have you ever played an RPG session and had no combat take place? If so, which system were you playing?
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>>43721616
My DH2 group haven't had combat in the last 3 sessions. They're working on their secret HQ and fake IDs as ordered by the Inquisitor.
However, the next session will start with the Sister being literally dropped into a pit thing's den by a group of over-zealous mutants who believe that she is Sister Sabbat.
>>43721616
Yes, Shadowrun.
It was weird, the plan went off without a hitch.
>>43721616
I played in an entire campaign where no combat took place. It was great. WoD.
With my regular group, it's normal to have most sessions without combat. We usually play GURPS and Call of Cthulhu, sometimes (old) World of Darkness.
Campaigns we've run recently:
CoC 1940's: no combat at all.
GURPS modern day: no combat at all.
WoD dark ages: combat in about half the sessions.
CoC 1920's 1-shot (actually ended up being 2 sessions). No combat at all.
GURPS modern day (sequel to the previous GURPS game) one combat so far out of four sessions (no fatalities).
>>43721616
>have you ever played an RPG session-
No
>>43721616
Yes, I've had my players looking around for some sabbat shovelheads for two sesions, just investigating and asking questions.
>>43721616
yup.
Adnd. and it was hilarious. pissed off the autistic warrior guy though.
Playing in a friends Legend of the Five Rings game, we're a group of Scorpions from different families, and most of our games so far has had little to no combat at all, despite at least two of us being Bushi. We're all having a great time, and I look forward to each session.
Despite how violence is considered mundane in the world of Over the Edge, my last campaign my players decided that they wanted to explore art galleries. So the game became a pseudo whodunnit, trying to figure out which artist trashed the other artists' displays.
Nary a gun was fired or a punch thrown, but it was an outstanding diversion from the intended scenario.
>>43721616
>no fight in session
Yes.
>which system
...Shadowrun. They were fucking good at what they did, my players. Mind you, they were armed to the teeth and did the run without a bullet in the air.
>>43721861
Well, you know what they say, you get by easier with a kind word and a gun, than just a kind word.
L5R- our characters are set up as the governors of a newly discovered island.
Yep, many times, we love to roleplay around each others and npcs.
D&D 5e
My first time in GURPS was without combat - we almost drowned like fucking idiots, though.
And yes, I created a char pretty much centered around combat.
A couple of times in a Traveller campaign we haven't had combat, mostly because it's terrible there.
>>43721616
Every game I run has sessions with no combat.
Even Only War
Happens all the time in Unknown Armies. Mostly because if you use your magic right no one wants to fight you, but also because the combat rules in Unknown Armies are vicious and only fools fight all the time. Damage heals slowly, and a gunshot can kill you outright if you're unlucky.
Last OW session was just wrapping up and getting sent off to start another campaign, so I guess it doesn't count. Planning to have a live rp session during dinner where everyone plays a different officer plus an inquisitor and each one has to pull their own agenda though.
>>43721616
Have you ever played an entire campaign with no combat?
>>43721616
Yes. Every RPG my group has played has had sessions without combat.
One player still gets upset with me about that because he likes to roll dice.Everyone else makes fun of him for that.
>>43722109
>that player that as soon as someone rolls dice rushes to roll too
He's an ok guy but damn, he looks like he's been conditioned to do it sometimes
>>43721616
Weird question.
There are entire systems that don't even have rules for combat, entire systems that would be surprised if a physical fight broke out at all. And then plenty of people play entire campaigns in regular systems where combat is rare to non existant.
And here you are asking if people had even had so much as a session without a fight.
>>43722099
I ran a CoC game once with no combat. Sure there were monsters and spooky shit going on, but no fighting actually took place. The humans they cornered gave up and were taken in by the police, and the monsters were unsummoned and run away from, never fought.
Yep, current game. It's a kids show setting using savage worlds system, usually every other session is a non-combat session, with the other sessions being combat heavy. For example the most recent one was about finding a lost dog, and the one before that was about cleaning up trash from the beach.
DnD5E.
Group spent the entire session in one town, interacting with townspeople and doing odd jobs for people, it was nice.
The only violent thing to happen was our thief punched a thug in the nose to try and intimidate him. He just sucker punched him.
>>43721616
Dozens. Combat is more a rarity, but when we fight we fight something big.
5e, once or twice. Our DM is really in love with his setting so arriving at a new location and meeting npcs can eat up a session if he forgets to have bandits or muggers randomly attack us for something to do.
Many times i dnd5e. We couldn't manage to make even slightly challenging combat fast enough to take less than 3 fucking hours, so eventually combat was like every 3rd session.
>>43721616
The accompanying question should be how long do your sessions go?
A 3 hour session without combat is one thing but 6 hours? 8 hours? 10+ hours?
