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 characters often quickly catch up to higher-level party members. And in most new-school OSR systems, leveling is scaled at a way that there are even quicker way to advance.