Any Good Games Where Running Away Can Be A Victory?

[hawkeyefan]

No you don't. What you need is a system where combat is actually dangerous and has consequences therefore is something to be avoided.

Picture a game of D&D where the PCs don’t fight, but instead avoid every single encounter.

Now picture your players’ faces playing that game. Are they sad? Bored? Both? Yeah, it’s both.

In D&D (any edition) there are basically no long term consequences other than death. If you're on 1hp you are still just as physically competent as if you are on full hp - and you will always recover given sufficient time. Which means that unless you die (very unlikely) there is basically no risk. In games with death spirals or long term wounds you want to avoid combat because it's possible that you will always have lost a finger - and because you are a lot less competent even after winning a fight if you've taken a few wounds.

I wouldn’t disagree with these ideas. They do seem like viable ways of making combat more dangerous and therefore good ways of making players think twice about getting into fights.

I think that having rules that don’t just make combat risky but make other options more fun is also a good idea.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Picture a game of D&D where the PCs don’t fight, but instead avoid every single encounter.

Now picture your players’ faces playing that game. Are they sad? Bored? Both? Yeah, it’s both.

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. If they've cast Solve Problem on half a dozen challenges (a depressingly common D&D spell) then they're probably bored. If it's been skill based, acts of daring, and with twists and successes with consequences and partial failures along the way they're probably a lot more animated and excited than by 5e's flabby combat.

I think that having rules that don’t just make combat risky but make other options more fun is also a good idea.

Definitely. The question is how to do that - and the only time D&D has IME really tried was 4e.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Picture a game of D&D where the PCs don’t fight, but instead avoid every single encounter.

Now picture your players’ faces playing that game. Are they sad? Bored? Both? Yeah, it’s both.



I wouldn’t disagree with these ideas. They do seem like viable ways of making combat more dangerous and therefore good ways of making players think twice about getting into fights.

I think that having rules that don’t just make combat risky but make other options more fun is also a good idea.

Yeah, usually "making combat unattractive" is kind of perverse unless you intend for the fun in the game to be problem solving or something else.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. If they've cast Solve Problem on half a dozen challenges (a depressingly common D&D spell) then they're probably bored. If it's been skill based, acts of daring, and with twists and successes with consequences and partial failures along the way they're probably a lot more animated and excited than by 5e's flabby combat.

Sure, I think what you're describing is what we're talking about as desirable. I don't know how much 5E's non-combat related rules actually deliver anything like that. It can be mitigated somewhat by creative input from the participants, especially the GM, but the rules largely don't support this kind of play in the same way they support combat.

Definitely. The question is how to do that - and the only time D&D has IME really tried was 4e.

That's possible. My opinion of 4E is pretty limited, so while I can't really agree with you, it's more because I don't know the system enough to comfortably do so. I know several folks whose opinion on the matter I trust, and they consider 4E strong in this regard, so I'm inclined to agree. Or at the very least, not to disagree!

And I'd say some of the early iterations of the game likely did pretty well in this regard, but this was more about the minimal abilities for PCs. Take a Fighter in Moldvay Basic and add a bunch of bells and whistles designed only for combat, and watch as he struggles even more to not solve every problem by killing it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Honestly, while its easy to slap D&D around for having poor support for everything outside of combat, that's a disease of most games; you end up with, at best, a generic resolution mechanic outside of it with a bit of modifiers. The only time you see something more is if there's s particularly central process in a game (say, hacking in a cyberpunk game).

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

Honey Heist, where the goal is to get away with the honey.

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, where one of the most iconic kinds of adventure is to escape a sci-fi disaster/haunted location and get as many survivors out as possible!

Blades in the Dark, where getting away with the crime is pretty much the most common goal in a score. Sometimes it might mean one of the PCs engaging a heavily armed gunboat with a sniper rifle as her smuggling craft attempts to flee into demon-infested waters in the Void Sea...the goal is merely to buy time to get away, because they're too heavily outnumbered and outgunned to win...

And I should add The One Ring - I believe the entire Frodo/Sam thread of The Lord of the Rings is one long "run away from the forces of the Dark Lord" mission.

 

[Ixal]

Shadowrun might qualify as usually your objective is often to grab something and run and while powerful you are still just a group of criminals against a corporate machine which will grind you down eventually.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Shadowrun might qualify as usually your objective is often to grab something and run and while powerful you are still just a group of criminals against a corporate machine which will grind you down eventually.

Though that only works at some points in process; namely when you've already done what you're there to do.