>>43721616
Lots. Some were good, some were bad, some were boring, but most were enjoyable and pushed the plot forward or served some other purpose, like characterization and developing PC personalities.
It depends on the system, though. My last three AdEva games had a lot of non-combat sessions and mini sessions between the main ones. I try to have roleplaying and exploration-centered sessions when I run D&D 5e, and I've got some big plans for my next game.
I've seen several sessions go without combat. D&D 3.5, 4th, 5th; Shadowrun, Exalted, oWoD, DH,Rogue Trader, HEROES 6th edition, and there was one session of Scion where I chopped someone's head off but we didn't do combat rounds (she was old and I was invisible).
>>43721616
D&D 5e
Only got into RPGs in the past year or so, first proper campaign played was in Dread so had no proper combat for the whole thing. Still treat combat heavy RPGs as something of a novelty in spite of the fact that every other one I have played is combat focused.
>>43721616
Yeah. The last game a I run was a no-combat, actually. The warrior got a bit bored, but everyone else enjoyed the lore-dump. PTU.
Yes
D&D4
In the end, it was mostly a freeform session
>>43721616
I regularly have sessions where nobody even picks up a single die, much less is involved with combat. This is especially true in my WoD campaign.
>>43721616
Yes, of course. Most recently I ran a session of MtAs/VtM that was entirely about politics and intrigue, most of it conducted in or directly after a fundraising dinner party.
AD&D
The party spent the entire session trying to rig this booby trapped corridor to not kill them so they could get the macguffin at the end. So I guess technically there was no combat.
They kept failing. It was hilarious. Meanwhile my PC was in the next room chatting it up with the NPCs my party rescued, every time we heard an explosion or horrible scream I went like, "Eh, I'm sure they're fine."
>>43721616
All the time. More times than I've had sessions with combat. Infact, some people have the hugest no combat boners. Sure, I don't need fighting all the time but man I'd really appreciate some dramatic throwin' down every three or four sessions.
>>43721616
Yes, many times. D&D mostly, a few times in Shadowrun and many other times in Call of Cthulhu.
>>43722533
This is my personal favorite.
Combat is infrequent, but when it happens it's a serious story altering event.
Do people seriously expect to have combat in every single session? How boring is that.
Usually I only have combat once an entire story arc, and it's rare that it's more than twice.
>>43723465
>Do people seriously expect to have combat in every single session?
Lots of groups like to have MULTIPLE combats every session with little bits of interconnecting RP to string them together. That's not my style at all, but I can acknowledge that it's a legitimate play style if that's what everyone at the table wants.
>>43723465
>Do people seriously expect to have combat in every single session?
No, but I'd like it to happen more than once in a blue moon at least.
>>43721616
Homebrew Star Wars D20 System
>>43721616
It happens all the time, with all sort of games, including all possible editions of D&D.
Sometimes you gotta leave room for dem character development, man.
>>43721616
>have you ever played an RPG session and had no combat take place? If so, which system were you playing?
The past six sessions of Anima.
>>43721716
Dude those are the best/weirdest runs.
Shadowrun.
The entire plan went off without a hitch. Naturally we immediately committed suicide, as whatever coming for us was bound to be incredibly fucking horrible. A plan never goes off problem free. The less there are, the worse the payback is.
>>43721616
Alternity. We were on a spaceship hurtling into the black with hardly any fuel, desperately hoping we'd find a moon or something to slingshot around. Whole session of us just RPing nervousness, despair and grim acceptance, followed by another session where we got lucky and stumbled across a sleeper ship and had to comb through the mouldering ruins for fuel and supplies.
7th Sea. We attended a party for an entire session, and had one session that was almost 100% the GM and the players playing a word game IC.
D&D and Dark Heresy, during investigative arcs had lots of research and no fighting.
>>43724450
>having an anima game
I'm jealous.
>>43721616
DnD 4e
They went to a new city that was a rest stop for where they were actually going. They went out to resupply and forgot to organize a meeting point or time.
It was one of the best sessions I've ever run.
>>43721616
5th Edition D&D. The party had just cleared a dungeon and retreated back to town to rest and plan their next move. They ended up taking horses and then a ferry to another town to get in contact with some NPCs, and then traveled to the next leg of their adventure. It was some good down-time and character development all-around.
Dungeon World. We spent an entire session spying on a group of assassins, pretty tense but we never ended up fighting them directly.
I once played a campaign (about 7 sessions) of Changeling: the Lost where we only entered combat three times. Two of those fights ended with someone with maxed Lethal damage, and one of them got a character killed.
Dark Heresy
Cyberpunk 2020
World of Darkness (Most WoD games I was in only had combat once or twice through the entire campaign.)
Abandon All Hope
Call of Cthulhu
Deathwatch
A lot of games, really. I believe the only game I've played that always had one combat per session was Shadowrun.
