Why are players so averse to running away? I've literally

>>49789187

Modern games and video games teach them that you have to beat the enemy to see the next thing. Games that give XP for fighting monsters are basically telling players "if this fight seems too tough, you won't be able to handle what's next, so you've got to beat this guy to get stronger!"

I like OSR, because players get piddly XP for winning fights, and tons of XP for acquiring treasure, whether they fought for it or talked their way into it or snuck in behind the owner's backs. Combined with the lethality, players learn to run pretty quickly, because fighting is dangerous and unproductive.

>>49789187
They've been conditioned by mediums to not run away, and to just smack problems with a big sword or fireball until it goes away.

Sometimes you just have to remind them that running is an option. This may even be as simple as stating out loud, "Okay, this encounter is very dangerous. Remember that retreating can still be an option."

Even still, a lot of players won't run. It's stupid how someone can go full murderhobotard and then turn around and say fleeing is dishonorable. In these cases, make them wish they got the hell of there.

>>49789238
I was actually going to mention OSR games in my previous post. It's fun to watch someone who's used to more "modern" conventions squirm the first time they realize they're about to get their shit pushed in.

The group I play with now, asked me to run a campaign for them. They quickly learned that "charred stone floors" and "distant growls" were not bluffs. They were warnings.

>>49789187
In 99% of the scenarios I see, most players don't know they should run away until half the party is dead and the other half is dying.
It is exceedingly difficult to make obvious when an obstacle is intended to be insurmountable. Players and fucking narratives as a whole expect obstacles to be difficult, but not unchallengable.
To make something clear that "you must not fight, you must flee", requires a great deal of setup that most GMs do not do.

>>49789264
>They've been conditioned by mediums
Someone should dispel those necromancers' curses, then.

>GM throws at us an impossible encounter just to make us flee
>Turns out the monster is waaaay faster than us

>>49789187
Me a /fit/ warrior, a minatour, a nerd mage and some jew bard were in some town talking to some old bitch
She wont stay on track and starts chatting shit so I got aggressive and she started shouting and while attempting to restrain her I fumbled and knocked her out cold on the ground
So then I jumped through the window and the minatour attempted to too, but just came crashing through the wall, which of course attracted attention, and we just ran off abandoning the other two
Mageman did some nerd shit I believe, and we all just left the bard because fuck bards, jew can make his own way out for being a bitch

You know, OD&D had a ton of rules for running away. Enough that you could possibly say it was a game about running from stuff.

Running away is never an option in games that use HP and rounds. Most "unwinnable" fights are demonstrated as such by damage numbers and not circumstances. And by the time you are taking unmitigateable damage it is too late to run as your enemy has the same base speed you do.

In Anima BF fleeing from combat is hard as fuck, you basically leave your back open to your enemy and give them a free attack with a lot of bonuses enough to insta kill you if he rolls slightly above average

I remember similar happened in 3.5, every time we fled the monster got an AoO and used it to grapple us or trip us which ruined or escape and made us even more vulnerable to its attacks

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>>49789400

This is a very silly post.

Having to run away is a circumstance players should always be thinking about. Your party has a plan for "what if the enemy can fly" and "what if the enemy is incorporeal," but doesn't have a plan for "what if the enemy is stronger than us?" Come on.

>your enemy has the same base speed you do.

And therefore escape is impossible? Close a door and put something in front of it. Jump on a horse. Drop some caltrops. Cast a spell! Half the fucking spells in the book are great for getting away! Grease, web, blade barrier, word of recall, any wall spell! There is literally a spell named Expeditious Retreat!

I'll give it to you straight: if you were in my game, and you complained that "running away is never an option" because "the enemy has the same base speed you do," your character would just have a stroke.

>>49789187

GM is also at fault. It depends on how you present the situation.

Few years ago I run a horror campaign. They were playing raiding viking party. 4 players and around 100 other vikings.

During the night they were attacked by werewolves. 2,5m tall, agile bastards. Able to leap few meters in a heart beat. So the werewolf pack start killing the raiding party. I described utter chaos. Screams all around them. Frantic running. Trying to make sense in the dark what the fuck is going on. So they start running away. But the werewolves are gaining on them. So one guy decides to do a last stand and turns back to face the enemy. He then sees a werewolf slamming a random viking, hearing a scream and bones shattering, and sending him flying a few meters. And werewolf didn't even slow down. And it is still running in their general direction.

He decides to "fuck the last stand" and continues to run with the rest of the players. They try to split away from the rest of the vikings to increase their chance of survival.

You need to present them a non-winnable situation. Fast paced descriptions are a must. Also forcing them to make fast decisions or suffer the consequences. If the adrenaline is high it is usually easier to make a horror campaign work.

Also it is good for other players to roleplay being scared, telling other players to start running, not having the time to explain the situation (try to quit out-of-character chit-chat and out-of-character planning).

Also giving some information to only one or two players. Giving notes, or taking them to the side for a 1-2 minutes to explain them what they hear or see and then immediately continuing the game so they don't have time to process all the information. If you allow them 10 minutes to process the info they will lose the edge.

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>>49789334

The one time I managed to put the players in a "flee first, fight never" situation was a fantasy game where I threw the Not!Nazgul at them.

I made them roll Willpower (SW) with crippling modifiers before they could even see the things.

Later on in the game, I got to relish the looks on their faces the occasional time I began a sentence with "an icy silence descends on the town, and you feel a sense of overwhelming dread. Roll Willpower."

>>49789432

that is your problem. you are playing a heroic combat simulator game and you are trying to run a horror campaign.

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>>49789187
Many GMs don't like wiping parties so they stopped doing so. Those GMs always have a backup plan to get their party out with narrative BS. This gets players accustomed to expecting victory. If the GM doesn't put their foot down and prove a fight to be dangerous players will not take things seriously.

Then there's also the issue of fights that can't be run from. Recently I was in a party fighting a bunch of undead. The first four were escorting a fifth one which was bound and gagged. We killed them, but they immediately set their captive/escort free and it attacked us. It beat the snot out of us, but we couldn't run. It could run over four times the slowest character's speed and nearly double the fastest character's speed. Our traveling wagon couldn't get us out fast enough and the thing was undead so it would tire us out even if we ran. There was no way to escape, so we had to fight.

