Kill the character. Just cause she doesn't want combat doesn't mean the world is going to respond to her desire. I'm only half joking. If one of my players said "I don't want any combat in this campaign", I'd respond with "Good luck with that. Hope you don't make anyone angry." Combatless sessions, that's easy. I'm running Shadowrun right now, and we've had several sessions of just legwork and RPing before the next session, which is when the fighting happens, but a whole campaign? Is this a fairly typical D&D campaign, in a medieval-style setting? I could see it being a tad easier in a modern setting, but not much.
Seriously, I can't think of anything to help you. Maybe you should tell the player that you plan on reducing the amount of combat, but, being unable to see the future, you can't promise a lack of fighting.
I can see how you can be stressed, as I imagine DMing a campaign with no combat would be difficult but I think I may have a solution; me and my group have just started getting into Call of Cthulu and have not had a single encounter yet, as instead of HP it is sanity based, you may want to look into it.
Since no one has yet discussed exp, I will put in my recomendation, that you start them at 1st level and decide on a rate of advancement like 1 per 3 sessions (what Im using in a high combat game, or 1 per 6 sessions - and award that fraction per session. Or you could throw out xp completely as some here have done and just decide when party is ready to level.
My argument against individual story and rp awards is that they may end up uneven with better RP's having signifigantly better advancement. As well as the difficulty in assigning ad hoc exp to everything.
Rember to have the players make detailed backgrounds, as you will be mineing these for plot hooks - two or more previous generations of alliances and enemies for each PC would not be out of line.
This game is based on Jack Vance's Cugel and Rialtho the Marvellous series. So you would have to like a fun/absurd-oriented heroic fantasy world. Nonetheless, as the stories revolves around verbal interractions rather than combat, the gaming system has been geared toward verbal interraction rather than combat. It is really peculiar and innovative in that approach of gaming. You can give it a try even without actually buying the book, as there is a lite PDF version available for free.
The problem is simple. One of my players for an upcoming campaign has stated she simply doesn't want combat. None, zero. The other players think the idea is worth a shot. What in HADES DO I DO?
Obviously, you need to call the D&D police, since she offends your core gaming dogma so much.
However, such a campaign would reveal the fundamental flaw of the rather stupid and quite worthless "CR" system. In a situation wherein combat does not determine the challenge, "CR" does not reflect the challenge posed.
I would check if she does really want no combat, or just does not want to play combat encounters out. You could have a group of NPC guards/retainers whatever with the party, who would take care of combat encounters - you can decide what happens there, f.e. if a murderer is arrested and such.
1. D&D is a tactical minis game, with a faint veneer of a skills system on top. Gawds, but I love it so! Nonetheless, it's not exactly ideal for this kind of campaign. GURPS would probably be better. Amber Diceless or FUDGE are low-overhead alternatives.
It's not complete, but there are some REALLY good notes in it for running a political campaign with another game system.
3. For D&D, why not run a campaign of romance and political intrigue? Restrict all players to Experts and Aristocrats, give them strategic (rather than tactical) resources such as small armies, fabulous houses, and various commoner servants, and then let them at each other. Or alternately, have them represent a political bloc, and let them at the other nobles.
I think I'd bristle a bit at this notion because it imposes a sort of metagame restriction on you. Does "no combat" mean that the PC's could walk into a bank and rob the place and the security guard or police couldn't try and stop them because of the "no combat" stricture? Can they mouth off to a group of armed thugs with no fear of reprisals? Pee in the coffee of a mob boss?
I do think it would be possible to run a game where the main plotline does not require much in the way of fighting. Sort of a "trouble won't come looking for you if you don't go looking for it" philosophy.
I'd also take a moment to mention that "no combat" doesn't mean "no danger" or "no adventure". Look at Adventure Racing (like the EcoChallenge) for example. Plenty of harrowing experiences with things like whitewater rafting, mountain climbing, navigating through treacherous terrain. But no fighting (well, plenty of verbal fighting but no physical fighting). If you take that approach then suddenly Str, Dex and Con are no longer dump stats.
I think you could succeed at a sort of "around the world in 80 days" kind of campaign. Or maybe something along the lines of the Amazing Race. But the bottom line is that if you won't have fun without some fighting, then you shouldn't participate.
It was pretty late when I posted this last night, so I was pretty tired and didn't completely explain myself for you guys. Sorry about that.
In general, as both a player and a DM, I hate thinking of D&D as a wargame/minisgame, but rather think of what I play/run as "a generic roleplaying game, often set in fantasy worlds, that uses the D&D mechanics for resolution of combat, when it comes up." Hope that made sense. I'm a heavy RPer, I guess I'm saying. I like it the most when we go three sessions without rolling a die, and then have a climactic battle with a BBEG, only to have him get the town guard on us because he's the Crown Prince or somesuch.
Personally, I think she may be thinking this way (anticombat AND violence, for those that asked) because the last adventure she was in was the Demon's God Fane, which when you get down to it was a small amount of RPing, and then a dungeon crawl. She missed the adventure we just played, the Bastion of Broken Souls, which has a much higher RP to hacknslash ratio. I think in actuality she would be happy with a campaign that was more like the latter, but I don't want to simply brush her off, I would like to give her options/consider her comments/etc.
Three things I've thought of:
Threat of physical harm is one of the simplest and easiest to work with plot devices out there, I think. Call it a crutch or an old stand by, it's intrinsic to the D&D mechanics because it's intrinsic to the D&D style of adventure.
You want to have no possibility of violence or whatever, it would be simplest to either not have numerical rules at all, or use another system (Suggestions I have so far are Amber, 7th Sea, and Storyteller. Any others? I don't really see how GURPS is more helpful than D&D, but then I haven't played it).
The decision to engage in physical violence is almost ENTIRELY the PCs choice. This is what really gets me. If the DM puts a dungeon crawl right in front of them, the PCs do NOT have to take it. They can decide to visit their grandmothers or something, and as long as it's in character, that's great! Fantastic, even! Even when faced with an adventure that's supposed to have a fair amount of combat in it (My players don't read:
I intend to run U1-3 and then the Slave Lords megamodule, for reference
), there are generally plenty of ways to get around violence. Maybe she really has a problem with one or two people in our group who just want to hit things and literally start playing games on their cell phones when something plot-driven comes up.
Ok, anyone reading my above statements can see that the best thing to do is to drop the players who hate RP (Already doing. We're going to different parts of the state and all.), tell the player that it's her character's decision to get into or stay in combat, and then do my best to maximize RP while minimize beating things. However, I do still want to give her resources, in case that isn't good enough, so that she can could GM her own thing.
Does "no combat" mean that the PC's could walk into a bank and rob the place and the security guard or police couldn't try and stop them because of the "no combat" stricture?
How are they going to rob the place without the possibility of combat? The metagamist aspects either work both ways, or they don't work, but it doesn't sound like this player would be abusing it.
Eltern said:
I don't really see how GURPS is more helpful than D&D, but then I haven't played it
