Effective use of Lethality in Old-School RPGs

A few days ago I wrote about lethality in older-school RPGs. Many responses were enthusiastic; other correctly criticized my post regarding arbitrary as opposed to non-arbitrary death; after all, "gotcha" death usually sucks in RPGs, and if the Referee just wants to kill the PCs, he could always bury them in a landslide or under a collapsing ceiling. This, of course, will be no fun. So I am obliged to further elaborate regarding the use of lethality and Save-or-Die elements in older-schools role-playing games.

Lethality should always be the result of a choice. An informed choice, at least to a certain degree. As I've noted above, and as obvious to any good player or Referee, "gotcha" lethality is not very enjoyable. A Save-or-Die situation should arise as a result of a player choice. Taking risks sometimes warrants an immediate risk of death. For example, if you choose to go toe to toe with a venomous snake, you take the risk of getting bitten, which may be fatal. Typically, a good Referee will describe a snake or, at least, hint at its existence. If you choose to ignore the warning and take the risk, you can definitely face death. After all, venomous snakes are scary for a reason - many of them can kill you. A dead king's tomb still containing treasure after centuries of potential grave-robbers is bound to be trapped to the hilt, and its exploration warrants great care and many precautions. If you take the risk and rush your exploration of such a dungeon, a trap may kill you. There should always be a chance to avoid the trap by player skill and attention to details. But deadly traps in such tombs are part of the adventure genre. If you choose to drink a mysterious potion found in an underground temple of Chaos, you risk being poisoned or worse. If you enter the dungeon corridor strewn with many human bones and skulls of possible victims of a horrible monster - you might actually encounter the monster itself, and you risk turning into yet another pile of bones in the corridor. If you enter the curious garden of strange statues, you might face the Medusa - capable of turning you to stone with a single gaze.

The thing common to all of these cases is that there is a warning before the decision to take the risk or avoid it. Either an explicit warning, such as the town's elders speaking in hushes whispers about the horrors of a haunted tomb, an environmental cue such as bones of former victims or the petrified victims of the Medusa, or a risk known to common sense such as the notion that strange liquids in deep chapels of Chaos might have negative effects on you or the basic fact that venomous snakes might kill you with a bite. Taking the risk is a player's choice, and typically holds a potential reward. A pile of gold under the slithering snakes, rumors of great treasures guarded by the Medusa, stories of potions holding wondrous effects on their imbibers. If you wish to reduce risk, you also reduce the reward in many cases. You wish a big reward - you'll have to take risks.

The same goes in Traveller. In character generation, if you choose to be a Marine, you should be tough as nails - as a Marine should be, or you face a high risk of death in the line of duty. Even if you're tough, Marines are people who get kicked out of a starship in orbit and told: "conquer that planet!". This is badass, but very, very risky, especially in times of war. The reward is first the badass title of a Star Marine, and also all manners of combat skills, easy retention and relatively easy promotion. Scouts are more extreme - you die easily in the line of duty just like Marines, because you go into the Unknown and the Unknown has teeth, claws, and tentacles, but you may receive the ultimate reward - a free starship of your own! A clever character entering the Merchant Marine risks a far lower risk of death, but if you do gain a starship, it has a heavy mortgage attached. You can try and save hard-earned Credits by travelling in Low Passage, but you risk Low Berth failure and death. You can try and save on expensive refined fuel by doing frontier refuelling, but unrefined fuel can do bad things to the delicate and finicky civilian systems of your Free Trader.

Risk and reward, accompanied by at least some hint regarding the risk and reward at hand, are key to enjoyable death threats in older-school RPGs. This could add much tension, excitement and thrill to your game of handled right. This is why Save-or-Die effects are so useful in such games.

