Have you ever done a campaign that featured no fighting, and was mostly focused on trading, intrigue and diplomacy?
>>46045273
Yes, and my party cried that we weren't playing D&D.
My current D&D 5e game is mostly inter-party interactions. It's nice, because it slows down the power progression pace and lets a story be built naturally by the players instead of just me.
No fighting or no PLANNED fighting?
Because while it's possible to do the second, the first is damn near impossible with 98% of groups; they will inevitably pick a fight with SOMEONE.
>>46046763
Same here, my Moden 5e Game has relatively sparse sections of combat, broken up by my players making asses out of themselves at outback steakhouses, begging for things from NPCs, and trying to figure why the evil corporation is supporting a new presidential candidate.
>>46045273s
yep we call it Settlers of Catan
>>46046791
I ran a really solid one-shot where I just walked the party into a fucked up situation and then sat back and let them go nuts on each other. I didn't run PLAN any fights, but they decided to fight each other without my involvement. It was awesome. Everybody left the table with a smile that night.
yes its called monopoly
Never one that lasted very long. I've been in games which that was what it was billed as and while we didn't fight the game died a few months in.
>>46045273
Yes, I’m currently in a campaign that hasn’t had any combat at all and it’s been pretty fun so far. It’s a resource gathering game with a lot of silly roleplaying involved.
It started out of the blue in a skype call with some of the people we play D&D with. Our skype group occasionally will start up silly one shot free form games when it’s later at night and there’s nothing else we’re talking about. “Welcome to Walmart. It’s Black Friday. The doors just opened. Roll for initiative.”
Somehow Joe and the DM start up an idea for a dwarf starting his own mine. Joe starts digging the mine, gathering materials and goes to sell them to the town. As I’m browsing the internet listening to them play, Joe mentions it would be easier for his character to get his mine up and running if he got his friend to help him. So I join in.
>>46049981
The game is played on roll20 in a D&D 3.5 room the DM had used for another game. The DM draws a minimal map to keep track of where we’ve mined and which area the group is at. In the mine you basically have to deal 4 attacks on a wall for 60 damage or higher to clear out a square on your turn. As you dig you need to set up braces to prevent the cave from collapsing. Wooden brace require 3 planks to set up and can hold up a ceiling up to 3 squares in any direction. Wooden planks can bought individually or you can chop them yourself by buying lumber. Each tree has a potential of 10 planks or more. If you roll above 10, you get a plank. If you roll a 1, you chop the wood shoddily and you waste material. Rolling a nat 20 gives you 3 planks. Carving around a stone square makes a stone column, which only supports 2 squares in all directions but last longer without needing to be replaced; we haven’t played enough for the wooden beams to break yet. Basically every turn seems to end when we attempt to clear out a new square or if we need to leave the mine and get more supplies. Everything else in the game is complete roleplay.
As the story goes we start off only with 2 pick axes, 1 shovel, a hammer and an axe. The mining feels similar to the game Steamworld Dig but without the gravity since it’s played overhead. In order to sell our ore, get equipment and other materials we interact with the townspeople and many of them are eccentric.
>>46049991
I won’t go into every story because it’d probably bore you but here are some high lights during the campaign.
We find a giant green rock in the mine, have to shove it to town because we didn’t have a cart yet. Are told by a jeweler, that it’s uranium, sell it to the humans in a southern town. Get radiation poisoning. Medicine makes us piss out lightsabers. From then on our characters refer to uranium as poison rock.
Start shopping around for a cart and pack mule. See a sheep on fire at the shepard’s property. Hear “Oh God! I should have used lube! I was going to fast! I should have used lube!” Put the fire out, heal the sheep, don’t ask questions. Continue on to the wood cutters to purchase a cart. Return to the shepard’s for an animal to pull the cart. The man looks frantic and asks if we have lubricant. We don’t but joe knows the spell grease and the man demands he cast it on his body. The man gives us a donkey for free and thanks us greatly. We forget to tell the man that grease doesn’t last long and then we see smoke rise from his property as we head to town.
Later on after mining for ore we return to town and see a human wearing green armor. It turns out he is wearing a suit of armor mad out of depleted uranium and says he’s going to climb the mountain. We were more concerned that he might get poisoned but the DM said he was safe, but very warm inside the armor.
I'm currently in a campaign that maybe has combat every three sessions.
It's pretty interesting but it's mostly focused on intercharacter interactions and exploration.
>>46050003
Went to dwarven university to try and learn better mining techniques. I accidently end up in the wrong room while Joe is in the right class and find myself inside a religious class and it doesn’t have a lecture until tomorrow. Since I recently turned into a cleric, I figure maybe I can get something out of this. The teacher’s name is professor Notahuman. He appears to be a dwarf wearing a robe with long arms and holds a mop head over his face as a beard. Me and joe return to the university and go to professor Notahuman’s class. He explains the religious teachings of the dwarves and tells us that when they find uranium in the mines the dwarves carry it to the center and drop it into a pit to be eaten by the slimes.
