PC Free Will

Tonight we had another playtest for the Origins adventure that we are planing on running next month.  The group did fine up until a one of the battles where they got wiped out.  Actually, since it was a playtest I stopped it when the stronger half of the party was dead.  It would have been a TPK.

Adding the morale rules into the game make encounters much more interesting.  I think that if encounters were all fought to the death they would be a tad boring and the party would be overwhelmed much more often.  It is surprising how many creatures don't want to fight.....imagine that.

After the game we talked and some of the players stated that if they knew X or Y, they'd want to leave the adventure...in character.  They weren't upset as players, just that they figured their PCs would say "screw it" and leave the first chance they got.  My wife's response was an old in-character gaming quote of mine, "If we don't like it we can always leave."

I was a little serious in my response along the lines of, "so?"  With the exception of the initial railroad setup the PCs had a way out should they choose to take it.  I brought up that pretty much anytime outside of combat in all of the adventures we've played so far we could have left whenever we wanted.

A tournament game is no different...you don't have to play along.