Another time we did have to flee from slower enemies. Normally we're hard to faze, but 50 ghouls in half-plate is still a bit much.
The way to scare players is simply to let them fight one thing that is very tough but can be beaten. Then put three of them with a larger/scarier thing next to them. They should be scared of that. Or have a strong NPC run away from an enemy or situation. Just not too many times or it loses the effect.

>>49789187

There is never any reason to run away in a video game. If you die, the story isn't over, you just reload and try again. Players are conditioned to try and pull off a win no matter how long the odds because running away is completely unproductive. If you're going to lose the fight, you may as well reload your pre-fight save and still have all your expended consumables. Even players who strongly prefer TTRPGs to video games will play significantly more video games because only one person needs to clear their schedule for them, so there's always some pretty strong video game habits to fight against.

>>49789591
That's really good. If you have a system that is very rules heavy and you want to scare players just use the rules. Crippling debuffs scare the crap out of me and every other player I've met when we play D&D.
Big scary enemy that can deal tons of damage? Not scared.
Small enemy that can permanently debuff strength? Absolutely terrified.

>>49789720

>Big scary enemy that can deal tons of damage? Not scared.
>Small enemy that can permanently debuff strength? Absolutely terrified.

Why not both? This is what I did with the Ringwraith rip-offs.

Even if the player's eventually leveled up enough to try to attack them, they would've found regular items wouldn't really have done anything.

I actually set them on a side-quest to find a weapon which could help against these enemies but the game ended when a giant crab wiped the party.

>>49789546
Good for you, I've both OD&D and 2E D&D and every DM I had wouldn't let us run. Either the cavern would collapse, or our spells would randomly fail due to "stress", if we tried something mundane by closing a door or riding a horde or dropping a caltrops the DM would simply have whatever is chasing us ingore the caltrops or make the horse throw us with no chance to roll to prevent it. That might be a D&D thing that isn't present in other RPGs but running always fails every time I've played.

>>49789400
>rollplayers: the post

>>49789846
Your GMs are clearly at fault here

I really love those "oh you're not actually supposed to fight that boss yet, why didn't you run away" moments.

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The moment where I want to run from a party is where I think it is too late to win it. The issue is that it finally gets clear when you are losing is the moment that people are down. Downed people have to pass death saves or the die, so by running you are leaving allies behind.

If you have a party of partymembers who actually like and care for each other it's hard IC to run and risk people dying, hence why you stay around and try to get the victory, even in a bad scenario.

>>49789187

I think a big part of it is it's just natural to follow the cues you get from the DM. Honestly, unless thy're trying to be dicks, most players just follow the quest lines. It might be that they don't know they're able to run.

I think DMs who under-describe areas contribute a lil to this. There's also DMs who either inadequately describe threats, or modulate how threatening something is based on how they want players to react.

Actually yeah don't base encounters with monsters based on trying to force characters to act a certain way is probably a good rule of thumb because it tends to make things bitter

>>49789871
I love the "the fuck? Why did you run now? You were supposedly to fight the BBEG now" moments, like we can read the GMs mind and know when we can do something on when we can't

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>>49789817
Good point.

You just reminded me of another idea with the crab.
Figure out what scares your players or "triggers" terrible memories in them. Just pay attention to them playing video games and see what scares them and make a similar thing for the tabletop.

Like this crab for instance. It killed one of my friends so many times in DS3. If the party was in a swamp and I described a giant crab moving towards them he would probably want to run. The same with another friend if I described a large mutant monster with a Gatling gun arm with grenade launcher attached ONE IN THE PIPE . A third is simply creeped out by little grey aliens so I could just throw in an Xcom sectoid ripoff.

>>49789846

>>49789861
this guy has a point. you had a shitty gm who doesn't know to run the horror game.

1. You need to make players run away.
2. Players make a plan how to escape.
3. You give players a room to catch their breaths.
4. Repeat the process

For example, Resident Evil 3 had nemesis that chases you through the game. You run into police station and barricade the doors. You hear him trying to break them down. As you are exploring the police station he breaks in through the windows with a large crash sounds.
You also "defeat" him many times through the game just for him to show later on.

>>49789187
i blame video games

>>49789846
>I've had bad DMs so ALL DMs are bad
Loving
Every
Laugh

>>49789968

It's very important, especially for horror games, to establish at least one enemy the players will instinctively know is beyond their abilities. And it should be early on.

Part of why Pyramid Head was scary was because there wasn't really anything you could do about him.

>>49789968
>RE3
Incredible bad example, if you stayed and fought you were rewarded with fucking awesome items

>>49789187
As both player and DM, I'll just say it's not very fun to run away. Not even in cthulhu, most of the time.

Unless there's a way to defeat the threat apart from the escape, they'll rather fight to death than run unless you make it very obvious that they're supposed to escape to advance the plot (and that will probably kinda break the vibe).

>>49789890

Normal people when they get hurt start to think are they really willing to continue fighting. Players think in a way of hit points. I have 20 more hit points and armor/ damage reduction xyz. I can survive 3 more attacks.

You could make your players do willpower rolls for:

When outnumbered, when you get hurt. When 2-3 enemies surround one of you.

powergamers will call this bullshit but normal human response is flight not fight. Fight mode is developed by conditioning. One example I remember that during the musket era there was a fight between two veteran squad, companies whatever. Because neither side didn't want to back off mortality rate was enormous when compared to battles between regular soldiers.

Also don't play dnd. Or at least don't allow them tons of magic items or high levels. You can be lv 5 warrior. But 10 lv 1 brigands have a decent chance to fuck your day. Especially if they are smart about their approach.

>>49789846
>OD&D

You know there are rules in the book for running away, right? Rules for things like throwing down food or coins to distract monsters and stuff like that. If your GM was ignoring those (and from the caltrops thing he was) then it's his fault, not the game's.

>>49789432
You just need to negate him an action or just not enter melee combat. With a bit of luck both are extremely easy in most situations, even against enemies that can crush you in an attack or two. Anima is not precisely the worst game for running away.

>>49789187
Because it isn't fun?

You could just play every dnd game by simply saying fuck it, that bbg seems a bit tough, I will just drink at the tavern every session.

>>49790012

most of the players who played that game for the first time got wrecked by him. You can outplay him easily when you get the feeling of the game or playing for the second walkthrough. But when you are just a beginners that bastard is scary as hell.

Because it's boring and in my experience the gm will some how make it a worse choice than just dieing.

