Friday, June 10, 2022

High Lethality

Old school roleplaying games, Dungeons & Dragons foremost among them, have a reputation for being deadly and absurdly so. Ask almost any roleplayer, young or old, about what distinguishes older editions of D&D from more contemporary ones and I'd wager that a good number of them would mention their supposed deadliness. I say "supposed," because I'm not convinced that older RPGs really are inherently deadlier than their descendants. At the same time, I do think there's something real behind this perception of high lethality; it's not simply a macho boast.

Since returning to old school gaming shortly before I began this blog, I've refereed or played in a lot of different games, starting with my OD&D-derived Dwimmermount campaign. In nearly all of them, player characters died, with a RuneQuest campaign set in and around the Big Rubble being a stand-out in this regard (the campaign ended with a total party kill while fighting trolls). The level of lethality varied from game to game, though, with some (the aforementioned RQ, for instance) being quite lethal and others (such as my ongoing House of Worms campaign) being much less so. 

Many things separate these games from one another in terms of their lethality. Their rules clearly play a significant role. RuneQuest in its first and second editions is famously deadly, while D&D, even in its oldest forms, is much more forgiving of characters above 1st level. The referee who ran each game likewise played an important role. I myself tend toward generosity; other referees of my acquaintance are far more unforgiving. That said, I think the single most important factor is the players themselves and how they approach the game. For example, in my House of Worms campaign, the players are exceptionally careful in determining their characters' actions and this has paid huge dividends. Since 2015, not a single character has permanently died, while my Pendragon campaign has seen innumerable deaths. 

Permanently died. That's important to remember. From the very beginning, Dungeons & Dragons has included the means to restore dead characters to life, usually in the form of spells like raise dead or reincarnate or magic items like the rod of resurrection. AD&D, which some regard as the highest expression of Gygaxian D&D, explicitly includes gold piece costs for casting spells like raise dead in the event no player character can cast the spell himself. The cost? A mere 1000 gold pieces plus 500 per level of the caster, or 5500 gp if one employs a 9th-level cleric (the lowest level at which the spell is usable). This suggests to me that, while it's assumed that PC death is possible, AD&D also assumes that it should be reversible

Given this, why do old school RPGs, especially old school D&D, have this reputation for high lethality? I think it's because, while character death isn't certain by any means, it's not only possible but unexpectedly so. The culture, for lack of a better word, surrounding old school RPGs, then and now, is that nothing is guaranteed. The dice, not the player, nor even the referee, determine what will happen and this is a good thing. Any "story" that emerges from play does so organically rather than as a result of intentional design. Thus, any character might fall prey to a pit trap or a venomous bite or just a lucky hit by a lowly orc. That's what it's like to play D&D.

That doesn't mean a dead character is necessarily gone forever. Many old school RPGs provide lots of means of overturning these setbacks – and setbacks, they are. I suspect that many players feel that character deaths must have meaning and hence should only happen for "good" reasons, not simply due to the result of a random roll. Similarly, the ability to reverse death is often seen as contributing to the meaningless of death. After all, if you can bring a character back with just the expenditure of a few thousand gold pieces – a pittance for even mid-level characters – death's sting is lessened considerably, if not eliminated entirely.

While I genuinely appreciate this perspective, it's clearly not one that Gary Gygax shared. If he had, why would he have included raise dead or the rod of resurrection? Just because death is possible and often without warning does not mean that it's the End. D&D is a fantasy game, after all, and the myths, legends, and literature on which it draws include numerous examples of heroes overcoming the power of Death itself. That's as much a part of D&D as save or die attacks and green devil faces.

20 comments:

  1. I recall one AD&D game where we created multiple characters one session for a straight up unexceptional character crawl, time and time again, the casualties were so high players were equipping their characters with the notion of being able to quickly expand equipment based on what previous characters had been carrying. It was quick and brutal but we were 14 and we had plenty of time to play RPGS.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think that the easyiness of coming back from the dead in D&D is vastly overplayed.
    Out of curiosity, I'd ask people the following three questions:
    How many times did you see it happen in play?
    Could the same characters afford it again?
    Was the game a Mounty Haul campaign?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you assume the majority (all?) of the experience gained comes from treasure as the original game was designed, characters in the real of 7-8th level MUST have 75k-ish gold pieces laying around just from having gotten the experience to be that level. This will vary by class, of course, but given an equal distribution of treasure that will just mean some people are higher level, not that they ahve less wealth. Sure, they might have spent some, but they HAD it and if they were smart they kept 3 or 4 raise dead's worth in the bank.

