Non combat roleplaying encounters?

true, but often that's only really interesting in terms of how it impacts how your character interacts with the world as a result. Maybe we learn that your character was the son of a master craftsman who would spend years perfecting a single item and as a consequence, your character takes a very careful and patient approach to handling most situations. We need to see the backstory in action for it to mean anything.

That's like saying "is it a good idea to roleplay in a roleplaying game ?"

>Straitjacketing your players into whatever you've determined they WILL run into so you can masturbate to your shitty novel.
Yeah, no.

There's a lot of prep work that goes into an NPC unrelated to any sort of story. I can definitely force them to run into things but that doesn't mean they'll do shit about it. Maybe they'll murderhobo it, not a problem. Definitely wouldn't try to asspull names, descriptions, backgrounds, some baseline shit not directly related to NPC that they can get out of him, etc. That would be completely retarded.

You can definitely do this if you know what you're doing, just like any kind of improvisation. One of the best session of my on-going Cthulhu campaign was a completely improvised halloween party in London (pc's were like "hey, it's halloween, shouldn't there be a party somewhere ? You're a noble after all, you must have been invited somewhere"). The pc's had the opportunity to develop their character, I've added strange encounters, they were able to gather information on several elements of the scenario... It was also a good moment to introduce the etiquette of the english aristocracy.

that's how half of the npc's from my campaigns are born, the other being prepared. It doesn't mean that you add them on the run that they cannot be useful later and become important, also you can without any problem link them easily to other characters. You just need to take notes of what you add. The thing is, when you are acustomed to do so, players don't even see the difference between random npcs and "true" npc

For that sort of situation I have a couple sheets of randoms laying around to keep track of whatever might come up. I'm not going to be writing down notes all game long on stupid crap like who showed up at a spontaneous halloween party encounter. They're prepped but not defined in game context.

Like I said to other guy, too much writing down. I'm fine with keeping notes on what happened or who they ended up being in the game context but time spent writing shit is time not spent on players.

>There's a lot of prep work that goes into an NPC unrelated to any sort of story.
There doesn't need to be.

> I can definitely force them to run into things
And you shouldn't.

>Definitely wouldn't try to asspull names, descriptions, backgrounds, some baseline shit not directly related to NPC that they can get out of him, etc.
Like I said, you're new, so it's understandable that you can't do this yet, but it's definitely the ideal you should be aspiring to.
That would be completely retarded.

I'm a relatively new DM, so I may know nothing and be talking out my ass. What I do is keep a back log of NPCs made up so I have something to work off of for encounters, but I generally improv the encounters themselves. It's also worth noting that most of my NPCs are story/character relevant, which is why I try to have at least a little work put into them before I throw them into the campaign.

I flat out refuse to asspull details that might come up in the future AND flat out refuse to constantly track that shit with constant note taking.

Doesn't mean I'm going to write a paragraph of flavor text but I might put outline a basic physical description, some minor background information, stats are stupid easy where applicable if only because eventually yes some murderhobo will take them out.

As for forcing encounters, they might ignore/murder/completely misread what I had intended to put him there to do and those are all fine but encounters are why DMs exist. I don't understand what the fuck you think someone should do instead of making encounters, are you one of the PF table-fetishists?

I've made due with some other board game cards that happened to have portraits on them and paperclipping them to blank character sheets. Worked out fine.

Just to answer to that, I don't stop the game to write down everything, I simply add the name of the npc while talking and after the session I add everything that's seem important for this npc, idea and stuff (or sometimes I do nothing because, yeah, I know he was definitely just a random npc that will never show up again).

But I agree, well prepared npc are most of the time way better than improvised ones

Most of your encounters should be noncombat. If you're planning out sessions encounter-by-encounter you're almost certainly doing it wrong.

I never KNOW someone won't show up again. I call back to the random encounter shit any chance I can get.
>So the you saw a short red headed farmer type leaving the scene?
>That sounds like that random guy we met that one time!
And that brings about deeper plots and rewards and they know better than to ignore "obviously random encounter" NPCs in the future. I will totally shamelessly asspull plot hooks though if the players want to run with something.

It's a good idea, but the problem is that you're still thinking in terms of combat and non-combat encounter. Ideally, you should just make encounters, and leave them to the players to solve. That's not to say you shouldn't make encounters where violence is the most likely solution, or probably the best solution, but you should always be open to the idea of your players finding better solutions.

Well, the most important is to have fun, so if your players have fun and you have fun too, there's no problem, it's just one way of DMing.

yup, a good example beeing the classic "ambushed by bandits". You can make a simple "as you are walking on the road, an arrow pass just before your eyes ! An ambush !" or make a bandit stopping them on the road, telling them they're watched by many of his friends in the trees, but maybe they can talk their way out. You even have the possibility to flesh out the bandit who talks that may escape and come back later, and so on

>Single bandit
>Stops an armed adventuring party
>Claims they're surrounded
>Demands a peasant sized pittance of gold
>100% bluff

I'd roll with that motherfucker if he survived.

