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In the Spycraft thread Mr Analytical said:

"A Smiley game would fucking ROCK though. Set it in the UK in the early 80's when civil unrest was brewing all over the place. No Gadgets. No Combat. Just intrigue and trying to turn a soviet operative."

The context was the series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Now, I'm not saying combat is wrong, I'm running a Vikings game at the moment after all, but let's say I wanted to run a game with suspense and intrigue but no combat.  What tips would you all have and how would you keep it interesting?

Quote from: Balbinuslet's say I wanted to run a game with suspense and intrigue but no combat.  What tips would you all have and how would you keep it interesting?

Add combat :)

No combat does not mean no conflict. Keeping stakes and keeping interest are key.

Most of the successful games I have run that have been investigation driven. The need for excitement and tension over fear of loss is replaced by curiousity and the pressing need to unveil more of the mystery. Conflicts exist too... in the course of such an investigation, players may come accross NPCs who impede their efforts, and they have to find their way around.

For me, investigation driven is the only real substitute for more active forms of conflict as a centerpeice of the game. I have played and enjoyed games that were more about personal exploration than investigation (I was once in a DC Heroes game based largely on A Chorus Line. I shit you not.) But I don't think I'd be interested in doing something like that again.

Edit: Okay, that's not entirely true. My old traveller games often features combat or investigation, but sometimes the interaction and conflicts were about survival (against odds... e.g, star trek style save-the-ship) and capital gains, though I sort of see those as 3rd and 4th in order of preference of centerpeices of conflict in a game.

I actually think it would have to be less like TTSS and more like Smiley's People.

In TTSS he really does spend most of his time going through files and then carefully laying a trap once he understands the lay of the land.  In Smiley's People though he spends far more time out and about and at the end comes the bit I was thinking of when the idea of a George Smiley game hit me.

He finds out that a Soviet agent is behaving bizarrely so he has him observed discretely before they snatch him and then put the screws to him, trying to convince him to turn and spill his guts lest he get reported and sent back to Russia to live the decidedly less comfy life of a low-level intelligence professional.

Essentially the game would have to be about investigation and then using social skills and raw cunning to turn enemy agents or uncover enemy networks.  It would function much as a normal game would except that rather than hitting people and forcing them to do what you want you have to know how to apply the right kind of pressure to get them to do what you want.

You'd still have loads of conflict and intrigue and clues and problems to solve, it's just that you'd have to find new ways to solve them as you couldn't really use combat (as a system you'd probably use RQ with iht locations plus fire-arms to make sure that shooting someone's really the last choice).

Quote from: gleichmanAdd combat :)

If you had to have combat, you could treat the social situations as combat.  An over-the-top example of that is how West and Loveless banter in Wild, Wild West.  Loveless is always slapping back with racial epithets while West slams back statements about being "half a man" or "without a leg to stand on."  They both "battle", though it's on the social plane.

Again, that's an over-the-top example.  

Using social interactions as a form of combat would be most interesting. :)

Risk vs. reward's gotta be in there somewhere, I reckon.  Without some way for the PCs to lose their asses, my players would riot and demand open elections for a new GM.

Maybe some sort of social-fu mechanic, where you could browbeat, debate or torture someone into a state of compliance.  Naturally, the same could happen to the PCs.

EDIT:  Arg, scooped.

Quote from: Balbinuslet's say I wanted to run a game with suspense and intrigue but no combat.  What tips would you all have and how would you keep it interesting?

More seriously, off the top of my head...

1. Select the right players. They have to be mystery bluffs and/or heavy role-players.

2. Provide each player with slightly (or even completely) different objectives known only to themselves.

3. Spend a significant amount of time fleshing out the characters to be played. Perhaps steal them from other games for a one-shot 'cross-over'.
This stuff works best with detailed characterization.

4. Spend a lot of time working up the reality of the mystery/conflict. Put lots of clues in (more than needed) as players will miss clues. Aim some of them at specific characters.

Quote from: gleichman2. Provide each player with slightly (or even completely) different objectives known only to themselves.

  That could actually work really well.  British Intelligence is frequently portrayed as being incredibly bureacratic and hide-bound.  You could run something where all the players came from slightly different parts of the same organisation and they all had clues unknown to the other characters but when brought together make for quite a big clue.  But of course, the characters have to overcome their natural aversion for laying their cards on the table and/or cooperating with the guys from the office on the other side of the hall with which they're embroiled in a bureaucratic turf war.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI actually think it would have to be less like TTSS and more like Smiley's People.

In TTSS he really does spend most of his time going through files and then carefully laying a trap once he understands the lay of the land.  In Smiley's People though he spends far more time out and about and at the end comes the bit I was thinking of when the idea of a George Smiley game hit me.

