Also is there any D&D or similar RPG that allows you to not neccesarily take part in combat? I mean not to rule it out because beating the living hell out of things can be both cathartic and relevant to the story but just sometimes I would like to see an RPG having a sort of war of words and diplomatic conflict rather than a simple "beat up the giant robots" one.
I'm playing one that can be played totally without any fighting, and I find that just as epic as anything else. The sad part is that it's in my silly language only. The good part is that you can make it yourself. What you need is:
Good fantasy
Lots'a time
A pen
Some blank cards (made from cardboard with paper glued to them, or something similar)
Make two kinds of cards. The first one has things like "you succeed", "you failed" and (this is what makes the system interesting) "you fail,
but something else works out perfectly" or "you succeed, things does in fact work out
too good". These cards are drawn whenever somebody tries to do something, unless the DM has a better idea.
You can write random stuff on the other cards. The game I play has a surrealistic setting, and involves stuff like "your dead grandmother shows up, terribly angry" or "everyone suddenly changes personality
completely". A diplomat game can have "somebody walks in the door with an important message", or something similar. The idea is to make random occurrence cards that fits your game world, and draw them at regular intervals. This is what sets the game aside; you and the DM never knows exactly what will happen, something happens, and the DM has to improvise exactly what it is. In the diplomat example the DM has to figure out if it's a messenger carrying a declaration of war, or if it's a servant that has uncovered your lies that enters to confront you with what he knows.
After you have made these, the hardest part comes, to make a game world. Our setting is pre-made, but making your own shouldn't be too hard. Set it in a book everyone in the group has read, or in the real world, or in a favorite movie, or just make up something. This demands a great deal of roleplaying from the players and a lot of effort from the GM, but the end result is just as fun as any other RPG. Feel free to make up other rules if you want. On way my group has found that makes the game a lot more fun is to let the players that's not active at the moment, take the roles of NPCs. If one in the group has brought along the guards to chase the evil overlord's minions, the other players take the roles of the guards, and decide their actions.
Was this any help at all?
