I've seen people running games which are mostly combats including battlemap and miniature, and other GM where combats is pretty rare, so just curious to see the trend in this c/
My party has quite a few tools to resolve encounters without whipping out the initiative tracker, and fights are pretty much only inevitable in the optional dungeons, so it averages out at 0.4 combats per session.
Varies wildly depending on system, but I generally try to make sure there's some sort of large conflict that they're trying to solve which usually has a few smaller conflicts involved. In DnD those smaller conflicts are often combat, but in Forged in the Dark games there's more variety.
It's rare that the big thing for a session is combat unless I've set up some sort of boss battle, but hey, sometimes the players want to kill things, I'm not gonna stop them 🤷
Depends on the system. Classical fantasy adventuring? Most if not all sessions. Adventure and Sword&Sorcery? Sometimes, half perhaps. Character drama? Very seldom.
I look at how the system spends its page budget and use that as a guideline. If there is a chapter for combat, one for harm and recovery and one for combat magic then the system wants me to focus on those parts. Also I look at how the players/characters are rewarded and try to have each session hit several of those criteria. So if the only (reliable, non gm-fiat) way to earn rewards if through combat then you bet your sweet ass there will combats each session.
I usually have a combat in most sessions, but not every one. I'm currently running PTU, so combats take a lot longer than in a game like D&D, which means I have to place them carefully. Fortunately most players default to trying to befriend Pokemon before they try fighting them.
PTU also has a lot of different AoEs, so having maps helps a lot. I'm learning to draw them slowly
I try to build in the option for a combat scene or the ability to sneak or talk their way past it in every session, so that my players can decide the battles they want to fight and the ones they do not.
I just recently had my players plan and execute a "prosperity gospel" give us your money and we'll double it scam. It was exceptionally well thought out and one player even wrote a speech he gave, and because it was a bustling space station (Glavis Ring Station) I decided about 10k people attended or were in the immediate vicinity. They rolled exceptionally well in scamming the people and made off with like, 40k credits split down the middle for both players.
To punish them and show consequences for actions, several of the gangs and people started searching for them and they were spotted in a busy area, and they got into an altercation. One player forgot the scene was a crowded transit station, and then he got grappled he panicked and punched off a 20ft point blank AoE around himself that dealt 6d8 damage, vaporizing four enemies and a dozen innocent civilians. They then ran on a train where the thugs chased them, where the other player shot a direct line AoE that hit the train engine compartment, which exploded and caused the train to derail presumably killing all the civilians on board.
My players had a blast (literally!) And now security forces are scrambling, scouring the space station for them. They keep joking about how you either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.
They are going to see several holonews reports in the next session about the political blowback, and this will result in a serious escalation of the conflict between both factions. One side will accuse the Republic of terrorism and destabilizing a "neutral" safe haven and retaliate, and the republic will suspect the separatists of staging something to give an excuse to attack, and will stockpile and prepare for conflict.
We are playing a Star Wars 5e scenario, set about a thousand years before the movies.
Combat is much easier to run than RP, so most of not all sessions will include combat (especially as all our sessions are evening ones after work). That said, apparently one of the best sessions I have run had zero combat, so it can be done.
Most of the discussions about combat have asked that where possible, it should be dynamic, with destructible environments or things like that. (Even if the NPC's use them against the characters too).
My 5e game is at level 14 so combats have become more rare. Specifically because they take longer and usually need to be higher stakes. I'm not going to make a bunch of highwaymen into an actual encounter, it's just going to be a decision of if the party wants them to live or not done outside initiative.
I play 2hr sessions we 1/4-1/3 sessions tend to have encounters. This means maybe we got 3-5 sessions b/t encounters of any length.
I'm in a Burning Wheel campaign right now where the main focus has been political intrigue. Burning Wheel has a duel of wits system that's been a very fun substitute for physical combat. There's strategy in planning out your turns to counter your opponent. Our characters are all conniving egoists looking after their own personal gain. The DoW system has been a good in-universe system for resolving different character goals inside the party.
I run 90 minute sessions after supper for my step-son, and the breakdown is generally narrative update/skills encounter/battle, with the potential for overlap between neighbours. So, usually once per session.
I'm currently playing Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults, which is a very combat heavy adventure. Every room is either a fight, or else a subversion of the players' expectation that there will be a fight in every room.
I haven't run such a combat heavy campaign before, but I think it's been going really well.
I often say that the more I age the less combat I put in my game.
It's a tendency that has been ongoing over more than 20 years of game.
Firstly, we had discussion with other players about shooting at target isn't interesting, combat needs to be challenging and dangerous which basically involve removing any easy/useless encounters like this easy ambush to warm-up the party which doesn't bring much to the story, and I slowly evolved to combat still happens every session but it's one big/relevant combat rather than small random combat.
Then, when not having a "student agenda anymore", I had less time to play, when you need to finish the game-night at midnight rather than at 04, you need to cut-down stuff, and this is how I switched to occasional combats rather than regular combats.
In the last decade, I've been doing more and more drama-focused games rather than action focused game making combat even more useless. Even in more classical games, I often end-up skipping the combat, So you're well prepared the terrain have the advantage of the number, the surprise and the terrain, no need to roll the dice. This trends also goes with my players, like recently I had players solving a Cy_Borg one shot only by talking using spies drone (even though it's a game where I would have expected some fight) turn-out that when they understood *PCs are weak, fights are dangerous) they've done everything to avoid-it.
Once in a few sessions. Party because that's on our characters to decide how they address the goal and partly because I create jobs where "covert" seems to be first thought. Not that I would be against them going berserk, it just often seems like the proper approach
I still prepare maps, though. I've learned that theater of mind does not work with me, my players were sill lost in what's where. Probably it would be a good idea to learn how to do ToM properly but I feel I still need to learn other things first. And these are still useful for showing where the cameras and the doors are
I almost never use battlemap, but sometimes I prepare map, as they help for more than just combat. A map of the crime-scene sometimes really helps the PC figuring out how the clues say something about the story. Knowing how dorm are organized in the university campus can really help when you want to play campus drama. Thinking about how the "servant can bring food from the castle-kitchen to the ballroom* suddently means that you have a whole network of small corridors which can be used for an infiltration.
And then even though I suck at it it's sometimes quite fun to do
I almost never use battlemap, but sometimes I prepare map
Wait, what's the difference? A grid?
I prefer to have some kind of grid on mine as it helps with seeing the scale. But the moment a player starts counting squares of movement, so the the squares of range fit, I get triggered ;) I don't play rpgs to measure ranges with a ruler
A map of the crime-scene sometimes really helps the PC figuring out how the clues say something about the story
Exactly! it can backfire, though. You put something somewhere becuase "it fits" but suddenly your players are sure something you didn't intend has happened because of the layout
I'd say that the difference is mostly the intended use but you're right a map could be used for a battle or for role-play depending on the circumstance. You may-want to use the map just to fight, or want to use the map to set some "game elements", the tavern has some private lounge on the side, room where you can "buy some love" on the upper floor, and in the basement there is a few cages where the local mafia keep persons who needs to have a talk with the boss (and may loose some finger in Yakuza inspired scene)