Ain't No Walls

     Thanks to the good people over at reddit, I have a backlog of topics to expound on, including those cursorily mentioned in my first two posts. After much deliberation, I have decided that lethality is the subject of highest importance when discussing the OSR through the lens of 5E. In many discussions on many internet forums, I have seen lethality as the definitive kill switch for enthusiasm when it comes to new players entering from modern editions. It can be discouraging when you play a new game for the first time and die over and over again. How can you expect to have any fun when your character dies before accumulating any loot or experience? It's a fair criticism to make about OSR systems, and the reality is not so straightforward. Hello darkness, my old friend     Let's take a look at some of the main underlying causes of lethality in an OSR game and how players can manage them so everyone has a good time: 1. Slow recovery of hit points ...

  Mom says it's our turn to roll death saves  - art by  Jussi Alarauhio -     My introduction to the OSR happened at the bookstore. Browsing the TTRPG aisle, a heavy tome caught my eye with its name and artwork alone: Zweihander . Touting itself as both grim and  perilous, the idea of a more dangerous system than D&D thrilled me. I bought it, and spent the next week or so reading it cover to cover. Zweihander is a d100 system, meaning everything is in percentiles, from core stats to the resulting skill checks. It also abandons traditional hit points in favor of Peril; basically the more you fail at fending off threats to your life, the closer you draw to death, in steps, until it is inevitable. What struck me as interesting was how mundane things like a rat bite or a crossbow bolt wound could kill a character. Nobody playing Zweihander is going out in a blaze of glory like Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire. It's much more likely they will suffer an i...

  Back when a beholder was a force to be reckoned with, and not just a damage sink for your party of demigods - art by Todd Lockwood -     I'll be clear right from the start, this post is directed at players of 5th Edition D&D. If you're like me, you may have wondered to yourself at some point, "What was this game like in the beginning? If this is the fifth iteration of Dungeons & Dragons , why don't I ever hear much about the previous four?" Perhaps you have dabbled in more recent editions preceding 5E, like 4E, 3.5, or Pathfinder (which is a hack of 3.5, but we'll circle back to that). Maybe you've come to the conclusion that D&D, much like a videogame franchise, has generally improved over time and going back to previous editions, while fun, would be counterproductive, like playing The Elder Scrolls: Arena  when you could be playing Skyrim . In some ways you would be right. However, the progression of D&D isn't quite as linear as y...