After playing for a few years, I realized that in most cases...

Strike! is very focused on the tactical combat part. There's some randomness, but mitigating it is part of the game's strategy.

I'd recommend it for fights that are skill based.

...

If it boils down to luck and DM fiat though, where's the sense of accomplishment in saving that village when you know deep down that the only reason this village exists is so you could "save" it or leave it to burn?

The village isn't going to be terrorized by an adult dragon before you're around level 10-12 because there's no way for you to beat that dragon as a low-level character, so instead, it'll be a group of orcs and a few goblins and maybe by the end of it, the DM will make you level 2 characters.

So what's the point of getting stronger?

Play something that's not DnD and stop calling your GM a DM.

The point of getting stronger is that it lets you leverage your power outside of your standard progression adventure. It means when you walk into town as a party of level 8s, you don't have to sit there and take it when people get rowdy at the bar table over, it means that you might not be able to fight an adult dragon head on like a level 12 but you might have the option to arrange its death through other means that a level 1 won't.

Mechanics are what enable your out of the box options. They set you up for your list of rules to use and abuse. Your expectation of combat to play like a video game seems to extend to other facets of tabletop as well, because it doesn't seem you're giving nearly enough due consideration to how much a level range can allow you to interact with the world outside your DM's plot hook.

Any RPG will do the trick as long as both the GM and the players are willing to make it be that way.

again, purely depends on the GM and the players

The point of getting stronger is to make the game less repetitive

>understanding of the rules

Does that really matter?

It's one thing to win a battle because of some clever or imaginative thinking or having the courage to take a big risk, but if it all boils down to a question of how well you've poured over the books, visited charOps boards in order to build a powerful character, and ultimately manipulated the rules in order to bring the most unbalanced aspects into light, does it really matter? Is it worth rewarding?

I don't think "understanding the rules" is supposed to be some tool for victory. In fact, the baseline of "understanding the rules" should probably be coming to terms that in the case of any meaningful decisions some options will be stronger than others, but not always in a way that is best for the tone of the game.

When I GM, I see no real reason to "reward" (or penalize) players who build strong characters or use mechanically optimized strategies, nor do I consider how well you can use the rules to achieve victory to be a particularly important or impressive skill. It's useful in other situations (such as putting homebrews through stress tests) and and its vital in other types of games, but as a whole putting to much emphasis on how well you can use the rules to achieve victory in a roleplaying game tends to lead players to obsess about what is ultimately less important than considerations such as how well your character can cooperate with the others or whether they can bring their personality into each battle.

>Also, Have you tried GURPS and 3d6?

If you're trying to use that as a solution to his problems, you're only going to exasperate them.

GURPS is particularly awful at making the game feel like anything other than a fussy "Mother-may-i" scenario with the GM.

Here's the thing, if an NPC approaches you, it's because a) they have something you want and b) the problem that you need to help them with is something that's within your ability to accomplish.

The DM isn't going to give you something that you can't handle as a party, which makes it feel as though every major issue that's happening within the world is tailored to your capabilities as a group.

What the fuck kind of games have you been playing with it?

>Does that really matter?
Yes.

If you don't understand your limitations as a player, how are you supposed to figure out ways to break through those limitations to achieve something that you thought wasn't possible?

Also, if you don't know how the rules work, how are you going to approach them in a way that would lend itself to outside-the-box thinking?

And if learning the rules doesn't matter, why use them in the first place?

Your DM is shit but that aside, this has already been addressed. If the railroad is always tailored to your power level, then leverage your power level in other directions. There's a legitimate issue you might have in your 8th level party always fighting 8th level enemies as part of the story, but if you take a break to challenge petty thief dens in town on your downtime and they're 8th level there, that has nothing to do with the any system.

>muh collaborative story

Go away Forgefag

OP needs to go play a sport. Or perhaps a video game. Dark Souls, maybe?

