Adventure Ideas that don't involve combat(or very little of it)

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Ok,

I'm looking to run a few adventure that don't revolve around combat as a change of pace. I have between six and seven players usually. Any ideas from the assembled herodom?

Thanks,
Rob

[Doug McCrae]

1) A murder mystery
2) Heroes are asked to appear on a TV discussion programme. Theme - Should costumed vigilantes be subject to government regulation?
3) Heroes have to testify before a congressional hearing.

[BobGreenwade]

The murder mystery idea, while frighteningly difficult in any RPG setting (let alone one with superpowered humans in it), can be a wonderful diversion if done right.

You could also borrow a page from Without A Trace, and have the PCs track a high-profile missing person. I did that once with a superhero group, and though I gave it the air of a "scavenger hunt" it was a rousing success.

Another idea is to have the PCs act as bodyguards for a VIP, such as a foreign dignitary who is popular with most of the American public but not with certain radicals (President Mussharif of Pakistan comes to mind as an example). The PCs could spend the whole time tracking down clues and cornering criminals who would really rather not fight back against someone known to wield the power of a tank in his hands.

[TheEmerged]

Never underestimate the power of a good investigative mission. This can backfire if your players are prone to paranoia or second-guessing themselves, of course. But it can be *great* fun if you can pull it off.

[Hermit]

Ideas for non combat:
1 One of the DNPCs shows signs of having a drug problem.
2 Someone is impersonating one of the PCs. What are they doing, and why?
3. The PC team is challenged by an NPC hero team in a sporting event for charity.

[Lord Liaden]

Diplomatic missions can be interesting. If the PCs have had contact with an alien race, underground or underwater civilization, or extra-dimensional realm, their government may request that they represent the nation or the planet in order to establish diplomatic relations, or settle some conflict. It opens opportunities for travel to exotic locations, negotiations rather than fights, and dealing with alien high-society situations. The PCs might also become involved in the political rows of their hosts, possibly by being falsely implicated by one of the parties.

[BoloOfEarth]

A lot depends on the characters' skills, powers, etc. but here goes:

(1) Natural Disaster: Hey, you can't fight Mother Nature. How would they deal with flooding, fire, or anything else you come up with?

(2) Illness: An epidemic is sweeping the city, and the heroes (who may be affected themselves) have to track down the cause to hopefully find the cure. It could be anything from bio-terrorism to a lab accident to a new pharmaceutical's unforseen side effects.

(3) For an odd change of pace, have the players play some normals (or maybe agent-level characters). This works especially well if it's a lead-in to something the heroes will later investigate.

I ran a two-parter once, where the first part was the six players split into several teams. One player was a go-between buying a mysterious stolen micro-disc of information; another player was the bodyguard for the seller; two were agents of the person the disc had been stolen from; and the last two were FBI agents tailing the other two agents. Then, the heroes ended up talking to the characters they had played as they tried to figure out what the disc was and what happened to it. (When the heroes met the FBI agents, I had the players who had played the feds play their parts.)

[Armitage]

Originally posted by BoloOfEarth
(2) Illness: An epidemic is sweeping the city, and the heroes (who may be affected themselves) have to track down the cause to hopefully find the cure. It could be anything from bio-terrorism to a lab accident to a new pharmaceutical's unforseen side effects.

One thing I planned on eventually doing was an adventure based on the two-part episode of "Quincy" entitled "Slow Boat to Madness".
The PC's are on a cruise ship when passengers start going insane and then collapsing and starting to die. It's believed to be a disease, so the ship is quarantined, the other passengers panic, etc.
The only real potential for combat is when a pair of passengers steal a lifeboat and go ashore in a nearby banana republic that stated its violent opposition to having the ship anywhere near it.
And then a major DNPC who was on the cruise with the PC's develops symptoms.

Keep the passengers under control without hurting them.
Help and contain the victims.
Deal with the upset military without causing an international incident.
Find the source of the illness.

[The Monster]

This is pretty quirky, and would require some serious thought on your part, but I might use this one myself...

Playing off the earlier suggestion of having everyone play normals, why not have the mystery start out with "What happened to all the PC Heroes?" The players would play investigators/police/reporters/DNPCs/Contacts who are trying to discover why all the superheroes disappeared suddenly. Were they murdered? Abducted? Just way overdue on a mission? It might be a fun change of pace and still give everyone a personal stake in the outcome.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by Armitage
One thing I planned on eventually doing was an adventure based on the two-part episode of "Quincy" entitled "Slow Boat to Madness".
The PC's are on a cruise ship when passengers start going insane and then collapsing and starting to die. It's believed to be a disease, so the ship is quarantined, the other passengers panic, etc.
The only real potential for combat is when a pair of passengers steal a lifeboat and go ashore in a nearby banana republic that stated its violent opposition to having the ship anywhere near it.
And then a major DNPC who was on the cruise with the PC's develops symptoms.

Keep the passengers under control without hurting them.
Help and contain the victims.
Deal with the upset military without causing an international incident.
Find the source of the illness. And don't forget "PC develops symptoms..."

Great idea; especially since we have two physicians on our team. Consider it stolen. :D

BTW, how did the Quincy episode work out in the end? What was the cause?

I ran a scenario recently that featured little combat where I took the team (along with half of the University of Montana at Butte) back to the Cretaceous. The heroes not only had to figure out a way to reverse the process (which kept our brick occupied since she was our Nobel-prize winning physicist), but the doctor on the team had to treat minor and major injuries from the transference (and later, from the local fauna). Better yet, the heroes had to keep their superpowers under wraps or they would have given away their secret identities. None of the University staff or students ever realized MidGuard was present.

