THE OSR IS DEADLY: But Not Deadly Enough To Kill Long-term Play

Purple is total generated; black is deaths
(aka poor decision-making; get gud)

60% of the time, your PC's 100% alive!

I appreciate this video from Mystic Arts because it does a good job of addressing the OSR, contrasting the playstyle with 5e, and outlining what the MCDM's Crows brings to the table.

But one thing in the video bothered me is the claim that OSR systems are simply too deadly for long-term play because characters would get killed too frequently. 

Now, I get that systems like Mork Borg might not be geared for the long-term, but there is really no way one can look at OD&D or AD&D or even BX with its 14th-level cap (OSE for the young crowd) and conclude none of them have longevity. But more to this blog's point, is that it has not my own experience.

Look, we have the numbers! In Miranda Elkin's Nightwick Abbey, which has spanned roughly 138 sessions✤ with OSE characters, the death rate for the first 50 sessions was about ~40%. 

And when looking at sessions 51 to 100 (which I haven't put in an infographic), the death rate drops to less than 10%. Most likely because enough PCs have advanced to 4th or 5th level, they can protect low-level party members. 2-12 points of damage can be weathered by most characters, so you, the player, can decide to keep risking your character or leave the dungeon.

So, if 100+ sessions is indicative of long-term play, and in today's modern world, its a very solid benchmark, then BX/OSE, an absolute OSR standard, is able to support long-term play even with a higher-than-modern-D&D death rate✤✤. Yes, you will encounter early deaths, but that disrupts the opportunity to roll with the campaign. Especially if you link new characters to old ones- but this can be done with a sentence that contains a motivation and doesn't require any sorta "system" to support it.

Here is another example, again in a campaign with Miranda. The PCs are listed in order of creation, but you can see how several died at level 1, a cleric survived, suffered an injury (Death and Dismemberment table see below), and then two more PC died. That cleric healed, has converted to a "new god", and has leveled up after their return. A higher death rate in Cuccagna than Nightwick for me, but I also applied a little more risk and bravo to the various fighters versus this cleric.

But notice, the campaign play didn't stop. As a player, I was still very intrigued by the wizard-born lands of Cuccagna and so I rotated through characters, eventually coming back to a one-handed cleric (now converted to a Dolmenwood enchanter to better represent a shift).

Death stop several PCs, but did not stop the campaign.

How to cheat death ☠.

Here are some quick, dirty favorite ways of mine to help players get over the "sticker-shock" of old-school system character death at low levels. 

Run two PCs: Yes, just run 2 PC at the beginning of the campaign. Don't allow players to choose the same class either. This also give each player more to do and a more diverse array of party skills. One dies. Eh, you still are gaming with the other. This is also why a hireling system is good to incorporate.

Start PCs at Max HP at Level 1: Again, not groundbreaking, but does allow most PCs to receive 1 average porc-ax to the face for ~3 dmg and live. A good signal to the player they've reached a decision-making point in the game.

Use a Death & Dismemberment Table: Like here. As I said in the earlier post, despite the scary-sounding name, these systems end up saving PCs more often than killing them. And if you do enforce downtime to heal, players again end up having 2-3 characters of various levels in their "back pocket". Often now with very interesting backstories.

Go out with a BANG!: I've not used this method, but I like ktrey's swansong abilities to add a little extra to a PC death. So maybe your death...(rolls dice)... results in a very fertile grave that attracts a dryad.

✤This campaign is still going, albeit with a slightly different party configuration, so the numbering system started over.

✤✤Another quick bit: "Won't my new low-level PC be underpowered?" No. Given that leveling in retro-clones, requires double the XP of previous levels. Low-level character often quickly catch up to higher-level party memebers. And in most new-school OSR systems, leveling is scaled at a way there are even quicker way to advance.

DON'T SPLIT THE SESSION: Rule 0 For Avoiding A Play-Killing Mistake In Modern Lives

"We'll stop here and finish it next session, no problem!"

