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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6181206" data-attributes="member: 5143">I'm running the game.  When I start games, they start like this: "Hello everyone, I want to run a D&D game.  I've got this cool dungeon that I've been writing up for the last year.  I'll be a lot of fun for everyone to explore.  Who wants to play?"Then I start games with a background and setup that encourages going on the adventure I created.  Something like "You are all seated around a table, talking to the Gnome who contacted you last week about a map he had found that leads to the Dungeon of Ultimate DOOM and about the artifact that he would like you to retrieve from inside.  You were all out of work and out of luck so you all decided to show up and hear him out."Sure, it's possible that one or two people decide to be difficult and abandon the adventure hook and set up entirely.  But it's unlikely.  And even if one or two people decide to wander off on their own as long as the majority of people agree, I can tell the one or two people that decided not to go that their characters have now left the game to go do their own thing and they can roll up new characters if they'd like.  However, the rest of the group has decided to go on this adventure so if they object as PLAYERS to us playing this adventure...well, they should leave the group now.Doesn't seem like they'd contribute that much.  This entire scenario goes against so many D&D assumptions, I don't even know where to start.Firstly, my first rule and the assumption of every adventure written for D&D, ever, is pretty much the same thing: "You are adventurers.  Your primary job is solving dangerous problems for other people.  You are the people everyone calls when Orcs attack a town, when the magic well starts glowing strangely and Ghosts come out of it, or when there is an item hidden in some out of the way dangerous place.  Make up a character that reflects that.  Imagine what skills your character should have to deal with these types of situations."Either way, if we assume that isn't the case and "make up whatever characters you want" is the rule of the day.  What gives this child the ability to hide and sneak well?  Is there a class he's taking to give himself these skills without gaining combat skill at the same time?  What happens the first time he scouts ahead and one of the enemies spots him and wins initiative?  Does he just die?  If so, does the player get frustrated by dying?  Or does he just roll up another character who is a boy with no combat skills who scouts ahead?  If so, what happens when that one dies the same way?That's correct.  Not everyone focuses on it.  But it's what D&D does.  Name a single published adventure in any edition of D&D that can be entirely accomplished without a single fight(or at least the possibility of a fight if the party makes one bad stealth roll or wrong decision).  Heck, name one that didn't assume an average of at least one fight a day.  Most of them involved an average of 5-10 fights a day.There are adventures that INVOLVE all those things, yes.  None of them can be accomplished without pulling out weapons and killing things.I freely admit that some people have taken the D&D rules and said "Hey, I like these rules, but what if the game wasn't about fighting at all and instead was about something else.  I'm going to run that game."  I bet it is even fun and was so much fun that they continued to use the D&D rules to run that game for years.It's structure is almost identical to Living Greyhawk.  Living Greyhawk became like this very quickly.  Each time our group of players for LG came close to dying and there was someone sub-optimal in our group, everyone would spend the next week complaining to them about it.  They would be offered every suggestion in the book to improve their character so that no one died next week.  If they didn't change their characters and take the advice, they'd be publicly shamed over and over again about how bad their character was.No one wanted to die.  Monsters were super hard and a misstep would cause someone to die.The player can control their PC within limits.  You don't get to play a Jedi in D&D.  You don't get to play a Ancient Red Dragon if the DM doesn't want that in his game.  You can't play a Kender if they don't exist in this DMs world.If the PCs are in the middle of a quest to throw the One Ring into Mordor, playing a blacksmith who refuses to leave home because he's happy there means you won't be involved in the game in any way.  That character is simply not appropriate.The DM sets the parameters for the game.  Sometimes the game system itself sets a number of parameters as well.My point is that each game has a tone it's built for.  It sounds like you haven't played many of them so you may not know this.  Call of Cthulhu is a horror game where you run away from enemies and solve problems using mostly non-combat methods because its system builds only characters who are bad at combat.  Which is rather the opposite of D&D, which creates characters who are good at combat.That's why I said it was about all 3 of those things.  Dungeons are a heavy theme.  That's why it's in the name of the game.  However, it's possible to use only the other two: Defeating monsters and solving problems that require larger than life abilities to solve and still have a D&D game.I'm guessing that swashbuckling adventure involves being attacked by pirates, exploring strange islands(possibly filled with strange, dangerous creatures, and ancient temples with evil magic...also known as dungeons), and solving strange magical situations.City adventures often have ambushes in back alleys, monsters in the sewers, plots to solve and eventually do battle with the perpetuaters, and battles with Wizards in their towers.It's certainly possible to run political intrigue games.  