PF, I guess.
You may actually enjoy the Ivory Tower.

Fuck off, Virt

Sounds like you need to play yourself a good old-fashioned hex crawl with a GM that actually knows how to world build.

Random town rumor tables (which may or may not be true or helpful), random wilderness/Urban encounters that may or may not require you to fight/talk/run, the chance to actually accidentally run into an Adult Red Dragon in its' lair because you decided to hike up a mountain side at level 1, the whole lot of it.

Pathfinder might mitigate the players being clever but onward from about 5th level, it exaggerates the "rolling high enough" problem more than any system I know.

PF is a game that becomes less enjoyable the more you actually understand how it works. It's a ruleset equivalent to that guy who accuses you of meta-gaming just because you built a paladin for an all-undead campaign.

No thanks.

>GM wants to run Wrath of the Righteous AP for our group.
>Decide to roll up a Paladin because Dues Vult in a AP dedicated to Dues Vult.
>GM calls me a meta-gaming faggot for making a Paladin.
>mfw

>PF is a game that becomes less enjoyable the more you actually understand how it works.
It kills me how true this has been for me.

You need a good GM with a bit of imagination that isn't a pushover. If he can build a live world that doesn't have areas scaled to your level. We recently came across a crypt with a dracolich that we released unintentionally because we pushed in a direction that wasn't something we needed to do and fighting it and escaping by the skin of our teeth was really hair-raising and challenging

In a way that's true, but on the other hand you're less likely to landmine yourself into not having fun.

Which is a thing, despite certain peoples' insistence that it doesn't happen. It happens a lot.

Understanding the rules enough to play is one thing, but the issue I have is with the idea of attempting to use the rules as a tool for victory, or that victory in combat should be somehow determined by how well you know the rules. Ideally, an imaginative and clever novice to a game and an imaginative veteran of that game coming to the same table will both be able to flex their muscles. Part of that is dependent on the GM, but a fair portion comes from the players understanding that knowing the rules better doesn't automatically make you a better player.

>how are you going to approach them in a way that would lend itself to outside-the-box thinking?

Outside-the-box thinking in roleplaying games typically involves looking at the game outside of the framework of the rules. While in a more limited game certain actions not detailed in the rules are simply impossible, for a roleplaying game there are no such limits.

>when you know deep down
Listen, buddy, I feel your desire for better mechanics (I've been writing my own system for this specific purpose, doomed though the endeavour may be), but deep down you know the entire game is just there for you to fuck around or die.

I don't actually run games that way, though. I throw random shit around with no heed to power levels. If a dragon is rampaging through town and you care enough to save it, better haul ass to find someone stronger to take care of it, unless you have some genius idea.

>tends to lead players to obsess about what is ultimately less important
It shouldn't have to be like this, though. The best games I have ever had were ones where everyone knew exactly how the rules worked and didn't have to worry about getting gypped by unbalanced crap. We played a strategic game with optimized characters, and everyone had realistic expectations of what their characters could accomplish.

>In a way that's true, but on the other hand you're less likely to landmine yourself into not having fun.
Are you joking?

>Hahah! I'll build around Step Up and max out my CON! I'm so fucking tanky and their melee will never get around me!
>I guess I need DEX to TWF, so I'll get that up and put the left over points into STR. Six attacks has to be good!
>I'm going to build an archery rogue and snipe people!
All mistakes I made when I was new.

Stop getting so upset about people enjoying popular games.

>Hahah! I'll build around Step Up and max out my CON! I'm so fucking tanky and their melee will never get around me!
You joke about that, but a dex based Weapon finesse build using the Tower Shield Specialist archetype, Mithril Fullplate and Tower Shield, and the Step Up, Combat Reflex and Combat Patrol feat lines was my go-to build for Fighter for the longest time until my GM started allowing us to use Path of War.

No.

