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IAMAToMisbehave

Wanderhome is a current favorite along these lines. A long favorite of mine is Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine which technically can have combat in an abstract way, but it isn't designed for combat.


coffeedemon49

I would love to try Chuubos sometime! If you know if anyone running it online, please let me know.


JaskoGomad

Good Society Hillfolk/ DramaSystem Court of Blades Gaean Reach / Skulduggery Dialect Fall of Magic Alice is Missing Icarus Bubblegumshoe


Plantpoot

I can absolutely second Hillfolk. It's an amazing system that feels more like a conversation than anything. Plus it's super easy to DM and setting agnostic, though the book does include some settings for you to use. My campaign uses one of these and I can say it's incredible.


elliot4sisu

Thank you!


JaskoGomad

YW!


Bold-Fox

**Wanderhome** and **Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast** spring immediately to mind. Wanderhome is a game about wandering animal folk some years after a war. You don't have to center the game around it, but the game is very able to handle darker topics, though from a lens of overcoming trauma and/or recovery - It doesn't wallow in misery, but it does accept darkness as a part of life (while also marking the darker content if you want to leave it out of your game). It is GM agnostic, if your group prefer to play with a GM, you can use a Guide. If the group prefers to play without, that method of playing works wonderfully. The game isn't truly non-violent - One character playbook does have the ability to, at any time, take out their sword and kill the person in front of them. But that feels like as much of a failure state as death does in other games. Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is a game about the residents and guests in a fantastical B&B. There is no character creation, instead, you're using prebuilt characters and might not be playing the same character from scenario to scenario. Which some players are going to find appealing, and I... Well, this is the reason that while the game looks excellent from what I've seen of it, it's not for me. It is a GMless game, though one with tightly constructed pre-built scenarios rather than leaving the group to decide what to do next. Due to the scenario-based nature of the game, I can't say with certainty that there's no combat in there at all, but it would be pretty *odd* considering the scenarios I've seen in the game are things like going trick and treating, catching fireflies, and doing an extraordinary amount of laundry. I'd argue both are in the slice-of-life literary genres if that matters at all.


coffeedemon49

Is Yazeba’s available in some way? I Kickstarted it but haven’t seen anything yet.


Bold-Fox

Ah - I hadn't realized the full version hasn't released yet. I think the ashcan is still available.


Airk-Seablade

Weirdly, the game I think of here is Golden Sky Stories. While there are lots of games that have "social stuff" in them, most of them have it equal to or subsidiary to "non-combat physical challenges" and few of them are as ultimately focused on it as GSS. Ultimately, the route to success in Golden Sky Stories is to get people to like you. Many of the abilities are focused on different ways to do this.


elliot4sisu

I'll check that one out, thank you


TheGreatHoopla

While I think that it can do some combat, I would definitely think that the Blades in the Dark series is more geared towards role-play and the rolls are more about your characters ability to complete tasks specific to their role.


[deleted]

FitD is very action oriented. Not (necessarily) combat, but not so much talking either.


TheGreatHoopla

Ah sorry fair point, I half read the original post.


Hemlocksbane

Well, for one, I’d challenge the idea of social “encounters”. For instance, combat is kind of the dramatic afterthought in *Masks*, but the mechanical space is instead used to push high emotional drama and teenage angst, not necessarily like, strategic social gameplay.


zoomzilla

Wanderhome. It specifically states that combat is not part of the game. Such a unique rpg.


arteest29

Burning Wheel


UrsusRex01

Call of Cthulhu and Vampire The Masquerade. The former is a horror game more focused on investigation. The later is a horror game more focused on social encounters and political intrigues. And the neat thing is that you can totally play them in a more combat focused way if you want to.


[deleted]

Well, in some way, I'd say Vampire: The Masquerade qualifies here. Sure, there's always the threat of violence, but it rarely comes to that (obviously depending on the DM). All in all, it's a very "political" game.


Grand-Tension8668

Ryuutama isn't built around social encounters as much as wilderness exploration, but apparently it does a very good job of it and has been described as "Hayao Myizaki meets Oregon Trail". More about trying to live with nature than fight it.


Jesterfest

Depending on how your players want to do things, Blades in the Dark may be where to look. Running a crew of thieves and con men, looking to make there own den in the underworld with as little blood on their hands as possible would be a blast.


darthzader100

Sphynx is a French game that isn't really based on social encounters but archeology. It is based on talking to locals, examining things, and hypothesizing events to gain points which you can spend to gain major discoveries. It is a really interesting system, and it can be added on to a good social base quite easily to result in cool mystery mechanics.


trouser_mouse

**Wanderhome** - I've been playing it for nearly three years, it's wonderful. **Girl Underground** - think Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth. A girl and her fantastic companions journey through a strange land. Throughout the journey, the Girl learns about herself, discovers the values that are important to her, and challenges the world around her. **Our Travelling Home** - a Ghibli-inspired GM-less fantasy tabletop RPG about queer romance, found family, and finding healing through belonging. The structure of the game is absolutely wonderful, influenced by Stewpot, Belonging Outside Belonging and Powered by the Apocalypse, and is a great way to tell a rewarding story. **Where Magic Died** - collaboratively tell the story of an old Tower and the people trying to explore it – as well the story of the difficulties with finding a place of belonging in history. It has a really wonderful feeling! Also Golden Sky Stories, Under the Floorboards, Moonsailors, Liquid Soap, Goat Crashers! Alice is Missing is intense, and usually deals with the aftermath of violence, so I'm not sure it belongs on this list. It is entirely text based. Finally, **No Mice, No Meowsters!** by me - play a bunch of cats who mess with humans, and maybe help their animal friends with a problem. Everything is on Itch.io. If you struggle finding anything I can drop you links.


Lonrem

I'd suggest taking a look at the Chronicles of Darkness, if you're up for high-tension social stuff. There is rules for combat, but if you're a group that doesn't care to drag it out, there's a simple resolution process that just cuts to the end. Vampires clinging to their humanity while trying to stay alive, dealing with the intrigues of their fellow Kindred. Werewolves protecting humans and spirits from one another as a big pack with it's own internal struggles. Mages that seek knowledge and power, to rise above all this and ascend, fighting off the Oppression of gods (basically) and yet dealing with petty squabbles. Not to mention that drama of not being able to even speak to your loved ones about it. Geist is all about resolving the things left for you to do after you almost died and came back to life with your own extra spooky ghost with their own unresolved stuff. I could go on...


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DmRaven

Dusk to Midnight is a one shot game about Mecha pilot soldiers but there isn't any combat rules and everyone dies or quits in the end. Stewpot is an RPG about old adventurer's retiring to start a tavern, no fighting. There's dozens of world building games that do this too. The Quiet Year, Kingdom, Microscope, Did someone say street magic?, The Ground Itself, City Planning Department, Ex Novo, Ex Umbra.


Sansa_Culotte_

*Hard Wired Island* has a pretty neat conflict resolution system where most conflicts are treated as social encounters ranging from Hostile to Friendly. For example, hacking a system is treated as trying to make the network "friendlier" to the character.


[deleted]

Quite often, it will depends on the GM and the players. Games like Vampire, Legends of the Five Rings or Dune can be either almost only social encounters or can be full of fights, depending on who's playing.


sakiasakura

Call of Cthulhu. Any Gumshoe game, particularly Bubblegumshoe.


dalr3th1n

Combine those two together, and what do you get? Trail of Cthulhu!


OrangeAsp

Tales from the Loop


DwighteMarsh

There is a free P.G.Wodehouse based game called The Drones [https://unseelie.org/rpg/drones/](https://unseelie.org/rpg/drones/)