Standing and fighting

This anecdote was from many years ago (~20). I was a Player, not the DM.

We came to the strong gate of the tall, iron fence surrounding the evil castle’s grounds. As we open the gate, we hear the baying of probably large wolves coming from the forest around us (on the outer side of the fence). We stop. After a minute, we see the large forms of many dire wolves moving through the trees, slowly getting closer. We go into combat mode and ask for initiative.

The DM stops us and asks, “Why don’t you just go through the gate and close it?”

We Players, “. . .”

The DM, exasperated, “The wolves are just atmosphere to get you through the gate. Geez, guys.”

The adventure was the original Ravenloft, and the sounds of the approaching wolves were supposed to drive us on, into the adventure with a heart-pounding beginning. But we were not rushed by the sounds of the wolves in the distance. We were not frightened by the sounds of them getting closer. We were not moved by seeing them coming into sight. We were going to fight. The DM could have added more wolves; to really show that we shouldn’t stand our ground, but that could easily have just turned a atmospheric scene into a TPK encounter. We had a way out of the encounter, right there, but we chose to take on a dangerous challenge for no reason.

I’ve seen similar scenarios, with all kinds of DMs (myself included) and all kinds of Players (myself included), through many, many, many years. Unless the Players have several minutes to think about how they are going to approach a living challenge, they almost always chose to fight – even when they have an obvious way out/past without combat. And I’ve seen TPKs result from such behavior.

Heroes in books and movies often run from, hide from, and avoid unnecessary or dangerous fights. Why do RPG heroes always choose to fight?

Have you ever seen PCs run from, hide from, surrender to, or avoid unnecessary and dangerous encounters? Is it a Player mentality? Is it a DM description?

Quasqueton

Most of the time, unless you are significantly more mobile than your opposition, it's not possible to get away, in game, unless they choose to let you go. By "significantly", I mean, you can fly and they can't, everyone in your group has a higher speed than everyone in theirs, or you can teleport, entangle them, or do something else with magic.

Running away from a group of wolves? In play, that's just an opportunity to get picked off one by one rather than grouping up, casting a few preperatory spells, and fighting as the well-oiled-machine that most PC adventurer groups are. You can't read the GM's mind to know that he's going to let you get away, after all.

Besides, if you don't fight them now, you'll probably just run into them later, possibly when you're wounded, tired, or out of spells. If you stand and fight, you can pick your battlefield.

Quasqueton said:

Have you ever seen PCs run from, hide from, surrender to, or avoid unnecessary and dangerous encounters?

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Well, the simple answer is: Yes, I have.

But that just might be the players I have collected who immerse themselves into their characters and the scenarios and keep in mind that from the character's perspective their life is always on the line in any encounter - and thus they should be handled with care - and avoided when logistically or ethically.

Of course, if someone is playing a bloodthirsty or reckless character - their choice might be different - but it would still certainly be influenced by the majority of the party getting on the other side of the gate and closing it.

Also, as a DM - I never say things like "that was just for flavor" -that is so cheesy and I would be annoyed at a DM who broke my suspension of disbelief by going meta-game on me.

1) Heroes in books and movies are more fragile than D&D characters, or at least they think they are. (They actually have script immunity until such time as they've served their purpose, then they have script fragility. But they don't know that.)

2) Heroes in books and movies don't get any XP for fighting the wolves; all they get it chewed up.

3) Heroes in books and movies do what the author says; player characters do what the PLAYERS say.

-The Gneech

Back when I was in high school I did a little LARPing (don't worry, I'm all better now ). My party of friends went on an adventure. We had a clear mission to accomplish. We spotted two guards along the path. Rather than fight them, we snuck around them through the woods. Later there was a treasure chest in a magic circle with three statues. We assumed that if any of us stepped into the circle, the statues would animate and attack. So, we picked up a fallen tree and used it to push the chest out of the circle and took it without a fight.

At the end of the adventure, the head referee said we hadn't gained enough XP for the next level. He told us he gave us no XP for the fights we had avoided. We argued and eventually won with the help of another referee.

Looking back on these encounters I realize that if I had been playing a pen and paper game, my characters never would have avoided these fights. So, what was the difference?

1) We could see the entire scene with our own eyes and assess the situation ourselves, rather than relying only on what the DM describes to us and then having to come up with questions to clarify.

