Challenge without Combat

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve read quite a bit about combat mechanics—how to make fights meaningful, what kind of mechanics I want from combat, and how to keep things exciting during a fight. That’s not because I think RPGs should be combat-focused but because when combat happens, it should add to the drama and excitement. Moreover, if I think that there is something that many GMs I played with bungled completely was combat. 

That said, I don’t think combat should be at the centre of an RPG. In fact, in most games—including some that have excellent combat mechanics—the real challenge should come from something else.

Combat is Not the Ultimate Challenge

Many people assume that the primary challenge of an RPG is combat, winning battles, and overcoming enemies; that the goal is “leveling up” and acquiring better gear, or defeating the GM in tactical combat.  It’s easy to fall into this mindset, for two reasons. The first is that computer roleplaying games are heavily focused on this. The second is that, in the father of all RPGs, D&D, character progression is strongly tied to combat encounters.

Nonetheless, I think you will get better, more enticing sessions if you ask yourself this:

If the player characters can easily win any combat what is still a challenge in this adventure?

If the answer is “not much”, I think that’s a sign you need to start challenging the players in other ways.

Think about a good Superman story. It is rarely, if ever, about whether he can beat the villain in a fight. He can. He’s Superman. The real story is about finding out what he is up against and why, what dilemmas he must face, what choices he must make, and what are the enduring consequences of those choices.

Real Challenges: Tough Decisision, Dilemmas, and Mysteries

Most of the best RPG moments happen between fights, when players are forced to make hard decisions with no easy answers. Instead of just throwing stronger enemies at them, try presenting moral dilemmas where the players can’t save everyone and everything and must make a difficult choice. 

Uncertain consequences can also create tension—should they act now or wait? Either option might make things worse. And sometimes, a victory itself comes at a cost. They may have won the battle, but what did they have to sacrifice?

This is not even about making your game world morally gray or amoral. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is not morally gray, but even there the protagonists are faced with enormous ethical dilemmas. Both Boromir and Faramir must at a certain point decide whether to take and use the evil power of the Ring for good. Gandalf must decide whether to protect Frodo or let him suffer for the good of all. Frodo must decide whether or not to kill the Gollum, a clearly evil but pathetic creature. None of these decisions is easy to take.

Beyond moral dilemmas, one of the best ways to challenge players is to make them figure things out. Not just puzzles in the traditional sense—though those can be great —but situations where they have to deduce what’s really going on. Who is a friend? Who is an enemy? What’s actually happening behind the scenes? What was the reason behind the disconcerting actions of an NPC? The uncertainty and the process of uncovering truth pull the players deeper into the fictional universe.

This is one of the most engaging and underappreciated forms of challenge in RPGs. A mystery doesn’t just feed players information, but makes them work for it. Players should feel compelled to build theories and devise plans to test them and uncover hidden motives or unravel deeper plots. This process is highly creative, often requires collective problem solving, and leads to exploration and discovery of the fictional world. Each moment they spend planning what to do in terms of the fictional world, the players place themselves more firmly in the point of view of their characters. Tactical combat may have the opposite effect, removing them from the fiction and throwing them in the abstract world of making choices mostly informed by their understanding of the game mechanics.

A hidden enemy can be much more than just “the next boss fight”—uncovering their motives should be as engaging as the final confrontation. And maybe even the final confrontation can be  more about what is said and decided than about tactical positioning and dice rolling.

Mystery forces players to engage with the world differently. If every obstacle is solved by rolling initiative, you’re missing out on the full range of what RPGs can do.

But What About Combat?

I’m not suggesting you never use combat, far from it.

However, in my favorite genres (horror, mystery, low level fantasy), violence should feel like a dangerous option with potentially fatal consequences. When combat is an active choice of the players, they should want to  know very well who they’re fighting, why, and what advantage they have—and even then, the outcome should never feel certain. When combat isn’t a choice, it should feel like an unavoidable danger they must overcome, maybe with simple survival being the main goal.

Almost no one—not even the most reckless creature—enters combat without believing they have either a significant advantage or no other option. Animals posture before fighting, trying to intimidate their opponents before engaging. People plan, gather allies, or seek ways to avoid combat unless the benefits outweigh the risks. Players should feel the same weight when making those decisions.

Conclusion

RPGs should not just be about combat. Even if your system supports it, even if your players are combat-focused, the best RPG sessions derive tension, challenge, and excitement from the fictional world more than from the mechanics.

Tough choices are often more interesting than tough enemies. Figuring out what is really happening—who to trust, what’s at stake, and what the right path is—increases engagement and adds depth. 

And if/when combat happens, make it count.

In summary, next time you prepare a game, ask yourself how the adventure challenges the players besides combat.