Hello, I am looking at adding a non-combat encounter to my upcoming session. I am thinking something more Psychological/Philosophical rather than a physical challenge. My players are pretty into the roleplaying aspect and want to introduce that to a dungeon I have coming up to shake things up during the session. These environment itself is inside a mountain/cave that is related to some primordial stuff going on in the campaign if that helps. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
For it to be an encounter it requires a consequence of failure and a conflict to be resolved.
A puzzle to open a door which requires a humanoid life force to open would be a moral/ethical challenge for low level, or making the soul consumed so not even resurrection would work for a higher level party.
Hello, I am looking at adding a non-combat encounter to my upcoming session. I am thinking something more Psychological/Philosophical rather than a physical challenge. My players are pretty into the roleplaying aspect and want to introduce that to a dungeon I have coming up to shake things up during the session. These environment itself is inside a mountain/cave that is related to some primordial stuff going on in the campaign if that helps. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Just having to face things they find scary, giving them the chance to really get into the feelings-- what could your primordial cave hold that would frighten the players' characters? It doesn't have to be something they'll have to encounter as a fight-- it could be a glimpse of something very large moving through the caverns in the dark, or masses of insects skittering away and up the walls-- or dropping from the ceiling-- as they enter one area with torches. Maybe some traces of something terrible happening in these caverns before. If the characters have specific fears that you can exploit, go for it, work them up before they even reach the puzzles and obstacles. That lets them roleplay not just during the encounters, but as they're dungeon-diving and searching around the place.
As far as specific non-combat encounters, traps and puzzles are always good-- having to unlock doors or create bridges over chasms, figuring out the weight limit on a raft to ferry the party and their equipment over a body of water with something hungry lurking in it, chests that are trapped, or traps set around some lone piece of bait. It could be something set up by any sentient creatures who are using the caverns or who have used them in the past, but there can also be things left by adventurers who have fared less well than your party hopes to fare! Maybe if your party discovers a fallen adventurer in a tunnel with a magical item on them that they'd like to loot and use, they have to figure out a password ,or to find the right route through the caves, they have to code-break a scroll found on a corpse. You can still use an intelligence skill check rather than just having your players try to read your mind in character, but they'd be able to say 'ah, when I was in the great library of (X), I read about the life of an artificer whose work I recognized, and realized that to activate the ring, I would need to call out the name of his childhood dog!'. or 'I learned this code when I was a young squire, under the great adventurer (Y), who would use it when sending sensitive messages to his guild-mates!' (and you COULD also give your players a real code to break, if it's the kind of thing that some of them would enjoy, though a skill roll might be a lot faster)
And, whenever there's a sentient enemy that wants something, there's always the chance that your players could at least try to talk their way out of a fight and get their XP by solving an encounter non-violently. When I was my group's DM, I had players deceive potential combat encounters, but I've also had them bribe enemies who went on to become allies.
You've got a lot of options for bringing out engagement in and out of encounters. It's great that this is something your group is into and I hope they really get into the things you throw at them-- it's extra work on your end to find things that aren't just the standard types of encounter, but when it works it can be a whole lot of fun. I've been both the DM and one of the players, for different things along the line of what I've suggested, and while there are players who just want to get a passing skill roll and move on to the combat, for players who love the roleplay aspect, it's so rewarding to have those good character-building moments.
I once put a door in a dungeon that you had to tell a deep, personal secret to in order to pass thorough. You could try stuff like that that teases your characters' existing backstory, flaws, or phobias to the surface.
Anything psychological should force characters to confront something within themselves.
As far as philosophical, you may want to present players with multiple "win" scenarios that come at different costs and let their moral philosophies play out against each other. The Trolley Problem, per se, where in order to reach outcome A you may need to put innocents in danger, but in order to reach outcome B you put yourselves in danger, and if you die, who saves the innocents?? Use what you know of your characters' values to design a scenario where conflicting beliefs are brought head to head.
In my world, various different lands are covered in a mysterious mist called the Deep Fog: the precursor to an impending doom. To traverse it the part rides a specially designed train. However, to operate it you must remember your past in order to look forward into the future (it’s thematic).
Heres the fun part. I explore the single character and their emotional conflict. It’s almost a meditation, i present to them two option catered to their character which reflect avenues of growth or regression. Depending on their route they’ll either traverse the fog safely and enter the new location from the towns entrance as ambassadors, or crash in the nearby wilds to demo the new locations conflict and dungeon vibe.
The Fog clears by the end of the arc and I repeat this each new arc. Theoretically it’s gonna happen once for every character, but because it’s based on their back stories and whatever new town they’re going to it keeps it fresh while maintain continuity. Essentially i’m creating a puzzle based on what i perceive might be their potential future, and their character flaws/motivations become their obstacles.
