NON-Action/Adventure Games

[RobShanti]

Has anyone ever run a roleplaying game that was NOT an Action/Adventure story? If so, what gaming system did you use, and what was your plot?

Cthulhu is the closest thing I can think of to non-Action/Adventure, but even that tends to include some adventure story elements.

 

[steenan]

One of the best and most emotionally intensive sessions I played was a Vampire: the Masquerade game. While it had parts that can be classified as "adventure", they really only served to frame the important part: our interactions with a girl we abducted and with our prince who wanted her changed into a vampire. Exploring and confronting our backgrounds and beliefs, trying to understand and persuade. It climaxed with our group letting the girl go and my character telling the prince that, no matter how powerful, he had no right to decide her fate.

In Nobilis campaign, there were sessions full of adventure, but also sessions completely focusing on politics or metaphysics, with no action scenes at all. For example, one session focused on exploring the fact that one of the characters brought an alien entity into being by making a photo of it and on his emotional relation to this entity, then on judging if a beautiful illusion is better or worse than a painful life and how it corresponds to Excrucians accusing all of our reality of being a lie and illusion. I don't remember how the players untangled it, but they did, somehow.

There were more such games, but these two I remember in most details.

 

[Razjah]

If you don't consider Noir part of the action/adventure genre, I ran a Burning Wheel game that was the best game I have run. The three PCs were looking for the Silver Dove because whichever noble family had possession could make a claim to rule the city-state. Most of the "adventure" involved the PCs trying to swindle and scheme their way through the city because fighting would be a terrible option. When one PC tried to betray the others it was great! He ended up getting assassinated, but the betrayal was such an awesome climatic moment.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm also on board with thinking that CoC comes the closest. Investigation, which may or may not have much action.

If you're talking about running an rpg romantic comedy or procedural drama or something, I don't know of any.

Is it untapped, but potentially fruitful territory? Yes.

 

[Ratskinner]

I dunno it you'd count horror as amongst action/adventure, but certainly there are games that shoot for that.

Personally, the rpg that I've found is the least action/adventure is Gumshoe. Its not uncommon for violence to happen only in the final scenes, and its not even absolutely necessary then.

Fiasco is also not particularly action/adventure...but I'm not sure it counts as an rpg.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Primetime Adventures is the best I can think of.

 

[RobShanti]

Good plots, folks! Well done!

You raise an interesting query, Ahnehnois. What about RomComs or procedural dramas? Has anyone ever tried something along these lines?

 

[Razjah]

Not a RomCom or procedural drama, but there is the MAID RPG. Linkify!

Dogs in the Vineyard? I've never played it, but this could perhaps be something to look into.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Thought of another possibility. What about Monsterhearts? I know very little about the system, though.

 

[Celebrim]

Has anyone ever run a roleplaying game that was NOT an Action/Adventure story?

No.

Cthulhu is the closest thing I can think of to non-Action/Adventure, but even that tends to include some adventure story elements.

Some? Sorry, but it seems to me to be all action/adventure elements. I suppose there are some instances of horror genera stories that are not action/adventure, but I can think of no instances of CoC that would fit that description. I feel I'm not speaking your language here. What defines action/adventure for you? What wouldn't be one?

A game that wasn't action/adventure would need to:

a) Not feature violence as a mode of conflict or conflict resolution. The characters might work in an ER, and occasionally treat the victims of violence, but wouldn't settle disputes in this manner.
b) Not feature the PC's directly under the threat of violence beyond the sort of accidents or low level arguments people ordinarily face.
c) Would focus on things that are ordinary and mundane. Normal domestic life, for example.
d) Would focus more on how characters feel than what they do, or at least as much on how they feel as what they do.
e) Would be primarily trying to engender in the players some feeling other than excitement or anything related to it (fear, for example when we are speaking of something other than anxiety or nervousness).

I think there are systems that might occasionally tread outside of the action/adventure genera for extended periods depending on the group playing them. Blue Rose, for example, could play that way for an extended period, as could My Life with Master. In theory, many of the World of Darkness ':' games were aiming for that, but I think in practice seldom achieved it. A lot of indie game seem intended to play largely outside the action/adventure drama until reaching some sort of dramatic conclusion, where they switch focus.