He finds out that a Soviet agent is behaving bizarrely so he has him observed discretely before they snatch him and then put the screws to him, trying to convince him to turn and spill his guts lest he get reported and sent back to Russia to live the decidedly less comfy life of a low-level intelligence professional.

Essentially the game would have to be about investigation and then using social skills and raw cunning to turn enemy agents or uncover enemy networks.  It would function much as a normal game would except that rather than hitting people and forcing them to do what you want you have to know how to apply the right kind of pressure to get them to do what you want.

You'd still have loads of conflict and intrigue and clues and problems to solve, it's just that you'd have to find new ways to solve them as you couldn't really use combat (as a system you'd probably use RQ with iht locations plus fire-arms to make sure that shooting someone's really the last choice).

Interesting ideas.  Are you familiar with the background to the computer game Floor 13?  That is less realistic, hopefully, but the techniques are as you describe here.

http://www.abandonia.com/games/en/140/Floor13.htm

Ooh, I'm not actually and being a mac user I'm unlikely to become familiar any time soon.

Sounds like a good game though.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalOoh, I'm not actually and being a mac user I'm unlikely to become familiar any time soon.

Sounds like a good game though.

It's great, but buggy as hell unfortunately.

Your interface is your desk, you read reports and issue orders, then read in the press and in private reports how it went.  It's tense without any action at all.

And the game starts with Richard Branson being thrown to his death IIRC.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI actually think it would have to be less like TTSS and more like Smiley's People.

In TTSS he really does spend most of his time going through files and then carefully laying a trap once he understands the lay of the land.  In Smiley's People though he spends far more time out and about and at the end comes the bit I was thinking of when the idea of a George Smiley game hit me.

He finds out that a Soviet agent is behaving bizarrely so he has him observed discretely before they snatch him and then put the screws to him, trying to convince him to turn and spill his guts lest he get reported and sent back to Russia to live the decidedly less comfy life of a low-level intelligence professional.

This sounds like it would be geared more towards a single character, based just on what you're saying here. How would such a game allow for a number of characters without having one of them overshadow the rest?

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalEssentially the game would have to be about investigation and then using social skills and raw cunning to turn enemy agents or uncover enemy networks.  It would function much as a normal game would except that rather than hitting people and forcing them to do what you want you have to know how to apply the right kind of pressure to get them to do what you want.

Hmm. Based on what the Slaad was saying about Spycraft 2.0, it seems that game, at least, has elements that take this kind of thing into account.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYou'd still have loads of conflict and intrigue and clues and problems to solve, it's just that you'd have to find new ways to solve them as you couldn't really use combat (as a system you'd probably use RQ with iht locations plus fire-arms to make sure that shooting someone's really the last choice).

I personally dislike hit locations, finding them to be slow and tedious to use, but in principle I agree with you about them in this context.

Quote from: ColonelHardissonI personally dislike hit locations, finding them to be slow and tedious to use, but in principle I agree with you about them in this context.

For my 1770s game, which was intended to be low combat, I used CoC.  A PC died in the first session when they got shot and after that I don't think there was a single other straight fight, though there was an armed robbery and a poisoning.

No combats though, not after that first one and a PC instakill.

By the way, you might want to check out the computer game "Missing." You essentially play a game of "cat & mouse" with the bad guy. You assemble clues, some of them gathered from internet websites set up for the game or from emails that get sent to you by the bad guy. It also involves a lot of puzzle-solving. No combat, no real interaction with other characters except in really tangential ways. It's not exactly the same thing as you're talking about, but it may interest you.

This also reminds me Jere Genest's campaign, Tantaene animis Celestibus Irae (http://www.innocence.com/games/taci/), which used the Heroquest rules to represent investigation and other activities. Unfortunately the game failed at some point, partly because according to Jere, HQ sucks.

Another thought: The benefit of combat in games is that it gives everybody something to do, no matter how good they are, simply by virtue of being present. I think that to be successful most games need to have this feature even if it doesn't correlate in a representational fashion with the attributes, motivations, and actions of their character.

It seems to me that setting out to run a non-combat scenario (instead of one just happening spontaneously) breaks down into several distinct issues:

• prep and management
• what the PC's will be doing instead of combat
  
• why the PC's will want to avoid combat, and the non-combat price they will pay for any outbreak of violence

Prep and management
From the premise of a Le Carresque espionage game, and other posters' thoughts, I would say that you're going to be running a game with PC's who have overlapping and conflicting goals and loyalties, and a dense plot containing several subplots, blind alleys and red herrings. So I think prep will be very important. If I was going to try running a game like this I'd discuss the basic idea with my players; then sketch out a basic plot with key NPC's; then do a separate chargen session; then fill out the plot; and then run the game.

