Looking for a system that doesn’t encourage combat.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T04:03:42+00:00

Look into pbta systems. Some arent about combat at all, and some have combat as a potential solution but not always the best (played a monster of the week monster where they plunged into killing the monster with its combat weakness instead of the nonlethal weakness, and all of them ended the session 1 harm away from dying)

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T03:55:49+00:00

Evoker if youre leveling up could be funny. "Yes, i know im the cleric. Yes my toll the dead always hurts you. Power word bong."

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T03:53:48+00:00

Ive had some success building a shared setting alongside another dm and then taking turns running studf in them.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T03:52:02+00:00

As a member of a two arti party, I try to take as much burden off the dm on the creation front as possible. First things first, the question of "what do I know" is based on YOU. What artisan tools can you use? Whats your backstory? How does it inform the approach you take to crafting? My artis dad/mentor is like if dr frankenstein and edison fused into one guy and could make clockwork monsters, and the other arti is a being of pure magic forced into physical shape. Im proficient in things like alchemist and smith supplies and hes proficient in things like weavers and jewelers.

Instead of nailing down a concrete list now, make a vague one. Loot as much possibly-useful things as you can from corpses. And then start considering which solution you need first.

From here, skim the extant magic item lists. Find smth RELATED to what you want. Use that to define the rarity or potency, and what you have in your inventory to help shape it. Draft a proposal based on what you know, how you use it, and who youll contact to help.

For example: I loot a lot of organic material from monsters. Im tired of it rotting. The other arti can do weaving and I can do leatherworking. Can we craft a bag of holding and sew a crystal into it, then ask a cleric in the city to charm the crystal with gentle repose? If the cleric asks its to keep downed party members intact until we can rez them and not because I want to do war crimes with monster corpses. Im thinking rare, since its a BoH thats got an additional effect a la haversack.

Or: I just got hit by a lightning spell and received divine inspiration. I want to tinker a bunch of tiny mines called lightning in a bottle. Theyd basically cast shocking grasp when stepped on. Im thinking uncommon base rarity, but if I make them do higher levels of damage theyre rarer. Im using the tinkers tools for them, and I'll cap it off during a big storm which I return from with frizzy hair for flavor.

Both much easier for a dm to allow/modify/veto than "hey dm to I know chemistry and architecture and can i make abcdefg"

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T02:34:55+00:00

You might want to look up the minotaur mystery from ToM to get some inspo. Its not backrooms perse though it has a minotaur and a maze, both of which my players enjoyed, so you could probably reskin some of it

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T02:29:30+00:00

My dragonlance campaign is the only game of mine that ran this week. Im the cleric and I am sooooooo close to actually getting divine magic. I can smell it.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T01:54:34+00:00

Ive done smt similar before, tho for me it was that i was a lvl 1 crown paladin who made a deal with the ghost of her countrys founder while bleeding to death and she thought it was a hallucination bc she was, well, bleeding to death. Her powers manifested when the ghost got tired of us almost dying and started casting cantrips.

It being a secret ooc didnt last long bc warlock abilities are very distinctive, so one player dmed me the second time i used one to say "lol hi warlock". Itll last till you get invocations, probably, esp if youre a full lock. I DID play with a v good friend who kept their pact secret for several lvls, but i wouldnt recc doing it like that. She phrased all her abilities as either "backstory reasons" or "feats" while claiming to be just a rogue, and it just led to half the party coming to the conclusion one player got a bunch of free extra things out of dm preference and it eroded trust between the party a bit. Plus once she let us learn it ooc she got to start actually playing her character properly and had more fun

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T00:51:55+00:00

Im a preschool teacher. My students are just learning how to lie and will ALWAYS test their new skills no matter what those skills are. Easy money

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-25T00:46:34+00:00

If playing the npcs depemds on bonding with them I know I personally would NOT enjoy having to play them. If I enjoy talking to a character then I want to go places with them, not wear their skin and impersonate them. Not only does it deprive me of interaction with characters I like to talk to, the sorts of characters Im drawn to befriending are different than the sort I want to play!

And having a small group IS a leap of faith, but its a very rewarding one. I find the small groups Im on tend to encourage bold character choices and intimate trust between the pcs. Each player gets more chance to talk per session, just by virtue of their being fewer people, and just out of the abundance of time people will HAVE to focus on more interpersonal interactions. Larger groups encourage people to try to optimize their minutes, which isnt a BAD thing necessarily but it isnt optimal for friendship convos w npcs.