>you're only going to exasperate them

>robust set of stuff you can do by default
>combat rules that make sense, easily understood derivative values, and stats that can be mapped onto real world scenarios without blatant stupidity
>hurr mother-may-i
Do you even know what that means? 3.5 melee that wants to do something other than full attack without resorting to Dungeoncrasher or whatever is Mother-May-I because the rules for them are shit and the backup mechanics that you run things off of by default - attribute checks and skill checks - are either barred from you due to your skill points or are as unreliable as your deadbeat tweaker cousin who wants to clean your house for you, honest.

If I want to kick some fucker in the shin or throw sand in their eye or take aim at some guy's head specifically in GURPS, I don't need to beg the GM to come up with something on the fly or default to rules that don't work.

No offense mate, but that sounds like absolute trash. You can make opportunity attacks, yes, but you re only doing damage (a piddly amount at that) no movement control of any sorts, and you need to give up your turn for combat patrol to boot.

Unless of course you are omitting some key feat from that build that lets you control enemies.

>I want my victory to have meaning
>In a tabletop fantasy game
It never will have meaning, because it's not fucking real. You will never be able to reliably brag about it. It will never leave you truly fulfilled. It's a fun pastime, a game. If you're looking to feel meaningful victory in a fucking tabletop game, the rest of your life must be a mess.

>Playing D&D for a sense of accomplishment
Please, do something with your life. You can get a sense of accomplishment from other things. Real things that actually matter. You're looking to fill your very real void with fantasy accomplishment, you won't be successful in that.

>Look at all these options!
>they're all shit

GURPS.

>You will never be able to reliably brag about it.

Really depends on the game tough.

I feel like following up on this, so here's a combat example...

And two examples of "adversarial play", which as far as I can tell is basically what the OP wants.

I keep wanting to learn this game but the rulebook is so fucking bad. They seriously needed to hire someone to have formatted it, what the fuck is with people thinking they can get away without project management?

What does this even mean? What are you complaining about? That the GM matched the things you'd be facing more or less to your party's capabilities so that if you do something clever or you roll well you can win? I don't see how this is a bad thing.

>Where victory is earned through the skill of the player in utilizing the mechanics given to them rather than given at the whimsy of the dice and the DM?
Short of having something that randomly determines what you'll be facing and when, you'll never completely free yourself of the DM "allowing" you to win. And as someone who has played shitty games where this is the case, you might want to count your blessings.

Maybe Dark Heresy? I know if we didnt plan out our fights we fucking died.

My general feeling is that this game manages to miss the point of roleplaying games pretty fucking hard.

The combat has a lot of niggling options making it dense but very gamey, while everything outside of combat is just sort of a vehicle to get people back into combat.

It's like an awkward board game, and not even a particularly good one. The 4e D&D board games seem like a much better way to spend an evening.

It was basically a situation where I'd set my starting point with it, then bouncing from enemy to enemy the entire combat, as the rest of the group kited backwards to keep forcing the enemies to provoke attack of opportunities.

By 12th level, I'd have the Disruptive and Spellbreaker feats, a short sword with the Agile property (allows the use of dex to damage if using Weapon Finesse), and if we were facing spell casters our wizard would Quicked Enlarge Person me (for the extra reach and damage) and teleport us in the middle of the spell casters so I could force concentration checks and pinball between them smacking them in the face every time they tried to cast something or move out of my reach. We tried convincing the GM to let the Wizard throw me at people using Telekinesis, but the GM didn't like the idea of the group turning me into an opportunity attacking - spellcasting denying 8 to 10 D6 missile.

It was a fun game.

It could be condensed down significantly. While I sorta appreciate the dev commentary, it should have been relegated to sideboxes. I hope they'll do an "ultimate" edition after the book with equipment/monster hunter stuff comes out, but that's going to be a bit delayed...

> while everything outside of combat is just sort of a vehicle to get people back into combat.

Out of combat stuff is to serve bridge between conflicts; which then can be combats, but you can play without ever touching the tactics module.