As well as conflicting goals, hooks like sympathetic villains- or outright PC loyalties to villains- would be a good way of creating immersion in the requisite atmosphere of suspicion and so on.

Instead of combat?
It strikes me that a game like this would also benefit from allowing the PC's to split up more than the average party. Time pressures would also be important for generating tension. So attention to methods for dealing with these, and for handling tasks like research and so on would also be useful. Making the main investigation an aside to the PC's 'day job' might work here, so the PC's are constantly being called away to unrelated mundane tasks, or having to explain to section chiefs why they aren't attending to their regular in-tray could provide useful obstacles and conflict if it wasn't overdone.

The cost of combat?
What would make the absence of combat in a game like this dramatic is not that it was impossible, but that it would cost the PC's something other than the normal price of injury. Legal repercussions and capture are 2 obvious options. A bad reputation that encourages people not to help them is another. I'm sure you could think of others. The point though is that I reckon this would work better if the players were being driven towards wanting to use violence but had reasons to hold back.

These the kind of things I'd be thinking about if I was to try a game like this. I hope they help. I know that they've given me a hankering to dig out my Smiley novels and put together a mini-series of my own! If I was to do a game like this I think I'd probably use True20 to run it, which would give me the perfect excuse to buy Spycraft to see if I could graft anything from that onto True20. ;)

:forge:

RPGPundit

Quote from: JMcL63These the kind of things I'd be thinking about if I was to try a game like this. I hope they help. I know that they've given me a hankering to dig out my Smiley novels and put together a mini-series of my own! If I was to do a game like this I think I'd probably use True20 to run it, which would give me the perfect excuse to buy Spycraft to see if I could graft anything from that onto True20. ;)

I think if you could make the skills match up neatly enough, and borrow a few feats, it's not inconceivable that you could get Dramatic Conflicts to work with True20 without an excessive amount of work. They already do a few of the same thing with skills (e.g., IIRC, true 20 rolls athletic skills into 1 skill; Spycraft does the same.)

Quote from: RPGPundit:forge:

RPGPundit

... and your point is caller? ;)

Quote from: JMcL63

• prep and management
• what the PC's will be doing instead of combat
  
• why the PC's will want to avoid combat, and the non-combat price they will pay for any outbreak of violence

  Yep, that all makes sense.  The prep-time would be necessary because you'd have to put some thought into the plot and the network of relationships and different factions that make up the thing to be discovered.  You'd also need to think through some of the permutations of what should happen if the PCs alienate important contacts and so on.

  As for what people would do other than combat, I'm not sure why people are finding this so counter-intuitive.  Most political dramas have very little combat in them... it's not as if this is come completely unknown plot structure.

  In the context of a Smiley-type game MI6-types aren't allowed to act in Britain and if they start killing people the police, special branch, MI5 and the cabinet office would be spitting blood.  Also, in the series, MI6 types tend to be public school boys and oxbridge graduates rather than former marines.  There's no reason why they'd know how to kill people or be capable of it.  the whole point of the exercise would be for it to not be James bond.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalAs for what people would do other than combat, I'm not sure why people are finding this so counter-intuitive.  Most political dramas have very little combat in them... it's not as if this is come completely unknown plot structure.

It's not that I find the idea counter-intuitive at all Mr Analytical. Rather it's an issue of PC specialisation I guess. I mean to say: if winning combat is the major objective of a scenario, then the different PCs' roles in that are easy to understand. When there are a variety of non-combat tasks that are to be more important objectives than winning combat then that will effect what PC's should be good at, how skill-use will effect pacing and so on. That's it really.

QuoteIn the context of a Smiley-type game MI6-types aren't allowed to act in Britain and if they start killing people the police, special branch, MI5 and the cabinet office would be spitting blood.  Also, in the series, MI6 types tend to be public school boys and oxbridge graduates rather than former marines.  There's no reason why they'd know how to kill people or be capable of it.  the whole point of the exercise would be for it to not be James bond.

Yes, that makes sense. Although a little bit of hurting wouldn't necessarily be out of order! ;)

I think it's a little hard to generalize about non-combat games, since they can vary widely.  

The one extended campaign that I ran which had zero violence was a fantasy game where characters from the real world were sucked into a strange fantasy world (dubbed "Water-Uphill World" since water there falls upwards).  There wasn't any rule against violence or anything -- it just never came up, at least for the PCs.  The PCs were all schoolchildren who in that world had magic powers.  So they weren't suited either tempermentally or physically for violence (though Noriko did study kendo).  

I don't think I did much different than in my other games.  Actually, I used a bunch of examples that campaign in my article on general game prep -- see Jonathan Walton's journal PUSH, Volume 1 (http://plays-well.com/push/) for the article.  I came up with interesting things to explore, and interesting characters to interact with.  The one thing which was different was that exploring magic was a big part of that game.  So that fits as another outlet of play.

