There's more to life than life and death

If you only play with life and death at stake, you'll flatten your game and lose a lot of interesting scenarios.

Defeat and death in the dungeon

How often are these goblins going to fight to the last man? How often are they going to stay in a pitched battle when they're already losing? How often are your retainers going to do the same?

In the second world war, the deadliest military conflict in history,  21 to 25 million soldiers died, out of 70 to 130 million mobilized. Yet nearly every fight in the dungeon is a fight to the last man. Ridiculous!

In my game, if an organized enemy comes into contact with the players, they immediately send a runner to a strongpoint to get reinforcements. And they retreat long before they're wiped out; 20% casualties is a good time to turn around, if you can get away.

(This requires a precise interpretation of morale. Morale can't just be "roll this to see if the enemy runs away'; the enemy must be played smart enough to retreat independent of its morale check. A morale check checks for a morale break specifically, a disorganized retreat against orders.)

If the opforce plays cautiously and retreats to strongpoints, the pace of the game changes. Play becomes focused on finding and securing strongpoints, rather than beating individual rooms in the dungeon. If you can't hold the strongpoint against the enemy, if you leave the dungeon without having dealt them a decisive blow, you haven't really accomplished anything, even if you managed to score a few hundred XP along the way.

Players should set up their own strongpoints and reinforcements. When I was a player in Adam's Alfheimr game, I built a fort around the entrance to a dungeon, so I could control access to it and reinforce with ease. If any enemy had managed to raid the fort and dislodge us, we would have had to end the expedition in defeat. To be very clear: this would have been a defeat even if every important character survived and we got a high score. Our strategic position was itself valuable and therefore at risk.

Anything you can possess, I can take away

 In a sandbox wargame, every single thing has a target on it, every single thing is fair game. Let's talk about stuff outside the dungeon which can be won or lost.

You've got contacts and allies, right? You didn't get those for free, you had to work for them. You've either spent downtime enmeshing yourself in a social circle or you've won friends through heroism. Put those guys on your character sheet. They've all got their own agendas and needs, and if you don't see to them regularly, you're going to lose their friendship.

Moreover these guys can all be threatened. You're playing in a city with a crime problem. One of your contacts is a rich man who owns an expansive library full of rare tomes. If bad things happen to this guy, you'll lose access to the library, or your ability to work there will be hindered.

I'm not suggesting GMs simply start kidnapping everybody's valuable NPC contacts constantly. Rather, you should threaten them when the situation suggests that they would be threatened. Throw in a small chance (1% per NPC per downtime turn maybe) that something bad happens or they have some urgent need.

This should go for everything on the character's sheet: all their contacts, property, and allies. Just check every so often to see if they need anything or are in serious trouble, and then figure out what they need, or what the trouble might be.

Some additional rules to add non-mortal victories and defeats

I've cribbed all these ideas from the Finns; thanks, Eero!

Anchors. An anchor is an institution or relationship that you fight for or return to after every scenario, somebody or bodies you're really invested in. When you have an anchor, cut your upkeep costs in half. (You're paying 1% of your XP every month, right?) But if your anchor dies, you lose between 10% and 50% of your total XP, depending on how important the anchor was to you.

Quests. You can go on quests, it's not "FOE", just make sure that victory and defeat are defined in advance. A quest is worth 1000 * 2^[quest level] XP. (Feel free to add in a multiplier between 1 and 5 depending on the scope of the quest, from one session to months.) Half the points go to the primary quest-holder(s), and the rest are split evenly through the party. This is a big win in terms of points, but the primary quest-holder takes -10% to every other XP source while the quest is active.

These quests have stakes, too. If you've failed the quest, whatever bad thing you were trying to prevent comes to pass, or whatever good thing you were trying to bring about does not. Not only that, you've lost out on 10% of your possible XP while you were questing.

Getting a quest isn't automatic; you need to roll for it. Maybe you've got a 3/6, with bonus/penalty dice from Wisdom/Presence and your fictional positioning? (It's easier to get a quest if it aligns with your values or has to do with your anchor.)

Magic item quenching. You've got magic items, right? If you put your magic item up directly against a stronger force, 1/6 your item survives and improves by +1, bonus die if the struggle matches the item's purpose. On a fail, your item breaks. If you fight with a magic weapon, you risk breaking it, end of story. That's a major loss, even if you win the battle.