>>43721616
Played a 13th age session where our bard(an aasimar) convinced the bandits that he was a god and basically started a cult right then and there.
Then the second combat there were kobolds, and I(a kobold) convinced them to chill and take us to their lair so we could get their help in fighting the greater bandit horde we had coming to get us.
Solid session.
> All these games with actual characters and character development.
Screw you guys. I just want one without murderhobos and lol-random/edgy. My friends suck.
>>43721616
Yeah.
Rogue Trader
Black Crusade
Shadowrun
Eon
RuneQuest 6
Mutant: UA
Warhammer Fantasy RPG
Pretty much all games I've ran also had several sessions in a row with no combat. I build tension with stories and mysteries. Last session, my players found the BBEG's home space station where he fell into madness over a precursor artefact and started to construct his energy-leeching bugs.
The tension and atmosphere came from slowly figuring out what he did and how. I find combat so much more rewarding when things are actually on the line, and the foes are interesting.
In Song of Swords, we had a werewolf game that went for about 10 sessions, and only the last two sessions had combat. Aside from that, it was mostly trying to learn how to defeat the wolf, prepare, and heal the aftermath of its attacks.
We had to fight two werewolves, but in the end we managed to stop them without any casualties.
>>43725341
>> All these games
Screw you guys, I just want one.
>>43725341
>My character decides it's not fair to kill absolutely anyone, especially someone trying to run away.
>Will kill in self defence, won't hold back, but in the event that the enemy becomes helpless, he wont kill them.
>Party is on a little boat, and some bandits attack us on their own little boat.
>Their leader becomes unarmed and falls in the water
>I decide to toss him a rope to help him, he might not make it to shore
>Party is like WTF we beat the encounter let him swim off or drown
>I keep trying to convince the bandit to come aboard. He may have information for us (we were tracking a human trafficker).
>DM decides to have the bandit swim off
I don't mind, I'm just a bit miffed that the DM and party were seemingly frustrated by the fact that I wasn't prepared to let a man die.
>>43721616
Yes
Both in 3.5e and 5e
>>43721616
Homebrew game I'm GMing now has had a few. The players are all new residents of a small settlement on this undeveloped planet. I statted and fleshed out every member of the community. For the first few sessions there was no immediate threat to the settlement, so it was completely up to them whether they wanted to explore the wilds or interact with all their new neighbors. They chose to get to know all the people around them, made some friends, some enemies, and started to pick up on a few hints that the settlement's "mayor" isn't exactly the most trustworthy guy. All in all it was good stuff.
In a 3.5 campaign I DMed though, fuck. We had one guy spend nearly an entire session shopping while everyone else sat there with their dicks in their hands. That was awful. I salvaged it with a last minute adventure in a nearby jungle at the very start of our next game. Really, no combat can be fun as long as it's kept interesting. It's the guys that just drag your game to a halt that make it bad.
We're playing D&D 3.5 atm.
The last two sessions were devoted to a diplomatic mission from our king. As the party's face, this meant I had my work cut out for me. It was extremely nerve-wracking: I had to convince 8 different elf fiefdoms to not go into war against some mind-controlled dwarves recklessly as they wanted to, and instead work with us to hold a line and put a stop to the dwarf mind-control issue with less casualties, by figuring out what is controlling them and stopping it. My fellow party members refused to do any talking, even though we were all diplomatic agents on the mission, and all of us had the same knowledge from the king, leaving me to give a 15 minute speech/debate surrounded by violent elf lords and their bodyguards.
I convinced 4/8 to work with us, while 3/8 still wanted to go to war. The final voting lord came down to a die roll, and swung things in our favor, 5/8 for peace, so the decision was passed. Shit was stressful.
>>43725435
It's usually decided at character creation.
Do a pre-adventure session (session 0) with the whole group.
GM explain the theme and the boundaries of the campain.
Players defines the main traits of their characters. If accepted by the group and the GM, they then weave the backgrounds together via common events or pnjs.
Result : Almost no backstabbing (not "lolrandom", at least), players more far invested in the universe and less prone to murderhoboing.
>>43725973
There is a difference between not attacking the helpless and actively trying to save him.
It's like if you healed the wounded ennemies that you just defeated. It can make sense with your character, but it's a very uncommon trait to have. Guess it depends on your views on redemption and idealism/utilitarism.
Also depends of your views on drowning. If you have a phobia concerning drowning, it's perfectly understandable that you want to spare such a fate to people.
>>43726202
>We got both kinds. We got Country and Western.
>>43726641
Well some people make the distinction that 3.5e is bloated combat centric and 5e is a bit lighter in comparison and geared towards RP
Yes they're very similar. Different editions of the same game.
