Things to do in a tabletop rpg that are not combat related?

[Celebrim]

I linked to some actual play examples upthread. In what way do they not exemlify players trying to solve problems? And what is objectionable about a player trying to bring his/her PC's best skill to bear?

I started to write a long response, then realized that I was rehashing old ground. Fortunately, there is really no need for me to answer these objections, since if one reads the threads you've linked to the sorts of objections I would make have been outlined in detail by many other posters.

Let's just say that for my part, I don't don't find your play examples demolishing my position but rather supporting it. Not everyone is as impressed with your examples as you are. I'm glad your group had fun with it. I find it interesting that you find the pacing useful to your play. But I'm not in the least convinced by your play examples that there is anything particularly artful or helpful about the use of skill challenges.

As for the X before Y structure, it adds something very important to the game: it creates a space in which the GM is obliged to keep the scene alive.

I'm not sure why that should be a desirable goal.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I once played a dirt farmer as a character in D&D 3e. Not as a one-shot - I played him for the whole campaign.

He had no fighting skills, no magic of any kind, no thievery skills, etc. His skills all revolved around farming. His stats were not particularly high, he had no weapons or armor, and he was a little eccentric. He had no interest in treasure or magic items. He mostly enjoyed digging things up and poking around in bushes and such. I played him as a challenge to myself, to see how well I could run a character who was pretty much a peasant with no skills that were applicable to the campaign.

The DM understood what I was doing, though the other players didn't. They just sort of tolerated me. While they fought, I poked around in the bushes, or dug in the dirt. When we went into cities, I explored trash bins and sewers. Etc. etc. The DM did a lot of rolls at various times to see if I stumbled across something interesting, but I generally didn't.

Until one day I did. My non-stop hunting and poking led me to discover something that nobody else did (or ever would have), which ended up having campaign-changing significance. In fact, the character ended up becoming one of the most important characters in the campaign because of it.

When I run games, I encourage my players to do a lot of roleplaying, even if that takes them in directions I didn't anticipate. I reward them well for doing that, too, so even the combat-obsessed players eventually start to roleplay a lot more. There have been situations where an entire multi-hour game session consisted of nothing but talking to people in a town, or trying to figure out what some strange thing in the forest was. I don't drag things like that out - I let the players figure out their own pace. If they spend 6 hours on a Saturday quizzing shopkeepers about something, they can do that, as long as it makes them happy. In the long run, having a few games within a campaign be completely non-combat oriented can lead to a much richer, deeper campaign overall.

 

[Neonchameleon]

When I read the post above, my immediate reaction is "So. You spent hours doing things that distracted from everything that the rest of the players wanted to do and therefore dragged their fun down until the DM took pity on you and gave you a deus ex machina?"

And if one player wants to spend six hours quizzing shopkeepers while five want to get on with things - I go with the five.

 

[Celebrim]

When I read the post above, my immediate reaction is "So. You spent hours doing things that distracted from everything that the rest of the players wanted to do and therefore dragged their fun down until the DM took pity on you and gave you a deus ex machina?"

And if one player wants to spend six hours quizzing shopkeepers while five want to get on with things - I go with the five.

Yes. For my part, I wouldn't have approved a dirt farmer as a concept - not because I'm adverse to the idea of a gritty campaign featuring ordinary people trying to survive in ordinary ways - but because if only one player is on board with that it represents too much divergence from the rest of the group. I've learned the hard way that you have to focus good RPers with thespian inclinations on the action the rest of the group is engaged in, or you end up running what amounts to a separate table for each player as each player does his own thing oblivious to the needs or desires of everyone else. As such, I no longer above characters that are blatantly anti-social, solitary loners, homebodies, completely dysfunctional, radically different in desires or abilities from the rest of the group, lacking heroic motivation, or lacking in reason to leave their current situation. You can GM those sorts of PC's when you only have 1-2 players, and it can be fun, but they are simply not appropriate concepts when you have a larger group.

