Non-combat encounters

[drdevoid]

I am currently playing in a game where the PCs are trapped in a powerful genie's prison demiplane. Since being exiled there, they have gotten caught up in the demiplane's politics as well as its mythology. The "leader" PC is being viewed as a legendary savior figure by one faction and the party is deliberately playing it up.

But the main conflict comes from trying to leave the demiplane and directly involves who the party partners up with to that end. Their closest ally is the brother of their greatest enemy. They'll need to curry the favor of both or replace them in their positions of power unless they can turn one against the other. It's impossible to leave without the help (or the heads) of both.

We've had maybe 4 combat encounters for the last 5 sessions and they were all minor skirmishes. For what is generally a pretty hack and slash group, we've loved negotiating treaties and attending banquests as well as all the intrigue and subterfuge.

 

[ptolemy18]

In your games, do you ever have encounters with villains that don't result in combat? Do they ever play out as a battle of wits, or an exposition scene? DMs, when you want to run an encounter like this, how do you go about setting it up, and keeping it interesting?

I much prefer it if the characters can meet/talk to the villains before they actually have to fight them. It can lead to entertaining role-playing, and it's very melodramatic.

In my current campaign, the characters met these two mercenaries when they were going into town, who tried to convince the PCs to hire them. One of the mercenaries swiped something from a nearby merchant (using his Rogue skills) and gave it to one of the PCs, just to show he could. The PCs still didn't want to hire them, though, and so the mercenaries left.

After leaving the mercenaries, they decided to ask around for information about the two guys. The PCs found out that they had been kicked out of the army for stealing from some civilian gnomes. Then the PCs (a neutral-evilish bunch) decided to go over to the mercenaries' inn and talk to them, and maybe, maybe steal from them.

They went to the inn (run by some seedy-looking gnomes who were in fact criminals) and talked to the mercenaries. The mercenaries asked where the PCs were headed, but the conversation didn't really go anywhere and the players decided not to rob the mercenaries because they seemed tougher and tougher the more they talked to them. However, before they left the inn, they surreptitiously told the gnomish thugs that the mercenaries had been robbing from gnomes. And then they left.

The next day, they see a bunch of gnomes from the inn walking around in crutches, all bruised. The gnomes attempted to attack the mercenaries but were defeated.

Later on, the very same gnomes track the players down and attack them intending to rob them. The players defeat them.

Then, a few days after THAT, the players are attacked in their beds by the two mercenaries, who have tracked them down because they're pissed off that they tipped off the gnomes.

I just like how they managed to infuriate *both* sets of NPCs by setting them against eachother...

Jason

 

[kigmatzomat]

Sometimes. Rarely. Okay, maybe twice.

Once the players had the McGuffin the BBEG wanted. He'd ambushed them once with a "light" assault force (it involved a tendriculous) and was prepared to do it again weekly. They were discussing things internally and one of them got the bright idea to hang out a white flag. The BBEG sent an (obvious) simulacrum) to negotiate.
The party did a little research and determined the McGuffin would either kill the BBEG or speed up a transformation they wouldn't interfere with intentionally. (It's a divine ascension thing and they, for no reason I can ascertain, see no reason there shouldn't be evil gods in the world as long as they don't have a "kill the world" agenda.) So they gave him the McGuffin.

There were a few encounters where they decided to talk to the dragon and not attack on sight; that was good. They have a very healthy "don't infuriate the dragon" policy.

Once they invaded an "abandoned" wizard's tower and were attacked by the mimics who'd decided after a few generations it was theirs. The party decided negotiation was an option when one summoned a lantern archon.

Mmmm, I haven't really had a whole lot of BBEGs in 18 levels and, IIRC, only one of them has been killed. Well, I differentiate between BBEG and "boss fight." There's been quite a few boss fights. Some aren't evil, though.