If you wanted to be nice and have a fun encounter that would get the party talking and thinking about their previous actions, you could go on a variation of Newcomb's Problem. The party enters a chamber that contains a highly knowledgeable being - any creature or humanoid that can use magic that suits your theme. They explain that they can see the past but cannot know the future (you might have the creature state that they are the Master of this Dungeon to make it clear that they have all the DMs knowledge) and they have judged the party. They have decided to help those that know themselves in their quest against whatever your primordial stuff is.
The creature waves his hand and a minor item of use and a glowing orb appear in front of the party. The item of use could be a magical item or some healing potions, depending on your party's level. Inside the orb may or may not be a higher level magical item of your choosing. They can choose to take the lesser item, choose what's in the orb or take both. Their choice now will not change what is in the orb.
The creature states the outcome has already been decided (you can place the answer in an envelope prepared before the session). It has seen their previous actions. If it (you) thinks the party would take both items nothing will be in the orb. If it thinks the party would only choose the orb, the item will be inside.
The party can choose the lesser item and keep it. The party can choose just the orb and may get a greater prize or not (depending on your previous judgement of what their action would be). The party could choose both but if there is nothing in the orb the lesser gift disappears as well.
The point here is to think, based on their previous actions, what the creature (you) thinks the party would do. If they have generally been greedy and selfish, they should guess that you would believe they would take both, and so choose the lesser. If they have generally been unselfish and generous, they should guess that there is something in the orb (and so take both). As you should know their backgrounds and secrets, you can bring this into play and somebody in the party might have to reveal a secret or risk losing both items. Also a great way to recap what has happened previously in your campaign.
It can spiral into double bluff thinking - well if they know they have been kind then they would choose both and perhaps the creature deduced this or the fact that they would consider taking both might be a factor, etc. It's a fun conversation, moreso if they are playing as their characters. At the end of the day, they won't lose anything but should have a fairly lively debate.
I always find that character driven encounters engage the players the most. With that, depending on their level you could have the party discover a book or scroll from one of the characters' back stories. Another way to introduce this sort of spin is instead of having a book or scroll, you could introduce some script written on a door or other locked area that the party has to solve some puzzle to enter or unlock. It could contain additional puzzles related to their back stories. This sort of twist lends itself to having the characters try to unravel and explore what other characters in their backstories did and why are their specific character-driven matters showing up in a mountain related to primordials.
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Hello, I am looking at adding a non-combat encounter to my upcoming session. I am thinking something more Psychological/Philosophical rather than a physical challenge. My players are pretty into the roleplaying aspect and want to introduce that to a dungeon I have coming up to shake things up during the session. These environment itself is inside a mountain/cave that is related to some primordial stuff going on in the campaign if that helps. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
For it to be an encounter it requires a consequence of failure and a conflict to be resolved.
A puzzle to open a door which requires a humanoid life force to open would be a moral/ethical challenge for low level, or making the soul consumed so not even resurrection would work for a higher level party.
shortest answer:
traps. Puzzles. Rip off any saw movie.
Blank
Just having to face things they find scary, giving them the chance to really get into the feelings-- what could your primordial cave hold that would frighten the players' characters? It doesn't have to be something they'll have to encounter as a fight-- it could be a glimpse of something very large moving through the caverns in the dark, or masses of insects skittering away and up the walls-- or dropping from the ceiling-- as they enter one area with torches. Maybe some traces of something terrible happening in these caverns before. If the characters have specific fears that you can exploit, go for it, work them up before they even reach the puzzles and obstacles. That lets them roleplay not just during the encounters, but as they're dungeon-diving and searching around the place.
As far as specific non-combat encounters, traps and puzzles are always good-- having to unlock doors or create bridges over chasms, figuring out the weight limit on a raft to ferry the party and their equipment over a body of water with something hungry lurking in it, chests that are trapped, or traps set around some lone piece of bait. It could be something set up by any sentient creatures who are using the caverns or who have used them in the past, but there can also be things left by adventurers who have fared less well than your party hopes to fare! Maybe if your party discovers a fallen adventurer in a tunnel with a magical item on them that they'd like to loot and use, they have to figure out a password ,or to find the right route through the caves, they have to code-break a scroll found on a corpse. You can still use an intelligence skill check rather than just having your players try to read your mind in character, but they'd be able to say 'ah, when I was in the great library of (X), I read about the life of an artificer whose work I recognized, and realized that to activate the ring, I would need to call out the name of his childhood dog!'. or 'I learned this code when I was a young squire, under the great adventurer (Y), who would use it when sending sensitive messages to his guild-mates!' (and you COULD also give your players a real code to break, if it's the kind of thing that some of them would enjoy, though a skill roll might be a lot faster)
And, whenever there's a sentient enemy that wants something, there's always the chance that your players could at least try to talk their way out of a fight and get their XP by solving an encounter non-violently. When I was my group's DM, I had players deceive potential combat encounters, but I've also had them bribe enemies who went on to become allies.