I used to think that you could simply deal with the problem by judicious use of GM force. But I get tired of trying to herd cats, and you end up with a lot of people clamoring for solo spot lights and highly individualized attention.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

When I read the post above, my immediate reaction is "So. You spent hours doing things that distracted from everything that the rest of the players wanted to do and therefore dragged their fun down until the DM took pity on you and gave you a deus ex machina?"

And if one player wants to spend six hours quizzing shopkeepers while five want to get on with things - I go with the five.

You need to read the post again. Where did I say that one player wanted to quiz shopkeepers? That was part of a game session that I ran. The players were not bored and enjoyed it.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Yes. For my part, I wouldn't have approved a dirt farmer as a concept - not because I'm adverse to the idea of a gritty campaign featuring ordinary people trying to survive in ordinary ways - but because if only one player is on board with that it represents too much divergence from the rest of the group.

You're making a lot of assumptions.

I played the dirt farmer in ways that didn't interfere with what the rest of the group was doing, and didn't pull all (or most of) the focus on me. In fact, he was pretty well integrated with the group as a whole. I was perfectly fine with the dirt farmer dying if that's the way the game went, and the DM knew it. I wouldn't have even played a character like that without the full approval of the DM. As I said, I did it as an experiment to see if I could pull it off. Not in the sense of pulling one over on the DM or the players, but in the sense of seeing if I could set aside my common way of thinking about goals in D&D (and similar games) and come up with a sustainable, viable character who was a good party member and who didn't care about wealth, weapons, power, etc. At no point did the character object to the party going after those things. He was happy to tag along with whatever they did. We didn't do little side vignettes that were focused on him. The DM liked the idea of putting a character that confused the other players into the campaign, because that was something he hadn't tried before, and was curious to see what would happen. He was also curious to see if I could actually roleplay the character and stick to the concept.

Once they got past their confusion, the other players liked having my character around, because he turned out to be useful in a lot of unexpected ways, and didn't want any of the treasure. I played him as a sort of idiot savant type.

The DM saw an opportunity to play off one of the things the character did, which ended up becoming important in the campaign. He wasn't throwing in a Deux Ex Machina or trying to keep me from being bored, or anything like that. My character did something very minor that was odd, and the DM got an idea from it. His idea took on a life of it's own. He didn't plan for it to become a big thing in the campaign, and we were both surprised when it did. It just worked out that way.

I am a very experienced roleplayer (been doing this since the 70s) who is the last one to ever try to derail a game, or take it over in any other way. Since I have done as much DM/GMing as playing over the decades, I am very cognizant of the importance of keeping a game flowing and making sure that everyone is having fun. I can see how inexperienced or immature roleplayers would be problematic in similar situations, but that wasn't the case for me, the DM, or the other players.

When Champions came out, I used to make characters for fun and see how powerful I could get them to be within the 100-point limit. Over time I figured out some loopholes in the rules and found ways to create characters that were just about unstoppable and unkillable. I never played them, though, because they would have unbalanced the campaign. I always made sure my characters matched the power level of the campaign, even when I could have easily done otherwise. The game as a whole is important. It's not all about having the most powerful character.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I've learned the hard way that you have to focus good RPers with thespian inclinations on the action the rest of the group is engaged in, or you end up running what amounts to a separate table for each player as each player does his own thing oblivious to the needs or desires of everyone else.

That's only a problem if you have a player who is more concerned with himself/herself than with the party or game as a whole. That's why I am very careful in who I let play in my campaigns. I only accept players who understand the importance of having a game that's fun for everyone and know the difference between good roleplaying and trying to use the game as a personal theater of some sort. That's also why I don't allow players who are solely focused on playing like they are in a video game, where everything is combat and treasure and the focus is on "scoring high."

What that usually gets down to these days is playing with people who have been doing this for a long time, are very mature, and understand the concept of gaming being fun and challenging. That often means playing with folks who are in their late 30s or older, but not always. I have met some relatively young players who fit the bill quite well, and some older ones who don't.

I used to think that you could simply deal with the problem by judicious use of GM force. But I get tired of trying to herd cats, and you end up with a lot of people clamoring for solo spot lights and highly individualized attention.