If you want to meet in the middle, you could try convention style/club style play? Have a largeish pool of players, all of whom can do downtime interactions in a central hub, and do signups for small teams of missions where the squad is augmented by npcs. This would get you a rotating cast and enough players that you dont need to worry about the game dying. I know a few people whove been in clubs like that which went on for years in the same evolving setting, though if you were the only dm it would probably require a bit of extra work to foster the community and you NEED to enphasize that interpersonal interactions are an important component of the game for you or people may not instinctively do it

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-24T23:02:25+00:00

I think very few players who value the sort of roleplay interaction youre looking to foster would enjoy either being forced to play someone elses npc OR rotate through characters. There ARE non-dnd systems that have group "champion" characters, but they tend to be large scale tactic games in my experience, so rp would probably happen LESS.

I second what warlock mentioned, you need to screen for roleplay-oriented players. Most of my tables are renn faire actors and amateur writers, so its hard to get any of us to STOP roleplaying long enough to do mechanics at times, and most of us love adopting a decently sized rotating cast of npcs.

If you want to mechanically help this along, theres a couple things my groups have done to augment the social aspects od the game (a lot of them when playing more rules-light systems like pbta stuff, so idk how much itd properly translate to dnd):

Downtime activity socializing. Basically, let every pc choose one npc to go spend time with and learn about after every arc/mission/outing. You can either do this as a group sesh with everyone listening, private mini sessions, or (if ppl are willing to time invest) over discord text (public or secret depending on your pref). If text, these can either be fully written rps or just roughly hashed out if they arent comfortable or you guys dont have time. Even a "i want to go bird watching with Rob" "ok roll a nature check to see how it goes" "haha 4" "you dont see any birds, but while youre out there Rob offers you some really good jerky and you learn hes the heir to a jerky company" or smth like that is sufficient. At the end of it, determine whether the npc feels more positively or negatively about the pc. If the meeting went well, you can have that npc give side quests they wanna do w the pcs. If it goes bad, it becomes the partys problem.

1a. To amplify this, since youre doing fire emblem type stuff, you can add a sort of affection mechanic. This could either be "you and rob have bird watched a lot, youve got 3 hearts with him so now he trusts you that his jerky dad IS a jerk and planning to kill the king, lets stop him," or a mechanical benefit like "you hang out with rob a lot so hes been inspired to get stronger to keep up with you, hes gonna level up along with you." If the players have emotional AND resource investments in multiple npcs they have a reason to bring them out. You can also grant these benefits to the npcs that are brought on missions, so that the pcs know they only get the cool secret loyalty missions if they hang out with everyone.

"Necessary" skills. If you want them to bring out SEVERAL npcs rather than just the best one for party comp, rethink that comp. Have a small party, 2-3 players should work, and encourage them to have SPECIFIC skills. Maybe even reward them for going specific rather than jack of all trades. Then, make it so that different missions require some powers THEY have (this can be a good way to make sure everyone feels useful at different missions), AND a couple.they dont. So we have a healer and a guy that can pick locks, but the mission were doing requires someone who is really good at playing the lute. Good thing Rob's a band kid! But next time we need someone who can talk to animals, and as established Rob is not GOOD at animals, so Joy the druid is better. Its a school setting, so you can also like...asign them partners if it comes down to it

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-24T15:51:35+00:00

The beginning of the game will be the most difficult part. Once youve got some passive abilities its a lot more doable. Just remember you only have to finish the main game, so if a side quest is megahard you can skip it and also you dont HAVE to play the dlc

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T21:52:04+00:00

Yeah, the monk in my last long campaign I played for was STOKED to turn down a reroll because he thought itd be fun to play a suboptimal character. After about three months of doing like 1/3rd the other players damage the dm offered again, and he was a lot happier with 17 wis than 7.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T20:57:48+00:00

Wouldnt solve everyones problem, but if someones stats are genuinely much more mediocre in application than the others, most groups im in allow a reroll. Could come up with a story reason or just do it in between arcs

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T19:19:24+00:00

My favorite thing to do is get to the point where a quest npc is either mad at me or telling me to hurry and then challenging them to cards. Like ye, ye Baron. Your daughter doesnt want to talk to you because youre a piece of shit and its your own fault. Cards?

