The Ogre Benchmark

  My first move anytime I'm looking at a new fantasy game system is to beeline the monster manual and look up the ogre entry. It's the shortcut to figuring out the system's tone, the underlying math, and really how the game expects itself to be played. I'm sure some counter-examples exist, but it really is amazing how consistently it works. 
  Ogres have a wonderful set of fairytale baggage. Big, imposing, brutish, and a little bit charming, in fairytales ogres are fairly interchangeable with with trolls and giants, but from the earliest days of D&D trolls got relegated to a more animalistic trope while giants live a more civilized and independent existence. Ogres though? Still the same old big grumpy hungry guys, usually bullies, typically fat, usually dimwits. Just the kind of monster to get tricked by Puss in Boots into turning himself into a mouse. It's great.
  In the terms of the "game" part of TTRPGs, Ogres are a very standard final boss for the first dungeon. Most D&D-lineage games think that an ogre is really too much to handle for 4-5 first-level guys in a straight-up fight, but there is an expectation that the dumb big guy is an obstacle that can be overcome. Typically in turn ogres become an enemy the party can stand toe-to-toe with around level 3. I've also noticed that how the ogre is personified plays into how the system expects you to overcome him (it's always a him). Looking at the D&Ds:
   -OD&D and B/X don't expect you to be able to take a blow from an ogre at all. The simple ogres, however, are easy enough to trick and confuse. A B/X adventurer might be able to trick an ogre into setting itself on fire or blundering into a pit, but because its original D&D all he actually needs to do is to take advantage of the distraction to steal the ogre's treasure. 
   -AD&D 2e will have an even stronger fairytale feel to the ogres, with the longer monstrous compendium entry giving hooks for how the noble party of heroes can negotiate with the ogre, who is probably a more sympathetic figure (along the "dimwitted child" lines). AD&D 2e parties won't compromise their nobility but can work it out nicely in their questline to stop the naughty ogre from pillaging sheep.
   -D&D 3/Pathfinder take a stark turn with how the PCs overcome the ogre. They don't get XP for stealing its treasure or from completing a quest, but how can they kill it with an APL of 1 against its EL-3 self? Why, by making optimized characters, of course. System mastery of anything in the 3.P lineage will make a crew of adventurers who can confidently take on an ogre head-to-head, although there's definitely still danger there. D&D 3 also expects this by portraying ogres a good deal more savagely, while Pathfinder went gleefully over the top with ogres that are incestuous rapist redneck archetypes. They're here to be killed now.
   -D&D 4e has less ability to hyper-optimize the party, but an ogre is definitely something that can be put on a tactical battlemat where four PCs use terrain and all their encounter abilities to properly overcome the tactical puzzle. Ogres are less personified than before, just a chess piece on the board. It's theoretically possible PCs could overcome the ogre via social skill checks, but that Skill Challenge is left to the DM to set up.
   -D&D 5e, finally has the driest ogre of them all. Beautiful art, generic terms, and of course WotC corporate would never go so far as to describe ogres performing uncouth acts. How then can the party overcome a 5E ogre? Why by action economy of course. Bounded accuracy means the only real way to make the ogre meaningfully more powerful is piles of more hit points, which a group can easily out-endure. Make sure to wheedle Advantage from the DM while you're hitting him.
  All of this repeats for all the games I've yet to encounter with D&D in the lineage, but it works for most other fantasy games too. Next time you crack a new system's book, take a look at the ogre...it'll usually tell you everything you need to know about how the game is expected to be played. 
  Now just don't even get me started on dragons.