All I know is that I survived having 1 hit point at first level by not being idiot about what I was doing. The key to my survival was the two crossbowmen I hired.

I don't think it is that complicated but I think it could explained better.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3953[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3954[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112307It's doubly dumb to get upset about PC death in D&D because access to Raise Dead is pretty basic to most settings. While you might not raise a 1st level PC, it's common to raise a 3rd level one.

And/or make an adventure out of it. DCC did it with the module Blades Against Death. I wouldn't want to see death become a revolving door, but the occasional rescue from death for a favorite character can be pretty cool.

I've been running Dungeon Crawl Classics for a solid two years now and aside from Level 0s and Level 1s, the players have managed to bounce back from hitting zero hit points a whole lot... Without a Cleric in the party, I could see how the game rules prove to be more lethal for PCs, but overall, it's not been an issue at all. Players understand that death of the character is a risk when they enter combat. I keep bumping up monster stats to see how far they can get without dying and they always surprise the hell out of me with their tenacious survival abilities.
Now most of the PCs in my group are levels 5 & 6 and they're a whole lot tougher. We haven't seen a PC death in a good long while.

Is the high lethality of DCC fun? Yes, it is. I think it could be unfun if the players are too attached to their characters. It happens.
The possibility of PC death makes the game really satisfying when the PCs survive a tough encounter, and makes everything that much more meaningful, in my opinion. And rolling over the body rule in DCC is fantastic. Nobody at the table knows whether the PC is alive or dead until they roll. That kind of tension is fun. I'm also a fan of the fact there is no resurrection spell in DCC. Death is permanent.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112336I'm also a fan of the fact there is no resurrection spell in DCC. Death is permanent.

Well, with the caveat that one can always "Quest for it!™"

As in, for example, the DCC adventure The Hole in the Sky, which specifically has a reward at the end of the game that can bring back fallen characters.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112336I've been running Dungeon Crawl Classics for a solid two years now and aside from Level 0s and Level 1s, the players have managed to bounce back from hitting zero hit points a whole lot... Without a Cleric in the party, I could see how the game rules prove to be more lethal for PCs, but overall, it's not been an issue at all. Players understand that death of the character is a risk when they enter combat. I keep bumping up monster stats to see how far they can get without dying and they always surprise the hell out of me with their tenacious survival abilities.
Now most of the PCs in my group are levels 5 & 6 and they're a whole lot tougher. We haven't seen a PC death in a good long while.

In general, I usually underestimate player characters. I'm always tuning my adventures "harder" rather than "easier".

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112336And rolling over the body rule in DCC is fantastic. Nobody at the table knows whether the PC is alive or dead until they roll.

I'm not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classic. Would you explain this in a more detail please?

Quote from: Trinculoisdead;1112337Well, with the caveat that one can always "Quest for it!"

As in, for example, the DCC adventure The Hole in the Sky, which specifically has a reward at the end of the game that can bring back fallen characters.

Right! An exception through questing is fine by me, but yeah I'm generally a fan that a dead PC means an extra hard quest to bring them back (if the party feels it's even worth it). That's a lot better than gathering enough gold to pay a church to resurrect them.

When I set up my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game I sent out an email to my players as an introduction to the kind of game we would be playing:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is part of the Old School Renaissance of RPGs. A clean and sleek version of the early Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, the game focuses on exploration, danger, and weird fantasy. The setting will not be Tolkien-esque, but a warped 17th century Europe where the strange and magical is rare, inexplicable, and invasive.

OSR games in general, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess specifically, work from principles that are different than a lot of game in recent decades. In general…

• The Referee has environments and situations, not a pre-planned "story" of any kind
• Players drive things forward with their choices
• The game is dangerous. The Referee is not there to kill your characters, but neither is he there to protect them. Dice are rolled out in the open. Death is part of the game. (Luckily, new characters are easy to roll up!)
• The situations you encounter are not "balanced." You might want to avoid encounters, you might want to flee encounters, and if you choose to engage them you'll want to have the PCs manipulate the fiction toward your advantage (Short hand: Think of conflicts as asymmetrical warfare, not as engaging in a sport.)
• In this kind of play the Referee presents the players with an environment that is as solid as possible, that would continue existing if you weren't there[/I].
  

Everyone understood what they were getting into. Everyone had a great time.

Importantly there haven't been that many deaths. The players dug into the kind of game were were playing and were careful, planned, assumed it was on them to tilt the odds in their favor.

In other words, simply because the game allows death and as a real threat doesn't mean everyone dies. It means it is the responsibility of the players to come up with clever plans to keep their characters safe. For the most part that is what my players have done.