>>49789966
Fuck dude
Those crabs and the beefed up lothric knights were harder than any boss in the game
Fuck Dark Souls 3

>>49790119
Not every RPG is dnd.

>>49789400
>my gm designs encounters like a video game
get a better gm

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>>49790091

>Also don't play dnd.

While I don't hate DnD, there is a good point here. It is not a good system for horror games.

NWoD can easily be homebrewed for fantasy and is what I'd use to run a straight horror game for basically any genre.

>>49790119
Because it isn't fun?

It can be fun. I had more fun playing down-on-their-luck knights and having no money than when every encounter is carefully tailored so there is no way we could lose.

Okay, Tom got hurt for 10 hitpoints. Give him a healing potion. Jimmy got hurt for 24. I'll use my 2nd level healing spell. We looted 20 silver pieces and a weapon.

Now let us repeat this for 6 more encounters and take a rest so we replenish our reserves. And then we go again.

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>>49790144
I'm sad to say my gm has this issue too, though it only rarely pops up, happened recently too, a giant Crystal wyrm attacked us, we got it down to 98 hp from 1,500, and off its turn it just suddenly decided to fuck off.

No saved or prepared action, no special abilities(I asked afterwards)

Just fucked off, like a video game cutscene, just so we could fight it again later a-la "this isn't even my final form!"

I was mad, because he's again a very good gm who shouldn't pull that stupid shit.

>>49789432
>a free attack with a lot of bonuses enough to insta kill you if he rolls slightly above average
It's only a -30 to your defences.

>>49790099
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I do know that of all the shitty GM's I've had, the shittiest were the ones that only played D&D and nothing else.

>>49790169
Anon you realize you sound just as biased and over-reactionary as him when you put it that way right?

I mean I agree there can be some interesting stuff done with it but when you put it that poorly it's hard to defend.

Because honestly in D&D and fantasy games if it's going to take you down in a fight it's just as fast, faster than you, or has the ability to chase you down through some other means. The only exceptions are mindless shit that can't move fast but usually those fucking engulf or otherwise entangle a number of players on the first turn of noticing it.

The only way players realistically get away from fights is because the DM hand waves it, if the enemies actauly pursued they'd run the players down and kill them. Running is more a valid option in fucking video games cause there is dedicated mechanics for escaping vidyagame logic or the monster will give up after getting X from it's spawn.

>>49790154

>While I don't hate DnD

neither do I. But people are forgetting dnd is combat simulator where you punch monsters in the face and loot their stuff. That is first approach to problem solving in dnd. Also players have tons of resources to be good at punching things and surviving when those things try punching back. If you want to kill orcs, find magical items then play dnd. 3.5 states that challenging encounter is a type where you can solve 4 of those before you run out of resources and need to take a rest. So that means on lv 20 you can walk in a room, kill a balor, walk in a 2nd room, kill a 2nd balor... and then kill 4th and then take a rest. Then you go to a room 5 and kill 5th balor....

Try to use dnd system to emulate a different theme and you will quickly realizing it doesn't work because of the way the game was tailored.

>>49789187
Maybe your players, I always run away. Always.

Fucking faggot other players try to get pissy or take retribution, or kill me, but I'm the one always surviving the encounters.

>>49790362
Your the issue, but that's obviously the joke/bait, so here's your (you)

>>49790291

I'm tired. I don't have a willpower to be nice this late.

how would you go about addressing it?

>>49789650
>Many GMs don't like wiping parties so they stopped doing so. Those GMs always have a backup plan to get their party out with narrative BS. This gets players accustomed to expecting victory. If the GM doesn't put their foot down and prove a fight to be dangerous players will not take things seriously.

There's also the fact that too many players are babies who bitch and moan the second it seems like something bad might happen to their imaginary characters.


But I think the issue feeds into itself. Modern games recommend GMs to plan auto-win fights for their games, which gets players used to winning at everything forever without having to fire a neuron. Then any time they need to use their heads or end up taking a casualty, it's such a huge deal and everyone cries and wonders what went wrong.

It gets to the point where you have exchanges like
>I search for traps
>You notice that the room is full of traps
>I stride confidently into the room
>PC dies predictably
>hours of ass-ravaged crying about it
>campaign ends
>no one plays for a month

>>49790407
I'm sorry you've had to play with people who have the the emotional maturity of 10 yearolds

I can't be the only DM whose players all run away the second one member of the party gets killed or severely hurt. Like, every fucking time, the only time they don't and fight against all odds is when they feel the campaign will soon end (be it a true or false asumption).

>>49790407

also don't forget people are investing way too much time into one player character. And when one of them dies it is a huge deal.

When my group plays we don't waste too much time on a charactere. Name, role and some sort of motivation. That is enough. So if the character dies you just make another one.

This also doesn't mean you should roll a new character every 1-2 sessions. GM should not try to kill you on every possible occasion.

My friend had a best comment during one campaign where we they all died 1-2 times. "this isn't a story about our characters. This is a story about our ship and we are just passengers"

>>49790381
How is it an issue?

This should be worth a good laugh.

>>49790509
>When my group plays we don't waste too much time on a charactere. Name, role and some sort of motivation. That is enough. So if the character dies you just make another one.

I think this is something I'm going to work on. Next time I want to play, I'll probably just have them roll the characters up at session 1, give like two sentences of motivation aside from stats so they don't have weeks to get overly attached by the time they start playing. They can flesh it out later if they feel like it.

>>49790407
But how do you handle player death? What if half the party dies in an encounter? Do you make those that died sit out for the next few weeks until they can get a rez?

Do you make some bs about how a new character joins the party and have the player use the new one that just happens to be the same level as the party?

>>49789238
Got any recs for a good osr system?

>>49790509
I was in a group that did that, but we had one girl in the group that would get bored of her character and just kill it off so she could roll a new one every few weeks. It really killed the story.

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>>49790407
>There's also the fact that too many players are babies who bitch and moan the second it seems like something bad might happen to their imaginary characters.

Its a double edged sword really. I want to be harsh and kill players who do stupid shit, but if I kill all the players that's kind of it for the campaign.

>>49790605
Not him, but OSR general is a good place to ask

>>49780897

>>49790599

not the guy you are reply to.