If you have to use GM force at all, that usually means that there is a mismatch between the styles of the GM and players. I can adapt my GMing style for one-shot games, but when it comes to full campaigns I get picky.

 

[Celebrim]

You're making a lot of assumptions.

Perhaps. You aren't doing much to dispel them.

but in the sense of seeing if I could set aside my common way of thinking about goals in D&D (and similar games) and come up with a sustainable, viable character who was a good party member and who didn't care about wealth, weapons, power, etc. At no point did the character object to the party going after those things.

In general, there is an expectation by the other players and by the DM that regardless of your character concept, you can pull your share. That when the going gets tough, and various player's PC's are lying on the ground bleeding out and that ogre is about to squish them to jelly or those ghouls are about to pull a coup de grace action, that the PC still standing is a reliable aid in such a circumstance and will present a stout obstacle to having your character retired. So not having a character that matches these capabilities is in fact neither sustainable, nor viable, nor a good party member. A good party member is one that regularly saves other party member's butts with incredible displays of skill - that DC 35 diplomacy check, or disarming that CR 10 trap, or dishing out 40 points of damage to turn around a challenging combat. A good party member is the one where people say, "Awesome!! I thought we were finished." Your not describing a good party member. You're describing an NPC retainer who is occasionally useful and gets that one shining unexpected moment of awesome reserved for the NPC retainer.

I've seen that moment before. It's when your fighting Seige of Starmantle with 80000 combatants among both sides forming 8000 Battlesystem Tokens, and the city is laid out to scale across a two car garage with too scale fortifications, and the campaign has been leading to this moment for years and everyone is hugely invested in the outcome. And the allied force breeches the outer walls behind a spearhead of Treants, only to have the Queen's wizards start conjuring fire elements in the streets and the Queen's huntman to appear unexpectedly in the upper stories of the buildings to either side, and in the middle of this huge epic battle is one of the PC's retainers. And it comes time for his unit to move, and the PC looks at the NPC's character sheet and realizes years ago he gave the retainer a Wand of Quench Fires because it was a fairly useless item and it improved the NPC's loyalty checks, and now, suddenly the fact that the NPC has that wand is going to decide the battle. That's that moment where the NPC gets his moment of awesome, but that's not a good party member. That's an NPC retainer getting that unexpected moment of awesome.

It's perfectly fine to have a PC whose primary motivations are not wealth, weapons or power - but he better well be able to pull his share in some fashion. It doesn't matter if the PC's goals are spiritual, personal, philosophical, social or material. In general, I find that means that you have at least some amount of both non-combat and combat utility. The character you describe appears to have little of the former and none of the latter. It would therefore have not been approved, even if I had known you to have the maturity and intention to refuse healing, wealth, or other drains on party resources.

As a DM having one player in the party who can't pull his share puts a huge burden on me to try to balance the game as if that player was missing. It removes a safety net. It means if an encounter goes awry by bad luck, poor planning by the players or my own overestimation of the players chances your character is a liability to the whole group. Even if I think you are going to be good about doing nothing for that occasional 4 hour session of nothing but combat, it's just not worth the risks.

I am a very experienced roleplayer (been doing this since the 70s) who is the last one to ever try to derail a game, or take it over in any other way.

I've been doing this since about 1980 myself, and I have to say its always the good RPers that are most prone to do this sort of thing. In fact, the defining moment on this for me was when I did it unintentionally as a player, realized that every other really good talented RPer in the group had unintentionally done the same thing, and that in doing so we'd wrecked the GM's game. We'd all picked characters that were so filled with unique personality and were so novel and memorable, that in the context of the adventure we were dysfunctional.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

In general, there is an expectation by the other players and by the DM that regardless of your character concept, you can pull your share.

