Any Good Games Where Running Away Can Be A Victory?

[John R Davis]

The Jack Hack
Cthulhu Dark

 

[Ath-kethin]

Dungeon Crawl Classics awards XP for surviving encounters, not conquering them.

Survival can explicitly mean avoiding the conflict or fleeing - after all, the most effective means of living to loot another day is simply not getting into fights.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Yeah, it's odd that it isn't more common, though, I think? I feel like it's very common in stories, but when we sit down to tell stories collaberatively like this, there is this dichotomy. A given game either treats combat as sort of encouraged, or discouraged. Even Monster of The Week doesn't want you to fight the monsters all that much. There are playbooks that can, but generally you have to do research, investigate, plan, pull some deeply bespoke and/or incredibly reckless magic, etc, to win the day. Violence is at most what the Chosen does to keep the monster from killing anyone while the rest of the team does The Thing. It's fun, because it drives the story very very effectively toward certain types of stories, certain tropes, certain patterns, etc, and those are fun stories to be part of, but it is still in that mold of "combat or non-combat, but not both" as a focus of the game.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with having a game where the party goes into a situation and it's radically different than they expected and they have to adapt or retreat and come back with more information etc. It can lead to some interesting situations - I'm reminded of a session I ran in my winter post-apocalyptic D&D where the party went to this abandoned observatory. As they crept through, the signs were that a medusa had been there - statues of long-dead scholars were all over the place, obviously turned to stone. The party really was on edge... and the monster instead ended up being the ghost of the medusa. They beat it, but the challenge wasn't what they expected. By the same token, it wasn't the opposite where they had put themselves at a disadvantage.

Gaming horror story: I once played with a DM (you know the type, the one who fancies himself the Great American Author and it's beyond railroad...) His gaming philosophy is that defeat makes heroes stronger (this is true). However, his mental math was that, out of six encounters, the party should flat out be outclassed 3 of them, fight to a stalemate twice, and win outright once. ... yeah, not even Die Hard is that brutal.

 

[R_J_K75]

Does this even make sense?

Not sure but I'll give it a shot.

Unless an encounter is a guardian insofar as the only way to progress is to defeat the guardian, (and even then sometimes just evading or slipping past is an option), I've never built an encounter linearly. I've never expected any encounter to end any specific way so Ive always awarded XP accordingly depending on how the PCs reacted to it.

Case in point. In an Undermountain dungeon crawl this happened. PCs are faced with a door; typical right. So instead of interacting with the door one PC took his portable hole and put it on the floor in between the two sides of the door. The party step into it on the one side and came out the other circumventing the obstacle. Rules be damned, and I honestly couldnt even think of any that would disallow them to do so, I thought that was damn clever and awarded them more XP than what Id have if theyd just engaged with the door.

In my opinion and I may not be exactly answering your question but I think that moving the game forward, characters surviving and overcoming the encounter is reward enough and the mechanics of doing so are irrelevant. I think those things are hardwired into the game behind the scenes by the theme of the game perhaps? It depends on what the mood of the game youre running so the rules or theme of any said RPG will be effected accordingly Id believe,

 

[DemoMonkey]

Honey Heist.

 

[Fenris-77]

Dr. Who's mechanics seem to support this. The initiative system puts talking first, running away second, and combat third. If you watch any episode of the show that holds up as the structure and the Doctor still always manages to win.

 

[R_J_K75]

I'm reminded of a session I ran in my winter post-apocalyptic D&D where the party went to this abandoned observatory. As they crept through, the signs were that a medusa had been there - statues of long-dead scholars were all over the place, obviously turned to stone. The party really was on edge... and the monster instead ended up being the ghost of the medusa. They beat it, but the challenge wasn't what they expected. By the same token, it wasn't the opposite where they had put themselves at a disadvantage.

This is the best Ive read in a very long time, I just may steal it, check that, I am stealing it...next game.

Gaming horror story: I once played with a DM (you know the type, the one who fancies himself the Great American Author and it's beyond railroad...) His gaming philosophy is that defeat makes heroes stronger (this is true). However, his mental math was that, out of six encounters, the party should flat out be outclassed 3 of them, fight to a stalemate twice, and win outright once. ... yeah, not even Die Hard is that brutal.

How did you resist using a Royal Crown dice bag as an Executioners Hood to silence that DM? To add to the OP, that monster was simply defeated if the party knew enough to pour wine on the Executioners Hood.

 

[Yora]

OD&D, AD&D 1st edition, and BECMI give the majority of XP for the treasures, not the monsters that guard them.
Snatching a treasure and getting away without a fight is almost always ideal, as you're still in shape to continue grabbing other treasures. And your chances are much better to not die in the process.

 

[R_J_K75]

OD&D, AD&D 1st edition, and BECMI give the majority of XP for the treasures, not the monsters that guard them.

Think this largely depended on the class you were playing as certain classes were awarded XP on different criteria. Im personally not a fan of a single XP level track and every class gets the same of the latter editions of D&D, its easier but think it lended to a more sterile style of play.

 

[Yora]

Think this largely depended on the class you were playing as certain classes were awarded XP on different criteria. Im personally not a fan of a single XP level track and every class gets the same of the latter editions of D&D, its easier but think it lended to a more sterile style of play.

I am pretty certain that idea did not appear until 2nd Edition.