I mean, it's a waste cause it's the best part, but hey, if you want "REAL roleplaying" without combat, you can do that.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

Hackmaster comes to mind. But really, old D&D used to be played that way. Have you read "A quick primer for old-school gaming"?

Veeky Forums shills every single game except for D&D, simply because D&D is the one game that doesn't need to be shilled.

It's not Veeky Forums, it's literally just one guy who refuses to believe that no one likes his game.

>I've never seen them but they're totally shit guys

It's not just too bloated, but the text is also written in this conversational tone that I dislike. I have trouble following a block through because it'll trail off for some specific example and I'm lost on the rule when it returns. I can't help but feel the contents aren't laid out in the right order to learn things efficiently either.

It doesn't feel like the system would actually be that hard to learn but the book just frustrates me so much when I try to get through it.

Actually Strikefag is kind of a bro, and he does discuss other systems when Strike is irrelevant. He's a namefag, but only mildly annoying for being a namefag, not much else.

>Not recognizing the meme.
Also we do tell newbies to play 5e whenever newbies ask for a system.

Why wouldn't the wizards just walk 30 feet out of your reach (even with combat patrol it should be around 20-ish until very high levels) and then cast a spell? Yeah, they get hit with an AoO but a short sword with agile is like... 1d6 +10-ish? At that level, even a wizard laughs that off.

I guess with enlarge+reach weapon, your reach could be close to 30 sooner, but then your damage is even worse.

Eh, sorry, it's just that I tried a build like that but always got frustrated by some component missing. I'm glad it worked out in practice for you.

If you roll shit, you're competing against a threshold

You may want something with more freeform risk management, like Blades in the Dark

>Also we do tell newbies to play 5e whenever newbies ask for a system.

Probably because that's just a good recommendation.

>At that level, even a wizard laughs that off.

The HP calculations for most NPCs and monsters assume average HP per hit die. So, for example, a level 12 wizard NPC would have ~42 HP +/- con modifiers base. That 1d6+10 is 1/4 of their HP per turn, and I was doing that several times a turn. It probably helped that it was a game that tended to alternate between Urban environments and dungeons, with the occasional random encounters between towns, I suppose.

You don't have to quit, but I think you should take a break from PnP, OP, because you sound burned out. Try a board game (see: board game general /bgg/) that has the same RP elements, good story/campaign arc, plenty of rules to follow, but no GM. It might have some elements of luck based on cards or dice, but there's strategy and collaboration depending on the game-type.

I've been playing some Eldritch Horror and Dead of Winter lately, myself.

Have you tried board games?

Failing that, you've always got 3.pf, gurps, or really any system where you can minmax hard enough to destroy the universe. That's kind of like skill.

If accomplishment doesn't matter, why not just cut the bullshit and give everyone a shitload of levels before saying "you stand in front of the BBEG's lair, how do you proceed?"

It's not like anything that happens between level 1 and level X has meaning if what you're saying is true.

OP, have you tried being less autistic?

This is an extremely autistic viewpoint.
It matters because you have fun, not because you brag about your achievements.
Coming up with interesting solutions to problems matters.
Having character interactions and growth matters.

Something doesn't have to be an accomplishment for it to be enjoyable.

If there's no accomplishment, especially for a game, then none of it matters. For all I know, the only reason why our "interesting" solutions worked is because the GM allowed them to work.

It's like gearing up to fight the best player in the tournament, only to find out that the only reason you won was because they decided to throw the match. You don't feel good about it, in fact, it makes you question whether or not you deserved to win in the first place.

>Skill based

It's not really a medium that rewards skill in any way, unless you count rote memorisation and ability to perform basic mathematics and probability to be skill, but that falls under rolling high.

If you really require that your own personal aptitude be a catalyst for progress in the game for the game itself to have any meaning to you, there's not much I can say to you.

>understanding of the rules

Except self-limitation is inherent in this hobby.