      Sure, bad luck can always happen, but really by 4th or 5th level most characters should be able to afford the occasional raise. Seen it happen many times. I've even had a player group that included an "extra man" in the party when dividing treasure and that was the raise dead fund. "The temple gets a share", they would say.

      Delete
  3. I ran the AD&D module Night of the Walking Dead some years back, and the boss monster in that module has a special attack that kills a PC outright on a roll of 6 on a d6. I agree that classic games assumed a liberal use of the Raise Dead spell. The hobby suffers from too much PC coddling.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The truth is in the trend lines. Look at the trend in character hit points since old school D&D. In 80s Basic, the best available was fighter with d8 and up to +3 for constitution; death occurred at 0. Advanced promoted most classes, thief went from d4 to d6, cleric from d6 to d8, and fighter to d10 with up to +4 for constitution; death occurred at -10. Soon after, an article in Dragon suggested that all first level PCs should start with their maximum hit points! That has become the standard rule in 5e. This trend of giving PCs more hit points supports the case that earlier games were more lethal. Why else keep inflating hit points? Combine that with player demographics of the 80s – many young teen males pretending to be brave heroes – and you end up with lots of RPG violence. Another trend, have you watched online videos of 5e play? They have more social encounters in one sitting then we had across an entire campaign.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AD&D seems more lethal because most players' first experience with the game back then was usually at the hands of a slightly older DM who loved torturing his players.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is, quite obviously, my own anecdotal experience, but I always got the feeling that older games were much more about mechanical advancement and personal achievement; something akin to what we now think of as rogue-like video games. Go into Castle Greyhawk, roll some random encounters, roll on the treasure table, rinse, repeat. There would usually be some big foozle, but mostly as a figurehead antagonist. In such a game, death still sucks, obviously, but it's just a minor setback for the player who can reroll and start the process again. As RPGs in general started moving more in a direction of guided narratives (dare I say...Dragonlance?), character death started to seem far more inconvenient and incompatible with a heroic narrative. If your party that is trying to save the world fails...well that sucks, and it ruins the grand narrative the referee had planned! And so I felt (again, for me) that starting in the mid-to-late 80's, everything got a little "fudgier" in favor of the PC. So, for me, there's some truth to it, but it's more about prevalent playstyle than anything else. Then again I might be entirely wrong. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think D&D is very lethal - at low levels. Once you hit mid-levels you are inherently more survivable and have the resources / contacts needed for raise dead. Those first 3 or so levels are brutal. That initial experience of losing a character (or several...) is pretty memorable. But hey, at least you don't die in character generation :D

      Delete
  7. Played since the 80s. Never actually had Raise Dead nor Resurrection used in play. Ever. Reincarnation once.

    It might be a stretch to presume that because methods of coming back from the dead were included that Gygax thought death _should_ be reversible... they other is that he wanted a game where there were bounds where it _could_ be reversible...

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think this is a nature vs nurture issue.

    I ran the numbers awhile back on my last two campaigns one 1e and one 5e. Both ran for over 50 sessions (1e for 54 the 5e for 122) the deaths in the first 50 sessions were slightly higher in 5e. I think 7 pcs killed versus 6. (The 5e game got even deadlier as it went on)

    I think the difference in perception might be based on the fact more newer DMs were given the bad advice to fudge rolls behind a dm screen to save players and game designers started putting encounter building advice on balanced encounters (which I ignored in my 5e game because they create push over battles).

    My hypothesis DM style is more important than edition

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think ot was damn lethal- even with a hint of "monty haul" I only ever remember one PC who died coming back and that was a reincarnation- the player hated the reincarnated version after a couple sessions and tore up the character sheet and that was that.

    Personally, never a fan of high lethality and simple save or die/level drain, etc- these things I feel later editions handled better. Yes the chance of death should be there, IMO, but the "grind" of low levels is not much fun for me- and my house rules make for more stout low level PCs. As an adult with ,multiple family/work obligations, game sessions are way fewer and farther between than when we were 10 years old: easily killing off low level PCs and having the players roll new ones all the time is a waste of our precious time.

    ReplyDelete
  10. My experience back in the OD&D/AD&D (1e) days was that character death was very common at low levels (and not worth the cost to resuscitate). Eventually a PC would "stick", achieving something above 3rd and then last for a considerable time (months or years).

    AD&D, with it's challenging nature, expects some risk to result in death and that to be reversed IF POSSIBLE. There has to be a body dragged back to some place where the dead can be raised. Often, circumstances prevented that.