1. do they continue to march on with only 50% of the party? Guess they will all make new characters.
2. Do they return to town? There is a healer who can resurrect the dead. They are short on cash to pay for it? dead characters make new characters. They either join a party on a treasure hunt so they can resurrect the dead or they made this new characters permanent and leave dead to rest in peace.

>>49790639
>if I kill all the players that's kind of it for the campaign.
Yes, I imagine it would be. Getting a new group would be harsh after doing something like that as well.

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>>49790639

I've never encountered a player who gets genuinely mad when their character dies, but I will agree when a PC dies it takes some of the wind out of the story's sails.

These aren't novels or movies where a character can die whenever it's narratively convenient. PC deaths are usually pretty sudden curveballs even in a game where the players accept lethality.

This what makes horror games such tricky business.

>>49790624

that is her problem. Low attention span.

>>49790407
Instead I get games like this
>I search for traps
>You notice a pressure plate on the floor
>I search for what it might activate
>You find a hole in the wall about knee high and another one waist high
>We oil up the monk
>Y-you what?
>We oil up the monk and slide him across the floor, letting him slap the plates as he flies by

>>49789187
Funnily enough, last session my character did pretty much nothing BUT running away.
I guess that less surprising when playing a goblin in an evil campaign.

>>49790684
Yeah, probably. She was only in the group because her boyfriend wanted her to be there and she constantly played the slutty up with the NPCs trying to get them do do things for her. It was really annoying.

>>49789432
>What the fuck is the disengage action?

>>49790686
>We oil up the monk and slide him across the floor, letting him slap the plates as he flies by
That's definitely a fun way to deal with it.

>>49790983
>assume every game is 5e
>down to the smallest rules quirks
>even when it's explicitly stated to be otherwise
It happened once with 3.5 players and now it's happening again. Will we ever break the cycle?

>>49791075
My players are almost always fun. It's both a blessing and a curse.

I can't help but joke, so my games usually turn into a fun drinking activity with friends.

On the downside I can't run anything serious with my normal group.

>>49789187
Session zero, mate.

Before you start a campaign, bring all your players together, tell them what the session is going to be about, what the session is gonna focus on, and ask them for their input, how they feel about it, and what you can do as a GM to make that experience work for them, within reason.

That way, you avoid cases like having a balls-out mage in a low-magic setting, a gnome barbarian named 'Lord Huge' in a horror game, and the party failing to go into the dungeon without ten-foot-poles, ball bearings, extra rations, and waterskins in an OSR game.

If some of your encounters are geared towards running away, right then is the time to say, 'Some encounters will be difficult. Like, almost unbeatable. Running away, maybe leading the monster into a chokepoint or trap, or just flat out escaping after dealing damage to it so you can heal up is just fine. Don't say I didn't warn you. Is everyone okay with that?'

>>49789187
>Why are players so averse to running away?
Players haven't dealt with enough DMs who don't fuck around. They're convinced that all fights are winnable no matter what.

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>>49789187
You don't get knighted by being a pussy.

>>49789432
>every time we fled the monster got an AoO
>what is the full retreat option

>>49789187
Becuase they've been trained that they can win every fight.

>>49790334
>That is first approach to problem solving in dnd.

Not in early editions. Combat there is a failure state, something that happens when things go wrong.

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Well I mainly run "hard fantasy" games with lots of realism and a bit of fantasy thrown in the mix (sorta like the Witcher, but less magic and superhumans). Making a last stand is actually the BEST thing you can do because it offers the greatest chance of survival, as combat revolves around the rout. I GM so that for each casualty taken, everybody makes a willpower check- enemy and players. People who fail the check run for the hills screaming. If you are routed, you can't fight back effectively at all, making it easy for the enemy to kill you or capture you. Thus as the bodies pile up, it's actually in your best interests to stand and fight, as it's completely possible for a small group of people to overcome a much larger force by standing their ground and killing all who assail them. Of course it also depends on their enemies- common brigands and the like can be broken easily due to shitty willpower, even in large groups. Knights on the other hand might be something worth trying to escape from, or seek shelter if they outnumber you.

Also getting captured while routing doesn't necessarily end in death, unless a player has done something incredibly stupid. I like to give the party 2 options. Option one is that they pay the ransom, typically a hefty amount of silver, to get their friend back WITH his inventory mostly intact. If they don't have the gold, don't believe it's worth spending that amount given his inventory, or are just dicks, they can also refuse and the kidnapped player then sells off everything in his inventory to pay his ransom, returning to the party butt naked. Not only does this prevent the party from turning into uber murder machines with equipment creep, but it also encourages looting and reserve armor, along with creating options for quests for players to attack their former captors and get their shit back.

>>49789846
>Spells failing due to stress
>The horse throws the rider without a check
>Ignoring environmental hazards for no reason
I've only read the 1e AD&D DM's Guide (It's very similar to 2e from what I've heard, and would not have fewer rules in any subject OD&D covered) and I'm almost certain none of these are in the rules.
>The cavern would collapse
This is the only thing which wouldn't be covered by the ruleset. It's at least logical, unlike the others, but it's still contrived bullshit.

Conclusion: inform your GM(s) that they are massive faggots and should step down or at least reread the DM's Guide.

>>49791847
Collapsing caverns are covered in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, which is basically fully compatible with 2e.

>>49791387
That's really the crux of the issue, a significant portion of the times there is no communication between player and GM about the game.

Having a session zero cuts down on errors of expectation. A player can hear Horror and think he's supposed to be Van Helsing while another thinks hes a camper in a Friday the 13th movie.

The GM can prepare a small campaign primer (which works 75% of the time because some players are nonreading chucklefucks) but that only gives Gm expecations and not player expectations.

To sum up, niggers talk to each other to make sure everyone is on the same page before starting a campaign.

>>49789187
>Why are players so averse to running away?
Because America.

>>49791075
3.5 has an equivalent in the Withdraw action, though. A few games do have dedicated "get the fuck out" moves you can use.

>>49789546
It's difficult to know how strong the enemy is if you've never faced it before, without metagaming.

I killed two members of a 6-8 man party (cant remember exactly) who were atleast half composed of dwarves or warforged, with the tiny shitty snakes in the back of the 3.5 monster manual. There were only about 6 snakes swimming in a calf high stream, no extra modifiers for being hard to see either, stream was crystal clear & didnt inhibit movement. I just wanted some water snakes. Water snakes wouldnt leave the water. Party all stood in this tiny ass stream wacking at snakes till two members died. & a few were almost dead from poison. Fucking snakes only deal 1hp damage. Why didnt they retreat? Its not like the snakes were going to be faster than them, the snakes wouldnt even leave the water. Stupid ass players. Now im worried that every encounter will fuck my players up.