I did allow for a little dinosaur stomping. The first night our martial artist engaged what he thought was an ordinary crocodile in the lake filling the east edge of the campus and and was somewhat taken aback when the critter turned out to be 45' long with 5 foot jaws. And when our physician flew around the campus to get some air the next night and saw a pack of velociraptors chasing three coeds he blasted the 'raptors with his Area Effect attack. He was amazed at how easily they went down, one shot took them all out. But as I told him "They're not monsters, they're animals. Think of them as bipedal tigers with big rear claws." The T-Rex would have been tougher, but anyone on the team would still have beaten him handily.

A great time was had by all. (Well, except the dinosaurs.) :D

[Tempuswolf]

Originally posted by Trebuchet
BTW, how did the Quincy episode work out in the end? What was the cause?


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ergot-flavored tortilla chips?

[Emerald Mask]

I have used the natural diaster path before, heroes using there powers to fight a forest fire threating a town or evacuating a burning hi-rise can test players and characters alike. Forcing them to use there powers in different ways.

[Armitage]

Originally posted by Trebuchet
And don't forget "PC develops symptoms..."

Great idea; especially since we have two physicians on our team. Consider it stolen. :D

BTW, how did the Quincy episode work out in the end? What was the cause?

As Tempuswolf said, ergot.

When a pregnant passenger went into premature labor, Quincy finally realized that all of the symptoms matched ergotism. An examination of all the victims' activities revealed that they had all eaten in one particular bar on board the ship. That bar served edible dip bowls made from tortilla chip and the supplier had cut corners and provided sub-standard chips contaminated with ergot.

[wcw43921]

Three words:

MASS HOSTAGE SITUATION

The bad guys have an auditorium, or shopping mall, or stadium, or something just like those filled with innocent people, and a WMD ready to kill them all at the touch of a button. Charging in at full force isn't the answer; the player-heroes have to stall for time and figure out how to negate the weapon and rescue the hostages without prematurely escalating the situation into a shooting match.

The scenario "Asenscion" from the VIPER Souercebook is a perfect example of of such a situation.

[Brandi]

How about Sanctuary? Anyone in the group who likes just character interaction can have a ball chatting it up with people who might normally be their worst enemies...

[tesuji]

Don't start in a vacuum.

look over your PCs. Pay special attention to non-combat useful attributes they paid points for, especially significant points.

pick two or three of these traits and write non-combat stories that revolve around or make these traits pivotal.

Whenever i am "looking for a plot", i grab their character sheets and look for things i haven't made special yet, and the answers are there.

[Briguy123]

If your characters are in the mood for a little melodrama, try injecting some soap opera style plots into the story. In one campaign my character got slapped with several paternity suits. He was a young college nerd when he recieved his powers and the resulting fame netted him a plethora of groupies. Two of the women filing suit had definite grounds to seek a court ordered paternity test. It was fun playing out the drama only to find out that my character had been framed by the mysterious organization that was responsible for his origin.

Then there is always the comedy scenario. I had another character (female and attractive) who was conned into a date with Foxbat. That was a real hoot, although it did eventually lead to a breif scuffle. *Foxbat goes for the open mouth Kiss - BOOT TO THE 'NADS!*

[Chris Goodwin]

I like this one. If the players are always coming up with "generic" DNPCs, or never flesh them out, have one PC's DNPC generic girlfriend be another PC's DNPC generic wife. Of course, there's no guarantee there won't be combat involved....

[Crimson Arrow]

Some really great ideas so far. I won't duplicate anything that's come up already, but how about a recruitment drive?

It wouldn't have to be for new team members, perhaps the base needs staff and, of course, someone might turn up who shouldn't be there (reporter, DNPC, enemy).

Perhaps the heroes visit some sick children - the "Make a Wish Foundation" sort of thing might mean the characters get to show off powers they rarely use, just not in combat.

[LizardDaddy]

Pcs have a fanboy about to get into serious trouble. >Roleplay, possibly staging a "learning experience for the NPC >dealing with responsibility to fans/image

Rival organization- be it superhero or rival department at the company of a PC etc- challenges PCs to company olympics/scavenger hunt/something lighthearted. >Can the heroes win the event and keep identities under cover?

PCs are visited by Alien superhero group who are curious about earther's methods and codes of conduct. Its a case of the Foreign Exchange Students run amok! >Can become a bit lighthearted. (TFOS!)

Murder mystery- megavillain dies strangely. >lots of RP with former henchmen, other supers, looking into the past of the supervillain, exposing more of his /her backstory.

[talisman]

"Law & Order" changed my perception of how the process of the criminal justice system works. In Cop Shows, it was enough that the police or the detective found the bad guy. Now, I realize how important the trial can really be. Here are some plot ideas based on this premise:
a) can the PCs give testimony that's considered valid while maintaining their Secret IDs?
b) does all of the collateral damage that comes along with a fight in public go unnoticed? Are the PCs criminally liable for the damages?
c) Can the PCs be called up as expert witnesses (this is great for a solo adventure, when your other players can't be there).

I always had trouble planning out disaster games because of all the homework: looking up the damage of falling concrete or planning for falling bits of debris, etc. I always found it easier to do something like a disease.

[Vondy]

My Freedom Patrol game was traditionlly 2-3 sessions of investigation and covert operations work (90% RP / 10% CBT) followed by the huge blowout combat free for all and wrap-up session (20% RP / 80% CBT). Though, when running solo-adventures it widely depended on the player. I ran some solo-story arcs that had little, if any actual combat.

My San Francisco Streets game has proved to have a higher combat ratio per session (60% RP / 40% CBT).