OSR Games that really use combat as a fail state?

[overgeeked]

One of my many, many favorite aspects of OSR/NSR games is the notion of combat as a fail state. Your goal is to avoid combat as much as possible because it’s deadly. Think your way around or out of combat. Win the fight before it starts. Etc.

So are there any OSR/NSR games out there that take this literally? As in you just die in combat or each round the monster simply kills a PC at random. Think stealth games where if you’re spotted you fail the mission or similar. Only maybe a little more wiggle room than that.

I do not mean games with full combat rules that are deadly or lethal. The scene is overflowing with them. I do mean “if you encounter a monster it kills one random PC each round” or similar is the whole of the combat subsystem.

Anyone know of any OSR/NSR RPGs like that?

 

[zakael19]

Trophy: Dark plays off horror game rules where if you try and face off against monsters it’s a losing proposition.

 

[Blue]

Running Mothership, which is like the Aliens franchise with the serial numbers filed off for IP licensing reasons. You are ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Running a few-shot for a group that are normally D&D / PF players and I told them: "You are not adventurers. At the end you might be a survivor, a martyr, or just stupid. Character creation is short for a reason."

They got it.

It's even more "Combat is a fail" then Call of Cthulhu in my experience, because at least in CoC you could just be going against cultists for that false sense of 'okay, we got this'.

 

[jian]

The obvious model here is Dogs in the Vineyard, though of course it’s not a OSR/NSR game. You escalate through conflict stages (from talking to fisticuffs to guns) and lethal combat is definitely a fail state - you’re there to resolve the situation and win hearts and minds, not kill parishioners or get killed. I think it’d be an interesting model for Jedi games - igniting your lightsaber is a fail state.

DitV is sadly out of print (because the author got justifiably fed up with the moral implications of the game and setting) but it’s a really interesting mechanical example.

 

[Autumnal]

In Cthulhu Dark, which is the foundation for Trophy, combat with other humans is resolved in a simple set of rolls. Trying to fight monsters get you killed. You need to try something else.