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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8447271" data-attributes="member: 7028554">I didn't mean to imply that all or even most time spent talking to NPCs is a bad thing. I meant that, much more narrowly, having what might wind up being repetitive interactions with prisoners might become a real bummer. And if the PCs are sort of accumulating loads of prisoners during a somewhat typical dungeon delve (or similar situation)--one during this fight, two more for the next, another two after the third fight--it could make it not only cartoonish in nature and logistically annoying, but also sort of a roleplaying slog. Do you stop talking to the prisoners after the first batch, and gruffly tell the subsequent ones to shut up and march? But what if these new ones have different information, or a greater possibility of become allies?Generally speaking I think interacting with prisoners can be incredibly rich, for pure roleplaying and to develop the narrative (maybe even both at once). It was the potential repetition I was trying to address.But as for what would replace fights, if there are fewer of them, I think everything you might do in a game that isn't fighting. If it's a classic delve, then maybe it's the interactions that lead up to setting out, and the travel/exploration challenges and experiences along the way, and maybe the situations that could be combat but that many PCs would want to address some other way (stealth, bargaining, etc.). I don't mean to push a given playstyle, I've just personally found that a lot of issues that are related to combat--including stuff like over-incentivizing lethality, body counts that are goofily high and numbing, balanced encounters, etc.--sort of melt away if fights are less common, but the ones that happen typically come with a lot of dread and buildup, and usually have major consequences. A little like how there are so few actual fights in GoT (talking more the books than the show in this case), but almost constant menace and danger throughout. And also how some of those main characters don't really know how to fight, but for the ones that do that's a major part of their identity, even though the narrative isn't constantly showing them cutting people down to prove their badassery.That general approach probably doesn't work for story now games, though, I realize, so I guess I'm talking more in the context of the pacing and distribution of authority in a traditional game.</blockquote>

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