Running away from a fight

[Ardem]

I discussion that has been raised in the Rolemaster forum, which I am curious if this transend to other gamesets.

I recall growing up (when I was a young whipper snapper to RPG) that sometimes as a party when you faced a monster that was out of your league, where it was GM included or random encounter. You would as a player think running away was an option and you would not be able to win every fight. Especially if you were a lower character.

I will give an example I was playing MERP in the 2nd Age I think, and we were in the Dwarf Hold of kazakdum, we were searching for something in the lower level and the GM did a random encounter. At the time he said it was just a great stone magical door, after much talk with the dwarf leaders they decided to open the door we waited knowing we would get share of the riches on the other side. What happen was the door was opened magically and to our horror a Balrog appeared. "Yes it was a random encounter roll"

We all ran, I die quickly and did not make it, but such is life.

But I would not be suprised if today's player would try and attack it even though it was out of their league and wonder why they could not win or expect the GM to proved challenges they could always beat.

Has other GMs found this and is this a product of Computer RPGing that has jaded us to the most valuable aspect of saving ones skin.

[lachancery]

To unerwünscht: Haha! This one's for you. ;)

[damned]

my low level C&C characters recently bumped into a coupel of hungry ankhegs in the forest en-route to the ruins... they very smartly ran halfway thru the second round of combat :)

[Trenloe]

my low level C&C characters recently bumped into a coupel of hungry ankhegs in the forest en-route to the ruins... they very smartly ran halfway thru the second round of combat :)
That was definitely a get out of Dodge - FAST moment... It was refreshing and a reminder that the world can (and will) throw dangerous creatures at you that you may not be able to defeat.

To give my opinion on Ardem's OP, I think some of it has come into RPGing from the EL/CR/etc. statistical matching of encounters that 3.5E, Pathfinder and 4E suggest (4E more than most, I would say). This can lead to the idea that the GM will never give the player's an encounter that they have no chance of winning. In fact, some players will complain "that encounter was too tough for our average-party-level" if encounters are challenging (especially "early" in an adventure"). DM/GM guides often state a scenario designing process of having beginning encounters challenge rating/encounter level roughly equal to the party level, increasing by 1 or 2 and then having the final encounter being 2 or even 3 levels higher than the average party level (APL).

Does this come from computer RPGs/games in general? Having an increasing challenge and a final difficult boss to fight? Perhaps... Or, is it just the way the game has gone... When I DM'd 4e for a bit, I was a little unfamiliar with the new powers, increased HP, etc. and I found the statistical nature of putting an encounter together a useful tool to give me an idea of how challenging it would be for the PCs. Would I have ever thrown an encounter at the PCs that I knew was APL +5 in 4e? Probably not... Would I do it in WFRP, Traveller, WoD, etc. - absolutely!

I read recently in one of the old-school hex-crawl products (either from Frog God Games or NOD, I can't find it now) that the products were designed to take you back to the days where the creatures you meet next might easily kill you and tried to bring the edge-of-your-seat mystery back to encounters where you may die quickly if you stood and fought and very often the players would have to make a split second decision on whether to fight or run like crazy.

So, perhaps some of it has come from computer RPGs, and some from more recent main-stream tabletop RPGs.

I, for one, in future will be making it clear to my players when I run a game that sometimes the gloves will be off and encounters may be too difficult at their current level - they have to use their character's knowledge/appraise skills or gut feel to decide at what point to flee the encounter.

I'd like to see more of:
GM: "Roll for initiative. OK, player 1 - you're up"
Player 1: "I run away."
Player 2: "Err, what? I run away too!"
Player 3: "Come on guys, we can take 'em!"
SQUISH!

:)

[Magnatude]

yeah, I've noticed a trend of Players expecting fully balanced encounters...

