101 Non-Combat Adventures?

[Bismark]

Now that I think of it, I can remember one specific time our characters split up.

Goblins were stealing cars and selling them to some local gang. We put a bait car in a parking lot, and the rest of us drove around the gang's area, on the look out.

In this situation, or in many split situations (such as your example of the Smart hero infiltrating and messing with security and all that), the best way we had for keeping everyone involved in RP was with continuous radio contact. It's not hard to get, and is easily concealable.

While we're all cruising, or waiting while the GM makes some rolls to see how well the Smart hero is doing, we all RP over the radios. Works in some situations.

 

[infinitum3d]

Found this on another site. It's Medieval Fantasy for children, but can be altered for any genre.

Start with a group of ruffians starting a fight in a tavern. (Remind the players that they need to stop them without killing. This will also be a plot hook for later.) Every full moon incredible singing would be heard from the swamp next to town. (Hint : Get some opera music, or Dead Can Dance and play that. Play something sad. ) It is rumoured that there is a fearsome beast in the Swamp. A Swamp man. The headman's daughter has decided that she absolutely loves this singer want wants to marry him and thats the end of it. So the adventurers are asked to into the swamp for the next full moon to ask the singer to come back with them. There is a lot of interesting problems here. Wear armour in a swamp? Build a raft? What is the lay of the land in the swamp? ( 3 islands? One called Stirge Island ? One called Prospector's Landing, and one called Stinky Mire?) Let the players deal with a few critter encounters. (Do they need to kill the crocadiles? Can wolves be heard? Stirges.. . gotta fight them.) The singer in question is an extremely affible Troll named Chumly who can probably be cajoled into coming to town. Green carrot nose glowing red eyes and all. He wears some scraps of fine clothing. (When questioned about himself, he'll have a sad tale and that's why he sings. His father said he was too kind, and his brothers pickled on him for it. Moral story here about being bad to other kids. He ran away and learned to read music in this old abandoned library here.) Chumly comes with the adventurers to town and is extremely shy. He' s too embarassed and doesn' t know what to do. ( Players have to work hard to get him to meet the girl.) The Headman' s daughter freaks out at the ugly hideous beast. He' s ugly and she is vain. She is not nice. Chumly stumbles off crying . (Do the players cheer him up? How?) Lastly. .. the tavern keeper has an idea.. . A singing Troll would be entertaining, and extremely handy should ruffians show up again. He works with the players to hire Chumly. The tavern is called "The Singing Troll", and Chumly lives happily ever after.

 

[infinitum3d]

Here's another. Again, Medieval Fantasy, but can be altered for any genre.

Harvest Festival (State Fair, County Fair, Amusement Park, Disneyland).

Games of skill and chance. The players have to roll dice to see if they beat other competitors at games like Archery (target practice, skeet shooting), Wrestling, Ring Toss, Whack-A-Mole, SkeeBall, whatever.

They gain experience points from competing (like training), and maybe one of those Circus-folk people is an informant, or a contact agent, or a spy, or an enemy sent to eliminate the hero, etc, etc. Can't open fire in a crowded street, so handguns/ranged weapons are useless.

Yes I know this is an old thread, but it's a permalink, so its relevant.

 

[Pbartender]

Nothing specific, but here's a thought...

In all those TV shows, where you've got the bookish guy tagging along, (I keep thinking of Daniel in Stargate SG-1), there inevitably comes an episodes in which all the bad-asses get captured, but he doesn't.

So, you split the group into two groups... the non-fighter(s) and everyone else. The former are on the outside trying to rescue their more militant buddies, and the latter are on the inside trying to resist torture and interrogation.

It a fun scenario, because you put the combat heavy guys into a situation where they simply can't effectively fight their way out of trouble. They'll need to think outside the box a little bit to make any use of themselves.

Likewise, the non-combatants find themselves in a situation where they either need to find a way to apply their non-violent skill set toward an assault, or come up with a way of breaking out their buddies that doesn't involve combat at all. Either way, the players get to use their brains, the characters get to use their skills in a new, unusual and heroic way, and it puts a normally in-the-background player-character into the spotlight.

Just be sure to be generous in giving their cockamamie schemes a chance to work... In fact, along the lines of what normally happens in those sorts of episodes, the crazier the plan is, the better chance it should have of succeeding.

