Fight or Flight, Tense Decisions in Tabletop RPGs

A few weeks ago, Lyme at Brackish Draught made an observation that really stuck with me: The "in times of crisis you revert to your training" thing isn't just for gunfights. It also goes for any fast-moving, high tension situation. It could be a social crisis where escalation to violence isn't possible, or even a large group of people like a ship's crew trying to respond to an electrical fire. Tactical infinity and creativity in combat are mostly for fight choreographers. Actual emergencies or battles, every procedure you've trained for is a button. If you aren't a professional military or first responder service you probably don't have a lot of buttons to press. You might only have one, and the only option is press it or not. I can't speak to gunfighting personally, but a few years ago I had to do some firefighting training for work. Maybe it's because it was only a week-long course, but there was not a lot of tactical infinity involved in basic emergency response. You learn an…