H-hey Veeky Forums, tell me a story...

They spend 4-6 hours arguing about how to do things and then go off in different directions, some of which are mutually exclusive.

Often I just start swording problems before they can get involved now just so the session will get something done that night.

I would like to have a party that has more characters of the "fight" than the "flight" type for once. I would also like to have encounters that are actually possible to realistically beat instead of being just another reason to run away in a predetermined direction.

Crawl is not something inherently bad. Take a system with decent mechanics, plan varied and challenging encounters and you will actually have fun.

Easy Wish providers are always a trap. Your players have common sense.

I actually don't mind such situations at all, since despite what your animes shown you, men in dangerous situations are usually not at the top of their rhetoric ability or social common sense. All the IRL brawls I've been into that had any words uttered would read like cringefests in a verbatim record.

One time I downed an asshole and proceeded to kick the shit out of him, all while yelling (translation) "YA PRRRRROSTITUTE!!!"
Not "asshole", "fucker", "bitch", "bastard" or "whore" or anything like that in my language. "Prostitute". It's worse an insult in my language than in English.

"Worse" as in "a poor insult", ofc.

There was this short campaign that lasted two sessions. Don't even know if you would call this a campaign. Anyway, the party consisted of two guys, me and a pal. It was probably because of this that it wend so well, we are friends for many years and barely argue.

Because we were only two guys, we couldn't just storm the manor, fight against forces ten or twenty times bigger than ours and rescue the children with the sheer force of violence. We had to infiltrate this place by accepting their hospility, find out where the kids are, why they are held hostage, seek allies and ultimately secretely free the children before the sun rises.

The GM played this scenario a lot, but this is the first time he actually had to read up about all the npcs and how it looks inside the manor. All the other groups before us just waited until it's night, sneaked in and stabbed everyone in their sleep. But we had to be clever, plan shit, not everything worked, but it was a lot of fun.

In a campaign I played in a few years back, the party was fighting with this group of legendary thieves and smugglers that were trying to steal a bunch of magical relics from around the world. They seemed like bad dudes, so about half the campaign was us travelling places and foiling their plans (the other half was side quests). Finally, when all the artifacts were either in the party's possession or held by the leader of the thieves, my character got a chance to speak with him. I asked him why he wanted them.

He responded that they were the keys to open a gate to another realm (interplanar travel doesn't work in our setting) and his group just wanted to explore another world. They were so bored with this world and its mundane politics, they just wanted to find a new place where they weren't wanted criminals with massive bounties on their heads. The game ended with us giving them the relics, wishing them well, and the whole thieves' guild passing through the portal for realms unknown. In return we got to return all the stolen relics and national treasures they'd collected over the past few decades, after all they didn't have any value in another realm that didn't know their historical significance.

I can't really overstate how satisfying it can be to just talk with a foe and then bury the hatchet. We spent months in-game fighting these guys because we assumed that thieves and criminals were just villains who needed to be stopped, and they assumed that a group of mercenary adventurers would never be willing to negotiate with wanted criminals. When we watched them pass through that portal it was just so cathartic.

Since then, every character I play tries to reason with their enemies before fighting them. They'll fight and kill if they have to, but I've learned that I prefer ending conflict with words, not swords.

Everyone else in my group invariably plays murderhobos who think that death threats constitute diplomacy.

>the party was fighting with this group of legendary thieves and smugglers that were trying to steal a bunch of magical relics from around the world.
So was your party trying to stop Carmen Sandiego?

The BBEG did in fact use the well, that's why he's the BBEG.

And the wishes wouldn't have been poisoned because granting the wishes would have poisoned the BBEG's wish, which is what the well is actually trying to do, because the BBEG fucked the well over.

I've been in multiple games where combat was not the default option (though it has almost always been the backup plan, outranking both "run" and "surrender" so grain of salt, I guess)

In a deadlands campaign we usually just shot the monsters, but one player was a fast talking reporter who managed to schmooze his way into the underbelly of a town run by a vampire-backed rail baron, and my black hat gunslinger successfully negotiated with a hostileindian tribe by shooting one of our allies in the foot to shut him up as he started spouting invectives at our hosts.

in another campaign run in ORE where combat is somewhere between crippling and lethal most of the time and in a setting where magical healing is rare and still pretty lame when it does show up, we've been in more fights than we probably should have. still, the brains and mouth of the party do what they can via stealth subterfuge and giant bloated boldfaced lies. So far one of them is gaining fame as the lord of a far off land and the other has aquired all manner of information about unholy magical bullshit.

Finally, I recently joined a supers game after one player dropped out. as the son of a filthy stinking rich family who has bought his way out if every problem he's ever had I immediately went full on fast-talking face of the party and managed to avoid any major conflicts after aninitial ambush as we made out way off a hostile colony on mars that the rest of the party had originally shown up to ostensibly do legitimate business on. even before I showed up there was a lot of wounding security guards and subsequently threatening civilians into not starting shit, and one instance of a guy with a duplication ability shooting one of himself in the leg and throwing the victim into a crowded infirmary as a distraction.