Quote from: RPGPundit:forge:

RPGPundit

Dude, I'm currently running Pendragon vikings, before that I ran a historical Runequest game and prior to that Space 1889.

You really do need to learn the difference between "hey, I'm thinking of trying out x" and "hey, x is superior to your gaming you mouthbreathers".

You did make me laugh though.  I think the smilie would be better if it read "go back to the Forge, hippy!"

For the record, I am not saying "combat is bad, m'kay?"  Just, "hey, how would you make this interesting?"

Quote from: BalbinusNow, I'm not saying combat is wrong, I'm running a Vikings game at the moment after all, but let's say I wanted to run a game with suspense and intrigue but no combat.  What tips would you all have and how would you keep it interesting?

I've mostly run without combat because until recently -- last week, in fact -- I was never satisfied with the way combat worked online.  (Last week I managed to integrate a collection of partial solutions I'd thought of over the years into a package that worked, so now I'm not as likely to avoid it as before.)

I don't suppose that anyone really needs to know what a suspenseful fictional scenario that isn't built around combat looks like, since there are numerous examples in movies and books.

There are some things I learned by experience in my first campaign, which I thought was going to be a pretty typical adventure, but which turned out to be political intrigue instead.  The typical GMing advice and assumptions didn't prepare me for all of the changes that non-combat-focused play would produce.

1.  You want Real Roleplayers for this.  Seriously: people who are interested in social interactions and the repercussions thereof, and who don't need their hands held when you point them at disparate collection of NPCs who control access to resources or information.

If they insist that the important contests be mechanically arbitrated imagined-physical battles -- if they're not interested in roleplayed social maneuvering, or else if they have no idea of how to do it -- the game isn't likely to come off.

Probably pretty obvious, except one of the things that happened early in my first campaign is that the campaign took on political overtones, and the players tended to fall into two groups: the people who happily leaped into the maneuvering on their own because their characters had purposes and drives, and the people who tended to do nothing useful if I wasn't actively pushing a plot at them and steering them, saying, "Here, you need to be doing this now"; these players weren't especially interested in political and social problems and hadn't built characters with strong motivations along those lines.  I'm sure there are GMs who'd be happy running for the latter sort -- if you routinely do suspense-novel-style plotting, say -- but I wasn't one of them.

(If for some godforsaken reason you want a mechanical resolution for social interactions instead of roleplaying them out the way all right-thinking people would, maybe ripping the conflict resolution system out of Dogs in the Vineyard would suit.  I find it unimmersive, but it does what it sets out to do well.)

2.  You want everyone to have a chance at doing interesting and significant things, at making a real difference in the course of events, at having their moment in the sun.  Nothing different there.  But how you go about addressing play balance and niche protection in a noncombat game is generally different.

Most game systems assume that combat is the focus of play, and they attempt to balance or limit the PCs' ability to harm the enemy in a fight.  And the default assumption is that the power of the characters needs to be reined in; the starting character is weak, and probably a social nonentity.

But in a noncombat game, how good a PC is in a fight is so much background color if you're not going to be doing much fighting.  So I don't have a problem if a player wants to run an ex-Special Forces type who's stayed in shape -- so what?  It's not going to make him outclass everyone in investigation and intrigue, and it may give him both background knowledge and a different set of contacts from everybody else.  Different knowledge and different contacts are good -- that's where we want the niche protection.

Just because a character comes in looking way overpowered compared to the others for a combat game doesn't mean that it's going to break out the same way in one based on roleplayed intrigue.

In fact, the player who naively builds a combat monster who doesn't have social status, useful investigation skills, or contacts in an intrigue game is likely to be turn out to be underpowered.  Every PC needs a way to connect to the main action, and the pure combat monster in the intrigue game may not have one, and may be completely overshadowed by the characters who do.  If you take every build you'd accept for a garden-variety combat-based adventure, some of those characters may end up having no fitting entry into the intrigue plot itself.

The character's niche may be defined by their professional skills, but it doesn't have to be.  If there are different allied factions in the game and the factions are important, being able to get cooperation out of different factions can also be a niche.  (This character can get information from the elves at Shironlea.  This one can expect some cooperation from Aerhen intelligence.  This one has an influence on dwarven policy ... and so on.)

3.  The big hazard in my experience is setting up a situation where one PC can expect to give orders to another, if you don't know the players well enough to know that they'll get along.  It's social maneuvering ability that's the currency in this game, and you just put one in the shadow of the other.  It can work, but it's a risky construction.

4.  Not much of a concern in modern spy stories, but some fantasy systems have  intrigue-killing magic.  If there's magic, make sure it doesn't give the PCs ways to separate truth from falsehood, the real face from the mask, too readily.

