If you ever build an encounter solely built around being too much for the players, forcing them to retreat, always keep in mind the following:
1: Retreating isn’t fun. Winning against overwhelming odds, is very much fun however. Retreat in DnD is also very jank, disincentivizing players even more from even considering that option.
2: It’s very hard for players to gauge what would be too dangerous to engage (be it physically or social). If Steve the Figher gets hit by that superzombie there, and it does 15 damage, the players have no way of knowing if that was a critical hit, a really good damage roll, or the lowest possible damage the superzombie can do, **unless you are open about your rolls**. If your players don’t see the dice and the numbers, there’s no indication how strong a foe is, no matter how big and intimidating you describe them.
Some solutions:
1: Tell your players up front “In this campaign, i’ll occasionally drop in encounters where you are completely justified, and expected, to run away.” That way, players will be aware that your campaign has fights that they can’t fight.
2: Do your best to showcase the enemy’s power before it becomes too dangerous to turn tail. Let the ogre kick a fortification down. Give them an managable fight against a weaker version that they barely manage, to unveil a whole group. Kill a character that’s established to be on the same level as the group, or even stronger. Be obvious that these are really, really dangerous.
3: When your players say “Ok, we’re running away”, just agree and say “You ran away.” Or describe what happens during their attempt to escape. Trying to solve it via grid is just clunky, slow, and unreliable.
4: Don’t. Just running away just makes your players feel small and weak, for no good reason. Instead, give them goals they can achieve without directly engaging the overwhelming threat. Make the quest about saving the princess rather than killing the dragon. Evacuate civilians instead of fighting the entire enemy army. Give them something fun to do where “getting away with it” is part of a whole operation, not just a sad interruption of the adventure. ___________________________________________________________
Now, I’m writing this mainly about DnD, because in DnD, retreat is //jank//. If you’re using your own system, or a game where retreat is part of the main conceit of the game, like Call of Cthulhu, things might look different.
I was originally writing this about a Curse of Strahd encounter where the player ignored my heavy handed attempts to dissuade him from (at level 4) running through an easily avoided lightning field that had destroyed a stone sculpture with one lightening hit and, having been resurrected once already on his previous turn, flipping off Strahd instead of hiding but…
This is actually fabulous advice for GMs in general. Communication is key to let your players know that retreat is valid and expected if you want to run a consequence heavy game. Especially if you’ve not already established a horror-like tone.
You don’t get exp for running. More reason for players to not run.
Easy way around this: Treat running away as “accepting you’re not strong enough”, giving them roleplay exp.
100%
If you are running a story-driven game, you should award XP for story/role playing actions!
I saw your tags about how you like milestone leveling
And this is why I agree with that: milestone xp can be given for running away and kind of takes the pressure off of the “lost xp opportunity” of running from a fight
But also as a gamer in general: I rarely run away from anything in games and I know that bleeds over to dnd as well.
Running away in DnD can definitely be a tactical choice and not just a “we suck we can’t do this” kind of thing.
I adore how she carries his head low, at her side, and not aloft in triumph. This is not a self-aggrandizing hero lauding her great deed. This is a woman who wanted to be left the fuck alone.
Also look at her body. The double hips. The asymetrical boobs. She’s thin, but she’s realistic as hell. That’s a real woman.
Cottagecore is so Good. It makes me want to clean my house and wake up early and watch the sunset and eat vegetables and take long, long walks and create things with my hands. It makes me want to live, and be pure and good and exist, in simple, mundane way, and with love.
A haunted doll mistaking a creepy android to be a bigger, stronger, haunted doll, and the creepy android mistaking the haunted doll as a smaller, sassier android.
Android: [gets hit with rain water and short circuits] Haunted Doll: H̷O̷L̴Y̷ ̶W̵A̷T̸E̷R̶ ̵W̴A̵T̴C̵H̴ ̶O̶U̷T̴
Haunted Doll, dying: N̶E̵E̸D̷ ̷S̸O̵U̵L̸S̷ Android: [opens the haunted doll’s back and replaces the batteries] Haunted Doll: A̶C̶C̷E̷P̸T̶A̷B̸L̵E̴ ̷S̴U̴B̸S̵T̸I̷T̷U̴T̵E̴
Android: [transfers their data into a better body] Haunted Doll: A̸ ̵F̴L̸A̷W̵L̷E̴S̵S̷ ̷B̶O̸D̶Y̵ ̷P̶O̵S̶S̵E̷S̶S̵I̷O̷N̴
I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
Exodus from the blue hellsite 