I like to write non combat modules or combat light modules where there is a possibility of combat but it isn't baked in.

Fortunately Vivian likes to play non combat.

For many players the combat is the game. I'm with you. I avoid combat. And when I do combat I prefer tactics, plan B, tricks and general sneakiness.

But if I'm at a table where the players love combat. Roll for initiative.

Thanks

I had my Great Awakening in the early '80s, and that actually led me away from the D&D family because so many people not only just assumed combat, but assumed combat to the death with no quarter, no fleeing: just grinding down hit points to 0 on one side or the other then moving on to the next hit point grind.

And D&D doesn't have to be played that way but it is common. And more common in 5e with more powerful characters out of the box and death saves.

Yes, I know it didn't have to be. :( My "great awakening" was the realization that there was more to life than rolling d20+d<damage> non-stop. But I couldn't find others who thought that way in the AD&D circles I frequented, so I moved on to DragonQuest (where I knew players who did non-combat).

As a DM who got involved in the early days of roll playing I tried to prohibit the idea that if you were in combat it must end with somebody dead. The thought that maybe this situation could be resolved by talking through it rather than hacking and slashing wasn't usually employed. I often docked points from those who just wanted to kill without any other choices made available. Real life sometimes seems to follow that route now and then and I think using it as entertainment is just asking for increasing bad choices in our youth.

I think the problem was that a lot of early role-players stepped into it from the world of war gaming. (I didn't.) I'm positive a lot of the people I gamed with in the early days just viewed the characters as complicated playing pieces to optimize the movements of, not as characters in a setting.

And that's the kind of combat I like to play. Where you use strategy and work as a team to win the combat. If that means they run away or surrender you still win. But I prefer avoiding combat most of all and as a player try to roll dice as least as I can.

Yeah, figuring out how not to use all your resources in one fight so you have enough to accomplish your goal. Less fighting leads to less time wasting healing up and going back to town empty handed.

Especially if there is a time element. You must retrieve the potion before the full moon to keep your friend from turning into a werewolf ... Can't waste time fighting and healing. Let's figure out a way to sneak around those kobolds.

Time pressure is a GM tool more GMs should use more often.

I agree and I build it into my modules when I can. For instance the party was tasked with gathering medicine and with the people in the neighboring village sick they needed it by tomorrow. In my latest quest the party has to get a branch off the ancestor tree in a magic forest with about a bajillion hills and a big old tree at the top of every one. The catch was the ancestor tree glowed with a fey glow when the moon was full. So you know that only happens every 28 days so they had to be in the right place at the right time.