First scenario that played out with no combat...

[Gornil]

There WILL be spoilers in this post, so be warned. It will also be long and in-depth as well.

So I ran Ghenett Manor Gauntlet Sunday morning at PaizoCon at the 5-6 Tier, and it was the third time I have ran it. Haven't run into any serious issues before, and all of my players have said they enjoyed it. What happened this last time wasn't so much of a problem as it was a freak occurrence, and I'm curious whether anyone has ever run into a similar situation before.The party ran through the ENTIRE scenario without triggering ANY of the combats. Now I know I could have triggered the combats anyways, and find another reason for it, but as well as they stayed in-character and as in-depth as the their individual and team actions were, I felt that doing so would almost be punishing them for doing so well. Details will be behind the spoiler tag. I should also mention that they received almost all of the background info from the venture captain due to questions asked in-character, as well as some answers I made up on the fly.

Spoiler:

The first combat is against the guard dogs running around the property. The players didn't even attempt to sneak into the estate. The paladin in the party insisted that doing so would only compound the diplomatic errors that had already occurred with Besai. He also insisted on bringing a gift of a tea set, in case doing so would be beneficial to the players mission (Of course, I forgot to have this marked on his chronicle sheet at the end of the slot :P). The other characters were of a goodly and somewhat lawful bent, aside from one mad pathfinder arcanist among them, but all agreed to have the paladin walk up to the gate with another character (whose character escapes me atm, other than the fact that he was Tien) while the rest of the party hung back in the treeline to watch what happened. Things went well between them and Po, and they entered the compound without ever setting foot on the grass, as they entered with Po, and left the same exact way.

Spoiler:

The second combat is against the flesh golem in the banquet hall, and honestly I have yet to have a group fight through this one. In this case, no one made any aggressive movements, and all finally succeeded at their Will saves when they closely examined the creatures because of their odd behavior.

Spoiler:

The third combat is against the chaos beast in the Atrium, triggered when the players step onto the inlaid tile around the pool the creature hides in. This has usually been the combat that has offered the most challenge, and also the most enjoyment both from me and the players. In this case however, the players all stayed to the walkway around the pool, sticking to their primary objective of finding the book, Besai, and disturbing nothing else. The arcanist even cast mending on the broken statue in order to try and win brownie points with the Drumman owner(Can't recall his name), even returning later when the missing sapphire was found and inserting it back into the statue. Even when one character saw the bag of treasure in the pool, (I described it as about a foot deep or so) he was reminded by the paladin that they were ordered to leave all treasures alone, and not to chance the Decimverate's wrath by taking one small bag. The players stated they were sticking to the walkway, and skipped the guest rooms along the walls to go straight to the western rooms, as Po had told them that the Master's library was to the west.

Spoiler:

The final combat is supposed to take place outside the library, in the green house after either find a book missing matching the description of the Mutani Manual, or find the real one and go on to investigate the next room. The players had found traces of the Aspis Consortium throughout the manor, using survival checks by the ranger to specifically search for them. I will admit most parties find the real book hidden underneath the lectern, then proceed outside to finish investigating the manor, usually for faction missions or a sense of completion(?). However, I was kinda stumped when this group ignored the double doors leading outside, heading back into the mansion to locate and rescue Besai. Once they found Besai, they walked back out the front door, and out onto the eastern caravan trails back to Katapesh. To explain what happened to the Aspis Consortium, I described the main gates as the scene of a recent combat, with the gates torn apart, and a battered and bruised Po fixing the gates, while nearby lay the bodies of four hell hounds obviously killed while chasing whoever blasted their way out. Since the players had already found the real Manual, they weren't too concerned anymore about the AC and their "fake" book.

Now, I will admit that I ad-libbed a lot, as far as background info and room descriptions go. I played up the fact that this manor was dripping with wealth. The players asked a lot about the backgrounds of the NPCs, and since nothing is written in-depth about them in the scenario itself (which isn't unusual and not usually an issue) I came up with a lot of answers to their questions on the fly. The players took their time going over the entire mansion, with exception of the greenhouse and the mansion grounds. I would honestly say I spent most of the scenario role-playing PO and his wife's mannerisms and actions, as well as the descriptions of the rooms. Don't get me wrong please, I'm not complaining about the player's actions. I'm frankly in awe at how well these strangers sat down at a table together and coordinated their actions and plans. These were superb players, and I must have done something right because even without combat, the slot ran close to three hours and they all thanked me for such a great scenario and talked about how much they enjoyed playing it.

