In short, don't make vanilla flavored combat -- make roleplaying flavored combat. If you still aren't having much fun, and this isn't helping players see things your way, then maybe it's time you moved on to a new group.


From: Gwaldrop

One way to discourage excessive combat is to tell the players ahead of time to not make combat oriented characters. Often times they'll comply with you if you just ask them to.

However, some players are just going to do whatever they want to do. In this case, if you want a game oriented towards story more than combat just make it that way. Characters who solve their troubles with weapons first should get themselves into more trouble because of it. Also, such characters often slight their social and mental abilities in favor of combat abilities, so gear scenes towards the social. While they sit there and yawn because their character doesn't have the necessary abilities, they get to watch while everyone else gets to develop their skills. Perhaps this will clue them in on what you mean by non-combat oriented games.

One bad side-effect of this is those players who comply all too well. I have had a few games where nobody had any real combat ability at all. I prefer a more story oriented game myself, but I like action as well - sometimes the only way out of a situation is a rock 'em sock 'em fight. Make sure to let your players know that some combat ability is fine if you expect some action in the game, just tell them not to center their character around combat.