2) We had paid good money to play. We were not going to let some side encounter kill one of us so we would have to sit out the rest of the adventure. D&D is usually free, you can go create a new character or just sit and socialize if your D&D character is killed.

3) Padded weapons or not, those things can hurt! My D&D characters don't seem to have any problem with swords cutting them and maces smashing them, but I am an admitted wimp and don't like pain.

I think its mainly DM presentation. I have played, and then often ran, that same module. In every case the players took the cue to flee the scene and into the presumed saftey of the village.

Part of that might be that I am well known as a killer DM who can slaughter most groups with a wolf pack.

Of course it probably has more to do with the fact that I run the scene slightly different.

You enter the gate as evening begins to fall, in the distance, the lights of a village beckon, accompanied by the faint sounds of music. A shroud of misty fog is seeping out of the forest, scattering the bright light of the full moon into dim obscurity. A lone howl of a wolf sounds to your right, far in the distance...and suddenly the Gate slams shut behind you. The dust swirling in its wake feeds into the mist which grow deeper and darker. A tint of red seeps across the landscape with the last rays of the setting sun, painting the forest blood red.

A second howl answers from the left, chillingly bloodthirsty.....and closer than the first.
The Pack is gathering..... and hungry....

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As a DM I try to encourage non-combat answers to the encounters. Armed with this meta-game knowledge, there is a higher chance my players will look for different options. This has a lot to do with play style.
- If I am in a game where the encounters are all CR equivilent, I know we will be able to rest/heal up before the day is done, and that bargaining with the Mooks won't get me anything.. then combat is the first, and quite frankly, only option.
- On the other hand, if encounters can sometimes badly out-CR the group {or under CR the group}, rest and healing is a maybe, and bargaining with the Mook's might earn me a plotline short cut or useful piece of info on the BBG..then the swords tend to stay sheathed a bit longer.


As a player, I once ran and hid from a world ending event that the DM thought our 'Heroic' party was going to prevent. He had not counted on my CN Rogue wanting to go live up the last few days of his life in hedonistic fun instead of creeping into the deathtrap of the BBEG's castle

Quasqueton said:

Have you ever seen PCs run from, hide from, surrender to, or avoid unnecessary and dangerous encounters? Is it a Player mentality? Is it a DM description?

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Yep. Done it myself. Generally when I had a particular tactical objective, and fighting would get in the way of that objective.

There's a bit of a question here - in general, the players don't (and shouldn't) know when a fight is "unnecessary". They see what they see. They may come to the conclusion that the thing can be avoided, or they may not.

In D&D, there is also a long tradition of killing things and taking their stuff, and that generally bleeds into other games as well. Any fight that isn't a complete cakewalk is worth something, in and of itself (XP, loot, or what have you). So, unless it is made obvious to the player that the thing is more trouble than it is worth, they may pursue an unnecessary encounter merely for its intrinsic value.

Two words:

Hit Points

The players know exactly how much damage they can take (even if their characters might not - which is another argument/discussion in itself), and very often they know how much damage a wolf (or many other adversarial type critters) can dish out.

Which means they know IF they have a chance of whooping the things (at least to a point), and they know they have time before they NEED to run.

Heck, when I run a serious game now, I give less experience for combat than successfully avoiding combat... but I still have had people "Stand and fight" when they very easily could have simply ran away and hid.

Sometimes, you just want to kill stuff -- and in D&D, sometimes you're used to the DM saying "ok, you're fighting now!" and you miss the cues that you don't have to.

Heck, I had somebody stand and fight in my Cthulhu game. That didn't work so well...

Rarely.

Once, in Ravenloft, the PCs where exploring an abandoned, haunted castle. The whole adventure was an exercise in atmosphere, but what really did it was me dropping hints along the way that this could be a hiding-hole of Strahd (never did say if it was or wasn't). Then, when they come to the long-expected room with a coffin, the whole group is on edge. And when the lid swung open, as one the PCs ran away. It was glorious.

I have never seen any PC in any of my campaigns surrender. No matter how overwhelming the odds, they have always fought to subdual or death.

Then again, one of the times when I was a PC on the other end, I tried to run away from a encounter that we couldn't beat, only to find out that we were trapped. But the whole adventure was just a pile of bad DMing.