The reason I post all of this is really to ask if this has ever happened to others during Society play? I'm sure there are many things I could have done differently, and with hindsight there are a few different ways I could have had the combats fit in with the party's actions.

[Pirate Rob]

I had an absolute blast playing at your table. Skipping encounters due to things like high diplomacy or teleportation magic etc. is mostly really boring and not fun.

In the case of your table I didn't feel cheated out of the encounters. We encountered things, and interacted with them in interesting ways. We paid attention to the setting, and engaged it in ways that did not lead to combat.

It was refreshing to be able to engage challenges in ways other than inevitability bashing something's skull in.

[cblome59]

Gornil, I am absolutely jealous of this experience.

[Fromper]

Wow. When my group played this adventure, it was bloody. Very bloody. Half the group went down to negative hit points in the same fight.

Spoiler:

We went in the back way and fought the Aspis group early. We accidentally lined up in lightning bolt formation. You'd think we would have learned and moved after the first one hit us, but it was the second lightning bolt that dropped two PCs and a companion animal. Luckily, none of them died before they could be healed.

And my barbarian... had other issues.

Spoiler:

The chaos beast dropped his wisdom from 8 to 4, and I felt I had to role play him at that point as just too dumb to retreat, so I kept trying to stick my axe in the thing. He was even more fun to play for the rest of the adventure after that. :P The group monk pretty much put him on a verbal leash.

The very idea of being able to avoid ANY of the fights in this one totally blows my mind.

Spoiler:

What a second! Do you mean to tell me we could have avoided fighting the flesh golems by simply not attacking them??? *grumbles*stupid flesh golems and their DR*grumble*

Also, one of our group GMed this adventure again this past weekend and killed a PC. This one can be deadly if the PCs aren't careful.

[nosig]

I have missed combats in some scenarios - either by talking our way past them, or just by avoiding them entirely. I normally run a "face" character, thank you sir for showing another side of the game to some great players.

Kudos to both you and your players.

It's wonderful to hear about a party that did it completely - esp. in a scenario that I recall was ran for me as "Set piece combats" (place your figures for this combat, roll init., at the end, heal up and repeat. No discussion, no gaming outside of combat at all.... sigh.)

[Dragnmoon]

Gornil, not knowing the factions in your group, did everyone complete their faction missions?

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

There should be an Achievement for that.

[Zrinka Znidarcic]

Excellent work Gornil and the team! I am amazed and delighted :D

I really love it when players play smart and immersed.

[Whiskey Jack]

Fromper wrote:

Also, one of our group GMed this adventure again this past weekend and killed a PC. This one can be deadly if the PCs aren't careful.

That was me. It should be noted that the PC that was killed was under-level but playing up-tier and knew what they were getting into. We also had one player reduced to jell-o (technically not death, but puts a crimp on your day).

Because of the sandbox nature of this module, it could be possible to avoid some of the combats, but I find it difficult to believe all of them could be avoided... in our case, one combat was avoided by thoughtful play.

We also had very few players complete their faction missions.

[Gornil]

@Dragnmoon Most of the players completed their factions, we had a good mix of factions in the group, none shared.

Spoiler:

Andoran just delivered a letter to Po's wife, easy enough with the high diplomacy the character had. Lantern Lodge easily recognized the Tien statues. The Qadiran was easily able to find the "business transactions" he needed to note, thanks to the skills of the rogue in the party. The Taldoran was able to identify the perfume he needed, thanks to help from the party alchemist, and grabbed the bottle while the Paladin stood guard outside the room ;)

Spoiler:

That left only the Cheliaxan and the Paladin from the Silver Crusade. Since the Cheliaxan ranger had made a point of asking for traces of "pets" while searching the manor, I put the hell hounds bodies near the exit when they left, explaining that they had been killed by the Aspis Consortium on their way out. In retrospect this is honestly where I could have had both fights play out, with the party coming out of the manor only to find the AC NPC's in the middle of a fight with the hell hounds and Po. The ensuing melee would draw the PCs into the fight, giving the players a taste of combat that had been missed during the scenario thus far. As they say though, hindsight is 20/20.

Spoiler:

As for the Paladin, I had completely forgotten about his faction mission until things had wrapped up, when the player asked me about it. He wasn't upset about it thankfully, just curious. I explained to him what had happened and how he had missed it. (This was also when the group informed me that the reason they hadn't gone into the greenhouse was that they had forgotten about the doors during the excitement of setting off the sonic trap and finding the real Mutani Manual.) I suppose I could have included the fallen cleric's body alongside the hell hound's bodies, describing the teeth marks and scorch marks on her body. Like I said though, I honestly forgot about this one. It would have been better for the paladin to have found the body after fighting everything at the gate, as I noted earlier. The player wasn't upset about it though, and not finishing the faction does happen on occasion.

