Non-Combat Interactions

Anyone have advice on how to get players vested into things besides combat? It seems every time a fight breaks out, my players are suddenly interested, giving all these complex orders and ideas as to how to proceed. But the moment fighting stops, the best I can get are small responses like 'Go to this place', 'Talk to that guy', 'Poke the body'. I want them to explore the environment, find ways to solve puzzles I leave for them. Instead they just piss around until I'm forced to just railroad the game to the next battle just too keep the pace from grinding to a halt. Just what am I doing wrong?

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>Just what am I doing wrong?
still playing dnd?

>Just what am I doing wrong?
You're not making your non-combat sections as interesting as your combat sections. Since they seem to enjoy combat, leave them plot hooks and clues in the non-combat sections that will lead to bigger and better fights.

Thankfully, pavlovian responses are easy to establish in players, but it might take a while to properly train them.

>contrarian troll offers meaningless advice just because his entire purpose on this site is to further some misguided system war agenda

How sad.

>leave them plot hooks and clues in the non-combat sections that will lead to bigger and better fights.
Yeah I've been trying that. Any suggestions, since it seems the hooks I'm leaving get ignored.

For example, the party's going to be investigating a warehouse by the city's seaport, where they hope to find a rogue spy, but I'm planning on them running into a group of turncoats that are trying to open the city's ports to an invading fleet. Got anything to spice up the non-fighty parts?

Give a reason to interact with the world

>Reaction rolls: encounters are not necessarily hostile immediately; foes can be bargained with
>Converting goods to cash. If you have campaign money sinks like training and sages, who want to be paid in gold, but all the PCs have are bolts of silk and spice, they need to find someone to sell it too.

Maybe throw them into a situation where combat would result in a total party kill and they have to desperately negotiate, trick, run, and/or sneak their way out of it. Something where the tension level is as high as combat, but they just haven't come to blows. Also, think of any sort of action/adventure thing that isn't combat. Running away from a boulder, swinging over pits, dangling from a cliff face, etc. Indiana Jones-type stuff. Then, if you want them to be more invested in less action-y shit, start to blur the line. Have action-y shit begin or end a bit more gradually. Leave your players with the impression that it could, at any moment, break into the action-y shit. There is the constant threat of danger. And if they start to tune out, zing them with a quick spike of action-danger to keep them on their toes. Other than that, maybe resort to a bit of melodrama in noncombat situations. Be a bit over-the-top and throw in twists and extreme characters. Always have something going on, and control the pace. If things start getting slow, fast forward ahead. Don't make people role-play out boring shit. And have bits of action or even moments of combat ready to jolt them out of their complacency. A fist fight or stand-off is a good way to ratchet up the tension without going into full, lethal combat.

When creating their characters all they contributed to the game were combat machines. If you want them invested in the story get them to contribute to it. Delegate the storytelling; ask them to describe some stuff that their character would know about based on their backstory.

D&D certainly has less mechanics for players to engage with the world outside of their characters. All the player's power is in combat, so that's what the system encourages you to do.

>Wizards of the Cuck blithely ignores the gaping hole in cartoonish-fantasy wargame's mechanics where engaging social skills should exist

No, really, DnD is fun, but it's in many respects a cartoon that wears its wargame heritage on its sleeve. Its non-combat mechanics are not really composable or engaging. And "Just roleplay it" is kind of an awful idea if you look at 80% of players.

Pushy NPCs. Maybe this mechant really wants to sell them a clockwork owl and won't take no for an answer. Maybe this detective is harassing the PCs because they keep showing up at crime scenes. Maybe a peasant has become their biggest fan.

If they won't go to the mountain, make the mountain come to them.

Oh look, another DnDrone patrolling the board so he can get assblasted at anyone suggesting people play games that are progressive or fun.

How sad.

Make characters that aren't unlikeable one dimensional shitters and also like the PCs.

Good work on making Veeky Forums worse and trying to turn it one step closer to fucking /v/.
Because we totally need the equivalent of console-wars here to, edition wars in itself of course weren't cancerous enough already for your cross-posting piece of shit.

How is "try a different game" bad advice in this situation? It doesn't matter how it's phrased, the intent is the same. "Maybe it's not a problem with you, it's a problem with the system and a different one would work better for you" is not attacking you personally.