By the same token, as the Referee I don't expect the players to be locked into using "the rules" in all situations to solve problems. The moment the PCs engage with the combat rules there is a chance they can die. That's the way they work.

So any ideas or schemes the players can come up with to succeed at what they want without engaging the combat rules I roll with. (Setting up ambushes; working toward engagement with a free round of combat; finding the best weapon for the particular threat; and so on.)

Most of our game is stuff that happens outside of the rules or rolling dice. The same is true of the Classic Traveller game I'm running right now.)

This is REALLY IMPORTANT for the Referee to keep in mind when running the game. The mechanics are light in OSR games... and they are light for a reason. These games are, as Marc Miller wrote in the Traveller rules 40 years ago, "conversation games." It is the act of talking, generating ideas and actions for the PCs, the Referee making rulings on the actions without always having a mechanic at hand to help him, that makes the games work.

Yes. It is frustrating when a PC dies. But there is a great deal of pleasure from the players when they come up with ideas and schemes to circumvent threats or shift the odds in their favor and thread a needle to victory. And that sense of pleasure works in part because the fact is the PCs could die and yet they did not!

Quote from: Bren;1112344I'm not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classic. Would you explain this in a more detail please?

When your PC hits zero hit points, your character fall unconscious. You can be healed from this state within 1+level rounds, if you're not healed within this time frame there's a chance that the character is still alive which is called "rolling the body". The other characters roll your body over to see if you're really dead. You roll a d20 and if you roll under your current luck score, your character is still alive but really banged up. You go to 1hp and lose a permanent point in strength, agility or stamina. You're also groggy and get a penalty to rolls for a certain amount of game time.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112348When your PC hits zero hit points, your character fall unconscious. You can be healed from this state within 1+level rounds, if you're not healed within this time frame there's a chance that the character is still alive which is called "rolling the body". The other characters roll your body over to see if you're really dead. You roll a d20 and if you roll under your current luck score, your character is still alive but really banged up. You go to 1hp and lose a permanent point in strength, agility or stamina. You're also groggy and get a penalty to rolls for a certain amount of game time.

Notably, even DCC, which advertises it's deadliness, has various buffers between the character and death.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1112351Notably, even DCC, which advertises it's deadliness, has various buffers between the character and death.

Exactly, it's really deadly for level-zero characters (they don't benefit from this, if they hit zero hit points, they are simply dead), but beyond it's survivable. From reading about the game originally I really thought we would experience a PC death every couple sessions or so, but so far it's not even close. The players in my groups like to play smart though, so I think that helps mitigate the inherent lethality.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112353Exactly, it's really deadly for level-zero characters (they don't benefit from this, if they hit zero hit points, they are simply dead), but beyond it's survivable. From reading about the game originally I really thought we would experience a PC death every couple sessions or so, but so far it's not even close. The players in my groups like to play smart though, so I think that helps mitigate the inherent lethality.

What if enemies attack the body? Or do they just ignore it?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112355What if enemies attack the body? Or do they just ignore it?

If enemies attack the body, I imagine the character dies. Not sure there are rules that are that specific, but that's how I would rule it.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1112355What if enemies attack the body? Or do they just ignore it?

As a GM, most intelligent creatures do not attack incapacitated opponents. Undead are the most likely. A carnivore animal should actually try and run off with it's catch if it was hunting. An intelligent creature might attack incapacitated opponents out of spite or revenge. Attacking incapacitated opponents reflects a take no prisoners attitude, expect the allies of the downed foe to react accordingly.

As to the mechanics, many systems have coup de grace rules, or you can just make a ruling. Of course some creatures are not so easy to dispatch (regenerating trolls for example) and special measures may need to be taken.

Quote from: ffilz;1112363As a GM, most intelligent creatures do not attack incapacitated opponents. Undead are the most likely. A carnivore animal should actually try and run off with it's catch if it was hunting. An intelligent creature might attack incapacitated opponents out of spite or revenge. Attacking incapacitated opponents reflects a take no prisoners attitude, expect the allies of the downed foe to react accordingly.

As to the mechanics, many systems have coup de grace rules, or you can just make a ruling. Of course some creatures are not so easy to dispatch (regenerating trolls for example) and special measures may need to be taken.

See, I look at it the opposite way.

Animals are likely to go for the kill when they get an opening, or be in a battle frenzy and not even notice whether you're alive or dead until a few more whacks.

Intelligent enemies will realize you can get healed and take you out for good, just like players would. Granted, that would depend on the NPC's morality -- so dumb animals are actually more dangerous in that regard.

Well, I guess that's not opposite of you after all, but it's pretty common for PCs to go for the throat on downed enemies so I don't see it as something unusual in return.