This last week my exalted campaign had a session with no combat. There were a few social rolls made, but no actual social combat either. Since this is an incredibly rare occassion in my group, I thought I'd see how frequently it happens elsewhere, and what sorts of sessions cause it.

In my case the party spent their time investigating a murder. There was a ghost involved with a woman in their travelling army and another of the soldiers saw her "consorting with a creature of darkness." It was an innocent love affair which had only recently found out that the man was actually dead, but the onlooker had no way of knowing that. His bosses (the Circle) had just recently finished parlaying with an abyssal, so he was afraid to go to them as well. With the best of intentions he killed the woman (and later another woman he saw talking to the same ghost.

The players finally found him, but since he was a normal human there was no need for a fight. They travelled farther down the road and found more NPCs to talk to, but none to kill, untill eventually they reached the end of the Road to the End of the World and their goal.

What sorts of encounters have you had that spawn combatless sessions?

Im trying to remember the last session I played at CODCon (dont' want to be lying and I dont' have my notes).  But it was basically an investigation module - the only "combat" was that the inn in which we were staying caught fire so we had to get eveyone out, etc.

Other than that, no combat that I can recall.  But someone can correct me as my memory is for shit these days.

I blame the opiates...

In the earliest days of my roleplaying career there was a surefire way to ensure a no-combat session.

It was called "the gambling episode" and it was a favorite for a change of pace. Sometimes it happened spontaneously, and sometimes it was by request.

Anyhow, the basic deal was this:

The characters went to a tavern that had various gambling games, and they would gamble gold pieces, items, and various bits of junk ("I'll wager my singing teacup versus your jeweled holy symbol!") for the entire session.

We even came up witht he gambling games or used the ones out of the AD&D1st Edition DMG.

I even had a "fantasy" slot machine that you could play by rolling three d20s and cross reference some tables.

AM, you've hit upon one of the few ways I might be able to tolerate a session without a fight.  Though I'd be tempted to start a bar room brawl.

Quote from: Abyssal MawThe characters went to a tavern that had various gambling games, and they would gamble gold pieces, items, and various bits of junk ("I'll wager my singing teacup versus your jeweled holy symbol!") for the entire session.

I've tried that a few times, most recently while running Secret of Bone Hill when the players went to the temple and were invited to gamble. Unfortunately my players are the type to never gamble in game unless they have high ranks of whichever skill handles cheating and catching cheaters. They played one round because they felt obligated, but even after they won merely assumed it was an attempt to get them to bet more and backed out.

My campaigns used to start with a bit of tavern talk. We're used to create the characters together, and thereafter we filled the gap with a bit of in-character smalltalk.
Nowadays, I prefer to throw an improvised mini adventure at the characters - nothing to big, just a bit of intro, a small-scale fight and a bit of outro.

Pure combatless sessions never satifisfied me really.

I ran a traveller campaign that played weekly sessions for almost a year and only had three combat scenes in the entire campaign.  One was a fight with an alien lake-snake-creature that lasted only about 3 rounds.

RPGPundit

I'm not very familiar with Traveller. Isn't it about merchant ships or something like that? What was the general gist of the campaign that kept it running that long without a fight?

I tend to find investigative campaigns often have combat-less sessions - which makes a lot of sense, since the "game" element in such campaigns tends to focus more on putting clues together than on slugging people.

The game was mostly about a ragtag crew trying to make a fast buck, legally or not, running merchant routes in a old small cruiser.


RPGPundit

It depends greatly on the campaign. My current on-line StarCluster campaign frequently has no-combat sessions, particularly now that they are involved in a political campaign. My current Aces In Spades campaign and Blood Games II campaigns are all about the combat. Since the players lead and I follow, that's what they want to do.

-clash

PbPs usually try and avoid combat because it takes forever.

