i played a few sessions of Trespasser and had a great time! i really like the abstracted action system for the different timescales- it saves a lot of table time.
our characters got eaten by bugs trying to retreat from a freak random encounter. we failed the group initiative check three rounds in a row. we felt very powerless against the dice- there aren't any combat actions which make retreat more likely to succeed, so all the trespassers could do was keep fighting a losing battle.
retreat should definitely be costly, but we do think there should be tactical decisions which support a need to retreat. for our own game we've cooked up the "Retreat Round", where the trespassers declare they want to retreat and then the enemy gets a full ambush round against them, after which any survivors automatically spend endurance to escape. we think this will keep retreat feeling risky while engaging better with the other mechanics of the game.
Hi there Pteren, I'm so sorry to miss this comment earlier. Thank you for your feedback- can I ask, what was the initiative score of the bugs, and did you follow the "group check" rules on page 16? Retreat only requires half the party to be successful on their rolls, so it seems like very bad luck for them to fail three times in a row! I could definitely see this happening, though- in which case, I think that's a good mercy rule to implement! Maybe i'll consider letting each player reroll their retreat attempt at the cost of 1 endurance per, to make sure the party can really scramble when they need to.