 

[Tuft]

One of my favorite non-combat scenarios from a past campaign I played in:

Evacuation

Running across an isolated village of disfigured, mutated people (mongrel-folk in the original) deep down underground, you have to win their confidence and emphasize with their plight enough to want to aid them. Then you have to investigate to figure out that their current situation is untenable, and that their environment is warping them and killing off most of their infants.

This means that you have to convince them to evacuate. Once you got the whole village moving, you have to help them through hostile territory, handling environmental dangers, and negotiating free passage with hostiles en-route (since they are too vulnerable to fight).

Arriving at the surface, you have to locate a suitable place for them to stay, and help them start up trade and peaceful relations with their new neighbors.

 

[Tuft]

Well, pooh.

40-something views and no replies. Am I all alone in having trouble coming up with good, challenging, interesting non-action scenarios for Charismatic, Dedicated, or Smart Heroes? Or am I just all alone in caring about it?

I think your example was simply too complex. In this format you want something that can be summarized in just a few sentences, so that you can pop in a quick idea. If you have something that requires you to sit back and design, then you will get a lot fewer replies.

Better to ask for simple noncombat-ideas where people can find their own parts, rather than dedicated roles for each d20 Modern class.

 

[Janx]

Here's what I see as design problems:

fighting scenes are easy to run and everybody present can get involved (even Daniel Jackson got a pistol early on)
social scenes are easy to run (anybody with a mouth can do it)

in both, there is always somebody being active.

Shadowrun proved, that watching the hacker do his thing is boring. Because it's just him doing his thing, round after round (worse, because cyberspace operates on a faster turn cycle, he basically plays out his whole attack run in 1 normal combat round).

Doing research is boring. Its why the camera cuts to the chase. Unless you've put a puzzle in there and actually have the research material (so the player actually must look for the answer)

I reckon you could setup some sort of Skill Challenge (however 4e does it) where the nerdy makes a number of skill checks to get the information or result needed to solve the problem.

 

[infinitum3d]

Industrial Espionage: Search and Recover

You've been hired by a Multi-Billion Dollar Global 'A' Corporation to do recon against a rival company 'B' Enterprises. This HAS to be done silently (without getting caught, no dead bodies, no alarms sounding, no bad press!!) If you get caught the SEC fines you millions of dollars and 30 years in prison.

You have to ENTER (bluff, disguise, lockpick, disable trap/alarm) the rival company's . . . Headquarters/R&D Laboratory/President's Private Villa . . . FIND the secret . . . weapon/ingredient/blueprints/formula . . . and return them to your employer.

TWISTS/ALTERNATIVES;

1. There is a deadline. It has to be done in 24 hours, or 72 hours, or in the next 60 minutes (realtime!) between the hours of 10-11pm.

2. You have to infiltrate a building of "A" Corporation, the company of the guy that hires you, -NOT a rival- as in, this is a test of his own company's security system. The twist could be that you were actually hired by a rival from "B" Corporation, so you're being played the fool!

3. A Corp. is a global cosmetics firm specializing in anti-aging products. The rival B Enterprises International (BEI) is also a global cosmetics firm, specializing in natural/organic products. When you infiltrate B Enterprises, you can't find the secret ingredient, or it's name is in code/nicknamed/or simply made up. But you find GPS coords for a small island in Papau New Guinea, so you have fly down and find the native who acts as intermediary between the islanders (who grow the crop) and BEI.

TWIST: while you are in Papau, the CEO of A Corp. is reported dead from a stroke but under mysterious circumstances, and rumors of suicide and murder abound. 2nd TWIST: he's not really dead, he's just been distracted/whisked away to Hawai'i by a jealous lover in order to drive stock prices down. The rumors put the heat on you though, BEI is now on alert, so the job just got much harder to complete.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I don't do much modern gaming, but it occurred to me that you might use tv show episodes as inspiration.

I'm specifically thinking of shows that are "non-combat" shows, of course, and most of them fall into either spy stuff or mystery solving stuff. I'd suggest:

Leverage
Psych

I had typed that, and then I ran out, so I looked up tv genres. Maybe these genres (and the shows/movies/lit from them) would be helpful.
Adventure - Television Tropes & Idioms
Action Series - Television Tropes & Idioms
Government Conspiracy - Television Tropes & Idioms
Spy Couple - Television Tropes & Idioms
Spy Fiction - Television Tropes & Idioms
Urban Fantasy - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hope that's helpful.