However, none of the rules really assist with this in any way.  You don't need rules to talk.  So, political intrigue games can literally be run in ANY system.  In PHB only 1e D&D, doing so required almost literally throwing away your character sheet except for spells and thief skills since nothing else applied.Nothing can FORCE you to play any way.  If you choose to be a 1e Fighter in a game with no fighting at all, your character sheet gives you no useful abilities at all.  However, the class is designed to fight things.  There is an entire Monster Manual where 90% of the information contained therein will be useless in your game.The rules encourage you to run a game where you fight these monsters, that's the point of giving you combat abilities and having a list of monsters to fight.I believe you can rest easy that D&D will not FORCE you to play that way any more than any other edition of D&D has.On the other hand, I don't want the reverse to be true either.  I don't want there to be NO monster manual simply because a couple of people say "We don't have battles in my D&D game and I don't want them to publish a book that encourages that."I don't believe you.  I've tried it.  It ALWAYS ends up with at least one party member bored out of his mind and leaving the table to go play SNES because: "My character doesn't like to sneak around, so he'll wait at the inn while you guys do this."What can I do in a political intrigue adventure with a charisma of 8, intelligence of 8, and a big sword and animal hides on me?  Also, my character hates people, has lived in the woods all his life, and doesn't understand or care about culture or politics.  Also, keep in mind that our DMs always enforce roleplaying your stats.  Any good ideas I come up with are likely to be met with "Your character has an Int of 8, you are too stupid to come up with that."Also, as I mention above, you don't need rules to support talking.  You can talk without rules.  Not sure what you want the rules to do to support this type of game....other than ruining my game by adding in options to play completely non-combat characters.I don't think this is possible.  Many players styles simply are not compatible with other player's styles: One character would like to go to the inn and see if there are any rumors of nearby dungeons to go into and find treasure in.  The rest of the party is playing courtiers who are vying for power in the Royal Court and are very concerned about who will marry the princess and which play will be put on at the Festival next week.The PCs in the court absolutely refuse to go into a dungeon, their characters wouldn't want to get their clothes dirty and it would be considered uncouth.  The PC who wants to go into the dungeon hates pompous nobles and politics and refuses to set foot in the court for any reason.How do you run this adventure without telling one of the players to roll up a new character and without concentrating on any one character for longer than 10 minutes at a time to avoid boring everyone else at the table?Puzzles don't need rules.  But they exist in many, many published D&D adventures.  So, they are supported in terms of "The creators of D&D published ideas as to what the average thing that players would be doing in D&D and that involved puzzles" way.Though, I don't mean puzzles to necessarily be the riddle kind.  I mean "puzzles" in terms of "Everyone in this town is acting strangely, figure out why" or "There are strange people in black robes wandering around the forest, figure out who they are and what they want."  Puzzles are often the primary motivators for adventures.  Even wilderness and city adventures.Either way, even if we are talking about typical riddle adventures...they can involve anyone.  Solving riddles might not be for everyone, that's true.  Which is why when I introduce them I make sure they can be solved in less than 10 minutes and we can move on to something else.  Everyone has things they don't like.  Which is why any adventure that concentrates on one thing for too long ends up alienating certain types of players.  I might do part of one session as a political intrigue...but I'd move on quickly to avoid boring those people who don't like political intrigue.  I'll run part of a session as "exploring the wilderness" but I'll have the PCs find something they can fight or talk to on a regular basis because "You head north for a day and then set up camp" gets boring after a while.The goal is to have enough of everything to satisfy every type of player while not concentrating on anything long enough to make any of the other players bored.  Unfortunately, that's not entirely possible.  Inevitably, the game still needs a core experience that all players need to be involved in.  In D&D, that's fighting.    There's too much time in a session and battles take too long for it to be possible to accommodate players who absolutely hate combat without alienating those who like it.As a side note, to me Wilderness and City adventures are simply dungeons with different dressing.  My point isn't that D&D should be all about dungeons.  It's that the core of the D&D experience is:  Find out about a problem, investigate that problem, fight the people responsible for it, take their stuff.  Whether that problem is in a city, forest, or dungeon is rather inconsequential.</blockquote>

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