In my current megadungeon home game, we have not played for almost 4 months now because of a mistake I made. It's a mistake that makes sense at the time, but has had disastrous consequences for play since then. 

The mistake: I ended a session in the dungeon right at the start of a big battle because we ran out of time.

I should not have done this. I knew it could be a problem. At the time, I didn't want to risk having a PC die because we were in a "hurry up and finish" mode of combat. And I just didn't have a clever way of resolving the fight in 10 minutes that would be satisfying. I figured that stopping at the beginning of a key battle and the potential rescue of an NPC would carry enough potential energy that the next session would be focused and start with a bang! Combat! Action! High stakes!

That was 4 months ago.

Now modern life of work, kids, and family life have understabily intervined. Don't take this post as any sort of angry rant. My play group's focus is rightly on the various important aspects of their lives and playing D&D is a minor aspect. However, it IS a hobby everyone greatly enjoys and consistency is a key aspect. Long absences can dissolve the game.

I wish I had stuck to my rule of ending the session at the end of our allotted play time, and if that meant the players could not save the NPC, then so be it.

Fail Forward...Into The Next Session

In general, I think splitting the session led to three general, unwanted downstream effects in addition to delaying play for an extended period.

Denial of Agency: At the time, I thought that making the player go back to town and have the NPC become a sacrifice was robbing the players of agency, a big no-no in old-school play. However, in not completing the town-dungeon-town loop, I ended up robbing the players (and myself!) of 4 months of agency by not playing!

Decreased Flexibility in Attendance: I also decreased the flexibility of the megadungeon set-up to host a variable number of players and not require the attendance of 100% of my player pool to start a game. It is often this strengent 100% attendance requirement that kills a lot of trad-games or even any game. Hence, the joke of modern D&D is that the BBEG is "scheduling". In my experience running this game, I've been able to host a variety of out-of-town players who drop in for a session or two because we begin and end in the town. It creates a solid staging point and does the least to disrupt the narrative flow.

Yes, I could certainly have PCs with absent players be slightly off camera or function as sorta meta-ghost. But no one ever really likes doing this. And in my experience, it always results in awkward situations where present players will want to use the "ghost" PC's abilities, but then it has to be explained away why they don't directly come into harm's way or some other setup.

Missed Opportunity to Shake the Status Quo: Finally, I think the big thing I also denied my world was the chance to evolve it around an unfortunate outcome. Just look at how awesome it was when Ned Stark got it in Game of Thrones. It's a shocking twist, certainly, but it really drove home the feeling that the world moves under its own power instead of the author's. It's not true, of course. But that illusion is key in making an enthralling read AND an enthralling game.

Disruptions like the death of an NPC, particularly one the PCs witness, can be a catalyst for antagonist goal advancement AND a disruption of the status quo around the PCs. So not only do the bad guys advance but the good king now hates you for not saving the knight.

A Possible Fix...And A Suprise!

To remedy this problem, I turned to some of the RPG Discords I am on and was handed a really nice solution, which has since been turned into a blog post: Mindstorm's Quick Stakes for Tense Situations.

Exactly what I was looking for. And I set up my own table below.

It provides plenty of player choice to decide what would happen, leaving some up to chance and forcing some hard decisions. I even ramped it up by allowing players only 3 free choices before they had to move some into the WILL NOT HAPPEN category in order to remove remaining items into the WILL HAPPEN.

My players ended up deciding that both the monster and cultist WILL NOT be killed in order to ensure no PC was grievously wounded, and they saved Ambrose. But in the end, we were able to actually get everyone at the game, breaking the no-game curse.

How the fight actually went down is that they were able to save Ambrose, kill the monster, and the cultist got away- ah well- time for a new villain!

2025 SECRET SANTICORN: Fourth Level Titles & How To Get Them

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! In my last post, I blogged about what I gave for the 2025 Secret Santicorn. On this day of gift-giving, I wanted to post what I received.

My ask was for: Specific level titles for 4th level, and the requirements to earn them. I think you'll agree my secret santicorn delivered!

Thank you again Anon!