>>49792318
Were they rolling terribly or something? Even lvl 1 characters should be able to faceroll through that.

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>characters against a very old and powerful Black Dragon
>they decide to face it head on
>as level 4 PCs
>against a dragon that can destroy entire kingdoms

>>49789187

I've been in situations both when we were supposed to run, and when I put my party up against something they were supposed to run from.

In almost all of those situations, the threat was still beaten, usually easily. There is only so many threats you can fight where they are stronger than you, and you can reasonably run away from them is the problem. The problem is that real threats are things like wizards, for whom running away is basically impossible if they are sufficiently powerful.

>>49789187
I'm playing a 10ft tall black orc berserker in 5e, but I still ran the hell away once a fuckton of archers started shooting at me from the wall of a fort that was a couple hundred feet away.

Fuck fortifications, I'll kill something that's easier to kill.

>>49792393
They had a few bad rolls but honestly i dont really know. Granted they failed the poison rolls but like i said, they had a bunch of dwarves with high resistance, a warforged that was flat immune & they were all fighter types so all had decent Cons. No cleric or wizard though, so i understand a bit. But healing shouldnt matter in a single encounter with that many people against that few creatures. My original encounter actually involved a second wave to make a decent encounter but after they got wrecked i couldnt do that to them.

Later in the campaign, they stood outside a small outpost & traded arrows with a skeleton archer with half cover. I had to fudge the skeleton to suddenly run out of arrows to save them. This was one skeleton too, not a full encounter, the other skeletons were inside the outpost chilling.

The outpost was basically just a wood wall with a walkway, it didnt even have a gate, there were only three other skeletons inside & they were not going to suprise attack or anything, i figured the party would just run in, since 90% of them were melee. But no, they all decide to get in a line to try to shoot a thing with resistance to piercing & half covered by a wooden wall. My players were so very dumb.

>>49789187
I actually make running a major theme in my campaigns. Had a bit where the party were hired by the mayor of a rapidly expanding town (who was secretly a green dragon, but that's not pertinent yet) needed someone to check up on a small neighbor village in the southern forest. The local ranger hadn't reported, and nobody had heard from them in over a month. Turns out, the village druids had been seduced by an evil fungus god, injured the ranger (who was being restored to health by a dryad, which will be important in a moment) and were spreading evil spores around the forest. The party had just finished fighting the first of the three druids in a nasty fight, when a fucking Treant shows up. A Treant that has been corrupted, and is covered in giant blue mushrooms and foul-smelling fungus.
The highest level member of the party is 4. This thing is 16+ feet of mushroom - covered tree person.
I provided an out for them, with the dryad making vines and trees grow out and slow down the progress of the treant, while they ran in the opposite direction. The trick was that, every time the thing gets slowed down, they'd have to fight their way through myconids, or spore-covered hobgoblins. Somehow, they managed to get out of the woods, where they were saved by an elder treant and some pissed-off druids.

They still haven't completed the quest, technically. The next plot hook is sending them back in, and I can't think of a way to top running from a giant, shroomed-up treant. Seriously, where do I go from here?

Running isn't always supposed to be bad. You have to make it plain and clear that there isn't much of a choice there. Not every fight is going to be won on their own, and when they realize that, running is once again on the table. Just call it a strategic retreat.

>>49789187
Mine aren't.

Helps I run Rune Quest where getting attacked by a flock of geese can be a life-threatening experience for anyone not wearing full maille.

Only took two bear-maulings, an animate tree attack and almost being chewed apart by zombies five or six times.

You have to condition your players by almost killing them a few times before you can really let loose and TRY to kill them and expect them to act on their feet.

>>49789187
>Why are players so averse to running away?
The presumption that every encounter will be appropriate to their level. This is why I like a rule which is described in one of the "Complete" books in 3.5e (I think either Complete Warrior or Complete Adventurer, maybe Complete Scoundrel) where you can roll sense motive to size up an enemy. If your players act full retard, you can hint to them "you might want to size up this enemy first, right?". Once you tell them that they can't take this monster on and it will rape them through their eyesockets, they might be inclined to run.

The last time I had a pc book it my friend refused to run as well. He died, threw a fit and refused to reroll because he was too attached to the char and blamed me for dooming his pc. The campaign collapsed.

So now I dont.

>>49791678

well people mostly play 3.5 and pathfinder these days. Also good luck trying to play some other system with those people.

Early editions had slower power creep with amount of experience you needed for levels. 250,000 exp per level later on. And in 3.5 you max out at lv 20 with around 120,000 exp if I recall correctly.

Also lower dmg, lower hit points... You start to think twice if you want to go into a fight when you have 30 hitpoints on lv 5 as a fighter

>>49794041
I'm curious why 5e didn't really gain traction considering it's a much cleaner, fairer, easier, and simply more fun 3.5

>>49794942
It ain't what they grew up with.

>>49794942
Too similar to stand out, but just different enough to have a learning curve that you must adapt to.

My friends and I played it and quickly went back to 3.5 for the next game, doesn't help that 3.5 has a million splat books with fantastic books like PHB2 and the Complete series having all the fun classes - minus Complete Warrior, that book is hot garbage.

>>49794942
Because they aren't the same when you dig in.

>>49794942
>why 5e didn't really gain traction
Nigga it's the most popular RPG on the market and currently most played, what the fuck are you talking about

>>49794942
Because it's tuned down as fuck and doesn't have 1/1000 of the options other systems have

>>49795009
>47000 people on d20
Yeah, surely is the most played in the world

>>49795021
It's the best selling edition though.
Are you a retard?

>>49795014
Not a problem when the vast majority of options were ivory tower trap trash

>>49795021
Now, compare that to everything else. Compare that to other games at their peak.
You'll find the number you're scoffing at is actually fucking impressive.

>>49795039
Even if you remove the trap options, 3.PF still btfo 5e in sheer amount of options

>>49795039
He said other systems, not 3.5, Anon.

>>49789187
Please give me your players. Mine do nothing but run away at everything.

