Last session, our DM mentioned damage-immune, quick PC-drowning water wierds from 1E. As a curmudgeon, I immediately rolled my eyes and said something generally disparaging about the older editions regarding a lack of game-balance. My buddy across the table jumped in with "it was a different style of game back then. You expected to die all the time. You didn't need game balance."

Well, that can't be right.

"You need balance so that it's fun for everyone at the table," I retorted. Then I think he said something about my mother, and we kept playing. The idea that a game could be fun while lacking a militant eye for consistency and power levels on both sides of the screen perplexes me, though. Hopefully you can help me understand.

Parameters

Game balance is a broad term, and for the purpose of this discussion I'd like it to encompass every factor of the game: exploration versus puzzles versus combat versus roleplaying; character power among each other; character power among the enemy; DM rulings in unusual situations; and the common lethality around your game world.

I think we can all agree that, like a movie, expectations and individual taste play a huge role in determining our enjoyment. I prefer deep storylines, dynamic characters, a little emotional growth, and grit, so I think that a well-balanced game offers me the most direct, longest-lived, and enjoyable path through those fine forests. It isn't hard to imagine someone who prefers disposable characters and kicking ass without even bothering to take names, and it seems that a less-balanced style of game would cater to that audience. Getting drowned without recourse is moot if you aren't invested in that character.

Not Getting It

To me, this line of thinking becomes inconsistent if you think of the older editions where the goal was to "imagine the hell out of it." (Did I get that right?) Imagining things is fun, but hard work. It takes effort for the DM to think up a story that the characters will bite on. It takes effort for the characters to think up backstories and to act in character. And if your game has no balance you could suddenly find all that effort wasted when the PCs grow bored of rolling over your monsters, or when you grow bored of TPKs (to say nothing of the losers in these situations). Worse yet, maybe your off-the-cuff imaginings result in a great success for a PC one week, and then a dead PC the next. That would be nothing but frustrating, and would probably cause arguments, the anti-fun.

I'm missing something here. I can't embrace the idea that the 1st generation of tabletop gamers did nothing but reroll one-dimensional characters all the time for fear of unkillable water wierds. Or, if you did, I can't understand the adamant defense of those first editions as being the best on offer when 4E (certainly not my favourite) offers streamlined play for uni-dimensional character builds (guess what? You've got 5 powers, so go have fun!).

On top of all of that, the 3X extensive ruleset allows you to maintain balance while imagining as much, as little, or anywhere in between for your game (which is where I suspect the answer to the game balance question lies).

Am I wrong?