Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a campaign where I'd expect existential combat to feature, particularly with the bit about legal consequences for going too far. As I suspected, your prospectuses sound like they do a good job of setting expectations.

I normally just open a new tab for each reply, then cut-and-paste them all together into a single post, but I decided to test out the multi-quote function for this reply. Looks like the way it works is that you hit the multi-quote button for each post you want to quote, which selects it; once you have all of them, you click on Post Reply (as though you were posting without a quote) and your reply automatically has the selected posts quoted.

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

I'll try that next time. Thanks!

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

I'm glad you find them so. I've been writing them since the 1990s, and I've learned to make them more informative and formulaic as I've gone.

Here's a bit from the oldest prospectus I still have on file, dated 2005, so nearly twenty years back:

___Mentat: Immediately after World War II, but with a historical divergence: effective mind-control drugs were developed before and during the war, making possible most of the effects attributed to hypnosis, telepathy, and brainwashing in popular fiction. Induced autism drugs made digital computers unnecessary for codebreaking and no one has them. Can the United States use this technology to preserve world freedom, or will it be corrupted by the use of these methods? And how long can they be kept secret, or is the secret already out? Agents of the United States’s most secret organization confront these issues. Rules system: GURPS.

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

To clarify: I did not think you were addressing me, and do not disagree that johndallman's advice is good in general especially for player characters.

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

As long as we're talking about 3.x and retreating we should mention the way "Attacks of Opportunity" complicated retreating. AoO actually discouraged many kinds of imprecise swanning about in combat ("Roll for Initiative." "What do you do for your first action?" "I climb a tree.") but it was triggering an AoO by trying to break off combat that fixed in people's minds that it could be very difficult to do this successfully.

Gurps can make it pretty difficult too. Burning those 3 movement pts to spin around so you can run away full speed will generally give your opponent an attack you can't Parry or Block. Sometimes yu have to do something like encouraging disengagement by taking a Retreating Defense when you think the enemy is ready to flee.

Fleeing is always easier when you're not in melee but "hit' em hard and fast" is usually a good way to start off battles. I usually have non-engaged monsters roll IQ or similar stat to figure out that it's time to run but for the oens already committed to melee changing their minds can be difficult.

You could have monsters signal their willingness to flee by doing something like All out Defense with Retreat every Turn but that could just encourage aggression. After all, where did PCs learn to be "MurderHobos"? From running into endless series of "MurderNomads".

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

How's this supposed to work? For the first turn, starting in an enemy's reach would be unusual and decidedly not a situation where vague swanning about makes sense. For general withdrawal, there's a perfect solution named...Withdraw. Prevents the AoO and gives you full double movement.

Now, if you're white-rooming there is something that makes it hard to back off, but that's Charge, not AoO. (If you're not white-rooming, any kind of obstructive terrain can block the charge.)
Turning your back on an enemy in melee range to run away is a terrible idea unless you have reason to believe they're happy to let you run. Opening space by backing up with defensive maneuvers or Wait, that's a much more sensible approach. (Then you can take to your heels once you're not in reach.)

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

This is where Gurps' relentlessly "fair" alternation of Turns becomes problematic. You can back up every Turn but your enemy can advance every Turn in pursuit. It's not likely that you're going to hit terrain where you can back up but he can't follow you. A friendly pike wall isn't exactly "terrain". :)

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

The rules for retreats in AD&D1/2 worked in a similar manner, and were just as punishing. I think the real difference was that after about 3rd level damage relative to hit points was considerably lower in earlier editions, so getting hit as you ran was less punishing.

And back-pedaling is just as useless for making distance.

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

What's to stop you from declaring that you'll Wait until he attacks you, and then attack him back and step away from him while turning? Then on your next turn you're already an extra yard away (so probably two yards total), and you Move another 6 yards or so away, and 7 yards per turn thereafter until you run out of endurance.

Re: How to avoid killing your player characters as GM
 

There were like three small paragraphs in the DMG.


Yeah, yeah, I know. Which is why I mentioned Mike Mearls attitude about D&D, I suspect Murder Hobo was his preferred style, so it got baked into 3e. There are reasons my group hasn't played D&D since 3rd ed.



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