>>49789432
By the nature of Anima if you're in melee with someone so strong that you MUST run immediately, there's a real strong chance it could forfeit the free attack and still catch and butcher you next turn unless your character has some movement tricks primed. Big durdly monsters aren't hugely common I find.

The real answer in Anima is that you hold out long enough for someone to poke the scary guy hard enough to put him on the defensive, THEN you run away scot-free. If you can't survive long enough for that to happen then you must have picked a fight with something WAAAAAAY above your weight class.

>>49795274
>On the defensive
>What are accumulation monsters, what are taking -80 to defense to keep acting like nothing happened

>>49795388
Criticals can still fuck them, but anybody who's so ridiculously powerful that you have to run is probably beyond your ability to get a critical on anyway.

>>49795168
Quantity < quality

>>49795388
>What are accumulation monsters
A joke, outside of the ones that are literally gods, which are the ones that would catch you if you ran anyway.

>>49789187
It's probably also got a lot to do with the fact a lot of more commonly played systems make running away hard. In D&D, for example, you're likely eating a shitload of free attacks if you try and break off.

>>49789334
>It is exceedingly difficult to make obvious when an obstacle is intended to be insurmountable.
This is only because they never get real challenges.

They ought to be constantly weighing the progress of each encounter to see if they should disengage. It doesn't need to be insurmountable - a few bad rolls on a challenging encounter can make withdrawing prudent if players are actually being challenged.

The subtext of your comment speaks volumes - every encounter should be bearable even if things going badly unless there is a signpost that says it's impossible.

Fuck that shit and fuck the special snowflakes that have made regular character death no longer a thing.

>>49789650
>The way to scare players is simply to let them fight one thing that is very tough but can be beaten. Then put three of them with a larger/scarier thing next to them
But that always happens in TV and movies and the heroes suddenly scale up enough to find the first enemy type easy to fight.

And it happens in videogames, where you have no choice but to get good.

>>49789400
Confirmed for never having had a decent GM or never having played anything but D&D. Also, it's a fucking horror game. Running away should be the default reaction to combat, unless you already know what you're facing and how strong it is.

>>49794041
> And in 3.5 you max out at lv 20 with around 120,000 exp if I recall correctly.

Third edition XP functions ENTIRELY differently from the earlier editions and PF, so you can't really compare the two. In particular, you get a lot less XP at high levels since the amount of XP you get depends both on the CR and your level.

This entire thread is my problem in a nutshell.

I love it when fights are hard. In fact, if a fight doesn't carry the real, tangible risk (so no "you might die if you take three crits!") of killing my character, then it's not even worth rolling initiative for.

I want things to be dangerous, I want to get my shit pushed in, I want my rolls to feel tense, because a single missed attack might mean my death.

But every GM I ever played with was a huge bitch about killing characters because it's bad for the story, so you either get some excuse why you didn't die after all, or some cutscene crap happens, or there's cheap and easy access to resurrection magic.

It's so fucking boring. Nowadays all I can do is take unnecessary risks like charging in alone or picking fights with dangerous creatures or taunting the toughest enemy in any given fight, just to get a momentary thrill out of it.

>>49796115
Sounds like you should maybe talk to your fucking GM you potato.

>>49789187
probably just shit players. We use expeditious retreat all the time. Better to run and return at an advantageous position than to just stay in combat and take lots of damage/die.

>>49796127
I did. He said it's bad for the story when characters die, because it's trouble to get new characters into the group. Also he feels bad to kill a character a player is invested in.

I had the same conversation with, like, three other GMs.

>>49796148
the problem is when you as a player have great plans and you know that usually the campaign goes on for long enough to do them. But then... death.. and all your thoughts were for nothing.
Yeah in DnD you can get something like true ressurection but you need a new character first and i hate to build a character with like Lvl 15 or something. Because this character has seen and done some great things, lived through a few great stories and either you make these up or you have a lvl 15 character with the personality of a Level 1-3 Character. Had to do this twice and it was terrible.

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>>49789187
>Why are players so averse to running away?

It was odd. I had a fight with the "Boss" of a chapter, a mecha-mithril dwarf that turned into a big dragon machine, along with 5 priests. The Priests were able to use a spell to give the dragon and extra half action, which due to an ability it had it could turn into full actions, basically giving it extra turns. To prevent absolute nuking with energy meteors the priests were hooked together so if you attacked the Dragon, it would travel down the line to the priest at the end of it and likely make them explode. So kill the rather scrawny priests first and then you get your action economy back for the dragon.
Instead they just used the base's self destruct button and tried to leg it out of there, giving up some treasure in doing so. In the end it worked out and it instead became a cool escape sequence which was one of the player's favorite in the campaign.

Then while the characters were on a vacation earlier the planet was attacked by ghost-spaceships and bombarded from orbit. Despite their own ship being magically warded against detection from these ghost ships meaning they could just fuck off, they continued their vacation and fought some pirates and cultists that had nothing to actually do with the ghost armada.

Overall, they run away pretty often when they feel they're in a bad situation so they can regroup. They're pretty tactical about that so I don't really have this problem.

>>49789959
This, players don't know when they're supposed to run or when to fight, monsters also don't make this easy, you have a huge scary ogre which is piss easy and then you have a medium sized human who turns to be a god killer. And if they fight, and realize they fucked up is already too late to run

>>49789187
DEATH OR GLORY, BROTHER!

>>49789187
Video games and media teach you never to run away unless it is made obvious that you should do so.

Also realistically running away is almost never the key to survival in combat. Most casualties occur during the rout after the battle has been lost.

>>49796356
It's not just video games and media; it's the nature of most RPGs. Players are encouraged to play characters that take risks; adventuring is dangerous, looking for traps is dangerous, fighting things is dangerous. Most games rely on the players playing characters that are willing to take risks, and a bunch of characters that go "nah, that's too dangerous, I'm not going to deal with that" doesn't tend to go down too well.

We train our players to laugh in the face of danger and have their characters take up arms against impossible odds, you shouldn't act so surprised when they continue to behave in the way you've taught them to behave.

>>49791713
You're using regular enemies. OP is talking about enemies or bosses that you can't beat in a straight up fight. The part about capturing and paying the ransom is really a good idea, but that's not going to work when you're up against the undead.

>>49796115
You're the type of person I would like to play with.