I was in a game of transhuman space (great game, hold your nose to cover the stench of it being a SJG product and get it) in which we won the game (it was a con demo) without one single incidence of combat, and won it perfectly with all goals achieved.

The last group had basically blown up half the base to get the mission done and hadn';t gotten it all right.

So the GM said we did the best run thru she'd ever seen and gave us ALL prizes.

Combatless games can rock when you have ways to solve them thru cunning and planning.

Quote from: Dominus NoxCombatless games can rock when you have ways to solve them thru cunning and planning.

That's how I run games with little combat.  My current game is very, very combat light.  I doubt very much there will be combat in any of the upcoming sessions.  Most of it will be political manuevering.

Quote from: Balbinushey, how would you make this interesting?"

Setting and stakes.

One of the things a lot of players love about combat is the stakes are living or dying, right?  So:

A. Build into setting and chargen a sufficient number of conflicting motivations, so the characters can be working together on a main plot level, but at subtle cross-purposes on a micro level.  Definitely work with the players to zero in on some stuff that really gets them going.

B. More importantly, the motivations should involve something desperately at risk.  Family, well-loved career, world hunger, again, a riff on whatever really makes your dominant players go.  Otherwise, where's the need?  And subsequently, where's the drive?  If you build a situation where the consequences of ordering the correct donut are life-or-death important, it doesn't matter that it's ordering a donut vs. blowing a new pie hole through a zombie.

Personally, I loves some zombie explodin.'  :idhitit:

Quote from: Keranplayers tended to fall into two groups: the people who happily leaped into the maneuvering on their own because their characters had purposes and drives, and the people who tended to do nothing useful if I wasn't actively pushing a plot at them and steering them, saying, "Here, you need to be doing this now"; these players weren't especially interested in political and social problems and hadn't built characters with strong motivations along those lines.  I'm sure there are GMs who'd be happy running for the latter sort -- if you routinely do suspense-novel-style plotting, say -- but I wasn't one of them.

  This is true.  It does require players who are self-starters and who are able to sit down, look at a bunch of clues, formulate theories and decide upon courses of action.

  Alternatively, the GM has to know how to string an intrigue-based plot together.  I remember once playing an Amber game in which I was desperately trying to get into a position where I could make plans and pick sides but the GM would stone-wall every action that wasn't in accordance with his GTA-style plotting (i.e. you can do what you want, when you want but you need to do X before the plot can advance).

I'm not sure I have a lot to add here, but my current game has now gone four sessions without any combat.

I didn't specifically plan to have a no-combat game, and it's set in a violent and lawless period (the Dark Ages), so if anything I suppose I expected there to be fighting at some stage. But it has gone otherwise, and the players have been engaged and having fun.

How is this? I see several interrelated reasons:

1. We're using a system in which all conflict is treated the same way, viz. HeroQuest. A debate is as interesting and system-supported as a fight.

2. The players had a free hand in choosing abilities, and for the most part they chose non-combat abilities, such as 'Speak in Tongues' or 'Unnerving Gaze'. Neither did any players take templates (Keywords for those who know HQ) that emphasised combat.

3. The players have been free to chart their own course. I have no planned adventure, just a web of NPCs and their motivations.

4. I have adapted my approach to the players; ie when I saw the characters they created I went away and thought about how they might be engaged.

Combat simply hasn't come up as a solution to problems, and as I haven't forced it on the characters, it hasn't happened. The threat (or promise) of it is always there, but there is no imperative to fight.

I think that going into a game with the notion that you will avoid combat is about as full of traps as going into a game assuming there must be combat.

HeroQuest is incredibly good at that sort of thing.  I ran it once and the climactic battle was a PC storyteller trying to impress the military governor of the city with a stirring tale while a paid heckler tried to ruin it for him.

Every bit as tense as a fight to the death, great stuff.

When I played it, I had an old women in a Gloranthan setting and I used my Scold menfolk ability to stop a raiding party.  Again, brilliant.

But, sadly, I really don't enjoy extended contests and I find bits of the rules just too abstract for me.  I may reassess it when Mythic Russia comes out.

Wouldn't work. Not on an ongoing basis, anyway. Maybe a couple sessions before the inevitable set in. Gamers just want to kick ass too much. And if it actually advertised no combat, it would be the kind of game that would only ever be played if the designer could magically duplicate himself a few times. Or possibly once by some RPG.Net hipster who will play absolutely anyone once just to say he did. And even he might just buy the PDF and say he played for "indie" cred, because, well, who would know?

Desire to brawl is just one of the fundamental forces of the RPG universe. Like our gravity or magnetism. :)

Well, combine that with Droog's point, which I think is correct, that you shouldn't plan for no combat to the point of excluding it altogether. Just make it extremely dangerous, at least without a great deal of strategic maneuvering preceding it, and then make the maneuvering itself interesting enough. At that point my question is whether there's a benefit to making the combat any more or less interesting than the other stuff.

