How to make a generic conflict resolution system in an RPG not based on combat

Hexartes

See title.

Basically, combat in games, RPGs and RPG adjacent genres especially, has a far reaching and fascinating history and a well established well of tropes and terminology to draw from. It means you can easily use combat to create a lot of interesting scenarios, and I wanted to talk about ways to port this well established set of conventions to nonviolent scenarios.

I think the number one trope I'm interested in reframing is random encounters.

glennmagusharvey

This comment is about combat, but has to do with random encounters.

I was just thinking about random encounters yesterday when playing Trails in the Sky.  It has no random encounters.  Rather, it has monsters wandering around the field; sometimes they chase you.  Each monster thus represented is actually a formation of monsters, of course.

Noticeably, the formations are placed in such a way that you encounter generally easier formations first, and more difficult ones further into the area.  This is a gameplay design decision that I like.  But furthermore, it can be used to work with flavor elements.  For example, there's one area that has Hraesvelgr birds and their chicks.  The first thing you encounter where they are is a chick, by itself.  Probably strayed from the nest.  Go further and you encounter more chicks, and they're more likely to be able to display their special ability, which is to call for help -- which summons an adult, which is a much stronger monster.  Go even further and you see adults prowling the field.  So in a way this is an imaginable encounter arrangement based on real-life animal behavior.

(Super Mario RPG has on-screen monsters too, used in a similar way, though I don't remember noticing "ecological" patterns of this sort.)

Perhaps you could use real-life aspects such as this to inspire nonviolent encounter gameplay?

Imipolex G

the Mercy button

Hexartes

To clarify, Undertale's approach wasn't what I was talking about, because the system still relies on combat. Which is fine! Just not what I meant.

glennmagusharvey

Wildlife are a common sight around here.  Some species aren't exactly native, but then again, nor are we.  And I've started to enjoy taking pictures of them.

I wonder if that could inspire a nonviolent encounter format that involves wild animals/creatures/monsters/whatever.

This also reminds me of a mechanic in an old edutainment game called Midnight Rescue, where you're investigating a mystery and taking pictures of evil robots serving the villain both serves to make them disappear (otherwise they knock you over and waste your in-game time) and gather clues about them (to determine which one the villain is disguised as).

(After all, Pokémon Snap is a rail shooter...except you're shooting photographs.)

Bee

So I still play D&D with Rott, Leigh, and Justice.  The setting lends itself very well to wandering around an overworld, and Rott's set up an encounter system that works really well for it.  It's not exactly what you're looking for but might give you a potential tool or two.

You can move X overworld tiles per day (usually 3-5 depending on terrain and pace, and we play pretty loosely with it), then the GM rolls a d6.  If the d6 <= how far you moved, you have an encounter.

Then he rolls 2d6 and compares it to a list of possible encounter types he's written out ahead of time.  The center of the distribution (6-8) is usually non-hostile dudes that can give/advance/pressure story hooks or get attacked by something else.  As you move farther from the distribution's center, you get more exotic and more immediately hostile things appropriate to your level like umber hulks or whatever.

The downside is that the GM has to write out a list of border cases he may never use.  The upside is that the way these encounters can play out can actually generate its own story hooks and/or hilarity.

Like, at one point Rott rolled 10 several times in a row, which was a pair of razor boars that we really didn't want to fight (our first razor boar much earlier crit and vorpal-decapitated the party leader almost immediately after the fight started, long before we had access to lv7 rez.  It took some GM fudging to get around).  So this resulted in the same pair of persistent razor boar stalkers just following us a couple hundred miles upriver for some goddamn reason, and us staying in the boat and yelling at them until we found a nymph to call them off.

Also remember, D&D has rules for XP rewards for nonviolent resolution, and sufficiently mischievous or good-hearted party members can unexpectedly befriend some very strange people.  We've had intended combat encounters end up not only get defused, but result in persistent secondary characters, including but not limited to a high priest of a newly-dedicated temple, robot guards, an ancient time-displaced wight prince who walks around town with a frilly parasol to block sunlight, key allies in later war sequences, and at least one PC's spouse.  It happens so often that our home cities have just gotten Ponyville-scale jaded to the weird shit we bring home.