>>49796148
Sounds like you need to find a new GM. Whenever I go into a game, I establish with the GM that I want it to be a game in which rolls matter and in which the players can die, that I don't want them to fudge the dice and that I don't want them to cutscene away. Sounds like I'm a rollplayer, but I don't minmax, and I also appreciate good storytelling. Just let me be able to fail. If the campaign is good enough, I'm willing to play it again. If your would-be GM doesn't want to play it that way, don't play his game. I think a big problem is many players take any game they can get in, and compromise what they want from a game in the process. Kind of like marriage. Seriously, why do humans settle?

tl;dr Establish with a GM about how you're going to play beforehand, if it's not how you want to play, don't play his game and find something else. Don't settle.

>>49789966
I quit DS3 not too long after those crabs myself. I managed to kill one of them a couple times (he dropped a ring the first time and I thought he would never spawn again, but fuck me I guess). I don't know, DS3 is the one that's seemed most bullshit and worst design of them all to me. Those crabs are the worst regular enemy I had found so far, if they were just bulky as fuck while dealing so much damage and taking your entire stamina bar from one blocked attack, alright. But the fact 2 out of 3 times they also just submerge right in your fucking face and then come back one second later at full health just was unfair shit.

Anyway, I'll stop going offtopic and getting triggered by crabs.

>>49789187
Monsters are faster than you by RAW, anon.
Running away means certain death

>>49790306
This.
Running is way more viable in vidya where you have hitboxes and can actually catch enemies up on geometry.
In tabletop, you have no such luck

>>49789650
>Many GMs don't like wiping parties so they stopped doing so.

Ugh, this has become me, Rule #1 = Are the players having fun?

Maybe? but I can't give them a challenge they'll run away from, running is never in their books, and TPK isn't in mine, so narrative BS is the name of the game, and it leaves a damn bad taste in my mouth.

I know that I should have TPK'd many times, a long time ago, but it just feels empty to me: Kill everyone here, where it contributes none to the story, have a shit narrative end, and upset my friends by ending a several week session with a pointless party wipe

I guess that tells me I should wipe them at a narratively appropriate point if they keep up their routine of dumb risk taking and blind courage

Anyone have any better ideas?

I'm thinking at this point, I should have a chat with them regarding whether they're enjoying me pulling punches whenever they do stupid shit, or if they'd prefer a party wipe whenever they really mess up

>>49797986
Actually play a system that encourages character death and doesnt require threebooks and six splats to make a new one

>>49798062
>System that encourages player death

Which are those? and by what mechanics / narrative do they encourage player death?

>>49798088
Paranoia, and by giving each player five backup clones to play when they inevitably and comically die.

Because you let them win

>>49798088
Call of Cthulhu
the new Delta Green
Most horror games really.

For fantasy stuff most OD&D stuff works. Dungeon Crawl Classic is pretty fun.

>>49789187
Maybe THE most memorable fight in my groups just-finished campaign was one where we ran away.
We got invited in to dine in the great hall, with the nobles of an eerily quiet village... There was no inn, really, so whatevs.
The nobles were obviously all very pale, and totally vampires, which we guessed OoC, but we went along.
Eventually, we discover that they have the Quest-McGuffin, and are bad guys, and we get into combat, over dinner.

That battle was epic. There was 3 vampires, 2 elder ones, and a less badass guy, who both me (cleric) and the spellthief just unloaded on one of the first rounds. He died almost immediately.
This just pissed off the elder vampires, of course, and the lady of the house started tearing into our knight, dealing heavy damage.
Meanwhile, the lord fucking eviscerates our Barbarian, and starts chasing my gnome cleric around, but I duck under a table and cast invisibility.
Eventually, we had to smash a big gothic window, and escape the house, with out knight having a last stand, till we were all out.
Of course, the round after he got taken down to -22 hp, I finally succeeded on my turn undead.
And then we ran and ran, in complete darkness,
not knowing if we were being chased by elder vampires.

>you can never run away from enemies because they go at the same speed as you
They're not fucking robots. The won't chase you to the ends of the earth.
Any same GM would have maybe a couple chase you then stop and guard a perimeter while one heads back to report or get reinforcements.
The only real exception is shit like undead, even constructs are probably instructed to defend a specific area.

>>49798425
Any dm who gives enough of a shit about "challenge" as to require the players to run in the first place will feel that having enemies break off like that is going too easy on players. You know, like fudging dice or saving players because narrative.

Oddly, the only gms you can trust to run a proper chase scene are the ones who are least likely to have a chase scene. The ones who care for narrative more than challenge.

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>>49789187
assault through the enemy, just keep moving forward. It will work in ambushes, it will work on dragons.

>>49789187
I have the opposite problem.
>taught players to run away from elite mooks of the villain organization early on campaign
>pcs are now strong enough to beat them
>still run away

How do i clue in that the pcs have learned enough kung fu to fight the evil cultists now?

>>49798425
Tell that to every DM I've ever had.

>>49798575
Don't bitch when it doesn't work and you have to retreat

>>49795168
Oh it does, don't get me wrong. But it's an endless ocean of shit that you have to trudge through, fine if you're already used to it, but sucks when your friends drag you into it because it's what they're used to.

>oh you want to play that class? they're really cool
>okay you're going to need these four feats to make it work
>but not all of these, they're trap options
>these two prestige classes are really solid options
>avoid these twenty like the plague, also....

It shouldn't be this hard to make a competent character. That's why I only play e6 when I DM.

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>>49798575

That theory doesn't always work out too well. Particularly if the enemy is reasonably prepared for you to keep assaulting forward.

>>49789187
>literally no risk
>rolling up a character takes ten minutes
>why are people not terrified of make believe monsters?

But for real though, your players don't give a fuck about their current avatars and will use character death as a chance to resleeve and re-spec their characters.

>>49799310
I'm so sorry for your history of terrible groups, but you have to be very new or very stupid to think that this is what most of /tg/ has.

>>49799310
Players can get really attached to their characters, unless they feel like they've made a mistake or their character has become so crippled that they're barely playable.


When my friend was GMing he threw a Bloodthirster at us. My character was only a Sea Captain so he said 'fuck that' and booked it after telling the dwarf Slayer to jump at it. He ran and didn't look back.

>>49798425
Play a system with chase rules, then. Even D&D has those now.

