You mention video games. As a counterpoint, I see a lot of nostalgia for the old, NES era games. Newly created ones like Shovel Knight are very popular, and there is a whole cottage industry around using old consoles and CRT televisions, emulators and the like. And I just don't get it.

I think part of the cottage industry is to do with media preservation or emulation. I feel with videogames it's more like liking black and white films over color ones and there can be objective benefits to either style. Also Shovel Knight is a genuinly fantastic series of games, and I have no nostalgia for the NES.

Outside of that, thanks for the general overview of the stuff.

If you think what you are reading in the 1e DMG can be found in a video game, then your issue is reading comprehension, not combat math analysis.  At this point, based on what you've said in this thread, I don't think you are going to understand, because you don't want to.  There are none so blind as those who will not see...

I'm not interested in resource expenditure management-focused dungeon crawls. And quit lobbing bible verses at me, calling me ignorant.

And to filter that back to the original post - that ends up bleeding heavily into the choice of math/algorithms/risk curves, which are very different than current RPGs as you've noticed (to your credit).

Thanks, but in general the game appears to be not for me. I don't have a ton of fun running dungeon crawls.

It may not become objectively less punishing for the subjective reasons I listed, but to continue your analogy, if a player knows Umoria well enough, the only real threat of death is an off-screen AMHD breathing gas.

That's called player skill. I don't know why you dislike calling it that, but as you become skilled in something, it becomes more routine and easier. Not the system itself becoming easier. You don't become more 'acclimated' to basketball.

I wouldn't say it's more gamey, tho.

In the sense the focus is on meta-system mastery. I guess most often it would be called....Video-gamey? But since it came before videogames, thats why I called it gamey. As you laid it out, the game is about learning all X things.

Number crunching Shonen with power levels is made to sell toys to young boys.

Its largely trash writing and power levels have only made anime worse from a storytelling perspective. And I don't mean some hoity toity 'Art' way. I mean fights are less engaging when its one side throwing its numbers against another until the MC says 'Friendshiiiiip' and then their numbers go up.

I think a better example of 'Zero to hero' is something like Avatar the last airbender. The characters go from struggling against 5 mooks or so, to taking down airship armadas, but it doesn't feel inorganic or the characters just throwing their powers around.

Actually, I think there are pretty solid 'Zero to Hero' stories in well....adventure stories.

Those often have a prolonged story with lots of twists and turns and points where the characters get stronger or develop new skills to take on stronger foes.

The hero's journey is like one of the key stories ever, and it involves character skill growth.

What? Seriously, what? How is that "favoritism"? I literally just described how old school D&D works in play.

I have heard like 6 different ways how old-school D&D is supposed to work. At times it's this brutal mistress that's supposed to be utterly cruel and unforgiving, and you have to have like 6 replacement characters in the wings and we LIKED it that way goshdarnit!. And at times its this way better powertrip then anything that came afterwards. Its better when it had less rules, and they where worse designed but thats a benefit because it taught people about game design.

I just have to take what everybody's claims are about it with a grain of salt.

This and your other posts make it seem like you have no experience with the game

I don't. Im trying to dip my toes into it with Kevins stuff because it looks so enticing but Im trying to understand how its internal logic works.
I'm largely sick of 3e (broken maths, annoying power band assumptions, etc), and Im looking for a new experience. But Im allowed to be skeptical about a 40+ year old game that I hear very conflicting information about for how great it is.

I have to assume a level of nostalgic bias from a time when everybody customized their game experience more to their table as a result making 'the best game ever' for their table alone and then talking about that home game like its what the printed materials are.

D&D 1e is like 6 different goddam editions. And like 3 of those editions ruined the game forever, and its very difficult for me to tell which one did it.

You're also completely wrong about death. After about 4th level, death in old school D&D becomes pretty rare. There are a number of reasons why, but I doubt you'd be interested in hearing them.

I would be. I would also like to know how common characters after level 3 were.

It's not increasingly deterministic - you go from Saving on say a 14 at the start to saving on say a 2 or 3 at the end. But you're making a lot more Saves - and so are the monsters.

I'm not seeing it. As in can you elaborate further? I mean sure if you specifically get more foes with effects that target saves: Sure. But I don't see anything really allowing PCs to force more saves on foes (outside of being a wizard with more spells), and I don't see foes really force more saves (outside of the rise from very low HD to somewhat higher).

Seeing the balls-up 3e made of saving throws, with Fighters getting *more* vulnerable at higher level*, really brought home to me the cleverness of the original system.

Well outside of just bad maths on their end (IE just poorly made monsters that didn't follow the maths that they set for themselves to follow), the 'intended' power band just averages out to like a consistent 50% or so.
Player HP is also much higher in something like 3e, so even with theoretically worse saves, the effects are more survivable overall. Outside of the save or suck stuff which exists in every edition, unfortunately.

In addition the nature of the scaling means that lower level foes become much less of a threat then they are in earlier editions. As you pointed out that a bunch of low-level clerics throwing around command can force more saves, and the compound effect of more saves makes it more deadly unless your at the super highest character level. While in 3e because those spells save DCs will be lower to the fighters saves, they won't be as much of a threat.

However 3e maths are bungled in execution many ways, which took like 20 years of design by others to fix. But the theory behind it I believe doesn't get enough credit.