It doesn't take a genius to look up '[system] charop guide' and proceed to make the most broken character imaginable. That's your 'Personal skill' right there. Do you think it would give your game more meaning? Make it more gratifying?

I don't.

What's the point in being alive?

Things only mean what you want them to mean. You're edging into nihilism territory, but you're doing it ass-fucking-backwards, squinting at your bullshit D&D stories all the way.

Just accept it for what it is: A cool story that you helped build, enjoying yourself with friends all the while.

Do you apply that logic to the rest of your life? Have you ever enjoyed a videogame not played on the hardest difficulty? Do you believe the tests and exams you passed were always of the utmost difficulty, and that you never got a lucky break with easy questions, or because the professor liked you (if we're talking about oral exams)? Do you believe your partners and your friends are there for you because you ACCOMPLISHED them? Or worse, that you are THEIR accomplishment? Do you then think it feasible if they were to discard you like the piece of autistic dung you are because a better, more accomplished individual came along? Do you FOR A MOMENT believe that chance has never turned the stakes, nay, do you in fact believe this isn't a common or almost prevailing occurrence?
I supppose you can affect real life more than you can a random d20 die roll. Or maybe it seems that way to you because the results are not immediately discernible, but with a die they are. Guess what, life is more chance-based than you think, it just doesn't happen as quickly and it gives you a sense or agency that you will not get from rolling dice and adding up numbers, because deep inside, and outside too, don't get me wrong, you are a failure and are doing nothing with your life. Games are not meant to provide you with a sense of agency at the level which you crave, because you know them to be fake. No amount of involved skill will change that.

This thread is depressing.

Has the entire hobby always been a bunch of nerds circlejerking about how awesome their narratives are? It reminds me of when Mass Effect 3 was coming out and we found out that nothing we did actually mattered.

God, I might actually get back into vidya again if this is the alternative.

This tbqfhwyfamalam.

Welp, guess this is the part where the trolls come out to play.

To answer your question, no, I don't apply this logic to every facet of my life because when playing vidya or taking a test or whatever, my success is based off of my proficiency as a person and there's an actual risk for failure (whether it's failing a test or not making progress in a video game).

Skill based RPG¨
well there is this hich is based on physical dexterity as the core mechnic is a Jenga tower which you have to kep from falling, but there are also dice and maybe tables involved.archive.4plebs.org/dl/tg/image/1378/74/1378746682811.pdf

Just because it calls your bizarre and inconsistent worldview into question doesn't mean it's a troll. That's just a really short-sighted defense mechanism and you should really stamp it out before it blinds you to any genuine chance at introspection.

Assuming that things only have meaning if there is a chance of failure is just as arbitrary as any other method of assigning it. Can you really not enjoy something just for what it is? A fun story? Time spent playing a game with friends? Do you truly, honestly need to feel like you have been able to demonstrate your personal proficiency to be able to look back on your D&D game with fondness?

I mean, by my own philosophy, that is a perfectly valid outlook - Or it would be, if it weren't actively reducing your quality of life. If this pointless neuroticism is affecting your happiness, then you need to decide whether to embrace it and spend your time doing something you'd enjoy more, or discard it and continue enjoying this hobby. Those are the choices. It doesn't need to be made any more complicated than this.

If you want purely mechanical interaction your better off with boardgames and wargames. There's nothing wrong with that it's just a different medium.

But yeah in ttrpgs it does mostly come down to the DM. Now that doesn't mean the game can't be skill based it just means the DM you choose needs to objective, consistent and fair. One that sets out a base structure for the game and sticks to it. One that thoughtfully creates challenges and fleshes out the world with details for the players to utilise. One that puts their mood, options toward players and their own idea of plot aside, taking pleasure instead in ruling the actions and reactions that occur in the world.