You've got a lot of options for bringing out engagement in and out of encounters. It's great that this is something your group is into and I hope they really get into the things you throw at them-- it's extra work on your end to find things that aren't just the standard types of encounter, but when it works it can be a whole lot of fun. I've been both the DM and one of the players, for different things along the line of what I've suggested, and while there are players who just want to get a passing skill roll and move on to the combat, for players who love the roleplay aspect, it's so rewarding to have those good character-building moments.
I once put a door in a dungeon that you had to tell a deep, personal secret to in order to pass thorough. You could try stuff like that that teases your characters' existing backstory, flaws, or phobias to the surface.
Anything psychological should force characters to confront something within themselves.
As far as philosophical, you may want to present players with multiple "win" scenarios that come at different costs and let their moral philosophies play out against each other. The Trolley Problem, per se, where in order to reach outcome A you may need to put innocents in danger, but in order to reach outcome B you put yourselves in danger, and if you die, who saves the innocents?? Use what you know of your characters' values to design a scenario where conflicting beliefs are brought head to head.
In my world, various different lands are covered in a mysterious mist called the Deep Fog: the precursor to an impending doom. To traverse it the part rides a specially designed train. However, to operate it you must remember your past in order to look forward into the future (it’s thematic).
Heres the fun part. I explore the single character and their emotional conflict. It’s almost a meditation, i present to them two option catered to their character which reflect avenues of growth or regression. Depending on their route they’ll either traverse the fog safely and enter the new location from the towns entrance as ambassadors, or crash in the nearby wilds to demo the new locations conflict and dungeon vibe.
The Fog clears by the end of the arc and I repeat this each new arc. Theoretically it’s gonna happen once for every character, but because it’s based on their back stories and whatever new town they’re going to it keeps it fresh while maintain continuity. Essentially i’m creating a puzzle based on what i perceive might be their potential future, and their character flaws/motivations become their obstacles.
If you wanted to be nice and have a fun encounter that would get the party talking and thinking about their previous actions, you could go on a variation of Newcomb's Problem. The party enters a chamber that contains a highly knowledgeable being - any creature or humanoid that can use magic that suits your theme. They explain that they can see the past but cannot know the future (you might have the creature state that they are the Master of this Dungeon to make it clear that they have all the DMs knowledge) and they have judged the party. They have decided to help those that know themselves in their quest against whatever your primordial stuff is.
The creature waves his hand and a minor item of use and a glowing orb appear in front of the party. The item of use could be a magical item or some healing potions, depending on your party's level. Inside the orb may or may not be a higher level magical item of your choosing. They can choose to take the lesser item, choose what's in the orb or take both. Their choice now will not change what is in the orb.
The creature states the outcome has already been decided (you can place the answer in an envelope prepared before the session). It has seen their previous actions. If it (you) thinks the party would take both items nothing will be in the orb. If it thinks the party would only choose the orb, the item will be inside.
The party can choose the lesser item and keep it. The party can choose just the orb and may get a greater prize or not (depending on your previous judgement of what their action would be). The party could choose both but if there is nothing in the orb the lesser gift disappears as well.
The point here is to think, based on their previous actions, what the creature (you) thinks the party would do. If they have generally been greedy and selfish, they should guess that you would believe they would take both, and so choose the lesser. If they have generally been unselfish and generous, they should guess that there is something in the orb (and so take both). As you should know their backgrounds and secrets, you can bring this into play and somebody in the party might have to reveal a secret or risk losing both items. Also a great way to recap what has happened previously in your campaign.
It can spiral into double bluff thinking - well if they know they have been kind then they would choose both and perhaps the creature deduced this or the fact that they would consider taking both might be a factor, etc. It's a fun conversation, moreso if they are playing as their characters. At the end of the day, they won't lose anything but should have a fairly lively debate.
I always find that character driven encounters engage the players the most. With that, depending on their level you could have the party discover a book or scroll from one of the characters' back stories. Another way to introduce this sort of spin is instead of having a book or scroll, you could introduce some script written on a door or other locked area that the party has to solve some puzzle to enter or unlock. It could contain additional puzzles related to their back stories. This sort of twist lends itself to having the characters try to unravel and explore what other characters in their backstories did and why are their specific character-driven matters showing up in a mountain related to primordials.