In praise of lethality in old-school RPGs

A common complaint about older-school role-playing games (RPGs) is that they are highly lethal and, as the complaint goes "unduly and arbitrarily punish characters and players". And indeed, many newer-school players view such lethality in disdain and prefer their games to include more moderate dangers, less "arbitrary" threats and much stronger player characters. Dungeons and Dragons(TM) 5th Edition is a prime example of this. Around levels 3-5, player characters are already very powerful and are rarely killed by ordinary monsters; I found my 5th level party mowing through undead supposed to be scary, and only moderately challenged by a mummy, energy-draining wraiths and shadow-demons capable of moving through walls. Risks were mitigated; healing was made much easier; and many frightening abilities from earlier editions, such as level drain, poison and disease, were made far more forgiving. Don't get me wrong - we are enjoying the hell out of our D&D 5E campaign set in the Barbarian, Conqueror, King setting with some ACKS rule additions. But the ruleset feels to me more and more forgiving - and sometimes "flat". Risks and threats seem a bit minor compared to what the horrors of a haunted dungeon, a cemetery in midnight or a giant-toad-infested swamp should be.

Older-school games were certainly lethal. Highly lethal. A venomous snake could kill you. Green slime could kill you. Triggering a trap could kill you outright. A fight with several zombies at low level could certainly kill you. Medusae could turn you into stone with a single failed saving throw. At low levels, one or two sword swings had a potential to kill you. In Classic Traveller, you could die during character generation as well, using unrefined fuel could kill you, a single well-placed and lucky laser shot could blow your ship out of the sky, travelling in low passage could kill you, the "first blood" rule could get you severely injured from a single shotgun blast.

Why the lethality? There are plenty of reasons why this actually enhances your game. First and foremost, you typically play adventurers. Why be typical "Normal Man" level 0 villagers eke out a living at 1gp a month from the sweat of their brows, toiling on the harsh soil under the constant threat of starvation - when there are dungeons laden with marvellous amounts of gold and wonderful magical items a day's travel from the typical hamlet? Becuase dungeons are dangerous, and most who venture there do not come back. Adventurers are those brave - or some might say insane - souls who dare delve into these deadly places reeking with the stench of death. The YouTube video linked above - a promotional video for the excellent old-school dungeon called "Barrowmaze" - strikes the nail right on its head. Horrors await those who dare stray away from civilization into the wilds and the ruins of the eldritch past. Villagers huddle in the relative safety of their hovels and even soldiers - typically "Normal Men" as well except for the most grizzled veterans - find safety in their numbers and rarely dare fight anything but other Men, or at most Beast-Men hordes. Only a few foolhardy adventurers dare descend into dungeons in hope of finding gold and glory. Most find their untimely death. But a few survive and carry back sacks full of gold back to civilization, eventually becoming lords and magisters.

But adventuring carries risks. Horrid risks. This is part of the challenge of the game. This is a major source of excitement for the players. A mistake can kill you. Monsters can rip you limb by limb. A venomous snake, like a real venomous snake, is dangerous and frightening - a bite is very likely to kill you. Rush into combat like a fool - and you will typically get butchered. Tread carelessly, and you risk death. Player skill is important. This is a similar challenge to the "Roguelike" genre of digital games which is now enjoying another golden age after existing from the very dawn of digital gaming, from the sci-fi FTL: Faster Than Light, through the post-apocalyptic N.E.O. Scavenger to the fantasy Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. In these games, unlike more typical digital games of our day and age, you die easily. And death is permanent - you can't just reload a saved game when you die. When you die - you die. Yet players - myself included - come back and play these games again and again. Why? Because the challenge is exciting, because facing the challenge is enjoyable. Survival is its own reward, is a thing of pride. Player skill is important. Learning how to survive in the N.E.O. Scavenger world, for example, is something you - the player - have to learn; no character skill will save you from contaminated water, hypothermia and infection setting into your wounds; you have to learn how to cope with them. This is challenging. This requires thought and learning. This is also enjoyable for many gamers. An old-school RPG is the tabletop equivalent of "Roguelike" digital games; player skill is important and survival is a challenge - and its own reward.

