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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/Neat_Relationship510 on 2025-06-19 17:34:43+00:00.

I grew up playing 1e with my brothers, so now that I'm gearing up to get back into DM-ing I'm trying to convince a few 5e friends (and a couple newbies) to come to the OSR darkside for a while.

Unfortunately, the mere mention of THAC0 sends the 5e players into a blind panic (I've not mentioned the old tables that preceeded THAC0 in 1e books, they might actually catch the vapours and die). To solve this problem, I was looking into Shadowdark for an old school feel with new style D20 roll-over rules. But one thing has me hesitant about the €51 pricetag. Every GM I've seen on youtube keeps boasting about how many PCs they go through a session.

As I experienced it growing up, DnD was deadly, in that being silly could easily get you killed, and sometimes random encounters could have you running in fear rather than fighting, unlike 4e and 5e where death almost never happens, but characters were never dying just for the sake of it. You could still make characters you could feel attached to. Being so deadly that death is guaranteed takes some of the wind from the sails for me. I want my players to develop their characters and help build the story and world by doing so. Characters that can die are interesting because they need to think about their actions more carefully. Characters that WILL die are hard to care about.

Is this impression that the whole point is to kill the PCs more gung-ho 5e players FAFO, or is Shadowdark really just that much more deadly than other OSR systems? (Which are all obviously way more deadly than 5e)