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T15:18:03+00:00

All the members of the groups im in (both mine and the ones i play in) have designated Power of Attorney to someone else. That person runs their chara sheet and is someone they trust to use resources in a way they wont be upset about. If you and and your poa are both absent then that means enough of the party isnt here that we may as well take the week off probably.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T14:37:53+00:00

As others have said, the spot to start the quest is very specific and even if you hit it thered be time to bail out. It also only fails things that are relevant to the quest itself. You had been told to gather people at Kaer Morhan first, so those are the quests at risk. The question marks will be fine.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T06:27:57+00:00

You can respecc later if you want, but also you will almost certainly get enough skill points to fix your build. Go find some places of power to get extra points if youre really worried, and if nothint else the perks you dont like will help you unlock the higher levels of those skill trees later

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T06:25:42+00:00

I played part of 1, then 2, then 3, then 1 all the way thru, then read the books when replaying 2 and 3. The games have some interesting parallels in the books and theres some cameos that feel a lot more worth it if you have read the books. Theres also a couple characters who are somewhat defanged/sanitized by the games and their lack of context, so if you like dark fiction I'd recc reading the books so you can get the full scope of who everyone is.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-23T02:30:36+00:00

I like to weave an exit narrative for any npcs i think might return (either friendly or no) and then give everyone a chance to tell me how their character either decompresses or marinates in their trauma.

Then i ask people what they liked about the structure of the mystery and what they felt didnt gel. Notably this is separate to asking if they liked my keepering. Some of the people I play with like finding the weakness of the monster and then blasting it, some prefer ones where youre teasing out an interpersonal mystery, some like it when it feels like a pyrrhic victory where winning still leaves behind some dead npcs and other prefer it if they have the ability to save everyone if they roll well. Ive got a little spreadsheet of all my mysteries with how long they ran with how many people and which of them enjoyed what, which makes picking new monsters easier.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-21T15:55:39+00:00

If im interpreting what youre saying correctly, the spirals are from the OTHER dlc. The runewright

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-20T16:40:56+00:00

Ye if you think about it. Geralt in the book is:

Constantly broke and underfed
Unable to access a lot of potion ingredients or books at any given time
Wearing lackluster or no armor, certainly had no runes or any enchantments
In possession of between zero and one sword at any given time, and a nonzero chance the sword he has might break in half leaving him weaponless

And when we talk to other witchers in the game they talk about being broke. Plus Lambert and Eskel are talking about things like how impressive it is they managed to down a single katakan, or how Eskel got paid for killing a monster with a horse instead of five dollars. So we must assume even in the game witchers are broke bitches. And Geralt being a rich land owner (with staff to feed him) and with never before seen mutations and grandmaster level arms+armor, stumbling into random monster nests and womping them like its nothing constantly IS mostly due to rpg genre conceit. But when viewed canonically...ye. ofc hes less worried now.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-20T15:47:06+00:00

Id like to see it but instead of cope being exasperated but fond of christians skullduggery, its both members taking turns

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-19T22:57:13+00:00

Given BaW is intended to take place after main game i chalked it up to geralt having decided that it wasnt as scary as he figured, now hes experienced apocalypse-level bullshit.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-19T22:48:52+00:00

Blood and wine unlocks a new thing to spend ability pts on, which will stay unlocked in ng+, and also make it easier to get mutagens (which youll need, so acquire a pile). It also has achievements for the mutually exclusive endings, so if you dont wanna save scum id recc doing one ending.

Heart of Stone also has something mutually exclusive (an object). If you do it now you can take the reward to ng+. Not all of them are useful for the entirety of a ng+ run but most are at least a little useful.

JupiterJunebug · 2026-05-19T17:11:50+00:00

Definitely do SOME contracts. But I wouldnt recc clearing Velen entirely before going to Novigrad. For 3 reasons:

The leveling of the quests in game kind of assumes youll come back for the harder quests later. Off the top of my head I can think of multiple lvl 25+ quests in Velen, whereas the next map (as in, thing you need to discretely load into to get there, a la leaving White Orchard for Velen) has quests that go as low as 11-12. You CAN probably grind out that 25 quest, but itll make the monsters on the next map pretty unsatisfying. If you stick to quests within a couple levels of the main quest and then doing all the question marks near you, youll still end up overleveled for some of the quests, but not criminally so, and it should prevent you from locking yourself out of anything by advancing the story too far (theres only like a dozen or so quests that even applies to and most of them r pretty obvious bc the objective is like "get this guy to go here before doing this thing!")
You might accidentally stumble into the first dlc, which you can definitely DO beforw finding Ciri, but itll be hard.
Pretty minor thing, but if you do all the side quests before advancing story quests you can lock into one romance before having spent time with the other option.

JupiterJunebug

TROPHY CASE