So really it takes a skilled DM to run a game that allows players to be skilled. Really it's no different than any single player video game. You are not competing against the game because any normal videogame has to be conceivably beatable. You seeing if you overcome the challenge that the games designer has set for you using the rules they have made for you. Every victory or defeat short of hacking or exploiting glitches is both fair and within the will of the designer.
The difference in table top is that the designer is there in front of you and makes his rulings in real time.

Find games that made my skilled and dedicated designers. If you can't find any, become one yourself and inspire others to follow your example.

I call you a troll because you wrote out a wall of text that basically boils down to "do you need a chance to fail to feel accomplished?" and you tried to conflate a game (a recreational activity) with that of an exam (an activity that decides whether I pass a class or not). I don't need excitement and a failure chance to feel accomplished with my life as a whole and the fact that you believed that to be so is why I called you a troll. If you want to rescind your statement and start over from scratch, we can put it behind us and focus on the argument at hand.

Either way, it's not arbitrary to want a failure state in a game that I'm sitting down to play as a recreational activity. In every game known to man, there's always a win condition and a failure state. If a game lacks these elements, and player skill doesn't factor into these elements, then it stops being a game and starts becoming a circlejerk where we only lose if we decide to.

Five Star post right here.

You're arguing with another person. Should be pretty obvious, as he said he understands your world-view and cares about you enough that he advises you not to be so neurotic.

To me you're just an entitled piece of shit that never worked or achieved anything and is looking for a sense of agency where there can be none.

I don't particularly want to put it behind us because it is in fact relevant to the discussion.

More relevant, however, is that you have inherently misread the point of the hobby. Or, more accurately, your DM's interpretation of the point of the hobby, there is no objective point.

Some DMs like number crunching games. Games where you are given free reign over your character and are expected to work out the percentiles on every action you take to win, because no punches are being pulled, and you will lose otherwise. But the question is, do you actually define the ability to perform basic math and look through rulebooks for hours as 'personal profiency'? It takes about as much 'skill' as blackjack does. It has a win condition and failure state, so it fits your definition of a game, but it's, well, boring, in my opinion.

Some DMs like storytelling games. Games where the intention is to create a narrative, and the system is just an engine for this. Oh, there might be a chance of losing, but generally even being defeated or failing won't actually halt the story, it will simply take it in a new direction. The win condition and failure states here are not well-defined. You're expected to create your own win conditions and failure states from your immersion in the narrative.

Personally, I prefer the latter since it creates a more fulfilling experience for me, rather than winning at a game because I memorised all the options and made all the right moves, but I acknowledge that there is no objective truth to this, or, well, anything.

But what it boils down to is the choice I proposed before. Accept that this issue you have taken is detracting from your happiness. After that, you can either opt to find meaning from this hobby as you have before, or opt to leave the hobby and find meaning elsewhere, since you have explicitly said that you need meaning for enjoyment to be possible.

Final option, of course, is that you just have a bad DM.

Sounds like you want to play a wargame where you make up a story about your army and how they won. That's fine, but tabletop and dice aren't the problem, you're the problem.

>To me you're just an entitled piece of shit that never worked or achieved anything and is looking for a sense of agency where there can be none.
It's amazing how you can get this much detail out of a few posts talking about my dissatisfaction with the hobby. I mean, that's quite a lot of detail based off of a fairly minor interaction with an anonymous entity on a Bosnian knitting forum.

I don't need meaning to find enjoyment as a whole but if I'm sitting down with the intention of playing a game, I'd like to know that I'm winning and losing due to my own choices as a player, not through luck or DM fiat.

I think you misunderstand me, my dissatisfaction with the hobby is just that, dissatisfaction with the hobby. I don't need a reason to have fun, and I say this as someone who hangs out with people every week, either shooting the shit, playing vidya, or just throwing back brews and having a good time being jackasses on the weekend.

However, what's ultimately disheartening to me is the fact that tabletop gaming no longer has any real bite to it. Everything feels artificial, like through no fault of my own, I'm going to beat the BBEG no matter what decision I make because the DM decided that the game's narrative superseded the mechanics of the game, but not before we're at a point where we can beat them on relatively even ground.

