You could have a game with a traditional kind of setting and story, but not have a traditional combat system, if the rule was that anything that catches you will kill you. Technically that would be a 'combat system', but it's not what people usually mean by the term.

The rules could concentrate on things like how far you could travel in a day through particular kinds of terrain, hiding, disguising your tracks, masking your scent from predators, exposure, disease etc.

OK, here's an idea for a traditional setting without a combat system: a human colony on an alien world which has returned to a tribal, non-industrial society. The society's highest taboo is violence between members of the society, perhaps because of a crisis in the past (maybe the same one that meant they lost their technology). However, it's still murderous in indirect ways. People can be exiled for all sorts of real and imagined crimes. Generally, exile from one tribe doesn't mean exile from every tribe, so if you can make it somewhere else you're safe. Paradoxically, young people are admired for stealing from each other etc, but also punished harshly if they're caught. Also, people gain social status by going on dangerous 'vision quests' in the wilderness - even if they don't have a vision, but all the more so if they discover some 'magic' of the ancients or talk to one of their 'ghosts'. The 'wilderness' is sharply distinct from 'civilisation' - there are places that crawl with dangerous monsters, and places where they simply don't go, and no one knows why. Sometimes the ghosts of the ancients appear to a whole tribe, and tell them they have to move somewhere else, or be destroyed by monsters.

The default adventure for this setting is that the party is a group of young people who have been exiled for some crime or other, and are trying to make it to the safe area of another tribe.

Depends.

If it the denies the PCs the choice of entering combat, than it isn't an RPG, unless there is a really good ingame justification for this. This means games like Settlers of Catan aren't RPGs (even though you may roleplay your settles), because it limits you to certain actions and you can't just decide to start raising an army and attack the neighboring settlement or poison their grain supply or whatever. The same applies to all games, where there is a limited game environment (so the Descent and Heroquest board games can never be RPGs either).

On the other hand, just because something is allowed ingame doesn't mean there has to be a detailed rules mechanic for it. If combat is allowed, but resolved like any other roll (or if combat boils down to "Both players roll a dice each. The character of the player who rolls highest survives, the character of the player who rolls lowest dies."), than it's still an RPG. If the PCs can enter combat, but the players don't have many ways of affecting the outcome, than it certainly is a very gritty one at that, where players should really think twice about starting a fight.

In short: The more options/maneuvers/weapon classes etc. you put into the game, the more gaming "ammunition" your players have to affect the outcome of the combat in favour of their PCs and therefore the easier it is for them to commit themselves to combat, because they know they have plenty options and one of them might be the right one to win this.

Quote from: KrakaJakI think it's possible to have an RPG without combat, or even combat rules.

I don't think it's possible for a GOOD rpg without combat, or combat rules.

There's just something to say about being able to get mad at somebody and being able to punch that somebody in the FACE!

Using some arcane combination of telepathy and/or time travel KrakaJak stole my exact answer, word for word.  Curse you, KrakaJak!

Quote from: jrientsUsing some arcane combination of telepathy and/or time travel KrakaJak stole my exact answer, word for word.  Curse you, KrakaJak!

Actually, if you look close enough you'll see his thumb drive poking out of your rear USB port.

Quote from: James McMurrayActually, if you look close enough you'll see his thumb drive poking out of your rear USB port.

That sounds very dirty!  Now I suspect him of both stealing from me and sexual harassment!

It's entirely possible to design an RPG where there is no explicit combat system - which is as close as you can get without arbitrarily saying "characters will never initiate violence against each other, under any circumstances", which most people will find very limiting.

On the other hand, it's important to consider what role combat systems actually play in RPGs; they provide a mechanism for resolving combat which will go into significantly more detail than the game's core mechanic (or closest analogue if there isn't a core mechanic). Which, sure, is stating the obvious, but the question is why go into such detail about combat in the first place?

The way I see it, there's basically two reasons to take this approach. The obvious reason is that combat is what we are interested in when we play the game in question. In some games, there's supposed to be lots of fighting, and that's cool; sure, it's entirely viable to play entire sessions D&D, Exalted, and Shadowrun where no fights happen, but it's uncommon at least partially because fights are (or are at least supposed to be) fun and exciting in those games.

On the other hand, I don't think this reason is sufficient; there's plenty of RPGs with detailed combat systems where you're expected to avoid major fights to the best of your abilities (Call of Cthulhu springs to mind). There is another reason why nigh-all RPGs provided detailed combat systems, and I'd say it's this: most of the time, combat is considered too important to leave to the core mechanic. Let's face it, in almost all violent situations death is a possibility, and therefore the stakes are as high as they can reasonably get; as such, I think many gamers would be deeply uncomfortable where killing a character is treated like any other task in the game, because, well, it'd end up resembling something like this:

Quote from: The System Where Combat Is Just Another Task, Page 731, Example of Play.ANNE: "My character shoots Bob dead."
BOB: "I get out of the way!"
GM: "OK, guys, time for a contested roll, Anne's Shooting vs. Bob's Dodging."
*Roll, roll, roll...*
ANNE: "I win."
GM: "OK, Bob dies."
BOB: "Wait, don't I get a saving throw? Don't I have a pool of hit points or a wound track? Don't we roll to see how serious the wound is? Shouldn't we have rolled initiative?"
GM: "Nah, this is The System Where Combat Is Just Another Task, you don't do any of that stuff in TSWCIJAT."

Now, there are a few systems combat is, in fact, just another task - Dogs In the Vineyard springs to mind - but those tend to be games where every task (or, more strictly, conflict - there's a big difference between the "task resolution" and the "conflict resolution" approaches) is resolved using an extremely detailed core mechanic, because every task/conflict is ascribed equal importance by the system. But the vast majority of RPG systems assign special importance to particular things and gloss over others; indeed, very early RPGs pretty much provide mechanics only for those things which they regard as important, and provide little-to-no mechanics for the rest.

So, in conclusion, it's entirely possible to design an RPG where no importance is ascribed to combat, and it's resolved using the same basic core mechanic as every other not-very-important action. However, it would fall apart unless there was a "gentleman's agreement" between players and GM that combat situations will not come up in the game; without that understanding, there's always the chance that a fight will happen, and such a system will usually produce unsatisfying results from combat.

Combat is what gives RPGs meaning.  Without it, you have nothing.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe thing is, its one thing to run a campaign without combat, and another to make a GAME without combat.  I think that probably, an RPG has to allow for at least the possibility that combat will occur.

I think this is reasonable.  This is what separates an RPG from a game like Monopoly, the ability to do anything your character would feasibly be able to do.