From an Exalted game, me and a couple of player's I'd never met and the DM we all knew running a party of Infernals:
> Be tasked with taking over a salt mining town
> There's some funky shit going on
> Head to Casino run by a Godblood
> I do some smooth talking to the Godblood
> Seems to be working
> Handoff to party Fiend to let them put the social moves on him
> The Fiend immediately makes demands the guy will never agree to
> Internal Headdesk to infinity
> He attacks
> Slayer gibs him
> Herpaderp
> Lesson learned
> I am apparently the party face
> Despite being crafting themed
> Oh well time to reck shit up with my clever words
Later
> Bullshit Local God into think we're Solars
> Persuade Hothead Kid of an Abyssal who far out powers our party to disarm himself as part of a plan to infiltrate the god's stronghold
> It works
> We murder the shit out of the god
> Persuade Abyssal to leave and do his thing elsewhere
> He goes
> We own the town now

It can work out pretty good if you know the group dynamic.
In the group I play in that runs L5R each player has a favour type of adventure theme/s. We suggest what sort of thing we're in the mood for and the DM gives us a couple of options to choose from that fit those. For example one of the players really likes combat, so every second mod or so we choose one with combat as one of its defining parts. The system works well for us.

Basically, if Carmen Sandiego carried a sniper rifle, used bricks of c4, and was a massive edgelord. Also if she had worse fashion sense. I think Lupin III is a closer comparison to be honest.

You seem to think that the players can read your mind, OP.

Pro GM tip: they can't, and PCs as a rule are risk-averse if they're smart, which means not using the weird well was the smartest thing to do.

This plot is stupid, as legendary thieves could probably used a third party to mediate the rent of artifacts from their respective owners for a legal expedition to another world. This would probably take longer and provide much more of a challenge (they are BORED of this world, aren't they?), but causing much less collateral suffering.

If they knew they could obtain the artifacts legally and still went for the easy route, they fucking deserved a smacking.

I understand they weren't aware of the second line.

BUT

Their current odds should have been perceived as worse than risking the well.

>hi, yes I am an internationally wanted criminal. I'd like to rent the hope diamond from you, what's your going rate?

It's interesting. Depending on how it's done and who's doing it can work well.

Right now I'm in a pokemon RPG. I started off as a "follow the plot hooks, go in head first" kind of character but I learned that was remarkably fatal for pokemon.

Now me and one other guy are practicing our politics, conning Team Rocket and the other NPCs we come across while the other three party members get exploded. Because we talk instead of fight, we keep our pokemon, they lose them.

>third parties
>bribes
>forged identities
>promises of exploitation of the new world
Such people can work well above the law, and they can do it without stepping on all the people who don't in the process.

Of course, I don't know the context, but "Stealing a bunch of magical relics@Nobody gets hurt in the process" sounds anime-tier to me.

Now that she can phase between planes, we'll never be able to find her.

If I was a player I would not have chanced the well no matter how dire the circumstances were, everything has a cost is usually a really good rule to follow, so free wishes are never really free, but the cost may come up to bite you in the ass at a very bad time. Like wish for something that seems good to do, let's say save a bunch of people that died, that seems like a good thing to do in the short term, but these people coming back without warning or reason would cause a lot of panic, confusion, and could lead to a lot of issues including good shortages, food shortages, ect. Or we go the route that the wish alters reality so they never died, but who dies in their place, was the thing they died for important to die for? If it was then what was the result of them not being there to die?
Wishes are not something most players will take without a very valid reason, or clear indication of what will happen as a result of their actions.

>Gods forbid something interesting and unexpected occur!

Not even once. Have you ever played with a 3.5 Diplomancer?

>Conscious risk of existence being rewritten as we know it.
>Good idea
Pick one

My DM leaves universe altering artifacts lying around all the time and we can totally fuck up the entire multiverse anytime. And I'm pretty sure we have, or came close to (hello Mike).

It's interesting as fuck. There's also a dude that's split into several aspects of himself and calling him is a gamble cause we could reach any of them and not all are friendly.

>My DM leaves universe altering artifacts lying around all the time and we can totally fuck up the entire multiverse anytime.
Your dm sound like shit and I hope Mike stabs you in the chest

Pretty boring. Not enough fight scenes.

not that guy but you sound like you hate fun

Comic books arent that sharp, Mike's got nothing on me.

Well, since Diplomacy takes at least 10 turns, you can avoid this the same way you do in Exalted, hit them with your sword before they mind control you with their words.

Did that a lot in Exalted to avoid getting raped in social combat.

>since Diplomacy takes at least 10 turns
It's a mere -10 penalty to make it 1 turn.

Your diplomancers suck.

You were giving them wishes on a silver platter. You never trust a silver platter!

Then you just have to win init and hit them before they can start talking, I guess. Or ready an action.

"I shoot the pretty guy in the throat if he even opens his stupid mouth."

silver playters make fine improvised shields and bludgeons. I would trust my life to one in a pinch.

You can do it as a standard action with some builds.

>Tell me what it's like to have a party that actually uses their words instead of applying swords to everything until it stops moving.

Generally it leads to the party thinking they can talk their way out of things and you have to kick their shit in and break them. Make them fight for their lives.

Can't let players have a comfort zone and waltz through things. It's your job to shake shit up.

>Veeky Forums reminds us once again that everyone else fucking sucks at playing pretend

I have a pretty well-adjusted party, the most autistic thing that happens at the table is one guy tries to fish for extra feats/bonuses, luckily our DM isn't a complete cuck so I don't have any Veeky Forums-tier stories of woe

>the table seats two dudes and their wives.
>some nights we (especially the new player/dms wife) are bloodthirsty murder hobos and cut our way through baddies without asking why
>most nights we have more fun choosing choices choosy choosers choose. Like normal people who don't like injury.
For example:
>Rogue opens a door and we peek through to see a bunch of baddies playing cards at a table.
>they don't notice us
>Rogue closes the door.
>we move on
>this moment becomes our guiding icon for future encounters