But also, saying it to show that just because the system is combat centric doesn't mean you have to get into combat every session. A good deal of sperglords on /tg/ have argued pointlessly with me about this in the past
>>43721616
heroes unlimited from palladium. but this is more a matter of GM than system, isnt it?
Yeah. Both World Darkness (Vampire, Changeling, Geist) and Dogs in the Vineyard (straight up and Stephen King mix).
I feel like it must have happened at least once, maybe in Deadlands or something. I don't think my regular group has ever played something that wasn't about adventurous fighting men though so you kind of expect the fighting in your adventures.
My FFG Star Wars sessions are with very little gun play. The players have managed to talk their way out of most situations..
>>43721616
Multiple times in multiple systems.
Oh hell yes. Tons of times both as player and GM. Had an entire chapter of a Mage campaign go without a single fight once.
We play-tested a one shot of Night Shift once.
The most fighty part was me trying to chase the racoons away from the dumpster. I sat in my car and honked at them.
I mean, we did run into violently insane versions of ourselves, and our own corpses a number of times in the basement, but we never actually /fought/ ourselves, uh, them.
Through most of a V:tM campaign.
The GM had us convinced that we were small fish in a big pond, so being aggressive towards anyone of note was hugely risky. We spent a lot of time and energy to be indirect in how we conducted ourselves.
My own character was heavily built towards maximizing perceptive skills and I found it a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be.
>>43722185
So you ran a Scooby Doo game?
>being such a shitlord pissbaby manchild that you cant comprehend that you might not need to be killing things all the time
Oh yeah, criminal dealings dint have to end in a gun fight, the system was Ops and Tactics.
>>43721616
In basically every AdEva game I have ever played in, combat happens roughly once every 3 or four sessions. Thats just how the game is done.
>>43721616
Yes, many times. In order of frequency:
Cthulhu Dark
Trail of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu
Unknown Armies
Gaen Reach
Dogs in the Vineyard
Technoir
Shadowrun
Dying Earth
Fuck it, I'm just listing most games at this point. Yes, in most non-D&D games, I've had a no-combat game session. Some games, like Call of Cthulhu, I've had no combat more often than combat, or close to it.
>>43724868
I love urban exploration, how did you make a fun session out of that?
My players circumvented combat in a really fun way. It was a 5e game that took place in the underdark, they had an artifact that unbeknownst to them dampened psychic abilities, they failed to realize that they were being tracked by a small group of Illithids, they were escorting a NPC who set her camp at the base of a plateau whereas the players set up camp in one of the small grotto's dug in the slope of the plateau.
The Illithids had descended upon the party, and they were not able to detect the party due to the artifact but were about to feast upon the brains of the NPC, which would have revealed the location of the party. So they used mage hand to operate a small crossbow repeater to throw them off and give the NPC a chance to escape.
>>43722698
My last session was a touch over 8 hours with absolutely no combat. Players loved it. It was 4e, too
Yes I have.In D&D 4e
>>43741369
>>43741339
>>43724868
Look at all these filthy liars.I'm kidding, I do the same with 4e.
>>43741458
Without the memes, how are the rules for 4e out of combat?
>>43741591
IME, they are more or less the same as any other edition of D&D. You have skills, a number of character abilities that work with skills, and many classic utility spells have been turned in exclusively non-combat rituals.
The two DMGs have a lot of guidelines, nothing groundbreaking but the important things are there. The big departure from the previous edition is that there aren't many tables for noncombat stuff but mostly textual guidelines.
Also, 4e has a functional system for noncombat scenes in skill challenges, which are a bit of a hot topic because they are hard to do right, but are close to the way other narrative games do things. It's still an edition of D&D, so don't expect XP rewards for emotional states, but it has the bare minimum needed.
>>43741730
Alright thank you. Combat seem amazing and the group probably wouldn't budge if it wasn't D&D or Pathfinder.
I have, in the following systems:
Only War
Dark Heresy
Rogue Trader
DnD 5e
AdEva
More interesting question:
Have you ever played an RPG session where there were no dice rolls?Diceless systems don't count, obviously.
>>43741892
Yes. Every game I've played has had the "dinner session", in which we all have dinner and think about the plot.
>>43721616
Yes. In multiple systems.
13th Age, Exalted 2e, Gumshoe, Fate, etc.
Just how the group roles.
>>43741892
Yes.
13th Age only, though. Ironically the lack of social skills makes this possible, since you only call for a roll if it seems implausible the character would do/say something well and that never happened.
Actually about half our sessions ended up like this playing 13th Age.
>>43741989
That sounds extremely comfortable.
>>43721716
This has also happened to me.
>>43721616
Trail of Cthulhu should be a combatless game most of the time.
Ars Magica has had non combat sessions, normally when we're researching shit, test firing new spells and performing our Covenant janitor chores.
