That’s right it’s easy. One the things some folks rant about OSR games is the mortality rate of player characters. As GM and a player, it’s just part of the game. But as a GM, I look at it a little differently.
It’s like this. No matter the game, it’s easy to kill player characters. It takes no creativity or it’s not a challenge for the players or the GM. Like I said, just killing characters is simple and easy and half time the time they’ll aim themselves at the gun.
But what’s challenge and much more fun and interesting in my little opinion is beating them to within an inch of their lives. The characters not the players. Leaving them beaten, battered, bloodied and scarred without killing them. That’s an interesting and challenging session.
It doesn’t mean, you should go easy on them. If they pull the ancient dragon’s tail, let it eat them. But just going out on PC headhunt isn’t fun for anybody.
Here endeth my little rant.
They Might Be Gazebos! 
Word. I find that the more powerful the characters within the system, the harder it is to make them feel credibly threatened in a manner that doesn’t actually mop the floor with them. I mainly play supers games, so your mileage may vary.
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True that. I mainly play, oh whatever.
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I’m afraid I have to respectfully disagree.
I am an impartial adjudicator. I personally have no interest in trying to engineer things so that players just “scrape by” being beaten and near death.
The real joy, the real challenge, is for a player to have his character die, and have him take full culpability for that death as a result of his poor decision making. It’s not the fault of the dice. It’s not the fault of the DM. It’s the player, making a choice without thinking about the consequence.
To be clear, the challenge isn’t having the players die due to their own malfeasance. They almost universally do that. It’s to run your games and present situations that have them realize instantly upon the moment of their death, that it is they who are wholly responsible for their character’s demise.
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No Probs, Hackslash. It’s not so much engineer it so they just scrape by. It’s just more fun and challenging for me as a GM to really screw with them. Also, this was a little rant for those GM’s who judge their quality, creativity and self worth by killing characters and then having a big time ego trip about it.
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