For example, Harnmaster and BRP make combat dangerous and interesting at the same time. From what I've read, The Riddle of Steel does, too, if you fight without the benefit of Spiritual Attributes. Would it make sense to use systems like those for combat, or would it be better to use the same universal mechanic as other elements...or even something ridiculously simple like Rock Scissors Paper, loser dies?

Personally I think that if the players are familiar with the complex system already, it's worth using if everyone agrees. But if they aren't, then it shouldn't be used. Why? Because the exact ramifications of going to combat in any situation should be well understood by all.

(This is also incidentally why I suspect it's good to start any campaign by engaging the crunchiest bits, and that after you do that, you can "back off" and work more on the more "roleplayed" layers of play.)

Quote from: YamoWouldn't work. Not on an ongoing basis, anyway. Maybe a couple sessions before the inevitable set in.

I ran a fantasy campaign in four pieces, stretched over a decade, with very little combat.

In my current campaign, we've had around 15 sessions, only one of which was combat.  (We deliberately did a combat session to test my new approach to same.)

I'm having a certain amount of difficulty accepting the idea that my games do not exist.  :bemusedly:

Quote from: KeranI'm having a certain amount of difficulty accepting the idea that my games do not exist.  :bemusedly:

I'm confused, too, considering that you just described a game with combat that is presumably run with a system that includes combat rules.

Quote from: YamoI'm confused, too, considering that you just described a game with combat that is presumably run with a system that includes combat rules.

Well, yes, but I also described a game that went for a large number of sessions without any.  So I'm not sure how they could fit a description of going for a couple of sessions before the inevitable set in.  Whatever the inevitable is, exactly: but since the paragraph started out 'Wouldn't work', I'm assuming it's something bad, like crashing boredom.

It so happened that the combat session I ran worked, so we incorporated it into the game instead deciding that it was a failed test and writing it out.  But wouldn't have stopped playing if that scene hadn't come off, and if there was no combat at all in the game and no prospect of doing any in a satisfactory manner either.

Sometime last decade I was involved in a Shadowrun campaign that was explicitly oriented towards avoiding combat.

There were three primary reasons for taking that approach:

1) A desire to keep in the spirit of the "shadow" part of the game's name.

2) A means of challenge, where combat was seen as a last resort if not the result of some failure in either our playing or our character's abilities.

3) A contrast from the previous campaign, which had been extremely combat oriented.

The campaign was very successful.  There was never a lack of challenge, and none of us found it boring in the least.  Chalk it up to having a good GM, or all of us being on the same page, but it was really the most rewarding, fun and challenging SR game we'd played.  

It's not that we never had combat in the game, as we did occasionally muck a run up fairly badly, but we tried our best to be silent, invisible, quick and precise in our actions.  The combat, when it did occur, seemed more important and involving for its novelty.  

Anyway, I'm not sure that I have any solid advice that hasn't already been given in the thread.  It's just a matter of shifting the challenges around, I'd say.  There were still resource management elements in the gameplay, still win/lose/draw elements, &c.

The only reason Ive not run combat in a new campaign/ruleset because I hadnt gotten that far in the rule book.

Thanks for the comments.

I think it's right that one shouldn't absolutely forswear the possibility of combat, making it undesirable or overly dangerous is a better bet as then if it does occur for any reason it will have much more impact.

The trick to downplaying combat is probably to make other things more effective and less risky, rather than some kind of metagame ban.  As Elliot says, if it is very dangerous and the players understand how it works that will tend to downplay it anyway.

Slothrop, could you tell us more about the Shadowrun game?  In some ways that sounds similar, even though the setting is utterly different, what kind of stuff happened in play and how did you defeat enemies without fighting them?

Quote from: BalbinusThe trick to downplaying combat is probably to make other things more effective and less risky, rather than some kind of metagame ban.  As Elliot says, if it is very dangerous and the players understand how it works that will tend to downplay it anyway.

In my opinion, equally interesting and viable should replace the bolded words. I don't believe that risky combat dissuades players from using it as long as using the combat system is fun.

Quote from: droogIn my opinion, equally interesting and viable should replace the bolded words. I don't believe that risky combat dissuades players from using it as long as using the combat system is fun.

Good point, I think you're correct.

That said, a simple combat system with high risk usually isn't that interesting.  CoC's combat is very deadly for example, but not actually all that mechanically interesting.  Still, I take your point.

Quote from: BalbinusSlothrop, could you tell us more about the Shadowrun game?  In some ways that sounds similar, even though the setting is utterly different, what kind of stuff happened in play and how did you defeat enemies without fighting them?

