My sense of what happens in a lot of OSR games is:
1) the players go in for the first time, not knowing what to expect
2) the players fight two goblins and are killed by a crossbow bolt to the neck
3a) the players quit and never play again
3b) the players say "wait, we can die in this game", roll up new characters and attack the goblins in their sleep.
The important part I feel is that the players should have enough information to make it not a lottery or a meatgrinder. "This part of the map is dangerous, decide if you want to risk going there" is fun. "One of these four identical doors means instant death" is not.
I agree with your premise here, but I want to suggest some more context.
It is absolutely true that old school games are more about player agency, despite being "more deadly". Death must truly be on the table (roll in the open, death at 0 hp and all that), but that serves to heighten the meaningfulness of the precautions and preparations the players take, and validates the victories as much as it validates the failures. The referee isn't incentivized to keep the player characters alive lest all the campaign's story prep be for naught. The meaning for the players' efforts is found in the game itself, which must necessarily include the real risk of death from bad decisions or bad fortune.
I have studied Chainmail (and recently cloned it, as "The Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin" on DTRPG) and found it to be an essential part of OD&D. Low level PCs may actually find it easier to survive in a formation of troops on the battlefield than adventuring in a dungeon, because "heroes are always the last figures in a unit to be slain". OD&D (with Chainmail, as it clearly instructs to use) actually features highly heroic player characters. Comparable to (but more powerful than) how 1e AD&D fighters can make as many attacks against creatures which have less than a d8 hit dice (or are level 0) as the fighter has levels, an OD&D fighter (of any class) may make multiple attacks against "normal men" (1 hit dice creatures) according to their Fighting Capability, which for the Fighting Man equals their level. Chainmail works really well for combat with normal men, when used along the d20 "Alternative Combat System" for heroic fantasy combat.
On the whole, actual "old school" rules and play do not match the popular OSR misconception that old school was a mudcore meat grinder where no one could survive past level 3 and the referee delights in TPKs.
I'm not plugged into enough OSR sub-communities to pretend to know where we are today on this subject and how we got here, but even as of 10 or so years ago, I've maintained the impression that the OSR's bend toward lethality is actually pretty simple, and was not (at least initially) contrived. Maybe there is is post-hoc reasoning going on to try and explain it, but I personally don't think it needs any explaining.
When reading early D&D editions, just noticing that a level 1 wizard has between 1 and 4 HP, and dies at 0, and the default weapon damage for all weapons is 1d6... I mean there's no getting around the lethal significance of that; other than never entering combat. Even a fighting man guarding a wizard is more than likely to have fewer than 6 HP. And I believe level 1 THAC0 worked out to a about a 50% chance to hit or be hit by an orc (but I have to confirm that). These games weren't lethal because there was some kind of DM culture promoting game lethality, they were lethal because of the probabilities. They were lethal because wargaming models were expected to die on the battlefield, and that's where the combat rules originated.
And pretty soon, it wasn't popular and every new edition of D&D reduced the lethality.
"I want a reasonable expectation that my character can live. I want to invest in them."
I'll never know (maybe resarching old Judge's Guild articles might reveal anecdotal evidence), but my hunch is that your line here is the reason why lethality was unpopular. So I do agree with you. But my impression of the OSR leaning into lethality is two-fold:
1) They want to play with the old rules, which have some real benefits, despite the lethality
2) They want to be able to embrace those rules; not to shy away from them
"I want my character to live" has been the status quo for decades now. I remember when 3rd edition came out and people mocked the old editions of D&D. In fact, I believe Wizards had a TV commercial doing that. The widespread idea was that there were bugs in the older editions that have since been fixed by the newer, better versions.
When people started to rediscover old-school, they started to appreciate some of the really great implications of the original design that modern versions of D&D failed to understand. A lethal rules-set was one of them. This was their way to say that the status quo wasn't actually "right"; it was just one style of play. The OSR style was another style of play for those interested.
And of course there's everything in-between. There's nothing that says anyone has to be pure OSR or pure.... well whatever the cool kids are doing with 5E these days. It's very video game like.
So I want to say that the core of OSR really is "lethality by probability" just down to the rules, but anyone is free to tinker and either come up with play processes that reduce the amount that those rules are applied, or tweak the math to lower the lethality. It can still be pretty much OSR, but it's hard for me to agree that it's like.... O.S.R. Hope this ramble made any sense.
I guess for posterity I should add that the "I want my character to live" geas was so strong that DMs started solving this for their players before even TSR or Wizards did. This is where dice fudging originated. DMs that still dice fudge today will often have the rule, "I only fudge in one circumstance; that's when one of my PCs is about to die."
Since OSR decries dice fudging, it removed the last remaining protection from player death.