My personal favorite is the small troupe of actors who've donned stage armor and weapons to intimidate passersby into paying them. They have no actual combat ability, of course.

>Roll to detect cardboard & tinfoil
Jolly good.

I completely agree with you. When I talked about "obviously random and useless" I was mostly talking about stuff like a waiter in a restaurant, some random students in a study room... That were not sufficiently memorable for the pc to grasp and want to meet again.

Show don't tell is great in books or movies. Around a table if you force your players into spur of the moment decisions they will make a player's choice, not a character one.

To get them into a place where they can show you who their character is, they need to be tricked into telling you about who that character is in the first place. Talking about your backstory reminds you that it exists.

would be truly a great encounter

Yes but
>Random NPC waitress in a restaurant
>Not sufficiently memorable to attract a Bard
You know it will come up eventually. Better get prepared. Now that you mention it though I'm going to have to flesh out some of my random shops, too.

The Falx is a sorely underused weapon.

Sounds like a good idea. Players often forget the RP in RPG. Its good to expand on the players motives and as GM you should build on them and utilise the info for encounters and quests.

Avenging a dead family/friend/military unit/topiary is easy. Redemption, invention and fame are also good jumping off points.

I'll just add that it might be great, sometimes, to simply show. I'll take an easy example, a pc who is afraid of water because he almost drown when he was a kid, or something like that. You can have a moment where he doesn't want to cross the river by swimming, and have nice character interaction, while he try to hide his past and find justification about why they shouldn't cross here.

Yeah, ignoring npc is definitely a difficult science and giving straight example might not be the best... It's more something that I feel.

On fleshing shops, I think a good exercise is to try to describe real shops you already know (well, interesting shops like an antiquarian, a special pub...), it helped me a lot in description in general, even for more "unconventional" shops.

I wasn't planning on doing more than a name+concept, I can throw NPCs or anything at it later but like...
>a gourmet/novelty-food restaurant with a members only aristocrat trophy hunting club on the second floor

Could work something silly like that into any sort of medium-large town or story of any size. That's even a bit more than I wanted as a description though. 10 or so names with a couple-word mini-concept would hold me for forever. That's the sort of prep work I'm talking about. Like those little mini writing-cues.

90% of designing pubs, taverns, inns, and shops is finding the right name.

Agreed

Yeah, without a doubt a really difficult thing to do !

My favorite part of our most recent campaign was an in-game two-month long caravan trip between Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep. While there was a bit of occasional combat, it was basially six or seven sessions of straight roleplaying. It was fantastic.

I've been married to both the name and the design of the Drunk Duck Inn that Wizards of the Coast released like fifteen years ago.

>unsociable people

My GM insists in bringing his autistic weabo gf. She barely talks, it's almost as if she isn't around.
Answers questions when we try to talk to her with just 1 word and never interacts with anything. Freaking annoying.
I wouldn't be surprised if she browsed Veeky Forums.

Actually, I'm a huge fan of the smoldering corpse bar from Planescape, it has such an eerie feeling, plus the kind of place that is almost finding you, rather than you finding it...

Well, imagine it's the asociable and mysterious ranger in the group. If only one person is like this, you can roll with that (unless she start to that guying)

I have a friend of mine that for some reason is really into pathfinder society and he is always asking us to join him in a private pfs adventure module that he wants to dm.

>Our native language isn't English
>The motherfucker decides to read what the npcs say straight out from the book, translating it in his head has he goes, like a shitty google translate text.

I am scarred for life.

I hear ya. The hobby attacks people who aren't social due to the nerd label. I just don't understand why anyone who isn't social would think that they could have fun in a hobby that is literally sitting in a room talking with people for hours at a time.

Actually, some of the people I play with are clearly not "social person" but are definitely great at a table, they're just adapted to talk with very specific persons. Also, I had one time a really shy guy who changed completely at the gaming table, playing the face of the group without any problems.

In my most recent group of 4 PCs, two of them are like that. I think they are just coming because the GM told them to try it.
The GM insists on running a pre-written campaign with the lowest effort possible, his characters feel like robots, (probably because he is reading what they say from his notes).
What a trainwreck. I'll probably leave the group soon.

Well, if the GM is bad... Jump from the boat before it sinks

If your group is into it sure. I've had game with a group of friends were a couple times the DM was busy and couldn't actually run the game at that night so we just sat around for several hours roleplaying our characters interacting. Just be careful not to put people too much on the spot forcing them to make up answers then and there. Maybe talk to your players about their characters back ground a bit first to get them thinking about it.

Why do you think this is a new concept OP? You should have encounters like this to begin with, and a good mix of both.