I'm afraid that I'm going to be sketchy on details, as this was quite literally a decade ago, but our team's primary focus was on going into places, silently and unseen, typically finding something (or someone), and getting out without any trace.

To those ends, we made characters that were oriented towards such, and had the necessary skills to make such play interesting and challenging.  So, yeah, our team didn't have the standard street samurai figure (not sure how familiar you are with SR terms...hell, after this long, I'm not sure how familiar I am...) and we didn't really fashion our characters with the idea of combat in mind.

If I recall correctly, our team was composed of:

1) A rigger
2) A mage, oriented towards illusion/deception type magic.  (My character)
3) A hacker...err, decker, or whatever they were called in-game.
4) A faceman type, who also happened to be our primary means of killing people when it came to that.

Our jobs were typically presented as being successful only if we were unseen and didn't leave any evidence -- including wounded or dead folks -- of our having been there, and what we took and/or left.  

The GM conciously fashioned situations where the challenges weren't enemies to mow through, but rather to either avoid or coerce.  

It was a pretty successful -- though, unfortunately, unresolved -- campaign.  It's not that it never had combat, as I recall we screwed up three or so of the jobs and had to do a little shootin'/stabbin'/magic flingin' to get out alive, but we did attempt to conciously avoid combat.  Not in that we found it boring or somehow too base for us, mind.  We just all appreciated the challenge of not having that option to accomplish our aims.


What's more interesting, I think, is that we had even less combat in the game that followed that one up, and there was no prior agreement about avoiding combat.  It just occured naturally.  And in a Dark Sun game, no less.  

And then the game after those two was just a series of old fashioned dungeon crawls that had combat every 42 seconds or so.

Quote from: BalbinusNow, I'm not saying combat is wrong, I'm running a Vikings game at the moment after all, but let's say I wanted to run a game with suspense and intrigue but no combat.  What tips would you all have and how would you keep it interesting?

When I ran my version of The Honorable School Boy :D  set during the communist insurgency in Malaysia there was no combat at all. What I did was to make sure there were other activities that replaced combat that provided that added thrill.

I replayed the safe cracking scene in The Ipress(sp) Files - Micheal Caine never more cooler in spy geek chic :) - and instead of combat created situations where the players resorted to blackmail, theft etc to accomplish their goals.

There was a lot of stalking, bribing and toughtalk but no combat what so ever.  Make no mistake,there was violence in the air, and indeed the dirty/wet work was not done by the players but their underlings. The thrill (for the players anyway) came from planning and scheming.

I suppose trying to break into a guarded house would mean there is plenty of opportunities for combat, but having discussed the nature of the campiagn before hand and coming to a consensus as to the type of game not to mention characters which would be in play, there was never any desire for combat.

There was a hell of a lot of stuff that was going on, that was just as exciting, and besides the players became rather competitive as to who could come up with the most violence free scheme/plan.

I always had specific goals that the players had to acomplish. Each session had many threads, but there were specific goals, the players had to accomplish in that session. I would not try to run games without combat in an improv style - it has never worked for me in the long run.

Regards,
David R

Thanks Slothrop, much appreciated.

David R, bloody hell,  that sounds brilliant.  What inspired that choice of setting?  I doubt it was that important, but out of interest what system did you use?

That does sound mind-blowingly good David R.

Right now, in my current In Harm's Way game, the PCs are playing American naval officers in the First Barbary war - 1803. They really - I mean really - dislike the British Navy for perhaps valid reasons, and are spoiling for a fight. They captured a small Algerian port, and went out of their way to destroy a British frigate which had been damaged on a reef and hauled down on the beach for hull repairs, claiming they thought it was a Barbary frigate. The Brits demanded restitution, and took over one of the small forts covering the harbor until restitution is made. The PCs can't force the Limeys out without causing a war, and the British can't leave without their restitution from the damned Jonathans. Since then, the sessions have become full of political maneuverings and bluffs, as each side tries to disadvantage the other without stepping over the line into war. So far it's been fascinating. :D

-clash

Quote from: BalbinusDavid R, bloody hell,  that sounds brilliant.  What inspired that choice of setting?  I doubt it was that important, but out of interest what system did you use?

Thanks Mr.A, the whole group had a lot of fun :) Balbinus, the choice of setting was inspired by the fact that I'm Malaysian :D The thing is, I got myself embroiled in an argument with another gm about the tactics employed by both the British and communist insurgents in the country at the time. I then started researching (well actualy deepening my research) in the era, and discovered, well, it would be a cool time to set a campaign in.

Here's where it gets a bit wanky. There are certain themes I always liked about Le Carre's work - betrayal, class tension, the notion of the traumatising effects of loyalty, hubris etc - and thought it would translate well to the waning days of the British empire here in Malaysia. I wanted to explore the relationship between the people of the land and the more or less departing colonisers - and the fact that the future of the country was in our hands.

