The last couple of times I've been to Athens to hang out with my co-hosts, we played at least one session of a Star Wars RPG.
The first was a quick side-adventure where my traveling negotiator for a crime syndicate needed transportation, which used the Edge of the Empire game from FFG. I've discussed previous podcasts what about the system I liked and didn't (mostly, didn't), but there was something unrelated to the system that happened in the game. As the plot progressed, we were attacked by a bounty hunter who was trying to find my character (presumably to get rid of him since it was only a one shot, and I wasn't going to be around to play him again). The situation devolved, become a fight, then devolved further into a fight to the death... that is to say, at least one character on each side was on their last leg, and no one was going to give up, even if it meant dying.
It struck me as a weird situation, made weirder by the fact that later on, it basically happened again. Some of the other players began an assault on a highly, highly secure facility, and it never seemed to cross anyone's mind that dying was a likely outcome. Or maybe it did, and they just didn't care. Their characters were shot up, blown up, tossed around, and they just kept running at the problem head-first. Every challenge turned into a fight, and every fight was a fight to the death. Weird?
The second Star Wars game was an adaptation of Ghost/Echo (pdf link), a game I put together sort of a reaction to the way that the previous game had gone. The scenario had some opportunities for fights (Star WARS, right?) but the game works in such a way to encourage creative thinking and throwing obstacles into your own way to make the story more interesting. I hoped that, despite the fact that there weren't explicit rules for dying, the players would react to challenges and fights without a traditional RPG "crazed berserker" mentality. It went alright, but there were still hints of the attitude that if there is a fight, it is to the death.
I don't know if this is a common experience or attitude, but it sure seems that way. I've played in many D&D games (and Hero games, and Exalted games, et al) where the players behaved as if there was no possibility of retreat. I'm not really sure why. Was there actually an assumption that every fight was a challenge that could somehow be won, no matter what the apparent odds against the players's characters? Does character death even matter? I know for sure that injury never seems to. In part, that's because having penalties and being on the edge of death all the time isn't much fun, so a lot of games make healing or recovering easy, but maybe that ends up devaluing the characters' lives. Maybe?
There is a definite possibility that other methods of dealing with fights and encounters were undervalued or not even considered. The assault on the highly, highly secured facility was guaranteed to fail, but no one had even considered coming up with a plan, using tricks, diplomacy, money, allies, or any other resource besides ammunition and HP. The only reason I did was because, being unfamiliar with the system, I accidentally made a character who didn't have much in the way of combat ability or utility. If he had, I likely would have fallen right in line behind the "shoot everything, or die trying" folks.
Fighting to the death in RPGs isn't just weird, though. In my mind, it's an actual problem. It isn't just a quirk of habit, it genuinely limits tactical approaches (for people who are interested more in stepping up to a challenge) and it genuinely limits fictional outcomes (for people are interested more in improvising unexpected stories). Realism or "genre-appropriateness" is right out... characters in movies and books only "fight to the death" when everything (EVERYTHING!) is on the line. Most of the time, they try to avoid that sort of scenario, if for no other reason that they might lose.
Say your RPG is about sneaking down into underground ruins, clearing out the monstrous inhabitants, and gathering whatever treasure you might find in the meantime. If every challenge is a fight, and every fight is a fight to the death, you'll have an undeniably boring game. That's true even if the rules and systems for fighting would otherwise be interesting. First off, there need to be other stakes, other possibilities that could result from two war-ready parties encountering one another. With no reason for the fights other than "you want to kill the other guys," there is nothing of interest to do but try to kill the other guys while being killed in the process. Make the fight about chasing someone away, rescuing someone, capturing a creature, securing an important area, or distracting the enemy while someone else infiltrates... make the stakes about lasting damage to the characters (lost fingers or eyes!), the death of bystanders, or the loss of important resources (that map or key they need). There are so many specific situations that can create interesting fights that fights which are only about the relative HP of the players are clearly inferior. Yeah, clearly. I said it.
Second, and probably more importantly, every challenge need not be a fight. Even when one group characters seem entirely at with another, there may still be some interest shared or some exchange of goods or services to be made that could present non-fight-based challenges that are still fun and engage the players' tactical minds. Instead of storming the well-guarded base with automated sentry guns to rescue a kidnapped PC, the players could try to draw the kidnappers out with their victim, but do it in such a way that they don't expect and are unprepared for a fight... or maybe even con them into handing the prisoner over without ever realizing what they had done.
And frankly, if the players don't approach the game as though it were all about a challenge to their skills as CharOps magicians, with fractional bonuses and sandbagged power combos, that can't hurt either. Some games lend themselves better to highly confrontational challenges and tactical advantage-seeking, and other games lend themselves better to internal struggles (within the group or within the individual) or exploration... In the podcast, we often talk about how flexible RPGs are compared to video games or board games, and this case is no different. RPGs can be about investigation, exploration, planning, discussion, power, relationships, curiosity, confusion, unrequited love, unrequited hate... pretty much anything. If the game is too much about fighting (especially fighting to the death), maybe getting everyone on-board with the other possibilities can change that.
I think a key here may be expectations. If the players expect deadly fights, then that's what they'll play. If they expect and have available more options, then they will use those. To make sure the expectations are clear, talk about them before the game starts. When you want the other players to consider the options, nothing goes as far as saying "Hey, you/we will need to run away from some fights, and avoid others entirely. Think differently." And when you want the other players to focus on the struggle between power and corruption, nothing goes as far as saying "Let's play a game where you can have power, but it comes at the cost of what makes you human." I've seen some fantastic, genuinely emotional ideas come from the same group of players who always make death-seeking combat-monsters, and all it took was a bit of discussion of what we were doing before hand.