Me, I'm one of those DM's that loves to have unbalanced situations. Most of the time the encounter is NOT looking for a fight, but players like to poke things with sticks.
Eventually players start to understand the DM and adapt. My players already expect that encounters may not be just equal to their party CR.
I had one planned encounter where an overpowered Demonic Knight wiped the floor with the players in a matter of several rounds. The players expected a total party kill, but they awoke captured and battered. The encounter was also to help prompt one of the "Fighters" into wanting to some day get even with this bully... after he was left pinned, with a pair of Stilettos, to a tree, alone, to linger on an agonizing death. The Fighter was saved by passers-by, and the deep resentment of the defeat is helping shape the Fighter's personality. The Fighter went on to recover and helped his fellow captive party members escape.

For me, there is always story involved, and some days players need to be clobbered into sobriety, for the sake of an evolving and intriguing storyline.

[damned]

and characters who think that the law cant touch them? whats with that? thumbing your nose at the local nobility/law too often or too hard should see you clapped in irons at best!

[Phystus]

The increasing challenge thing is as old as dungeons themselves. The deeper you go, the tougher the monsters get. But yeah, there does seem to be more emphasis on allowing the party to win. And that grates on my old-school heart.

But I've found an upside to 'challenge ratings' and such. They do give you a fairly accurate guide to determining just how much is really too much. So they let you kill with more precision! ;)

~P

[Karrth]

Both as a player and as a GM I agree that there needs to be encounters that is too hard or require some serious thinking to get past.

But that being said, as a player, I prefer to have a 'fair chance' at either getting away or fighting. Not saying that it should be easy in any way but I'm reminded about last time I played table top gaming where the GM went out of his way to create difficult encounters -by altering the rules on the fly. Some things worked for his creatures while they didn't work for the players.

Still it did create that fear of encountering anything not human :)

[Valarian]

Sometimes running away, or getting captured, is the best way to go.

For example, if you are playing in a pulp or spy game, at some point it is likely that you will face a dire situation and your character will be captured. You should welcome it, it's likely that you'll find out what the villain has planned through the inevitable monologue and bragging. Play to the tropes of the genre.

If you are faced with a dire situation, don't be afraid to leg it. Follow brave Sir Robin!

[GunnarGreybeard]

Most games I've run at some point have generally included a seriously one sided encounter/situation where players have to run early or they risk getting captured. I don't think I have ever outright killed any PC who opted for surrender or was knocked out and then was captured. Now those who opt for the "I fight to the death" stand, because they want to rather than because its their characters' persona, that's on them.

Being captured can be a part of advancing the storyline and allows for those great escapes of player legend. I tend to GM along the "PC's should always have a chance" theme so that as long as they are not committing suicide or doing extremely stupid things they will stay alive, albeit much poorer and bereft of any nice equipment they may have been carrying at the time. :D

[mrklin]

Oh gods yes, I've seen this phenomenon, but it wasn't all that uncommon in the good'ol days either. Think my most memorable incident was:

- StarWars : a group of 4 brand spanking new Level 1 characters decide to take on 2 squads of Stormies, needless to say it went poorly, but what scared me more was the amount of 20's the guys rolled, leaving them not so humbled as they should have been, but just as dead.

Although I catch myself on the player side as well being a little too eager. Had just rolled up a new character, deciding to play myself heavily into the role of slicer. In hindsight I knew damned well there was no way in hell I was gonna be able to pull of an electronic bank-heist on the fly as a Level 1 character, but that thought never crossed my mind as I started rolling my checks... provided ample diversion for the rest of the group to perform the mission though (although I forget what that was at the moment)

[Yospeck]

Among the people I GM for (my MMORPG guild) I'm quite notorious for not caring if my players die if they do something particularly stupid or not run when that's clearly what they should do. The danger you face is that sometimes someone will say "My character just wouldn't run away from this....", which is fine and the pig-headedness of the player is generally portrayed in the character. So I have to be mindful otherwise I'm basically creating an encounter that I know this guy is doing to die in.

With the systems I've played the use of Destiny Points has always been handy, and in general people are a little more cautious when they have none. Similarly I'm generally happy to take hands, arms, eyes, etc. instead of outright killing the character and giving them nasty penalties.

