However people want to go about determining whether monsters die after reaching zero hit points is fine. I just don’t want the result of that to affect whether the escape procedure will work. If it’s not something the PCs can reliably do, the players will assume it’s effectively not available.I can see that. For me, having that sort of mechanism to give me access to some level of detachment rather than just sort of making the decision. Certainly if I find it interesting or helpful I'll just make the decision, but at the same time it's kind of nice to detach yourself and sort of play along with fate; it kind of helps me feel like a player, too, if I set some limits.
That’s interesting considering the context (a retreat in a B/X retroclone). I don’t really understand the nostalgia for meatgrinder play. B/X is not without its danger (death at 0 hit points, save-or-die effects abound, classes have smaller hit dice), but I don’t think it was expected that the whole party could be lost easily.And I find your decision really interesting! I know my two groups would act very differently to that: my group of younger, newer players would probably go along with that idea a bit more. But that sort of thing would lose my grognard group, as I have heard them complain about taking the risk out of the game if they don't feel like they can die. It's one of those generational differences, with the former growing up around late 2E/3E and the latter with Chainmail/OD&D. That's not a judgment on the decision (My older group is, honestly, can be real stick-in-the-mud when it comes to trying new things... though occasionally they really fall for stuff I wouldn't expect, like FFG Star Wars/Genesys), but just interesting to think about trying to do that myself and how it'd go.
In a way, “modern” games are kind of perverse in that they make it more difficult to lose a single character while making it easier to lose the entire party. The latter is far worse for whatever story-driven play the (presumably trad) group had planned, and yet some people object strongly to the idea that the PCs should ever need to retreat.
My issue with APs is that usually means WotC or Paizo, and neither writes adventures that can be run without having to prep them. I remember putting an absurd amount of time into prepping Kingmaker. It ended up being a fun campaign, but I don’t want to have to do that work again. I find doing my own stuff easier because I default to sandbox play and let the PCs set the agenda and have things react accordingly.For me, APs are just too cluttered in general. I like the wilderness, ancient forgotten tombs, and travel. I feel like I'm more of a fantasy explorer/archeologist than anything, maybe because of my love of history. Give me a tomb with only a few enemies but a ton of etchings and lore and I'll be happy as a clam. I'm kind of a really odd player, now that I think about it.
Well, in theory. Ironically, I’ve been stuck in perpetual prep for the last few years because I’ve never been able to fully prep my hex key or finish detailing my setting. It looks like setting creation in WWN will be taking care of the latter finally (and at a level of utility beyond what I’d get with setting supplements). I am hopeful that with the world established, the worst I’ll have to worry about is coming up with a dungeon to explore, so between session prep should be more manageable.