How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

And yet, if the GM runs monsters by this logic, many a good hack and slash game becomes frustrating.

That's not necessarily a bad thing if you view frustrating = challenging and use enough monsters that it's still difficult to force them all to flee, and make pursuit and finishing routed foes off permanently so they cannot recover and eventually counterattack an important part of the game.

But it's certainly different than the common default behavior.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is this thread about rpgs generally, or is it just about dungeon crawls? Because in the great majority of my campaigns, I don't see what you seem to be calling "default behavior." Even when I ran an intentionally combat-focused campaign, it wasn't about that behavior; it was about duels with the smallsword, typically to first blood.

My post (not the entire thread) was explicitly about hack and slash gaming, and any game that's about smallsword duels to first blood doesn't sound like it's hack and slash, let alone "common" hack and slash.

I am not implying that hack and slash is the "common default" mode of GURPS play or that you personally play hack and slash. I'm not even saying that I play hack and slash the majority of the time. Your smallsword duels would fit right into diplomacy protocols for my last D&D 5E game.