@Whiskey Jack If you read through the second spoiler tag, you'll see where I really should have had a combat encounter appear, but this didn't really occur to me until I was driving home, running things through my head.

[Grolick]

I wouldn't worry about it. We had a great time playing it. It's funny that given my propensity for dropping bombs that I didn't blow anything up. But then again, my PC is all about wealth, so he wouldn't have wanted to blow anything up to destroy all that wealth.

You did a great job with running it, and we had a party with a great set of skills.

[jjaamm]

Good for them, for going no combat and giving up most of there gold reward. Just ran this for 5 players, and they did the opposite. Talking while intro was read, so they attacked Po. Rogue was turned to jello, while he could make 2 saves he kept failing the 3rd. So with no rogue, they set off the safe trap. The player playing the fighter goes crazy and just starts taking everything, since by his words "we destroyed something and was asked to steal something so ....". At the end he gets the embezzler title. No one could make the DC 30 perception to find the real book. Neither did we when I played it.

[Whiskey Jack]

Back @Gornil, I understand. As other GMs have pointed out, this scenario can have encounters go in unexpected directions...

Spoiler:

I haven't seen a group attack Po yet, but I believe it can happen as Jeff attests to. (There was only one player who wanted to attack him and she was held back by the rest of the group.) For the record, it was the Hellhounds that killed the one player in my group.

[Rob Duncan]

Spoiler:

It sounds like your group's Paladin watched 'Aladdin'.. TOUCH NOTHING BUT THE LAMP! Remarkable control to be able to bypass the loot, fix broken things, and follow directions.

Well, well played. I would have loved to see that. ^_^

[Doug Benson]

Just wanted to jump in here and thank Gornil for a great game. My son, friend, and I played in his no combat game. You did a great job of room description and role-playing with us.

I have read your posts and I think you did a great job. I know they say hindsight is 20/20, but I really don’t think we missed any of the excitement with no combat.

Oh, and I wanted to thank Pirate Rob for his role-playing. I really thought he hated me when we were introducing out characters. I was the Paladin, and he did a great job with his venomous words. Thanks for making us all better players

[Pirate Rob]

Thank you for the compliment Doug. I'm glad we got our communication issue resolved quickly. I felt bad the moment I realized that you didn't realize I was only complaining in character. (That sentence turned out quite awkward as well)

The fact that you were able to play well with it once we figured out what was going on speaks well of you as well.

[Mike Shel]

Gornil wrote:

There WILL be spoilers in this post, so be warned. It will also be long and in-depth as well.

So I ran Ghenett Manor Gauntlet Sunday morning at PaizoCon at the 5-6 Tier, and it was the third time I have ran it. Haven't run into any serious issues before, and all of my players have said they enjoyed it. What happened this last time wasn't so much of a problem as it was a freak occurrence, and I'm curious whether anyone has ever run into a similar situation before.The party ran through the ENTIRE scenario without triggering ANY of the combats. Now I know I could have triggered the combats anyways, and find another reason for it, but as well as they stayed in-character and as in-depth as the their individual and team actions were, I felt that doing so would almost be punishing them for doing so well. Details will be behind the spoiler tag. I should also mention that they received almost all of the background info from the venture captain due to questions asked in-character, as well as some answers I made up on the fly.

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **...

First, thanks for recounting this running of the Gauntlet—as an author it's always a blast to hear about games like this.

Second, hats off to you and your group for managing it the way you did. I deliberately created most of the encounters with combat outs in mind.

Third,

Spoiler:

during the development process some things get left on the cutting room floor. If memory serves, the map and the text in my turnover indicated that in order for one to traverse the atrium without triggering the chaos beast, one would essentially have to hug the walls (in retrospect, an Acrobatics or Dex check would have been appropriate). In other words, I intended this as an unavoidable combat encounter, and the majority of reports I've heard cite this one as the most consistently challenging in the scenario. While you would have been within your rights as GM to have them encounter the Aspis party on the way out the front gate, technically the villains were headed west and over the wall with the false Mutani Manual.

[kinevon]

Well, we had an almost combat-less run of Slave Pits of Absolom, a while back.

We had a more-or-less Charm specialized Wizard in our group, and the GM couldn't roll the save for Charm to save his life that day.

IIRC, the only combat we had was against a pack of Rogues attacking without warning.

[Christopher Woldridge]

Sounds like a great game! Thanks for sharing.