I hope I'm clearer now.

If that's the case then the best advice I can give you is to trust your DM.

Like I said, attempt to immerse yourself in the narrative, and like said, trust your DM. You might be secretly worried that your winning and losing is arbitrary and based on DM fiat, but to your character? It's sure as hell a real fight, with real consequences, and the ending isn't written in stone.

Roleplay harder, and believe in the person who is running the world. If that isn't possible, find somebody else to run the world. A good DM will be able to create a real sense of risk and consequence, but you need to meet them halfway or nobody is going to have a good time. If you approach this with scepticism, you're never going to be able to immerse yourself.

Suspension of disbelief is very important in this hobby, and I think most of your problem lies in the fact that you have lost the ability to enter a mindset that is conducive to that due to your doubts. If so, I'm not sure what I can tell you that would make it better, since that delves farther into psychology than I feel I am qualified to deal with.

I trust him as much as to say that he's not as terrible as some of the horror stories I've read on Veeky Forums over the last few years but even then, I just can't shake the feeling in the back of my head that the only reason we beat the dragon is because it was scaled to our level.

I want a game where we're a bunch of level 1 characters, but can also choose to take on the BBEG by level 2, even though he's a CR10 encounter. Sure, we're most likely going to die and it's not recommended, but it's the principal of knowing that we could, rather than being led around by the hand until we go through enough (properly scaled) encounters until the GM says "okay fellas, it's time to take on that BBEG now!"

Do you know what I'm saying?

>he is still trying to climb the mmr ladder in delusional
[dih-loo-zhuh-nl]
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adjective
1.
having false or unrealistic beliefs or opinions:
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Psychiatry. maintaining fixed false beliefs even when confronted with facts, usually as a result of mental illness:
He was so delusional and paranoid that he thought everybody was conspiring against him.

Wut?

>I want a game where we're a bunch of level 1 characters, but can also choose to take on the BBEG by level 2, even though he's a CR10 encounter. Sure, we're most likely going to die and it's not recommended, but it's the principal of knowing that we could, rather than being led around by the hand until we go through enough (properly scaled) encounters until the GM says "okay fellas, it's time to take on that BBEG now!"
>Do you know what I'm saying?

I think I do know what you're saying, unlike the rest of the thread

I think you're saying you want to start browsing OSR general and play in old-school games where there's lethal dungeons and a lethal wilderness and your goal is to get rich and maybe find a macguffin at the bottom of the cursed megadungeon and probably have a few dozen characters per player end up dying horribly, and the GM is there not to hold your hand and slap your wrists as they guide you through a plot, but to neutrally arbitrate the consequences of your actions in the sandbox murder-land.

The dungeon gets harder as you descend, the wilderness gets harder as you get further from civilization, but there might be an out-of-place Basilisk on Level 1 guarding fabulous loot and if you steal the loot, good for you, and if you die horribly, that's fine too. Or maybe it's on level 3 and you want to 'dive' through the insane depths as a level 1 character in a high-risk high-reward gamble, and that's fine too.

Have you tried talking with your group or your GM?

Sounds fun, but how is that ANY different from what the OP is complaining about?

>After playing for a few years, I realized that in most cases, our party won because we either rolled high enough to beat the threshold for the action or because the DM thought that we were being clever and threw us a bone.

The party wins because the dice favored them, they were clever, or both. That's even more true in OSR where, by your own account, there's less of a trend of handholding and scaling encounters down; if the PCs want to survive, they need to play smart and occasionally get lucky. OP is whining that nothing matters and it's all an arbitrary game of pretend like that's a sudden revalation.

Have you actually read the thread or are you just pretending? OP (a fag, as expected) has problems with his GM coddling the group.

Y'know what, I think I will go check out the OSR general.