I DMed my first adventure recently, and wasn’t super confident managing all the mechanics of combat. Instead I designed a “murder mystery” style one-shot with a great deal of investigation and puzzles. It lead to some great character development, a very rich story, and everyone enjoyed themselves. I think the key is balance across a whole campaign, not necessarily in each individual session.
That's awesome. I agree, if you don't have combat, or minimal combat, in one session, it may take up the whole next session. Having fun is the whole point.
Yes. Of course one *can* have fun running sessions of D&D5e and PF without any combat, provided one recognises that this is working against the assumptions of those systems and the culture that - from what I’ve observed - those assumptions generate in a high proportion of players and GMs.
Consider this; you (rightly, in this context) provide a list of techniques in order to increase the chances of a combat-free session being enjoyable. The very fact that social encounters or RP or however you want to describe it needs such a check-list when running D&D and PF is revealing. I don’t think one would find it necessary to come up with a comparable list of ‘do’s and dont’s’ for a combat orientated session or game (apart from all that advice proffered to off-set the tendency of combat in those systems to become really, really dull).
This is because the mechanics of those systems generally presume combat is central and ‘the best bit’ so it’s not surprising that the player base absorbs that lesson and creates characters and directs them to act accordingly. GMs inevitably respond by providing the type of challenges their players desire and for which their characters are built. The result is a culture in which the question even has to be asked ‘can you have a fun RPG session without combat?’ The answer should be, self-evidently, ‘Yes!’ But it doesn’t appear to be self-evident to a large proportion of the hobby.
Arguments over subjective play-style preferences are the curse of the TTRPG hobby, and I’m not making any statement about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ at the table in any objective sense. If people want to hit things with heavy lumps of metal week-in, week-out, have at it. But I do think that, to know what one’s own preferences are, one has to be exposed to other ways of playing and the sheer ubiquity of D&D, its core assumptions and its massive influence on the hobby hinders that process.
Well explained. Yes, just doing my part to help newer (and older) DMs understand that just because one pillar of your session is missing, the game does not collapse. Here's to expanding the horizons of gaming.
I DMed my first adventure recently, and wasn’t super confident managing all the mechanics of combat. Instead I designed a “murder mystery” style one-shot with a great deal of investigation and puzzles. It lead to some great character development, a very rich story, and everyone enjoyed themselves. I think the key is balance across a whole campaign, not necessarily in each individual session.
That's awesome. I agree, if you don't have combat, or minimal combat, in one session, it may take up the whole next session. Having fun is the whole point.
Yes. Of course one *can* have fun running sessions of D&D5e and PF without any combat, provided one recognises that this is working against the assumptions of those systems and the culture that - from what I’ve observed - those assumptions generate in a high proportion of players and GMs.
Consider this; you (rightly, in this context) provide a list of techniques in order to increase the chances of a combat-free session being enjoyable. The very fact that social encounters or RP or however you want to describe it needs such a check-list when running D&D and PF is revealing. I don’t think one would find it necessary to come up with a comparable list of ‘do’s and dont’s’ for a combat orientated session or game (apart from all that advice proffered to off-set the tendency of combat in those systems to become really, really dull).
This is because the mechanics of those systems generally presume combat is central and ‘the best bit’ so it’s not surprising that the player base absorbs that lesson and creates characters and directs them to act accordingly. GMs inevitably respond by providing the type of challenges their players desire and for which their characters are built. The result is a culture in which the question even has to be asked ‘can you have a fun RPG session without combat?’ The answer should be, self-evidently, ‘Yes!’ But it doesn’t appear to be self-evident to a large proportion of the hobby.
Arguments over subjective play-style preferences are the curse of the TTRPG hobby, and I’m not making any statement about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ at the table in any objective sense. If people want to hit things with heavy lumps of metal week-in, week-out, have at it. But I do think that, to know what one’s own preferences are, one has to be exposed to other ways of playing and the sheer ubiquity of D&D, its core assumptions and its massive influence on the hobby hinders that process.
Well explained. Yes, just doing my part to help newer (and older) DMs understand that just because one pillar of your session is missing, the game does not collapse. Here's to expanding the horizons of gaming.