I'm not sure what makes you a bigger retard, how assblasted you are that "try a different game" is 100% legitimate advice, or the fact that you linked OPs post in your own, which doesn't even reference playing another game at all.

Goddamn DnDrones are bad, even worse than the Mathfinder addicts were before 5e came out. Literally the worse fanbase on the board right now.

Truth. DnDrones come in some fucking disgusting flavors these days, but I think the worst might be what i call Crowd Control fags.

Make your non-combat content into pseudo-combat content. If they can't take the initiative to explore the world around them, have the world around them poke them in the chest and call them faggots.

Basically give them more engaging/borderline handholding cues and creatively punish them for being too vague or terse.

>what am I doing wrong?
Dungeons & Dragons is a game about going into dungeons and killing dragons, nothing more. Anyone who tells you otherwise it's a shill or a virgin to better games

negotiations of course, make the turncoats offer them a cut of the reward, take that risk. make the turnies here seem like they actually have their best interests in mind instead of just being some more enemies to bash on.

Punishing people for not doing things the way you want to is never the way to go. Every game developer knows this.

>How is "try a different game" bad advice
>advice

dude, the original poster of that certainly wasn't just going on an advice as much as a dig.

Punishing people for not getting into the game properly is hilarious and exactly the way to go.

A dig at DnD, not at you. You don't have any reason to be personally offended.

but im not though?

Yeah, I'm sure saying everyone who thinsk differently from you is ruining Veeky Forums was an entirely rational assessment.

At least let me believe you were just bootybothered, so I don't have to think you're just retarded.

Literally you're the first person to mention d&d. Fucking obsessed autist.

combat has an immediate problem, obvious stakes, and a variety of tools which can be used to resolve it. There are the components which make a scene engaging to the players, if you want them to take an interest in non-combat stuff
>make sure there's a problem which must be either dealt with or ignored, taking your time or coming back to it won't be options
>clearly define the stakes, some systems do this by having the GM state before every roll what goes wrong if it fails, but however, you do it make sure the players know how much they stand to lose going in
>and lastly make sure there are a bunch of different ways they could solve the problem, this does not just mean leaving it open to ideas, if one answer is both obvious and fairly easy it doesn't matter if there are other options, they'll just pick that one. For every situation try and see if there's an obvious solution that presents itself when designing it, then change the situation to remove that option (or at least make it riskier)

>Every game developer knows this.
If that was true, we'd have a lot less shitty games.

Games tend to give the players a huge list of things they can do in combat and then leave the rest rather vague and nebulous. Hence players tend to lean on the structure of combat to resolve most things as it's all clearly laid out infront of them.

It might seem counter-intuitive to the idea that the players can literally do anything but why not just print off a bunch of non-combat related flash cards for the players based on their character stats.

So for example
1d20+insight - see if someone is lying

1d20+investigation - see what mechanism triggers this trap

1d20+medicine - see how long a body has been dead for.

Etc etc
Basically the game is very so taking what it does tell you in the book, expanding it and presenting it to the players will help them a lot.

Also this article on the three clue rule should basically be compulsory reading for all GMs.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Because the vast majority of games outside of a small niche have this issue. As most of the time it's an issue with the GM not the game design. I mean honestly suggest one that actually works for most groups and doesn't have this problem ?

Likewise it's almost impossible to accurately create a system for say social interactions so most systems give derailed combat rules as this is doable and leave the rest to rely more heavily on the core mechanics and the GM & the players you know roleplaying.

Give us examples of encounters that they party didnt find interesting, and we can probably tell you what you did wrong.

Try using a system that rewards working around battles or rushing into fight without thinking (little to no "loot", risk of injury e.t.c.)
Having complex mechanics for stuff besides fighting also helps if your player like it. Look into SoIaF RPG, Legend of 5 Rings, Shadowrun, WFRP and 40K games.

You are the reason such threads start with suggestion not to play DnD.

OP never mentions D&D.

hah

Try putting in some sort of gambling arc or something and go from there. Like say an enemy has valuable information and they are forced to gamble for the information and their souls.

I'd vomit if this is what it took to get my players hooked. Then again I don't play Dungpiles & Dumbasses