I love Morale rules! I've used them in my Dolmenwood, OSE, Acthung Cthulhu, and Mausritter games. If the game I'm playing doesn't have morale rules (like Mothership), then I'll simply ask an oracle question if they want to stay and fight.
Morale is a great mechanic, even using meta-gaming it works well for the players, i.e. targeting the leader to induce a morale check and an early victory.
Although it is not clear in Advanced edition (as in Basic edition), experience is awarded to monsters "defeated", this includes sleeping, immobilizing, turning, running away, surrendering, etc, but I think it should apply, how would you apply this?
One point to consider with monsters that surrender, although they might become part of the party with a good reaction roll, there is also the conundrum of what to do with prisoners, especially troublesome ones, and where alignment conflicts would come in to play, further enhancing role-play.
Surviving monsters also help build conflict among your players. I like the idea of assigning personal objectives to characters based on their profile. That player gets more XP for accomplishing these objectives but the rest of the party doesn't benefit directly. The rest of the party also don't know these objectives (although they are intuitive enough to guess) so the player can tell them or not.
Example: A bandit survived a random encounter and offers a bribe. The Rouge wants to take the bribe and let him go, the Warrior want to take the bandit to jail and the Palidan is sworn to kill him. How do the players work it out? What deals do they make among each other to accomplish their own goals? Suddenly a dice roll there only to make travel seem mildly interesting has spiralled into a drama that I didn't even have to write.
I do use morale, but my players tend to chase and hunt down fleeing enemies. Even though this is becoming less effective as they get a reputation. Initially they saw that a fleeing enemy might come back with allies, might panic the others, etc. they don't care, they just kill.
I’m an OD&D player from 1976 and I never realized OD&D had morale rules. EVERY monster fought to the death and we slaughtered EVERYTHING we encountered if it did not respond to us in the Lawful language. The literal handful of creatures that survived our assault by some quirk of the dice were interrogated (using the Common language) and then executed.
Needless to say, NOBODY played a thief and our first encounter with Mind Flayers ended poorly for us.
Every campaign we played in was like this. It was as if all the DMs and dungeons we played in were all from the same hellish Moorcock-ian universe were the Lords of Law and the Gods of Chaos were in open bloody conflict, themselves fighting to the death for supremacy.
In retrospect, our characters were so ruthless, the creatures we encountered had no choice but to fight to the death
I love Morale rules! I've used them in my Dolmenwood, OSE, Acthung Cthulhu, and Mausritter games. If the game I'm playing doesn't have morale rules (like Mothership), then I'll simply ask an oracle question if they want to stay and fight.
Morale is a great mechanic, even using meta-gaming it works well for the players, i.e. targeting the leader to induce a morale check and an early victory.
Although it is not clear in Advanced edition (as in Basic edition), experience is awarded to monsters "defeated", this includes sleeping, immobilizing, turning, running away, surrendering, etc, but I think it should apply, how would you apply this?
One point to consider with monsters that surrender, although they might become part of the party with a good reaction roll, there is also the conundrum of what to do with prisoners, especially troublesome ones, and where alignment conflicts would come in to play, further enhancing role-play.
Surviving monsters also help build conflict among your players. I like the idea of assigning personal objectives to characters based on their profile. That player gets more XP for accomplishing these objectives but the rest of the party doesn't benefit directly. The rest of the party also don't know these objectives (although they are intuitive enough to guess) so the player can tell them or not.
Example: A bandit survived a random encounter and offers a bribe. The Rouge wants to take the bribe and let him go, the Warrior want to take the bandit to jail and the Palidan is sworn to kill him. How do the players work it out? What deals do they make among each other to accomplish their own goals? Suddenly a dice roll there only to make travel seem mildly interesting has spiralled into a drama that I didn't even have to write.
I do use morale, but my players tend to chase and hunt down fleeing enemies. Even though this is becoming less effective as they get a reputation. Initially they saw that a fleeing enemy might come back with allies, might panic the others, etc. they don't care, they just kill.
They'll learn or they end up on hard mode.
I’m an OD&D player from 1976 and I never realized OD&D had morale rules. EVERY monster fought to the death and we slaughtered EVERYTHING we encountered if it did not respond to us in the Lawful language. The literal handful of creatures that survived our assault by some quirk of the dice were interrogated (using the Common language) and then executed.
Needless to say, NOBODY played a thief and our first encounter with Mind Flayers ended poorly for us.
Every campaign we played in was like this. It was as if all the DMs and dungeons we played in were all from the same hellish Moorcock-ian universe were the Lords of Law and the Gods of Chaos were in open bloody conflict, themselves fighting to the death for supremacy.
In retrospect, our characters were so ruthless, the creatures we encountered had no choice but to fight to the death