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Worlds of Design: The Lost Art of Running Away
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8065584" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>Awesome thread!</p><p></p><p>IMXP I have also seen few instances of running away from a combat encounter. Here's my spare thoughts on the subject. </p><p></p><p>- I've seen many beginners/newcomers whose starting idea is to avoid any fight before it starts. Some might be simply cautious or skeptic about their ability to handle it pretty much because they are new to the game. It always ends as they try to avoid the <em>second </em>encounter, and invariably another player jumps up and put them into place saying "come on stop it this is supposed to be a fighting game!".</p><p></p><p>- I have little doubts that 3e and 4e progressively shifted the focus of the game towards combat, and specifically towards "balanced" combat. A lot of players blame the DMs who don't comply with offering only winnable encounters.</p><p></p><p>- Most of those players who do try avoidance tactics (diplomacy, stealth, etc.) still do so believing that if it goes wrong who cares we just kill them.</p><p></p><p>- Running away after a fight has started almost never happens. It is too common assumption that every combat encounter is winnable, so the players stubbornly continue because even when a fight is going poorly they still believe that either (1) we are in fact close to winning but the DM isn't telling us, (2) there's a trick to win we only need to figure out, (3) we're just unlucky with dice but next rolls will go better. Also, it is much easier for a player to blame the DM or the dice or the adventure designer than to accept they had a limited view of the game possibilities. </p><p></p><p>- Sometimes it is objectively difficult for a player to guess how difficult a combat will be. A lycanthrope or a vampire is not a deadly foe in every single RPG system or movie/series, and character "level" is an abstraction that beginners have no clue how to compare with reality. So a DM throwing a vampire against 1st level PCs and assuming the players MUST know it's an impossible encounter is not really understanding that it's not that simple. And "clues" don't always work the way the DM thinks they do. But still most DMs are against doing the safest thing to do which is telling the players when a foe is too strong for them, because they want to keep the mystery. This is even much worse when the monster is something the players have absolutely no folklore reference about, like the slubberglubbershuck the DM has made up for the adventure... how the hell are they supposed to know if it's just a glass cannot or an unbeatable foe?</p><p></p><p>- Very few game systems features combats long enough to let the PCs figure out they made a mistake jumping into a fight they cannot win. Another thing a DM can do to help them is roll monsters dice in the open: when players see that a monster hits on a low roll, or rolls many damage dice, they have a much stronger clue than when trying to figure out from frequency of hits/miss. But again, too meta and the myth of "no mystery" is what makes many DMs not even considering this.</p><p></p><p>- Actual combat rules make escaping from a fight notoriously difficult. Most importantly, the books do not teach the players how to use the rules to run away from battle. I have mixed feelings about where the rules should represent running away be in the easy/hard spectrum, because fortunately I have never been in a RL fight myself so I can't speak from experience. I do think the initiative rules are at least a bit too advantageous for the pursuer, it doesn't sound realistic to me that someone who only runs would be constantly hit by someone who runs AFTER her AND swings a weapon, but that's what the combat actions and OA rules imply. So I think the key here is knowing when/how to properly switch from combat rules to chase rules, but again, the books do not teach how to do this properly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 8065584, member: 1465"] Awesome thread! IMXP I have also seen few instances of running away from a combat encounter. Here's my spare thoughts on the subject. - I've seen many beginners/newcomers whose starting idea is to avoid any fight before it starts. Some might be simply cautious or skeptic about their ability to handle it pretty much because they are new to the game. It always ends as they try to avoid the [I]second [/I]encounter, and invariably another player jumps up and put them into place saying "come on stop it this is supposed to be a fighting game!". - I have little doubts that 3e and 4e progressively shifted the focus of the game towards combat, and specifically towards "balanced" combat. A lot of players blame the DMs who don't comply with offering only winnable encounters. - Most of those players who do try avoidance tactics (diplomacy, stealth, etc.) still do so believing that if it goes wrong who cares we just kill them. - Running away after a fight has started almost never happens. It is too common assumption that every combat encounter is winnable, so the players stubbornly continue because even when a fight is going poorly they still believe that either (1) we are in fact close to winning but the DM isn't telling us, (2) there's a trick to win we only need to figure out, (3) we're just unlucky with dice but next rolls will go better. Also, it is much easier for a player to blame the DM or the dice or the adventure designer than to accept they had a limited view of the game possibilities. - Sometimes it is objectively difficult for a player to guess how difficult a combat will be. A lycanthrope or a vampire is not a deadly foe in every single RPG system or movie/series, and character "level" is an abstraction that beginners have no clue how to compare with reality. So a DM throwing a vampire against 1st level PCs and assuming the players MUST know it's an impossible encounter is not really understanding that it's not that simple. And "clues" don't always work the way the DM thinks they do. But still most DMs are against doing the safest thing to do which is telling the players when a foe is too strong for them, because they want to keep the mystery. This is even much worse when the monster is something the players have absolutely no folklore reference about, like the slubberglubbershuck the DM has made up for the adventure... how the hell are they supposed to know if it's just a glass cannot or an unbeatable foe? - Very few game systems features combats long enough to let the PCs figure out they made a mistake jumping into a fight they cannot win. Another thing a DM can do to help them is roll monsters dice in the open: when players see that a monster hits on a low roll, or rolls many damage dice, they have a much stronger clue than when trying to figure out from frequency of hits/miss. But again, too meta and the myth of "no mystery" is what makes many DMs not even considering this. - Actual combat rules make escaping from a fight notoriously difficult. Most importantly, the books do not teach the players how to use the rules to run away from battle. I have mixed feelings about where the rules should represent running away be in the easy/hard spectrum, because fortunately I have never been in a RL fight myself so I can't speak from experience. I do think the initiative rules are at least a bit too advantageous for the pursuer, it doesn't sound realistic to me that someone who only runs would be constantly hit by someone who runs AFTER her AND swings a weapon, but that's what the combat actions and OA rules imply. So I think the key here is knowing when/how to properly switch from combat rules to chase rules, but again, the books do not teach how to do this properly. [/QUOTE]
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