I'm not going through the campaign game by game and describing everything I did to do my share, but I did pull it. The character didn't fight much, but actually did as much as the other characters did overall. Not every PC has to physically fight to contribute. I figured out ways to make equal contributions without having fighting or spell-casting ability. That was part of the challenge. If I had not figured out how to do that, I would have retired the character. If the DM or other players felt I wasn't pulling my load, I would have retired the character. In fact, if he had had anything other than a positive effect on the game, I would have retired the character.[/Quote]

That when the going gets tough, and various player's PC's are lying on the ground bleeding out and that ogre is about to squish them to jelly or those ghouls are about to pull a coup de grace action, that the PC still standing is a reliable aid in such a circumstance and will present a stout obstacle to having your character retired.

You are assuming that battles and killing monsters is the primary part of every campaign. That's not necessarily true. I have been through whole campaigns where there is virtually no fighting, and what fighting did occur was minor and secondary to everything else. I have run campaigns like that, too.

On top of that, do you really think that the only way to stop an ogre (or any other monster) is to attack it, stun it, teleport the party away, etc.? There are a lot of ways to effectively deal with a situation like that without needing to fight or cast spells, particularly if the monster (or human opponent) doesn't see your character as a potential threat in any way.

So not having a character that matches these capabilities is in fact neither sustainable, nor viable, nor a good party member. A good party member is one that regularly saves other party member's butts with incredible displays of skill - that DC 35 diplomacy check, or disarming that CR 10 trap, or dishing out 40 points of damage to turn around a challenging combat.

That's a pretty narrow definition of a "good party member." How about a character that always figures out the secret to riddles, or has the research skills to guide the party through the challenges, or always figures out just the right questions to ask NPCs to move things along, or has figured out how to manipulate the town guards without needing to roll a skill check, or has political clout that frequently saves the party's collective hide, etc.? There are many non-combat skills other than diplomacy, and many things a character can choose to do that doesn't rely on a skill check of any kind. Accomplishments are not always tied to skill rolls, and not all skills are covered in any existing game. Some skills that seem useless (ex. knowing how to irrigate farmland) might actually prove to be useful in a broad range of situations IF the player gets creative with them and manages to do so while staying in character. Which, as I said, was part of the challenge.

I've seen that moment before. It's when your fighting Seige of Starmantle with 80000 combatants among both sides forming 8000 Battlesystem Tokens, and the city is laid out to scale across a two car garage with too scale fortifications, and the campaign has been leading to this moment for years and everyone is hugely invested in the outcome.

Here we are back to battle again. Why do you assume that the final big challenge involves fighting at all? Why do you assume that there is any combat at all in a given game or campaign? Why do you assume that the only way to be really useful in a battle situation is to be one of the combatants?

It's perfectly fine to have a PC whose primary motivations are not wealth, weapons or power - but he better well be able to pull his share in some fashion.

He did.

In general, I find that means that you have at least some amount of both non-combat and combat utility.

Maybe in your campaigns, and the ones you play in. That hasn't been true in all the campaigns I have played in or run. In fact, being combat-oriented has been a big drawback in some of them. Not every fantasy RPG campaign has to be run as a big hack-and-slash adventure with over-the-top archetypal heroes that fit into a narrowly defined set of classes.

Look at The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins had neither combat skills nor any others that were particularly useful on an adventure.

The character you describe appears to have little of the former and none of the latter.

He had quite a bit of the former. His skills weren't ones you would expect to be useful (most were farming related), but I found ways to make them very useful (even in urban environments), all while sticking to the character concept, because that was the challenge I had set and I worked very, very hard to make it work. The DM didn't have to find ways to make them work. I was just very creative, and had been thinking about how to do it for a very long time.

Even if I think you are going to be good about doing nothing for that occasional 4 hour session of nothing but combat, it's just not worth the risks.

That particular campaign didn't have long stretches of combat. If it had, I wouldn't have run that character.

Even if it was a heavy combat campaign and I hadn't figured out any way to be useful in combat (and had, for some reason, still decided to run the character), I could have simply hung back and waited, even for many hours on end. I'm very patient, and don't have to have the attention on me the whole time. Since that character wasn't a drag on resources or treasure, the net effect would be that I sometimes just sat and listening in some of the games, without putting any pressure on the DM or the other players to hurry things along. None of that was the case, though.

