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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 3825459" data-attributes="member: 31454">And I think that this is important to address the point pemerton made about being able to challenge the player, even if the characters themselves aren't particularly at-risk. A non-mechanical example of this would be a puzzle like the riddle at the entrance to Moria in Fellowship. In a roleplaying game, you could say that the characters in the Fellowship were at little mechanical risk in this challenge, but it still served as a challenge for their players. In more-mechanical examples, something like a chase (with actual chase rules, which include different options for catching/evading) where the PCs must capture an enemy before he gets out of the city. Odds are, the PCs are in very little mechanical risk in such an encounter, but it can still be a very exciting challenge to the players, who need to plan their chase carefully if they want to aprehend their target.Another version of this would be "social combat". I ran something very much like this in an New X-Men/Academy X M&M game, where the PCs were trying to convince a young mutant to come to Xavier's while Magneto tried to coerce the young mutant into joining his side. The PCs were at zero mechanical risk in this encounter, as this was more of a "charming revolutionary" Magneto than a "psychopathic mass-murderer" Magneto. The worst case scenario would not result in any sort of mechanical risk to the PCs: they'd only lose a story-based resource in the form of a new student to their enemy. Each side attempted opposed checks (mostly Diplomacy, but also Bluffing and Intimidating at times) to persuade the boy to join them. This challenged the players to come up with arguments for why a child should come to Xavier's instead of joining Magneto without any mechanical risk whatsoever to the characters.It's certainly possible to challenge the players without necessarily risking the PCs.</blockquote>

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