play rather than during the process of generating the character.
The lethality gets oversold on both sides. I agree that the level 1 OSR experience is a "get in, find the treasure, and get out" heist. Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (my main game these days) essentially compresses that into the level 0 "funnel". In either system, once you're past that first level, there's much less PC death, though the threat never really goes away. If you get shoved off the top of a waterfall and your body is swept away downriver, it probably doesn't matter if you were 1st or 8th level. (Whereas in D&D 5e you probably have some kind of short range teleport or flying ability by 8th level and possibly even at 1st!)
ReplyDeleteThere is certainly some jovial bravado about cheap PC death, and in one-shot games at conventions and game shops half the fun can be dying in heroic or ludicrous ways. But my preferred form of play is long form campaigns, where PCs develop their character "stories" over many sessions through the players' choices. There has to be a decent chance of survival to develop those stories, but if the threat of "losing" is not real, then the player choices aren't really meaningful. Accomplishing things in the game should be *real* accomplishments, in the sense that success is not guaranteed, but achieved through player decisions (and a little luck perhaps).
Yes, I agree.
DeleteI guess I'll be contrary and say I grew heartily sick of 5e as a player when I realise there were 25 actions and sub actions designed to stop me fro having to roll on the extraordinarily generous death charts in case no one in 5 rounds or so notices me- to even have a chance of dying if I fail 3 rolls in a row while sticking my fingers in ,my ears.
ReplyDeleteOr something.
I did run a 5e campaign and enjoyed it, but I very much did it as an amalgam of OSR and 5e rules. I kept death saves but did find them a bit grating. If I ran it again I would take them out.
DeleteA really important distinction is whether players consider the group/world to be the narrative focus of the game or if the individual character arcs are the narrative focus. If it's the latter, then character death causes disengagement: the thing that's important is gone. If it's the former, then character death is part of the story.
ReplyDeleteYou can see a similar thing with people who quit Game of Thrones as soon as SPOILER dies or hate Serenity because SPOOLER dies.
The attitude can also be related to people embracing or rejecting troupe-style play.
It has very little or nothing to do with whether you care about or how much you care about the characters.
I broadly agree. The only thing I would add is that Dadi is right that too much character death can make the whole thing seem pointless even if the group/world is the narrative focus. At a certain point things lose continuity and momentum. Broadly, though, your premise is correct
DeleteI appreciate when the OSR combines some background at character creation (e.g., failed careers in Electric Bastionland), clear communication about risk, and somewhat higher lethality to provide a meaningful, satisfying version of "play to find out." I'm probably in the NSR camp of our community with maybe another step towards story gaming. For me where that aligns with the B/X styles of play is that I'm less interested in those ephemeral (e.g., one-shot) experiences. I want my characters to grow and emerge over time - or have them die because of decisions made. The play is what matters, even if they remain less or insignificant within the broader world.
ReplyDeleteEnlighten me: NSR?
DeleteSorry for the jargon there. I mean the end of the OSR that includes Into the Odd, Cairn, and so on. People would sometimes say that was no longer OSR, so some people at that end of the hobby have used NSR describe it. New School Revolution or something? It probably happened around the same time as the "art punk" discussion, if I'm remembering properly. Mostly the lighter rules games that do tend to be more ephemeral (loved that word you used to describe some of those games a few years ago). I consider it all OSR, but I could easily be too broad. Ultimately I think the system you're using is important in what it prioritizes mechanically, but you can be compatible with many things - and, ultimately, we should be focusing the most on settings, adventures, and the like. For me, my preference are those Into the Odd-inspired games when combined with campaigns beyond short bursts of highly stylized play. Something like Cairn for sustained play with stuff added in whenever needed, for example.
DeleteAnyway, I appreciate you mentioned love of character beyond the brutality shtick! The irony is that, while reading this midday, I seemed to have missed those last two lines in your post. I suppose my post should just read, "yeah!"
I've played some higher lethality 5e games but in those cases if a PC died they just came back in with a new PC of exactly the same level as the rest of the party so there was no real reward for keeping a character alive in the same sense as in an OSR game where you're starting again from scratch.
ReplyDeleteAs for more OSR games I've had a bunch of interchangable mook hirelings and the one that survived a nasty encounter and saved a PC by rolling a string of crits (after which they got showered with magic items by the grateful PCs) ended up being more memorable than a lot of PCs I've seen.