Even when combat did occur in the games, though, the other players found it very useful to have someone drag unconscious people off the field, scare off the horses of dismounted opponents, toss arrows to people who had run out, confuse opponents with non-sequitur-ish actions, etc. Most warriors don't pay any attention to the peasant farmer running around in the background when they are faced with an armed, dangerous opponent, and I used that to my (and my party's) advantage.

I've been doing this since about 1980 myself, and I have to say its always the good RPers that are most prone to do this sort of thing. In fact, the defining moment on this for me was when I did it unintentionally as a player, realized that every other really good talented RPer in the group had unintentionally done the same thing, and that in doing so we'd wrecked the GM's game. We'd all picked characters that were so filled with unique personality and were so novel and memorable, that in the context of the adventure we were dysfunctional.

My character wasn't dysfunctional, it didn't affect the game negatively in any way, and he was every bit as useful as every other character. It didn't go the way you have described because I was very, very conscious of how it could go wrong, and worked very carefully to make sure it didn't.

The character's contributions didn't revolve around the discovery I mentioned earlier. It turned out to be a useful part of the campaign, but most of the contributions he made (and there were many) had nothing to do with that particular thing.

I don't run characters like that all the time. In fact, that one was an anomaly. It was an experiment and a challenge that I knew I could pull off within that particular campaign with that particular DM and that particular set of players, and only did so after really discussing it with the DM (discussing it, not whining about it). I only attempted it after spending a very, very long time working through how to make such a character work as a useful member of the party, how to repurpose skills in creative ways, etc. If I were running a campaign where one of the players wanted to try an experiment of some kind, I would only approve it if I had confidence in his/her ability to do so, knew how I would handle things as a DM, and knew that the character would be a contributing part of the party. Back then, that particular DM decided that I could pull it off, and I did. I wouldn't have even attempted it in most other campaigns or with most other DMs.

I am a good roleplayer, but I'm a well-rounded player in all ways. I am a good DM, and can run games or whole campaigns that range from combat-light to combat-heavy, and everything in-between. When I am playing, I keep the lessons learned from DMing in mind. When I am DMing, I keep the player perspective in mind. Battles are fun, but I'm just as happy doing things that don't relate to combat in any way. I'm very adaptable.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I hit "Submit Reply" too soon...

A lot of RPG players (and GMs) seem to think that combat is the end-all and be-all of roleplaying games. There may be non-combat things going on, too, but there seems to be a widespread feeling that the combat parts are the most important overall.

You can play that way, but you don't have to, or at least don't always have to. There are all sorts of ways to play and run games (and whole campaigns), and what is important is that everyone involved has a good time. Not all playing and GM styles fit well together, though, so it's usually best to find people to game with who have similar styles.

Having said that, though, more people need to realize that the problems they have encountered in the games they run or play in are not necessarily things that are problematic across the board. Some GMs run carefully plotted games where the players need to touch upon certain things (locations, fights, etc.) for things to advance. They do best with players who are very goal-oriented. Some GMs run sandbox-style games, and do best with players who are most happy figuring out what they want to do, rather than feeling there is a quest or end goal to it. Some like very crunchy approaches to things, some like heavy roleplaying, and many like some mix of the two.

Some players and GMs really like defined roles - set classes, playable races, etc. Some prefer a lot of creative freedom. I could play a literal mosquito in an epic fantasy adventure and find all sorts of ways to be useful. I could play a talking stick and do the same, in most cases, because I like to think outside of the box and am very resourceful. I could easily DM a game or campaign where someone played an intelligent mosquito in a band of hardcore fighters. I have met a lot of other players and DMs who could deal with such things just as easily.

Some folks would find it very difficult to play or play with (or GM) characters that don't have stereotypical sets of skills. One way isn't better than another, and having a non-combat oriented character will not derail or mess with all games or campaigns. In fact, if you have the right player(s) and the right GM, you can make virtually anything work with no more hassle than doing things the standard way.