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<blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8690129" data-attributes="member: 7028554">This doesn't apply to every type of RPG, but just like how movies can be a slog when there's just way too much samey action, and it's the buildup to the main fight—all that juicy tension and dread—that makes a story sing, I think some games can lean on anticipation more than constant combat.If you can pull off that sort of tension-building in an interesting way, then it could solve a couple problems you might be having:-If threats are telegraphed and discussed way in advance, the PCs should have a better sense of the odds they're up against if or when they fight something. Maybe they've heard about people going up against a specific band of ogres and getting slaughtered, or that there are too many skeletons in a given area to fight head on. If enemies are just various bags of inscrutable numbers, and it's assumed you should always fight-to-the-death through them, then PCs don't really have much of a choice regarding what to do about them, even if they understood the threat level.-It can be understood, and even stated outright by you, that this is not an MMO where you're grinding easy targets for XP. Like in lots of genre movies, combat is deadly stuff, where fighting is a last resort, and if it can't be avoided you should either be trying to get the upper hand (an ambush, exploiting a weakness, etc.) or fighting to get away our through, not just to stand over your slaughtered enemies. Granted, it takes some GMing finesse to make sure fights have interesting dimensions or stakes beyond kill-or-be-killed, but you've GMed long enough to handle that, especially if players realize they aren't just doing a slaughter simulator.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Grendel_Khan, post: 8690129, member: 7028554"] This doesn't apply to every type of RPG, but just like how movies can be a slog when there's just way too much samey action, and it's the buildup to the main fight—all that juicy tension and dread—that makes a story sing, I think some games can lean on anticipation more than constant combat. If you can pull off that sort of tension-building in an interesting way, then it could solve a couple problems you might be having: -If threats are telegraphed and discussed way in advance, the PCs should have a better sense of the odds they're up against if or when they fight something. Maybe they've heard about people going up against a specific band of ogres and getting slaughtered, or that there are too many skeletons in a given area to fight head on. If enemies are just various bags of inscrutable numbers, and it's assumed you should always fight-to-the-death through them, then PCs don't really have much of a choice regarding what to do about them, even if they understood the threat level. -It can be understood, and even stated outright by you, that this is not an MMO where you're grinding easy targets for XP. Like in lots of genre movies, combat is deadly stuff, where fighting is a last resort, and if it can't be avoided you should either be trying to get the upper hand (an ambush, exploiting a weakness, etc.) or fighting to get away our through, not just to stand over your slaughtered enemies. Granted, it takes some GMing finesse to make sure fights have interesting dimensions or stakes beyond kill-or-be-killed, but you've GMed long enough to handle that, especially if players realize they aren't just doing a slaughter simulator. [/QUOTE]

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