My sense of what happens in a lot of OSR games is:
1) the players go in for the first time, not knowing what to expect
2) the players fight two goblins and are killed by a crossbow bolt to the neck
3a) the players quit and never play again
3b) the players say "wait, we can die in this game", roll up new characters and attack the goblins in their sleep.
The important part I feel is that the players should have enough information to make it not a lottery or a meatgrinder. "This part of the map is dangerous, decide if you want to risk going there" is fun. "One of these four identical doors means instant death" is not.
I agree with your premise here, but I want to suggest some more context.
It is absolutely true that old school games are more about player agency, despite being "more deadly". Death must truly be on the table (roll in the open, death at 0 hp and all that), but that serves to heighten the meaningfulness of the precautions and preparations the players take, and validates the victories as much as it validates the failures. The referee isn't incentivized to keep the player characters alive lest all the campaign's story prep be for naught. The meaning for the players' efforts is found in the game itself, which must necessarily include the real risk of death from bad decisions or bad fortune.
I have studied Chainmail (and recently cloned it, as "The Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin" on DTRPG) and found it to be an essential part of OD&D. Low level PCs may actually find it easier to survive in a formation of troops on the battlefield than adventuring in a dungeon, because "heroes are always the last figures in a unit to be slain". OD&D (with Chainmail, as it clearly instructs to use) actually features highly heroic player characters. Comparable to (but more powerful than) how 1e AD&D fighters can make as many attacks against creatures which have less than a d8 hit dice (or are level 0) as the fighter has levels, an OD&D fighter (of any class) may make multiple attacks against "normal men" (1 hit dice creatures) according to their Fighting Capability, which for the Fighting Man equals their level. Chainmail works really well for combat with normal men, when used along the d20 "Alternative Combat System" for heroic fantasy combat.
On the whole, actual "old school" rules and play do not match the popular OSR misconception that old school was a mudcore meat grinder where no one could survive past level 3 and the referee delights in TPKs.
Completely agree with that also! Great OSR gameplay doesn’t have to be mudcore. I’m still learning about OD&D, your experience matches my impressions.
I'm not plugged into enough OSR sub-communities to pretend to know where we are today on this subject and how we got here, but even as of 10 or so years ago, I've maintained the impression that the OSR's bend toward lethality is actually pretty simple, and was not (at least initially) contrived. Maybe there is is post-hoc reasoning going on to try and explain it, but I personally don't think it needs any explaining.
When reading early D&D editions, just noticing that a level 1 wizard has between 1 and 4 HP, and dies at 0, and the default weapon damage for all weapons is 1d6... I mean there's no getting around the lethal significance of that; other than never entering combat. Even a fighting man guarding a wizard is more than likely to have fewer than 6 HP. And I believe level 1 THAC0 worked out to a about a 50% chance to hit or be hit by an orc (but I have to confirm that). These games weren't lethal because there was some kind of DM culture promoting game lethality, they were lethal because of the probabilities. They were lethal because wargaming models were expected to die on the battlefield, and that's where the combat rules originated.
And pretty soon, it wasn't popular and every new edition of D&D reduced the lethality.
"I want a reasonable expectation that my character can live. I want to invest in them."
I'll never know (maybe resarching old Judge's Guild articles might reveal anecdotal evidence), but my hunch is that your line here is the reason why lethality was unpopular. So I do agree with you. But my impression of the OSR leaning into lethality is two-fold:
1) They want to play with the old rules, which have some real benefits, despite the lethality
2) They want to be able to embrace those rules; not to shy away from them
"I want my character to live" has been the status quo for decades now. I remember when 3rd edition came out and people mocked the old editions of D&D. In fact, I believe Wizards had a TV commercial doing that. The widespread idea was that there were bugs in the older editions that have since been fixed by the newer, better versions.
When people started to rediscover old-school, they started to appreciate some of the really great implications of the original design that modern versions of D&D failed to understand. A lethal rules-set was one of them. This was their way to say that the status quo wasn't actually "right"; it was just one style of play. The OSR style was another style of play for those interested.
And of course there's everything in-between. There's nothing that says anyone has to be pure OSR or pure.... well whatever the cool kids are doing with 5E these days. It's very video game like.
So I want to say that the core of OSR really is "lethality by probability" just down to the rules, but anyone is free to tinker and either come up with play processes that reduce the amount that those rules are applied, or tweak the math to lower the lethality. It can still be pretty much OSR, but it's hard for me to agree that it's like.... O.S.R. Hope this ramble made any sense.
I guess for posterity I should add that the "I want my character to live" geas was so strong that DMs started solving this for their players before even TSR or Wizards did. This is where dice fudging originated. DMs that still dice fudge today will often have the rule, "I only fudge in one circumstance; that's when one of my PCs is about to die."
Since OSR decries dice fudging, it removed the last remaining protection from player death.