I did come accross that before, but thanks for reminding me as thats the exact kind of thing these players will need to get familiar with if they intend to adventure at all without any intent of slaying.  In the future they may have followers that could protect them, maby for now they need to hitch up with a larger group that could put their skills to use?
             thank you for the response, man you'r quick on the draw....

Not to steer you away from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers, but honestly, I'd probably just play a different system than AS&SH (or any descendants of D&D). If you take out combat, what you're left with isn't much mechanically.

If you are more interested in a storytelling/roleplaying campaign, then a game like BRP/Runequest/OpenQuest doesn't have to be very combat centric, because characters are not super men and can be fairly easily overwhelmed if faced with numbers (as it would be in real-life) but there are tons of skills and ways to approach problem solving and roleplaying. And although I couldn't get into it, I thought Barbarians of Lemuria's Careers system was interesting and might allow for the kind of play you are seeking.

NAJones wrote:

Not to steer you away from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers, but honestly, I'd probably just play a different system than AS&SH (or any descendants of D&D). If you take out combat, what you're left with isn't much mechanically.

Which isn't a bad thing. Frankly, the only thing specific to Sword & Sorcery in AS&SH is the Hyberborea Setting that comes bundled with the rules, and the name on the front cover. The rules themselves are not any more or less S&S than any other OSR game.

And I think not having much menchanically for stuff that isn't combat is a good thing. The thing that draws me to OSR games is that the rules seem to be made to help playing a game of adventure. But the rules are not the game. Sometimes I need to tell a player if the character can do a certain thing or fails at it, but the answer is not obvious and I don't want to make an arbitrary descision on a whim. I want to remain at least somewhat impartial and not give preference to some players over others. Test and Feats of Stength (and Dex and Con), carrying capacity, movement rate, and utility spells can help getting an impartial result, and that is about as much detail as I need or want.

The last adventure I ran friday had very little and only very short fights. I wrote a report of the whole thing here.

The next adventure will be a lot bigger, but combat not be much much common. I've just started preparing this, but I can already see the many possibilities for noncombat challenges the players will have to face.
The PCs learn that the old hermit who trained one of them as a cleric is missing and his home in the hills looted. The PCs go to find him and encounter a group of bandits taking another load of loot from the house. They may fight them and follow their tracks, capture one and make him talk, or stay hidden and see where they are going. This leads the PCs to an abandoned mine deeper in the hills where the bandits have slaves digging for an old burried treasure. However, the mine hasn't been maintained in ages and there's creatures living in the darkness now, and the bandits have neither explore nor cleared most of the tunnels. Finding the dig site, survivng the dangerous environment and creatures, and hopefully not alerting the bandits should be quite a challenge. Once the bandits are driven off and the slaves freed, the slaves will tell the PCs that they were part of a larger group taken by raiders from the marshes, and can point them to the main camp of the raiders. However, they already finished their raiding and are on the journey home, with their loot and their slaves.
The PCs might be able to get the horses of the bandits or not, and they may have brought supplies for two weeks in the wilds or not. This will determine if they can catch up to the raiders before they make it home. (Unknown to them, the hermit was not taken, but is following the raiders as well to learn the location of their village and come back with reinforcements later.) Getting out of the hills and potentially deep into the marches will be another big challenge itself. And one of the bandits might have escaped from the mine and trying to warn the raiders. The PCs might be fast enough to catch him, or he might warn the raiders so they can set traps and ambushes.
If the PCs fail to catch the raiders in time, they will need to get inside the village and free the slaves, but won't have the power to take on all the dozens of warriors all by themselves (since they are still just 1st level) and even if they can free the slaves, they still have to get a group of 20 noncombatants through a dangerous wilderness, potentially with pursuers on their heels.

This is still an early draft with barely any details, but I think exploring the mines, dealing with the marshes, and freeing the slaves will make up the vast majority of the adventure, while barely containing any combat themselves. There are three opportunities for a big fight, but even in those cases the players will benefit greatly from using trickery instead of a frontal assault.

How about combat that's not really combat? I love the idea of opposing forces being resolved metaphorically in metaphysick "battles" which take place entirely in the minds of the characters.
I always wanted to handle wizardly ascension similar to that of druids using this approach...

Or is it that you're simply tired of rolling "to hit"?
 

I like violence to be meaningful when it happens. Characters should be highly aversive of putting themselves into mortal danger unless they think it's really necessary. If combat is rare, it's even more of a crisis situation when it happens. That doesn't mean the game is nonviolent, instead I hope to make it actually more brutal.

As it so happens, I had a skeleton crew last night: two players. They played their 1st level thieves, and throughout the night they did everything in their power to avoid a fight, using skill, negotiation, and a willingness to run at every step of the way. We didn't have a single combat the whole night, but it didn't feel that way.

mabon5127 wrote:

RedJowel wrote:

Now I like the idea of a knowledge driven, role-play heavy campaign, and I'm up to the challenge, but cutting down on combat is a very serious challenge to me.  I'm going to have to think less Conan and more Call of Ktulu,  and devise ways to challenge the players outside of combat, or at least give them interesting things to do once they inevitably get captured by combatants.

Back in the old days when OD&D was it we managed to have mysteries and quests without combat.  I don't think its a fools errand particularly since both players desire that type of thing. Balancing a group of players with a mix of desires / agendas is tougher, I think, so no one feels bored.

Keep in mind that the whole "non combat" campaign has to be a choice of both players and GM, so it's not entirely your burden to come up with things for the players to do. They ought to be generating many of these ideas as well.

Mabon is correct about early OD&D -- while our group had its share of dungeon crawls and barroom brawls, we also did a lot of investigation stuff and "rescue the princess" adventures where the goal was to get in and out without getting ourselves killed. You can steal a page from the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG and have some big nasties that the players might want to destroy through ritual rather than fight. You can have them run errands for sorcerers who are in need of spell components. You can center a campaign in a city full of intrigue, where killing someone will get you run out of town or worse. There are many options you can pursue that don't involve combat on a regular basis, but you need to be sure that the players are interested in that style of play as well.

Fundamentally I don't see that you have to switch game systems at all, only keep in mind that you will probably have to "wing it" through stat checks and the like occasionally. Heck, I do that all the time and prefer it to a rules set which gets too intense in terms of skill lists and the like. And when combat does occur, which it most certainly will have to on occasion, you've got your AS&SH realy for action.

Just my two coppers.