RPGs: Logic, Lethality, and Loss

So, after a session of fantasy adventure RP last night, I got to talking with our active GM for a bit. As conversations will, we strayed over a few topics, but some left me thinking.


He made one brief comment about liking the thinking I expressed at one point. The group was faced with retrieving a hammer entombed with a king in a large burial mound, and we were faced with a largely-immovable slab of a door and possible curses/wards. One of the other party members was going on with "I'm going to look around, there has to be another way in." I had to sort of shake my head and point out, "No, there really doesn't. This is a tomb. They don't make these things to be accessed."

That's something I get into during games - arguably too much sometimes. I try (not even deliberately a lot of the time) to apply some form of logic to a situation. Often, I have to acknowledge that the information I/my character has is incomplete, so my conclusions can be wrong, but I try to stay away from assumptions like "we want to get in, there must be an easier way." Even seeing light drive away possessing shadow creatures makes me go to "that might be a useful tactic" rather than assuming it will always work. It's easy to assume things, and often in RPG presentation certain things are meant to be assumed, but it's awful dangerous to think you'll be safe from the horde of zombies while holding the Relic of MacGuffin based on the words of a soothsayer - at least go into the situation knowing it's possible that's wrong.

Of course, on the down side, this often leads me to think myself into a corner and say "We've seen X and Y, but that doesn't necessarily mean Z. We really do not know what the evil bad guy is trying to do with any certainty."

We also talked some about non-lethal combat encounters, and how they're kind of rare in what I will call typical fantasy RPGs. PCs meet orcs, and only one side tends to walk away. He doesn't really like that, which is understandable.

I pointed out that, mechanically, most RPGs don't allow combatants to safely disengage. Often trying to leave a fight opens one up to being attacked, and unless there are wildly different movement capacities at play, one side can simply pursue the other. So with that sort of design, trying to run away often becomes more dangerous than fighting. Add to that things like how adventurers generally not in a position to take prisoners unless in very specific circumstances and a lot of opponents may be to mindless of foreign to communicate any cease-fire with, and I think you've got a pretty solid foundation for why the default expectation seems to be battling to the death. And when that's the expectation, both GMs and PCs will tend to play into it, reinforcing it.

Of course, there are exceptions at times. I've played in a campaign where the PCs offered drink to any sentient opponent (and perhaps some not-so-sentient ones) at the beginning of an encounter. Sometimes, they accepted and conflict could be avoided. I've had at least one character who would frequently offer terms of surrender to opponents in battle when it was viable - though that only really works if you're on the winning (or sufficiently convincing) side.

Said GM offered that he was thinking more from the angle of the PCs surrendering, to which I pointed out much of the above. While it could happen in certain situations, I think a vast majority of the time there's no reason to think surrender/retreat is viable or preferable, and even when it might be, we're sort of conditioned to not see that as an option. The only real fix for that, as I see it, is to start introducing multiple situations where it does feel like an option - which should not be taken as suddenly dropping the PCs into situations where it's the only option.

And though we didn't discuss it as much, this got my thinking about failure in RPGs...

So often, critical RPG moments come down to combat. Slay the dragon to save the village. Defeat the corporate security to escape with the data. Defend the city against the evil wizard's army. Take out the cult leader before he summons the unfathomable evil to the world...

And due to the way combat is generally laid out as win-or-die (or win with some casualties), the options are pretty much just that. Either the PCs are victorious, or the game ends because they're dead. Since we're playing a game for some enjoyment, we generally don't want it to end, especially on a sour note. So we have games where the PCs are meant to win. The GM may seek to challenge them, and make victory difficult, but usually every obstacle is designed with some way past or around, because that's how the story continues. By design, failure is typically not an option so much as an end state.

Oh, little failures happen. A miss in combat. A poor stealth roll. A door that can't be unlocked. But there's basically always some way forward anyway. A stealth roll may lead to an unwanted fight and more complications and a barred door may mean going another way, but these things almost never cause failure on a larger scale.

I find myself wondering if maybe that shouldn't be more of an option.

I remember Wing Commander blew me away with having multiple story paths. Based on how well you did in one system, the Tiger's Claw might advance deeper into Kilrathi space or fall back closer to Earth. There wasn't a huge difference, and on a single play-through you're only seeing one route through the game, but it was such a novel thing at the time. You could lose in one system and still fight back to victory. Or you could get on a losing path and end up fighting over Earth itself against endless waves. While multiple endings might have been done before, I don't think I had seen multiple paths. You could suffer failures that were meaningful without automatically losing.

We get a litlte bit of that in media. Commonly in books and movies, we see the hero(es) suffer an Act 2 loss from which they have to fight back better than before to win. With an ongoing RPG campaign, there's so much more room for victory and loss both in a greater story. But, I suppose we're taught to expect to win and failure might be too demoralizing to players...

I think I'm getting to the point of rambling. I'm not sure I'd want to experience lots of failures, but I do wish it were more of an option. I certainly think the stories woven in games would be a lot more relatable, interesting, and "realistic" if success wasn't always a given.