I've also told my guys with the new campaign we've started that "there will be times that there are some rooms you just should not go into... or somethings you don't know will kill you until it kills you. If I've written it that way there will always be a way to find out beforehand, but I'm not changing the room of death just because you stumbled into it unknowingly."

This is why I loved playing Dark Heresy, because you characters are pretty much guaranteed to die and people come to terms with it really early on.

[weaselarmor]

I let my players know from the onset that I'm not going to hold back with the consequences of their actions. If you're level 3 DO NOT take on the whole palace guard to access the treasure vault you WILL DIE.

Most players and people in general can tell when things are being dumbed-down for then and don't tend to appreciate it.

[inuroku842]

Personally, I came into the world on AD&D and then moved on up through 3rd, 3.5, and finally pathfinder (all with the same DM) and have never actually experienced an unbalanced fight. I guess that was one of my DM's flaws, otherwise he was great. Since I learned most what I know from him, I've never actually ran an encounter in which players had to run away. I actually seem to base my quests and encounters off of the player's levels, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense to leave out an encounter with a green dragon that jealously guards his forest lair. I'm going to have to remedy that from now on...

I think maybe some of this syndrome may be due to computer RPG'ing, where you are 'quested' into areas with creatures that are compatible with your level (thanks WoW). Thinking back to the OLD FF games, you could easily wander into an area with higher level creatures, not even know it, and your entire party be dead before you get through the first round. I don't so much blame the new onslaught of mainstreamed tabletops, I think they're just following a successful trend in the gaming industry: players want to win, let them win.

[Ardem]

Sat Night I produced an unbalance concept. They were suppose to lose the fight, and I knew they would not back off either. Fortunately RM when the hit point go down it is a knock out not a kill.

There object was to clear a tomb where the object of the mission was to stop gnolls from releasing a powerful demon onto the world. However they entered deeper and deeper and opened up the room where the demon was. 5 Level 2 chars are not match for any demon.

Luckily I knew the demon would see these people as insignificant ants, he used a control spell to make one of them fight another, after giving them a choice to join him. I whispered into the controlled char, don't say anything you now under mind control you must attack a party member. He attacked and the party member though he had done a turn coat on him attack back full force and gained a critical. Broke his arm and smashed tendons putting the controlled char on the floor and out of the fight.

I then controlled the PC char who just laid down the smack and now he knew what had happenned professed an enormous amount of guilt for what he had done. The hurt char now released from control swore like a trooper at him, for being an idiot.

Meaning while the two of PC's focused on the demon but could not hit him as arrows missed and swings missed, he raised two skeletons and march calmly out of the door, he told the female elf archer to move or die, she didn't and missed, he whipped her with a E critical, wher she used a fate point, she was very hurt but did not die. Then the skeleton gave her a D critical and sent her down bleeding out.

He then strode out the door, while the control PC was hammering the halfing cleric.

The rest of the night ended with cries of complaints about opening the door and complaints about why the PC char who broken the other PC's arm and did not use the flat of his sword.

They knew the world was at risk, but they should of run, especially when the NPC name said Demon.

As a GM it was a pleasurable night, I love to mess with the PC's mind on occasion.

[inuroku842]

Haha, that's awesome!

[Doswelk]

One of the things I love about the Savage Worlds setting books is that they always state that the encounter tables are not balanced, they have just put the monsters that should be in that area on the tables.

Not having played D&D since 2nd edition I have read with "horror" about how 3rd and 4th editions have rules for how to balance out the encounters to ensure that each fight uses up X hp and X healing potions/spells etc.

Where's the fun in knowing that the encounter is balanced towards your success (other than bad luck with the dice)?

Mind you in Savage Worlds a kobold can kill a legendary character with a well placed sword thrust (thanks to exploding dice).

I think that players should always have in the back of their mind that ANY encounter might be the one they should not fight and talk/run/trick they way around it.