    Also, ultimately ALL our PCs died. We pushed our luck...dug deeper into the unknown and eventually met our match. Nobody made it to retirement. Nobody made it to 18th level. Nobody ascended into godhood. That was (in our mind) Monty Haul nonsense.

    And we never had enough money...too many things gobbled it up. Magic items seldom lasted either. They too eventually were destroyed or exhausted.

    All in all, it kept us hungry in the best way. We always felt like the underdogs trying to "make it".

    ReplyDelete
  11. I've been running a B/X (wish a dash of AD&D, when needed) campaign for a while now (a year?). There's usually 6 to 10 active players (some with multiple characters and levies of henchmen). I have enough House Rules to fill another rulebook. One of the first of those was: No Resurrection Magic. No raise Dead, no Reincarnate, zilch. Dead means dead. Now I don't have to worry about throngs of peasants camping outside the bishop's abbey, begging to have their children, wives, husbands, parents, and beloved family dog brought back from the dead. HOWEVER.... House Rule #2: 0 HP doesn't mean dead, necessarily. 0 HP means you're disabled, possibly dead, maybe bleeding-out, maybe just unconscious (there's a table to roll on).

    It's worked out pretty well, so far. Death is always a looming threat, and we've had our fair share of dead characters, but no worse than any other campaign I've run. And without access to the "Miracle of Miracles", the possibility of death is more poignant.

    ReplyDelete
  12. We were playing Moldvay in 1981 when a stone trap killed our NPC thief. We didn't know what to do, so we rolled a "Save vs Turn to Stone" saving throw and said he made it :).

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'll never forget my first AD&D session with "the big boys" some adults on base that my dad knew played the game. This was in the mid 80s. I had only played B/X on my own, or with my Dad or with my brother and one or two neighbors up to then...
    My 1st level ranger was killed when the wizard fireballed a bad guy early in the evening. The rest of the party was in the 20+ level range so they shrugged, and swept up my ranger-flavored-ashes ... I spent several hours miming a pouch full of ash until we could get to civilization and the wizard kindly fronted the money for my return to the vale of the living.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The only times resurrection was employed in my circa-80's D&D campaigns was if one of our party had a wand or resurrection. The two primary GMs of our games made acquiring a resurrection extremely difficult: finding someone who could cast it, alone was an adventure in of itself, and one that we ended up abandoning on the one occasion (that I remember) where we attempted it. There was never a high enough level cleric near by, and I seem to remember that we interpreted the rules such that you had to have a piece of the person's body, which made for a macabre piece of inventory.

    ReplyDelete
  15. our group used house rules (lifted from dragon articles, warlock and arduin) until the combat and tactics and switch to 2nd edition. when we switched to Harn ruleset we found the lethality remained 'gritty' enough and ensured a certain caution when heading into a melee with a handful of orcs. to each their own, this worked for our group.

    ReplyDelete
  16. It bears mentioning that the intentions of the designers regarding resurrection spells/wands/scrolls and the application of those benefits by players do not necessarily reflect one another.

    The Baldur's Gate video game, which employed the AD&D system, speaks to the use of resurrection as intended. It was a reset like a save game point. The death of a party member acted as an economic setback because you had to pay to resurrect the character or replace it.

    The notion that resurrection somehow adulterates the game experience strikes me as something that originated in the Dragonlance view of narrative in gaming.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How so? I fail to see any connection between whether resurrection magic is available in a setting and Narrative vs "Old School" style gaming? I loathe narrative play. I run an open-table (to maybe 10 active players), setting-based game, with no over-arching plot or "story", other than those plots which arise due to player machinations and interactions. As "Old School" as it gets, IMO.
      But, if your character gets nicked: too bad. You're dead, roll-up a new character or grab your back-up and let's go explore another dungeon.

      Resurrection or lack thereof smacks of Dragonlance? Or any kind of narrative story? Again, I fail to see it.

      Delete
  17. I think it's still pretty lethal, especially at low levels, due to lack of resources/funds. In our recent session of Advanced Labyrinth Lord, we wanted to get some XP and a couple levels before tackling Gillespie's forthcoming Dwarrowdeep megadungeon. Three of the eight PCs died in the first adventure. And that was with our house rule that adds your total Con score to HP at 1st level. The others were all wounded, most severely. Lacking funds, the dead were simply buried. And even in higher level games we've had cases where the body was buried, lost, or utterly destroyed, preventing resurrection. Our other group is about to tackle Necropolis and all are 7th-9th level, but less than half the original party is still alive.

    ReplyDelete