Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
I've noticed over the past couple of years that when faced with a significant opposition (but far from unbeatable) players tend to run away rather than dig in and fight it out as is more likely to happen IRL. Even when armoured support is available and the area quite defendable this seems to happen.
Is it just my perception or have others noticed the same thing?
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My opinion is that, probably, you are doing a good work creating the atmosphere previous to the combat and managing the actions of your NPC's. But perhaps your players are not fully aware of all their capabilities.
I'm running the same campaign with two (not, now three!) group of players. One of them have the same behavior described by Sgalcy12. They are all AD&D players. And this is a lasting heritage. They have a tendency to never consider a retreat and to believe that combat only ends with the dead of all their enemies. Some of them have the stubbornly tendency to keep a fixed position while in combat, even if this position is heavily covered by small arms fire. No diversionary actions, no flanking attacks, no prisoners (perhaps they think that Russians are orcs...
).Well, they have paid their good number of casualties but now they seem to have grasped the
Twilight way. After the lost of nearly all the group...
I have another group (let's tell it Group 2). They use concealment, explosives, diversionary actions, flanking attacks, covering fire... They always consider all they have in hand in any defensive or offensive action. If Group 1 accepts a mission with enthusiasm and depart before listening the details of the mission, Group 2 is always trying to carefully plan their actions while tormenting their superiors for more support or material. While in combat they never loss the momentum, though. But what I've observed is that they are more and more careful as their characters grew up. In a past Traveller campaign, after months of play, they recognized that their characters were more "courageous" at the beginning. Mmmmm... the
Veteran syndrome???
And perhaps Hollywood shares a part of the responsibility. War films seemed much more heroic and innocuous for the main characters before "Saving Private Ryan", "Blackhawk down", "Band of brothers", "Stalingrad"...