>>49799331
>I'm so sorry for your history of terrible groups
My group's fine, but that's the problem here in its most basic presentation; the players don't care about their characters, their quest or their world. And in all honesty that is at least partially the DMs fault.

>you have to be very new or very stupid to think that this is what most of /tg/ has.
I don't even know if most of /tg/ really plays desu senpai. As it is I suspect most of their groups are OK, though it should be said it's less about your group and more about the campaign within the group. You have good campaigns and you have bad campaigns and a party of players going full Witnessed over an escapable situation either tells me they don't understand the crunch well enough to know when they're dead, didn't see the way out or don't give a shit about the campaign and are playing P&P Diablo.

>>49799408
>Players can get really attached to their characters, unless they feel like they've made a mistake or their character has become so crippled that they're barely playable.
I've had characters I've been very invested in and I've had characters I don't care about one jot, it's depended largely on the game, the setting and whether the DM has run it as a story or as an 'Adventure'.

I've cared immensely about the characters whose story and life I felt able to really get in to, but there have been times where the DM has introduced the motley adventurers in a tavern, told us we have to defeat the naughtylich before he gets the jewel of rh'llan'gh'ol'llor and we're all like 'OK so this is the Belgariad right?' and it turns into less of a roleplaying game and more of a Mordheim campaign with each person controlling a different miniature.

Essentially what I'm saying is that if people are starting to throw their characters into meatgrinders for the hell of it, they're insanely bored.

>>49796437
Depends on the undead.

>>49796115
Im currently building a game system where, and this has actually happened, a level 15 wizard can be beaten to death by a level zero commoner with a sweet roll. Pretty much the goal is that every encounter is dangerous.

Well if it helps you, OP, I almost ran away last session

Playing 5e: Massive Dungeon and players want to explore every room of it, they often do, and find themselves in perilous situations but nothing too deadly

Playing OSR(Basic Fantasy): Normal Sized dungeon, they cant decide which room to enter, suddenly Skeletons, 3 out of 6 players die one gets a ring that was in a dead skeleton hand , and the remaining party runs away to live other day

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>>49799279
But are they prepared for us to do the same thing eighteen times?

>>49789400
On the one hand, this is true because most modern games don't have rules for running away. On the other hand, it's not because running away is totally a thing and any reasonable DM will figure something out. On the other hand, if there's nothing in the rules about it, novice players and DMs might not realize that's a thing that can be done and so it won't occur to them.

Either way, a lot of the time it falls on the DM to make it clear something is too tough before the fight starts (or at the very beginning) unless the game (and level) are such that the players can survive getting smacked around a bit before running away.

tl;dr all parties need to know running away is an option and put in work making it happen, and it's easy with modern games for one of those things to not be the case.

>>49789187
In a lot of games, killing dudes is the path to advancement. If you've already addressed that issue, then it could be a sign that you're undertuning EVERY encounter.

>>49800632
Sounds dumb

>>49800632
You know that system already exists right? It's called Ars Magicka and your casters are simultaneously godlike beings and wimpy nerds.

>>49798088
Double Cross

Players get XP, not characters, and you are encouraged to risk your character being turned into an enemy NPC by getting dicepool bonuses and more XP the higher you drive your "Turn into a dickass monster NPC" meter.

Narratively, the system is basically an anime in tabletop form. The anime being "these highschoolers/secret agency kidnapees have a virus that gives them powers, but also makes them emotional wrecks if they actually use the powers. Now they have to fight folks who went beyond the tipping point/anti secret agency resistance/secret agency folks." If your shithead meter fills up and is still at/past full at the end of an "episode" when you lower it via the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, it means you crossed the tipping point and the virus is allowed to do whatever it wants with you instead fo vice versa. Then you just make a new character with the same XP total and kick your old character's ass in a future episode.

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>>49789187
Sometimes it's much more epic when you stand and fight and manage -through sheer luck- to kill the villain before he manages to go through with his plans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U9lVjZg-Kg

But yeah, I agree with the other anons: there is the culture of videogames where players are just like "Kill everything, don't worry about consequences" but that's a thing the GM has to remedy.

>>49789187

Is that you, Liam?

>>49789966
Your second friend needs to git gud with zerker then

>>49790624
So don't make her characters story relevant. Whoever she's , just assume they're just passing through. Though that does require the DM to make sure her old characters leave rather than die, and her to not bitch and moan about not being the main character so it won't necessarily work.

>>49789187
Not my campaigns.

Of course, in our groups hide and sneak are virtually required skills.

I remember a D&D campaign where we were supposed to get something from this place that a lich was trapped in. We fought the lich who was super hard, and came to a point where neither side had an advantage over the other. We ended up making a deal with the lich where we would help him escape for a bunch of treasue including what we needed and to never bother each other again. Both sides made good on the deal.

The DM said he'd never seen a group do that before.

>>49801204
Well thats just like your opinion man.
>>49801758
Well too late to turn back now. Spent the better part of a year on this so I'm going to finish it.

>>49789238

That actually WAS D&D's old system: only problem was that it devolved into arguments over who got what loot in a manner akin to early WoW's hunter weapon debacle.

>>49804429
>WoW's hunter weapon debacle
?
Google just gives the pages for hunters and their weapons, not the debacle

>>49795786
That's if they do it in multiple episodes, and it had the heroes gaining power. In tabletop games, you know you're not any stronger than when you fought the one.

>>49789817

I take it they forgot to attack its weakpoint?

>>49804495
The gyst if it is that hunters have melee weapons with bonuses to help them do damage with their ranged weapon. (i.e. plus Agility, plus Critical Hit Chance, etc.). Because of this they considered almost any weapon upgrade THEIRS, regardless of whether or not a dedicated melee class needed it more. Less an issue at higher levels.

>>49789966
Your second friend has good taste, and easily justified fears.

>>49804495

In vanilla World of Warcraft, hunters were infamous for voting "need" on any weapon because they were the only class in the game that could theoretically wrest a concrete advantage from every attribute type and were capable of using all weapons types: in practice, this was bullshit as a survival hunter and a marksman had entierly different priorities and requirements, but it gave a flimsy excuse to them having at least nomial dibs on any weapon "just in case", as they were capable of putting any weapon into use regardless on whether they should be putting it into use.

This is entierly different from the reason people were loot whores in old D&D, but it had the same end result in the rogue trying to get an enchanted wizard hat because aquiring it gave him the XP needed to level ahead of everyone else.