Finally, having survived the horrors of the low levels, when death hangs over your head each and every moment in the dungeon or in the wilds - is the best background your character can have. Not even ten pages of backstory can mean as much for your character as actual experience you and your fellow player went through with your characters. You start, more or less, as a nobody, and you build your character, your personality and history - by actual adventuring. Classic Traveller adds to this a "lifepath" character generation system where you actually - though briefly - go through risky careers and face a threat of actual death for your character, making your choices and risk management crucial for your character's survival even during that early phase of the game. But even in Classic Traveller, the background your past career - rolled on a few tables in 5-10 minutes or so - is only a paragraph of text in most cases, and then you strike out to the stars to make a real name for yourself. But facing risks and threats builds your character. When a significant portion of the encounters in the game might end in a Total Party Kill (TPK), reaching Name Level - typically the 9th level in D&D-type games - is an achievement to be proud of and not just a given stage in the game.

In short, lethality in an RPG - when done right and framed correctly - can be a source of challenge, excitement and enjoyment. This is what makes older-school so appealing to many people, and this is something every tabletop gamer should try; some might not like it, but others will be thrilled.

Strategy and Tactics the key difference between old-school and new-school D&D

Much has been said about the difference between the old and new schools of Dungeons and Dragons and similar games. A good place to start looking into this subject would be Matthew Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming which is available for free on LULU.COM. However, the more I play games of both schools, the more I think that the difference between them boils down to strategy vs. tactics. That is, seeing the whole dungeon, or, indeed, the whole campaign as a battlefield, as opposed to focusing on the specific combat encounter in one or another room.

New School D&D, exemplified by the 3rd, 3rd and a half and 4th editions, is tactical. It focuses much on what happens in the particular encounter, and gives the characters many options for making interesting tactical choices in it. The 4th edition goes so far as to focus nearly exclusively on encounter tactics, while providing relatively free-form options for the wider campaign. Furthermore, in the 4th edition, and to a lesser degree the 5th edition as well, many (if not all) of the characters' resources regenerate between encounters, removing a large chunk of the resource management portion of the game in order to facilitate the transition from one tactically-interesting encounter to the next.

The Old School such as that presented in the Original and B/X (or BECMI) editions of D&D, AD&D 1E and 2E and the many retro-clones such as ACKS, Swords & Wizardry and BFRPG, on the other hand, is all about strategy. Sure, combat can be very exciting and varied, and even tactical, but the core of the game does not focus on the particular combat encounter, but rather on the dungeon, or even the entire campaign world, as a whole battlefield. One key here is resource-management; your characters have limited hit-points, light sources, food and water, and even time itself is a valuable resource as light sources run out, food and water get consumes and there is the ever-present risk of wandering monster encounters if the characters spend too much time in a dangerous area (such as a dungeon). Strategy is important - a combat encounter can rob you of critical resources, and because monsters can cause permanent damage or even instant death, it is highly important to know when to enter a battle and how to enter the battle on your own conditions.

The same goes to "high-level" campaign play, which is relatively emphasized by old-school games and much less present in newer rulesets. The epitome of this are of course sandbox-oriented games such as ACKS and Stars Without Number where you actually have rules to build your own kingdom, empire or criminal syndicate. The idea is, again, that characters "play the world" and see it as their playground, rather than focusing on encounter-level tactics and abilities. So in an old-school game, the individual combat encounter is not the central focus of the game, but rather one of many strategic goals - one of many battles in a prolonged war, and in many cases the characters will choose to avoid that battle or to engage it in their own terms...

Barrowmaze Complete on Indiegogo!

Just a heads up: Barrowmaze, the old-school fantasy megadungeon by Greg Gillespie, which has already been published in two volumes, is now on a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to fund an expanded edition, containing both parts of the dungeon, as well as an entire new village and additional barrow mounds. Custom 28mm miniatures are also planned. Knowing how good Barrowmaze already is, I backed this in a heartbeat!

Highly recommended.

LotFP Hardcover and Adventures Project - IndieGoGo

http://www.indiegogo.com/lotfphardcover?c=home 

Check this out! Crowdfunding campaign for Lamentations of the Flame Princess old-school D&D-ish rules in hadcover. Also if funded enough there will be up to 12 adventures from different authors!

Of Rank and Fighting Ability - a rant

I'm thinking about the major NPCs of my City on the Ice-Choked Sea setting for D&Dish weird fantasy. Part of it includes deciding what to do with the high-level NPCs I've detailed earlier for that setting. And here I come face to face with a very common trope: many video games and face-to-face RPGs equate social (or military) rank with fighting prowess. and i don't think that this should be the case.

