Death & - Moving Towards Lethal-Lite Rules
Dying is a big part of living. We say goodbye to our pets, our friends, our family, and eventually everyone when our own time has come. It's the great equalizer, the timer we're all on to get done what we feel needs to be done in our flash of the pan of consciousness. So it stands to reason that my favorite art form (games) engages with death quite frequently - Often as an overly punitive fail state. THE PROBLEM A lot of the thoughts here were sparked by Personable Thoughts' fantastic little post Toppling the pillars of the OSR: against lethality - It's pretty short and well worth the read but the gist is that lethality isn't necessary for an interesting OSR experience, and some recommendations of how to remedy that with consequences outside of death (as exemplified by Markus' own Death, Injury and other inconveniences ). However one quote stuck out the most to me: "A dramatic death because of calculated risk gone wrong, or a heroic last stand against an