Supposed to Lose Fight

[Thomas Shey]

The GM thinks the players will enjoy it.

They'd better know their players well if they assume they're going to enjoy a losing fight they can't do anything about. I'd suggest people who do that are not a signficant part of the gaming population.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Feels like there's often a bit of a false dichotomy at the table between "letting them go to attack us another time" and "dealing with the hassle of taking prisoners", so fighting to the death just feels easier. Maybe we need better play procedures for cultural norms around defeat

RuneQuest used to be very notable that if your opponents were intelligent and not involved with chaos heavily, the phrase starting with "My ransome is..." was pretty useful.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'm not sure "unavoidable defeat" is a problem exclusively in (or inherent to) any edition of any game--but I'll agree that it happening on streamed play shows (which have some important differences from play at most tables) is connected to how a lot of people are playing now.

A lot of people look to actual plays as the model of how the game should be played. Going out in a blaze of glory sounds great in a story, but in a game, it's frequently not fun. It can be, but things need to really line up for that to happen.