How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

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.

I was going to include this in my last post, but I can't figure out how multiquote is meant to work; when I click the icon I don't get a box to type in.

When you said "common default" it sounded to me as if you were saying that hack and slash was the normal mode for rpgs in general. So I thought it was relevant for me to say that I hardly ever do anything with that kind of high lethality, and—by implication—that my players don't even expect it (and I have no shortage of such players). I wasn't trying to refute the idea that I personally ran hack and slash, because I didn't assume you were saying that; I was just illustrating the point that there are other modes. Since it seems that you are perfectly aware of that, I don't think we actually disagree, and I apologize if I suggested otherwise.