Assuming that fighting prowess equals social or military rank is assuming that the society or military force in question is a perfect meritocracy centered on fighting ability - where the more competent people are promoted to positions of power. While this might be true for groups such as pirates or viking raiders, where people literally fight their way up the rank ladder to the top (and have to keep themselves in good shape to stand against challengers), many more civilized organizations and societies do not work this way.

Examples of this abound. In the typical western state, the military is, ultimately, under the command of a civilian politician, who may or may not have any military experience; this is quite extreme in the USA where the President - an elected civilian - is actually the direct commander in chief of the military. But this is not only a case for democracies - not all medieval monarchs were warrior kings; many were even invalids, yet had armies at their command.

Furthermore, even inside the military hierarchy, ranking officers need not be high-level Fighters. After all, climbing the ranks and administrating armies require quite different skills than fighting in the battlefield. And this is not to mention the even less meritocratic forces where a noble (or other dignitary) could earn a military rank by the virtue of his social status... In many cases, indeed, a Sergeant might be more experienced as a soldier than the Lieutenant he answers to, especially is the Sergeant has plenty of real combat experience and the Lieutenant is fresh out of officers' college...

So the game stats of people in power will vary in my settings. Some would have powerful stats, other will be (in LotFP terms) be level 0. But in many cases, a low-level (in game terms) person in a position of power will have mighty warriors at his or her disposal - bodyguards, elite units and the like.

Fantasy Brainstorming: A Seaside Town with Sea-Blooded Nobility

I have some vague ideas crawling around my head about a potential setting for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Grindhouse Edition) game. Unlike my previous, wilderness-centric D&D settings, this setting will be urban, and with a somewhat more advanced technology than usual D&D, to follow LotFP's Renaissance atmosphere. Inspiration would be Lovecraft's works, Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World saga (to a small degree) and my second favorite computer game ever*, Thief: Dark Project.

I'm undecided yet between a small-town setting and a big city setting, though I'm leaning towards the former for a more flavorful setting with strong NPC personalities, as well as a fully-detailed dungeon under the town. But I'm open to suggestions nonetheless.

The town would be situated on the shores of an ocean, with the old town originally built on a cliff, and the newer quarters growing around the docks below it. The town is past its prime, with many crumbling buildings in the Old Quarter and with rife crime in the Docks and a lot of filth spewed into the air by the new Manufacturing Quarter. The kingdom to which the town belongs is in bade shape (my initial thought was something along the lines of a shaky, corrupt restoration of monarchy after a revolution and a bloody civil war), and the roads inland are not very safe.

There is intense rivalry between the town's old nobility, the descendants of seafarers of old, and the newer and wealthier merchant and manufacturing barons. There are rumors about the old nobility being involved in unwholesome sorcery, while the old nobility views the rising merchant class as a group of rootless upstart with no real legacy.

The big secret is that the old nobility in the town are Sea Blood (as in Realms of Crawling Chaos) - they have been inter-breeding with Deep Ones from time immemorial. This is only fully known to the elders of the old noble families, with the truth kept in the shadows from the younger nobles. Those of noble blood have some sorcerous abilities, are long-lived and become deformed as their age; but the sorcery is attributed to a long tradition of magecraft, and the deformities to inbreeding, and many lesser members of the noble families don't know much about their heritage until they reach an advanced age (if at all).

PCs could play characters of Noble Blood. This will be a custom class which would replace the Elf, and have Magic-User spells instead of the RoCC Sea Blood's Clerical spells. Their XP progression would probably be faster than the elves', with the catch that they'll become deformed over time. Of course, Noble Blooded PCs won't know about their true nature until they reach a high level... And then, they'll be in for a nasty surprise!

There would be no Elves in this setting. Dwarves, however, will exist as Duergar, or the Elders, a dying race which has predated Man and is now being usurped by Humanity (actually they're an evolutionary offshoot of the Neanderthals who took refuge underground when most of their race died), and use the LotFP Dwarf stat.

Comments would be welcome.

* My all-time favorite computer game is the original System Shock. My 3rd favorite is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.