Plot -wise,  Schoolboy seemed ideal to base an adventure on (not only because it is my fav book), but because just as the novel begins with the "Circus" in disarray and the dispatching of our hero in a quest for revenge, my campiagn, started in the aftermath of a very real attack on a police headquarters and then (the campaign) fictional hunt for the prepratrators which would lead to the eventual capture of individuals (some who were part of the pcs) whose compromised ideals led to some unforgivable acts.

As for the rules, we used a very stripped down version of Gurps. The combat rules were modified, so it was extremely lethal -not that there was any combat.

Mice. A few days ago I had a dry run of IHW. Nothing connected with Our Cruel Sea the campaign proper, just something to get us used to the rules. Two adventures were played. Who Goes There, a purely roleplaying adv, and More Than We Bargained for, a ship to ship battle, both totally rocked :D

(And we got our campaign tagline for OCS - "My reflection on the water is not who I am" - which is a hell of a lot saner than our Hunter tagline - "Mama told me not to come :( )

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RThanks Mr.A, the whole group had a lot of fun :) Balbinus, the choice of setting was inspired by the fact that I'm Malaysian :D The thing is, I got myself embroiled in an argument with another gm about the tactics employed by both the British and communist insurgents in the country at the time. I then started researching (well actualy deepening my research) in the era, and discovered, well, it would be a cool time to set a campaign in.

[CLIP]

As for the rules, we used a very stripped down version of Gurps. The combat rules were modified, so it was extremely lethal -not that there was any combat.

David - that sounds absolutely awesome! I'd love to run a game like that! :D

Maybe in Cold Space! Ooooh! :D

Quote from: David RMice. A few days ago I had a dry run of IHW. Nothing connected with Our Cruel Sea the campaign proper, just something to get us used to the rules. Two adventures were played. Who Goes There, a purely roleplaying adv, and More Than We Bargained for, a ship to ship battle, both totally rocked :D

Terriffic! What was the subject of Who Goes There? More Than We Bargained For sounds like an encounter with an opponent stronger than it looked. A Bait and Switch maneuver? Love it!

Quote from: David R(And we got our campaign tagline for OCS - "My reflection on the water is not who I am" - which is a hell of a lot saner than our Hunter tagline - "Mama told me not to come :( )

Regards,
David R

I can't wait to read your Actual Play, David! :D

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceTerriffic! What was the subject of Who Goes There? More Than We Bargained For sounds like an encounter with an opponent stronger than it looked. A Bait and Switch maneuver? Love it!

-clash

WGT involved the players having to hold a party on board their ship -"something for our friends, in the War office" - and at the same time dealing with a spy in  their midst. Discovering a spy all the while negotiating through a mine field of class and professional ambition was an extremely difficult endeavour. They did catch him - picture Charles Dance in a tragic cameo, making a cryptic confession under extreme questioning - and he did provide the campaign's tagline :)

MTWBF had the crew escorting a ship (a favour to a wealthy merchant, granted by the ship's captain during the party a couple of months earlier) and at the same time having to deliver medicine to beleagured troops. They ran into some  French trouble and found themselves having to protect the merchant vessel (an unexpected boarding action !) and their precious cargo. (It didn't help that the merchant vessel was being used by the spy in question as a courier, and the captain of the French ship was his estranged illegitimate daughter :D )

I was expecting an Aubery/Maturin dynamic from two of the players, but instead they seem to be heading towards  Blythe(sp) / Fletcher Christian territory. Goody, goody.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RWGT involved the players having to hold a party on board their ship -"something for our friends, in the War office" - and at the same time dealing with a spy in  their midst. Discovering a spy all the while negotiating through a mine field of class and professional ambition was an extremely difficult endeavour. They did catch him - picture Charles Dance in a tragic cameo, making a cryptic confession under extreme questioning - and he did provide the campaign's tagline :)

MTWBF had the crew escorting a ship (a favour to a wealthy merchant, granted by the ship's captain during the party a couple of months earlier) and at the same time having to deliver medicine to beleagured troops. They ran into some  French trouble and found themselves having to protect the merchant vessel (an unexpected boarding action !) and their precious cargo. (It didn't help that the merchant vessel was being used by the spy in question as a courier, and the captain of the French ship was his estranged illegitimate daughter :D )

I was expecting an Aubery/Maturin dynamic from two of the players, but instead they seem to be heading towards  Blythe(sp) / Fletcher Christian territory. Goody, goody.

Regards,
David R

I'd have loved to have been in either game, David! Those sound so cool my teeth hurt! Thanks for the run down, and if you ever run a game over the net, let me know and I'll be there. :D

-clash