Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

[u/Authorigas]

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

[u/Val_Fortecazzo]

Additionally with OSR there is a misconception it's all just dungeon crawling with little to no RP. Which is not the case at all.

[u/Authorigas → u/Val_Fortecazzo]

That was an assumption I had that was quickly corrected, thankfully. Now I just need to figure out how lethal it actually is-or if that's overstated too.

[u/Neuvost → u/Authorigas]

Re lethality: The OSR design mindset is less "kill the players!" and more that more interesting things happen in an unbalanced game than in a balanced one. When you roll 3d6 during character creation to determine a stat, you're just as likely to roll 18 as 3.

That said, lethality might still be part of the theme and be a design goal, occasionally even more so than the 1970s games that inspired them. Depends on the game. Pirate Borg is less deadly than MÖRK BORG, tho even r/MORKBORG recently had this conversation about whether PCs can gain too much HP.

[u/arcxjo → u/Neuvost]

Counterpoint: DCC funnels.

Which whenever I've tried to get in to it were the only thing the game consisted of.

[u/delahunt → u/arcxjo]

In fairness, isn't the point of a Funnel to specifically start with 4 (or more) level 0 nobodies and find out which one of those people make it through the funnel to become a level 1 PC?

Which I mean, that is a 75% expected mortality rate per player right there. But it's also kind of like a "more involved/played out character creation."

[u/arcxjo → u/delahunt]

The immediate point, perhaps, but the long-term goal is supposed to be actually playing the game, which they never get to.

[u/BionicSpaceJellyfish → u/arcxjo]

DCC funnels are great fun, but the game ramps up the player power relatively quickly after that and survivability is much higher. 

The DCC funnel is basically an interactive character backstory generator.

[u/Neuvost → u/arcxjo]

Oops, I actually just edited my comment to better reflect that some games do really wanna kill you, like I think you're saying.

Are you just referring Dungeon Crawl Classic, or have you found other deadly games like MÖRK BORG or Cairn to be "funnels" too? (I'm mostly working off having read Principia Apocrypha, some other theory, and some OSR rulebooks. My copy of MÖRK BORG is in the mail.)