On the
latest Frothcast episode, there’s a segment on Gary Gygax’s house rules. Gygax projects the idea that you should challenge players as much as possible in everything I read by him. It turns out Gygax had all of his players start their characters at level 3, gave them all sorts of bonuses, and also let them live beyond 0 hp.
I feel betrayed.
Regardless, I think there is still value to both character-preserving games, and “life is cheap” kind of approaches.