Dungeons & Dragonsis a fantastic tabletop RPG designed for many things, one of them being combat. In fact, most of its rules revolve around fighting or making your character better at primarily fighting. However, just because combat is one of the core traits of D&D, it doesn’t mean every session of yours needs to have a fight in it — unless that’s what everybody at the table wants.
Still, how can you keep your game interesting while removing one of its pillars from your session? From just chilling around the world to finding other sources of action, there are a few tricks to pull off here.
Not all tips here will give you enough content for a whole session, but nothing stops you from mixing them together.
8Focus On Character Interactions
Let The Players Talk
If your players are really into roleplaying their characters, you can have extremely interesting sessions by just letting them do so. Sometimes you may feel the need to cut things short to progress the story, but you can just kickstart a conversation by building a scene and letting them go at it.
You can even help move conversations forward and be part of them through an NPC, but letting players do their shenanigans, interact before rests, or explore a city can take hours of fun interactions.
This may depend on how comfortable your players are with this aspect of the game, as forcing them to do interactions may go bad, especially if they are new players.
7Run With Comedy
Just Be Silly
Diving a bit more into social interactions — and the fact you’re playing a game, which is primarily meant to be a fun time with friends — you can embrace the chaos and just create stupid situations throughout the game, either just for the silliness of it or even let these moments serve as funny obstacles.
Of course, reading the room here is important, so that only works if your players are into having such moments happen throughout the game. But a silly session with games and drinking in an inn, or making silly NPCs like a captured minion who behaves just like a regular dude who needs a job rather than an evil henchman for an evil lord, among other things, can provide funny and memorable moments for the players.
6Give Them Places To Explore
Another Pillar Of D&D
Outside of doing all the interactions above, another important part of the game is exploration, and that can mean many things simply by considering where the party is. Venturing through a city, getting to know and interacting with characters and establishments, is already exploration and a good way to spend a session — and dump some lore organically.
But exploration can also be in dangerous locations. A fey forest full of tricky fairies, or an old crypt full of traps can all be amazing places to explore, and they can still work without any combat in it. You can have the party attempt to figure out what’s going on or what is hidden in said place and how they’ll succeed or fail to deal with the dangers. There are more than enough for a good time.
5Work With Mysteries And Puzzles
Put Their Brains To Work
Why challenge their brawn when you can challenge their mind? Instead of a big battle inside a dungeon, they may need to solve a problem to proceed to the next room, where you can prepare one (or multiple, preferably) solution, or hear their ideas, and if they seem like a good fit, use the dice to determine their successful attempt atbreaking your puzzle.
You can also build whole stories about mystery rather than combat, creating something like a murder investigation that, while it may lead to a big confrontation in the end, can still give them multiple sessions of exploration and even give them a bigger purpose to explore wherever they are in your game.
4Let Them Prepare For A Big Fight
The Calm Before The Storm
Your campaign is close to its big end (or at least the current story is), and now they must find a way to face the big bad. They’ve met and saved multiple people and made many friends, and now, they need all the help they can get for a massive strike against the evil Lich, Dragon, Vampire Lord, or whatever baddy you’re running.
But that requires time, strategy, and allegiances. You need to determine how things will go and make a plan against the evildoer. There are many details to sort, enough to use a whole session for in-character planning. Unless your players want to charge head first and die, that’s their choice.
3Use The Session To Teach Them Important Details
Another Way Of Preparing Them
This was briefly mentioned during exploration, where they learn about places and people and dump some lore. You can teach them about the world and give them things that foreshadow future events and may prepare them for dangers ahead.
Suppose your big badis a Devil.While the party is still at a low level and may not even be aware of the main villain, they can meet and interact with a Warlock NPC who made a deal with a Devil, who doesn’t necessarily need to be the same character. You can use this character to teach basic concepts about Devils or even introduce the baddie if you decide to make them the same character. If the party likes this Warlock, you can turn them into a potential ally or enemy if they need to protect their patron.
2Explore Their Backstories
Enhance Their Experience
Though this tip can end up with combat depending on how your players' backstories are — they might be chasing some old enemy down to kill them — you can still explore the calmer parts of their stories during these sessions, such as taking them to one of the character’s hometown, situations that trigger their past traumas, or having someone from their past reaching out to them, among others.
It also gives the players great excuses to talk about the backstory they’ve made and helps the characters organically be more fond of one another through scenes they’ll have together talking about their past. These situations can even be what kickstart party conversations, like we’ve mentioned earlier.
1Play With Heist-Like Scenarios
Let Them Play Around Stealth
A great way to give your party an action-oriented game without having combat is elaborate plans to steal something,like a heist.It’s also the perfect opportunity for stealth-oriented classes to shine, as it’s not always possible to be sneaky while having heavily-armored folks following you around.
Still, the non-sneaky characters can still participate through distractions by talking to and luring NPCs away from important places, for instance, and also has the party split, giving them an exciting dynamic they may not face often. Just keep in mind that a failed heist may end up creating a huge combat scenario. Or a fun escape scene.
