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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9472322" data-attributes="member: 75787">I am a bit surprised that, as you say, you have posted in the past on this subject with no knowledge of the RPG that I think pretty much everyone who has read or played it would agree is the most relevant game to the discussion of "games that don't focus on combat". I strongly suggest you at the very least read it before commenting on this subject I the future. I really do think you'd enjoy it also, unless you really, really cannot imagine liking anything not focused on physical violence.Oh cool, which campaigns did you run? It's possible you gravitated to more combat-focused ones like MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP or MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, given your dislike of games with a dramatic or investigative focus. I've run/platyed both of those and MASKS is very combat-heavy. ORIENT EXPRESS is a mix0, but combat could take up most of the time in play if you like combat a lot.I've run a few others also. BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS (fantastic, highly recommended) starts withhas a very clear focus on surviving in the Antarctic, and the scenes that are most memorable for me are mechanically more about running away than combat! But even if you count "running away" as combat, most of the play time is about how to survive in the cold.Oh, I should note that when you say "focus on combat" I'm assuming you mean that combat is what the players spend more time thinking about than anything else and/or the actual play time spends more time on combat scenes than any other type of scene. Let me know if you have a different definition in mind.For a more detailed look, I'm going to choose a Trail of Cthulhu campaign I have run -- ETERNAL LIES -- as it nicely breaks sections down into scenes, so we can directly count how many focused it is on combat! I'll avoid spoilers on the content and look at the very first Act, which has 17 scenes. They break down as this:No Combat Mentioned in the Scene:  IIIII IIIII IIICombat Possible, but Not Expected: IIICombat is Likely:Combat Certain: II choose the book and defend categories before counting (to reduce self-bias). Hence the tallying and empty categories. Without spoilers, the three scenes with possible combat are ones where either a failure in other skills, or a GM's desire to include combat, can make those scenes combat-focused.As you can see, there is really no way to play this campaign that is combat-focused. My players played the whole campaign and never spent much time or thought on getting better at fighting (I am not counting planting explosives as combat -- no spoilers here, my players just love explosions). Even when faced with scenes that were "Combat Certain", they managed to avoid a couple of them. Not the one in act one, but in a later act they used their contacts to do the combat part of a "combat certain" scene.OK, let's look at final acts. They tend to be more combat-focused. I'll do the same sort of analysis for the final act of Lynne Hardy's CHILDREN OF FEAR, and this is the first time I have read this chapter!EDIT: After doing the analysis, it's a bit spoilery-y, so[SPOILER]No Combat Mentioned in the Scene:  IIIII IICombat Possible, but Not Expected: IICombat is Likely: ICombat Certain:Actually, on reading it, it looks less combat-focused than the other analysis. The "combat likely scene" only occurs if another scene fails, and both the "combat possible" scenes have text like "if the keeper wants, they can ..." so very optional. My group would almost certainly not be fighting in this act.[/SPOILER]In summary, I reject your hypothesis that Call of Cthulhu is focused on combat. If your group loves combat, you can drag it in, sure. But the expected and average experience is that combat is infrequent, and that players will focus on investigation as a main task and survival as a secondary one.</blockquote>

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