I'm sure some of you think that's a good idea, or at least funny, but honestly the message it sends to me is "I enjoy killing characters and find it amusing, regardless of how you feel about it."
I need that T-shirt!
Now obviously the GM is running team monster, which means he necessarily has the goal of killing PCs, when in that mode. But there is a world of difference between RPing team monster, and generally just being an assclown about PC deaths.
Exactly. I fully agree.
I don't make things more lethal for the PCs. I just make a lethal world and run it accordingly. Considering the PCs are not mook commoners, but badasses in their own right, it's an equal fight. But equal fights mean sometimes the PCs lose.
If I'm going to invest time and effort into putting together a reasonable character concept, I'd expect that you respect that enough to not pull crap like "you die, no save."
A reasonable character concept takes 5 minutes. Maybe 15 if you're daydreaming or really trying to think out of the box. Unfortunately for many games, it takes far longer to make the character mechanically than their concept.
I consider lengthy backstories to be fan-fic wankery, so that gets no respect from me. A player wants be a novelist? Great, they can write their novel and maybe I'll read it when its published. But until then, I just want a handful of bullet points about how their PC fits into my setting so we can get cracking with the actual play.
Kids simply don't care about all the RPG conventional wisdom dedicated hobbyists are convinced is important. They just want to have fun.
We know girls just wanna have fun, but what about the boys?