What TTRPGs Excel At Not Having Combat?

[dbm]

"If a manager for a Punch and Judy puppet show can't be a viable PC in the game, I probably won't last long."

That says GURPS to me…

And really, this comes back to engine versus implied (or stated) world. With a system like GURPS you can run any campaign concept you want, you aren’t looking for a specific niche game. And GURPS has lots of detail on non-combat skills etc; just apply those to whatever your player is attempting.

 

[bsss]

I don't really want to default to a monster/murder mystery though. Maybe something bleak, like The Road or Looking For a Friend at the End of the World, or something weird like a time loop or dream world RPG.

Still lots of good pulls in the thread for this. To put a word in for Cypher System again, they semi-recently put out a post-apocalypse genre book, Rust and Redemption, which is a bunch of rules and a proto-setting for survival, scavenging, things like that (and mutants and other combatants). Ignoring the rules that matter more for combat, you make the game about surviving mentally and physically --- living --- in the world, and you're off to the races.

The thing about CS is you can port basically any idea to the framework, as it comes down to: what things [via skills and abilities and pool sizes] are the PCs good at, and how difficult [via GM ruling] is whatever they are trying to do? You could put a lawyer drama in CS, just focus the characters on library use, persuasion, of course law, etc., and make the tasks arguing in court, finding prior precedent-making decisions, persuading judges, making good rapport with detectives, etc., and the stakes are the overall state of justice in the city plus their personal satisfaction. That kind of thing. Heck, a Punch and Judy show would probably be doable, the game is a framework for telling the story you want.

This sounds like a "just DIY it, easy" punt, but CS is pretty powerful and flexible.

 

[Reynard]

I appreciate the generic system recommendations, but what about something bespoke? I don't really have a adventure in mind yet, so what is a game that really leans into the dramatic or tension aspects without the combat? That isn't regency romance.

 

[Aldarc]

That isn't regency romance.

 

[BenjaminPey]

Not the End, specifically taylored to stir the story towards dramatic conclusions for the characters, without any combat needed. (Generic engine.)

Brindlewood Bay for who-dunnits in which combat is not really supposed to happen (the characters are old female amateur detectives).

City of Mist for noir investigation, where combat, though entirely possible, is treated exaclty as all the other things you can do (no subsystems). (Legend in the Mist is kinda in the same bracket, system wise, but decidly geared towards adventure.) I played more than one hundred sessions with this one, with two "combats", total.

Night Witches, or any other opinionated PbtA out there without any focus on "adventures". (In Night Witches you play as female pilots in the soviet army during WWII. The focus is decidly not combat, even if there are some aerial fight scenes.)

Fiasco, where there isn't any system for action resolution — only scene outcomes.

Nephilim, for occult mysteries, decidedly not geared towards combat (mechanized through the basic system in its first iterations, now quite far from its roots). You play as mythical creatures reincarnated in human bodies through countless generations, searching for answers in your mystical quests.

Lot of others that don't come to mind right now.

 

[BenjaminPey]

Pasión de las Pasiones, for telenovela-like over the top drama.

Two Summers, for an exploration of friendship and interpersonal drama, with the passage of time as a major actor.

Mothership, arguably, for space horror stories where combat is more or less a synonym of death.

 

[bsss]

Fiasco, where there isn't any system for action resolution — only scene outcomes.

I was going to mention Fiasco specifically as an example of where dialing in the OP's desired amount of action resolution might be helpful for this conversation as well.

In case it needs to be said, to make a contrast --- CS, d20, "trad" games in general, the loop is, abstractly: GM presents a situation, the players describe what their PCs do, and the mechanics help determine the result. Fiasco is on the other end of this spectrum where players kinda represent individual characters, but the PCs are not avatars, but just more like narrative subjects --- there is no GM, the players pick a "playset", roll a couple times to build a pool of results, and go through the collaborative storytelling process of asserting truths about scenes and determining how the scenes and overall story resolve by choosing how to apply their dice pools. You could go a whole game without ever concretely describing what any of the characters do, just vibes and outcomes, and you've essentially played a whole movie in the course of about an hour. All the drama and tension is at the overall story arc level rather than how the individual steps for a scene --- a mote of tension --- play out.

Are they thinking Punch and Judy in that sense, where they don't want to be bothered with the minutiae of action-reaction loops and just want to tell stories? Or, the "trad" style, just where the action currency is things other than pain and death? (Or somewhere in between?)

 

[Parmandur]

Are they thinking Punch and Judy in that sense, where they don't want to be bothered with the minutiae of action-reaction loops and just want to tell stories? Or, the "trad" style, just where the action currency is things other than pain and death? (Or somewhere in between?)

The Punch-and-Judy thing is thst he has a player who wants to be useless in combat, a traveling Puppeteer.

Thinking about it, @Reynard , I've gotten the shape of a build in the Cosmere RPG that follows that bill: following the Envoy Career with a focus on the Awareness and Presense Abilities, with Skills focuses on Pedkfemance, Insight, and other Face stuff, choose a Cultural expertise for "Puppetry" and follow the Mentor path down the Talent tree...and you have a combat incompetent Puppeteer who can still contribute as a party Face in social scenes while hiding behind his puppets when things come to blows. Helps thst the game has a social combat system, and a system for Skill Challenges like 4E (but more developed).

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Cyberpunk Red is a game that can be run low-combat. In a lot of ways, how dangerous combat can be disincentivizes it (like Call of Cthulhu). And like Call of Cthulhu, it has a robust skill system.

I'm not a huge fan of FATE-based games, but I'll admit the system does a good job without having combat.

 

[MGibster]

Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplay by Free League. Can you fight? Sure. But the goal is investigating the best ways to deal with the supernatural creatures.

I'll plug Vaesen as well. While you can certainly punch a troll in the face, most of the vaesen can't be taken care of in a permanent manner via physical combat. And the game play really encourages PCs to investigate via talking to NPCs, examining clues, doing research, etc., etc.