Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

From my experiences so far (admitedly far more limited than most on this forum) the old school games were far more ruthless. The newer gaming systems attack the RPG genre from the point of view that you ARE special, that you ARE an adventurer, and this is just your origin story. However older games seemed to take more of the view that true heroes are made. So if a few "not to be heroes" die in the process, then that's OK, because in reality that is what would happen.

Also along the way the players learn and adapt. In my last session the players drew the skeletons attention and then backed up into a corridor limiting them to 2 abreast. Previously they would have charged in and been surrounded by the skeletons. Death may well have then occurred.

I saw on a forum, I can't remember, a great example of a starter adventure, it had things like trapped doors, poison dart traps etc.

Just thinking about it, if you wanted to just give them a taste before rolling into something really big write up a small 5 room or so dungeon. Put in doors with traps, fake floors, monsters in some places, but not in others. So a chest that is normal and one that is a mimic that old cliche. Then introduce them with a kind of groundhog day, a temporal loop put in place by a bored demi god. Every time you hit a TPK just roll back the day and they start again.

Although I have to say my party are quite keen on the idea of dying atm as I said now we are getting more of a feel for the rules they wouldn't mind different races and classes

run new players through a chargen funnel with 4 normal men each and let them learn the lethality of it with characters they haven't invested their heart and souls into.

I tend to not let players put a lot of investment into low-level D&D/OSR characters. Just role him up and play, he doesn't need a backstory or a personality. If he survives you'll develop a playstyle and history that can shape him, and we can always draw out his 'past' from that.
Lethality can be totally insane in OSR games, so sometimes using the 'Scarlet Heroes' rules as a layer on top can help if you have a small group. It's a pain to run a party of hirelings even with a full party, if you only have 1-4 people playing having 16 hirelings is a logistical nightmare.
I think of D&D characters more as freebooters or religious fanatics than 'heroes' anyway.

laDracykei wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 12:01 pm What worries me is the number of things that could kill them before they even have a chance to run away. Picking up and looking under a moldy bag (which wouldn't seem like a very risky action to anyone but a dungeoneer!) means a death save or 6d8 damage. Possibly to a level 1 character. Yikes.

That's all well and good for some campaigns, but certainly not for the one I have planned in particular, and I don't trust myself to be able to hit the balance between "trivially easy" and "as lethal to an inexperienced player with a first-level character as the Tomb of Horrors is to a moderately experienced player with a tenth-level one." I'll check out Beneath Brymassen; thanks for the recommendation.

Most of my players have learned -- and adventurers talk to each -- never touch things with your hands! Use a stick, pull on a pair of gloves, etc.
Never wade into something without probing with that pole.