When we ask why they would do that when they could sell it to the humans in UmoL, he asks us to step out of class, enter a broom closet and ask us if we can keep a secret. We say yes, expecting him to be a human. Instead he stands up, removes the mop head from his face and transforms into a drow. This is when he stops being friendly and becomes downright threatening. He ends up telling us he’s been convincing the dwarves for decades to throw the uranium into the slime pits so they won’t sell it to the humans. If the humans got their hands on some, they could use weapons made of uranium to destroy the thing in the mine creating the slimes. If that happens then the dwarves and humans will want to dig down into the underdark where his people live and he’ll be damned if he lets either of them threaten his house. We don’t mention anything about us seeing the man in uranium armor before. He then pulls out a weapon and tells us the next time we find uranium we dump it in the slime pits and he better not see us sell anymore again or else. He tells us he knows we won’t go running our mouths about anything he’s said to us and he knows where we live and he’ll be watching us.
>>46050015
After being threatened by professor Notahuman, we realize we missed out on the mining class to learn how to install ventilation, so we can get rid of poisonous or flammable gas we encounter in the mine. As the students are leaving the class we ask them about any important things we should know. One mentions we should buy a canary to keep with us as we mine so we can find out if we’re in gas filled areas that have no smell. And one guy offers to sell us his notes. We buy the guy’s notes and he runs off. When we read through them, the DM mentions that all that’s written on that paper are the guy’s Tiamat’s erotic fanfictions. The senile old man running the general store doesn’t have any canaries but he sells us a raven which joe forces into his pocket as it begins to squawk.
Next session a large steam powered suit of armor, plated with uranium, is coming from the south heading to own town. We end up having to convince the pilot to go back home and eventually he gets out of the machine and is about to talk to us. Before he can say much, he is shot in the head by an arrow and Notahuman reveals he was going to handle the problem himself. After intimidating our characters and telling us to dispose of the armor, he leaves. Joe gets the idea that we should use this machine to help dig in the mine, so we take it back home and foolishly leave it out in the open in front of our house.
Never. Even our Vampire: The Masquerade game has featured at least one major life-or-death brawl every session, and even a dungeon crawl.
>>46050021
The next day we learn how ventilation works and buy the supplies. We then remember we completely forgot to feed the raven for nearly a week. When we check on it, the bird is almost lifeless. After giving it water, we start feeding it mystery meat, which wiggles and curses you out every time you cut a slice. The mystery meat makes the raven grow a beard, develop a taste for alcohol and begins making tools and forging a mini anvil and becomes a black smith. Most of the session is spent with us mining but when we leave the mine to sell our ore, Notahuman is outside and he looks pissed.
Apparently us leaving the steam powered machine outside unguarded had many dwarves have been studying its design while we’ve slept. Now the dwarves have successfully recreated one and they’ve stopped throwing uranium away in the main mine. To make matters worse, the workers have found the body of the human in the depleted uranium armor and there seem to less slimes encountered by the workers in the main mine.
Next session we got to figure out a way to stop the dwarves from making the machines or Notahuman is going to kill us.
>>46045273
I'm running a game at the moment where the party's basically in charge of their own little plot of land with a castle and a little village on it. Whenever they come back from adventuring new shit will have happened in town, and sometimes they'll respond to that. Sometimes it's combat (gnolls have been stealing out of the granary, lord!) sometimes it's not (village squabbles, keeping up the castle, exploring new areas opened up as the mercenary company they're building expands)
So, I've run non-combat SESSIONS. I'm not sure about a whole campaign. If you did you'd better make damn sure you tell people beforehand or else someone's gonna make a spin to win Barbarian who sank all his points into axe and oiled muscles and sulk in the corner the entire game.
>>46045273
Yes.
It was in Song of Swords, bizarrely enough. Or maybe not so bizarrely.
I tried to in Rogue Trader but they just ended up nuking planets.
>>46050022
>dat pentagram
clever
Most of the campaigns I'm in are like that.
>>46045273
My group ran into some temporary scheduling issues recently but they have enough fun that they didn't want to put our sessions on hold for a few months. We worked it out and had the party split up during the last group session so that most of the characters went separate ways with the intent of regrouping once schedules are back in order. The party's characters were always disagreeing about what they should do so being solo lets them act how they want for the most part.
One player is a scholar trying to uncover and relearn old magic. He was the healer and know it all of the party but always wanted to avoid fighting because he was both a coward and a pacifist. His solo sessions have been almost entirely free of fighting and instead focused on him coming up with creative ways to trick or avoid potential problems while talking things out and bribing others. It's a nice change of pace and I think I have more fun in his solo sessions than any of the others.
Just do mysteries. Interconnected mysteries. Pick up a random shitty detective novel to get ideas and just make the characters do that. It's a lot more fun than constant attack that person, roll those dice, crunch those numbers, check those skills. A major truth about TTRPGs is that players looove rolling dice. They dream of 3D6s tumbling about in elaborate, clear plastic dice towers onto blacktops with their character sheet printed on it. If they get antsy or seem to start pushing for a fight, have them make a bunch of checks. Try to make them relevant to whatever you're making them do. Roll those dice.