We've had a few sessions without physical combat in D&D, but they're less common now. Our previous DM made an IMHO disastrous but influential decision, which was to only hand out XP for killing things. His explanation was that since we were all good roleplayers, to actually hand out RP XP would jack up our levels too quickly. I have been trying to talk him out of this position for a year or so now, with some success. Our current DM is influenced by that decision, but basically hands out XP at the end of a session as a single chunk, without really clarifying what we've gotten it for.

Prior to that decision, and also after it when I DMed a brief pirates campaign, we got XP for RPing - in fact, we often got more XP for RPing than for killing - and our games were more balanced between violence and non-violent resolution.

The sessions that tended to avoid violence were ones set in a single location - a city, a town, a secret hideout, etc. where we were building relationships with the locals. We tended to have these right after big fights, usually either boss fights or big dungeons we'd just cleared. The idea was to keep things relaxed and not force everyone into another grueling combat right away.

Quote from: James McMurraySince this is an incredibly rare occassion in my group, I thought I'd see how frequently it happens elsewhere, and what sorts of sessions cause it.
What sorts of encounters have you had that spawn combatless sessions?

Well in my current Over the Edge campaign there has been no combat for the past 12 sessions....and I doubt there ever will be. Nothing caused it, by this I mean that the nature of the campaign agreed before hand was that this was not a "combat" type campaign.

In my series of In Harms Way adventures there have been a couple of sessions where there was no combat,the first ...in fact it was the first adventure of the campaign...were the pcs had to hunt down a spy during a soiree on board their ship and the second "a night out in town" type thing with the pcs gambling amongst themselves and various dodgy npcs.

In my Savage Worlds - Burning Honor campaign which lasted about 5 or 6 games, one had no combat at all but a lot of tough guy talk between the pcs and their adversaries.

With these types of sessions I find that I have to replace combat with something else... the sense of immediacy/action needs to be maintained. IME the way to do this is by presenting the pcs with the opportunities to make decisions that have an immediate effect on the adventure...sorry not really explaining this last part very well.

Regards,
David R

The character of the game itself affects how common the combatless session is, but it can happen in just about any game.

I played in a long-running Call of Cthulhu game a couple of years back that saw very little actual combat because, for the most part, our PCs couldn't stand toe-to-toe with the antagonists. We mostly ran and hid and conspired with like-minded NPCs, biding our time while studying the enemy's weaknesses. That all changed as my character (a rare book dealer) became an accomplished sorcerer, made pacts with ghouls, and pretty much traded his sanity for raw power--while the other PC (a former legal secretary) went another kind of nuts, cut off her hair, and started training with military-grade firearms and explosives.

The solo nWoD game I ran recently had the PC avoiding combat for the most part, since the player was fond of her character and didn't want her to die. It segued into a Mage game, and she eventually got braver and more proactive with the added power, but it was still largely investigative, with combat as only one means of dealing with a problem.

I ran a brief Exalted game for the same player, but there was some form of combat every session (including social). In fact, I don't think I've ever run a session of Exalted (either edition) that didn't contain combat of some sort. Hell, if the PCs were just sitting around drinking tea, I'm sure we'd manage to work martial arts in there somewhere.

I've done a few mystery/investigation plots that go on for quite a while without combat. Usually they get to confront the bad guy at the end who refuses to surrender peacefully and a scuffle often ensues. This isn't always the case as sometimes the PCs will just call the appropriate authorities and have the big bad taken care of in that respect.

I personally like having a certain element of danger and regardless of the campaign type every so often have the PCs get jumped, just to keep them on their toes. Also, to start things off with a bang I oftentimes throw in a quick skirmish at the very beginning.

It really all depends on what your players want to do. If they want to fight stuff, they will, if they want to find other alternatives, they will. Some of the most rewarding runs in Shadowrun are those where not a single shot gets fired (despite the presence of armed guards).

It can be hard to avoid combat in a classic dungeon crawl, but it can be avoided easily in investigation, covert ops, political, espionage, and intrigue stories.