What is the best tabletop non-combat non-puzzle encounter?

[Q4T]

What is the best tabletop non-combat non-puzzle encounter you've ever experienced?

I am defining non-combat in such a way that includes combat-impossible and combat-optional. That is, a combat-optional encounter could be resolved with combat, but it's not necessarily the best way of resolving it.

Non-puzzle needs to be defined, because even if the meaning is universally understood, it's possible I misunderstood it and I'm using the wrong word. So here's what I mean:

A puzzle is a situation that has a known number of solutions. Usually one, but not necessarily. For example, an indestructible door into a room with indestructible walls that can only be opened with the secret lever is a puzzle. If there is an alternate secret lever somewhere, it's still a puzzle. A non-puzzle has an unknown number of solutions. For example, PCs wish to get past a guarded gate. Do they fight the guard? Bribe the guard? Discuss it with the guard? Sneak past the guard? Tunnel under the gate? Vault over the gate? Cut through the gate? There may be another way past that I haven't even thought of yet, and each of those methods can be divided into an unlimited number of sub-methods depending on how the players go about it.

With those terms clearly defined, what's the best example of a non-combat non-puzzle encounter you've ever seen?

Edit: Not sure what it's called, but I'm also ruling out any example of "I'll read you the story and you roll the dice for me" encounters. Also, "I'll read you the story, you choose from my list of options THEN roll the dice for me" encounters.

[Zathyr]

Well, there was an encounter where we were trying to take control of an island that (eventually) ended up with my character getting married. No combat. Mostly role-play. Some dice rolls.

Long story slightly less short: We talked to the folks currently occupying the place, trying to see if we could come to a deal. A few deals were presented by us, the players. A few counter-offers were presented by the others (via the GM.) One "deal" that was brought up was that I marry into the family. Me and the potential spouse spent a little time together; there seemed to be some chemistry between the PC and NPC, there would certainly be some mutual gain, so an engagement was agreed. While it was maybe more rushed than my character would've liked, everyone came out of it happy.

Now the wedding itself did have some combat, but that came later. Damn wedding crashers.

I've had a lot of fun RP encounters, but that one stands out as the most life-altering for any of my characters..

[Q4T]

Here's the one I'm most proud of that I've run:

The party meets a wolf that growls at them from a distance. The wolf is clearly guarding the mouth of a cave. No illumination comes from the gave, so it's impossible to know how far it goes or what wondrous things are contained within. Anyone who attempts to pass the wolf quickly learns that the wolf would sooner die in combat than allow trespassers. Offers of food are accepted by the wolf, but it doesn't alter its stance on trespassers.

The wolf is just a regular wolf, and it fights alone if combat indeed happens at all.

If, by whatever means, the party is able to pass the wolf, they discover puppies. Nothing more.

If the mother of the puppies does not survive the encounter with the PCs and the PCs leave, if they ever return, there are no longer any puppies in the cave, nor anywhere at all to be found. (Puppy bones may turn up here and there later.) The puppies are more than willing to be adopted by whoever will take them.

[CooksACarrot]

So twisting the knife AND subverting expectations in a logical way while simultaneously being a meta-critique of the tropes of gaming. Layers upon layers upon layers with a hefty dose of guilt, I like it.

[Aamir]

This is very nice and decent post thanks a lot for posting it... link removed -RS
....!!!!

[mod="RocketScientist"]Posting spam links is not allowed. Thank you.[/mod]

[Groo_the_Wanderer]

Hands down .. manta cats.

Some back story is required. In this land the King is essentially controlled / influenced / manipulated by his council of wizard advisers. They obviously want to keep their position so they offer very high bounties on fairly easy targets attracting and drawing in would be adventurerers from all over the land. These new recruits are gathered at a central depot, observed, questioned, quietly studied and investigated such that the wizards are very good at determining those that are relatively harmless to them and those that might one day pose a threat.

They then form them into groups (This is how the party met) and send these chartered companies off on bounties. All are compensated very handsomely but as often as not some fall in battle remembered in mead halls and tavern tales but no longer a threat to the status quo, others are accepted into the military where the graduation ceremony bonds them magically to obey and those left are allowed to continue on the bounty hunting trail or returning to their homes as they desire. The party is what's left on one such group, the back story started soon after them surviving a devious and lethal ambush with the six of them and another random NPC the only survivors of what was a 12 man company.

Happenings happen, as they will around adventurers, and the party finds themselves on the "wrong side" of the law. They met up with some rebels and learned that they do know of the magical compulsion the kings soldiers are under but kill them anyway, all in all leaving an unsettling taste in the parties mouth. They are unable to go back to the crown, and unwilling to trust in or aid the rebels they have made contact with (thanks for bailing on the rails there guys ...grumble grumble) so they take to the road trying to stay out of the way of everyone and figure out what is really going on and work their way back to the capital. Preferably unnoticed and unmolested.

One thing leads to another and they have ROYALLY messed up with my timelines, managed to cause (unbenownst to them) some very serious and major plot timelines to move up, down or even be negated and generally caused more chaos and disorder to the ruling establishment than the Rebels ever have. At this point they are nearing the capitol but running out of funds, supplies and options when they take to the bar.

The Encounter: the party needs to gain the supplies they need to finish the trek to the city without being discovered.

Expected options: Theft, con, bribe, rob, work .. so many options open to them to solve the problem but reality is they are unlikely to make it in the early spring weather without provisions, especially if they are to take to the wilds to be unnoticed. Plan on my end, the Blascksmith needed Iron and charcoal from a village some days away but goblins were in the area and was going to offer to supply the party for escorting his sons there and back with the resources he needed.

The Plan the Party came up with....
Well one of them is a bit of a singer, another knows how to play a lute (neither are bards by the way) and they decide to see if they can play for their supper. Each manages to find something they can contribute to the experience with the exception of a rather large minotaur warrior. His skills lie only in battle so they give him (I kid you not) a cow bell to play judging that they could signal him when to hit it and it would be very infrequently. The bartender agrees and the party gets to it, a handful of rolls are made .... The opening rif goes well, percussion kicks in and is a little too loud but on tempo, the singer and his back up start their thing and are in tune and singing quite well. The plan was for a metallica "Nothing Else matters" sort of tune. One that starts slow and kicks into high gear and that transition .. that transition is signalled by the cow bell. Well it's all up to our musically inept, barely literate minotaur warrior, the band is playing well, people are listening but they haven't been fully drawn in yet.... he raises the great bell over his head and with a mighty swing, crits his roll.

The crowd goes crazy, the party rolls through a couple of songs absolutely killing their rolls and when the sets over the Inn Keeper is begging them to stay a little longer. Knowing they need the funds the party negotiates food, lodging and a percentage of the nights take and does very well. Promoted as the "Manta-Cats" (named after the first fight the party got in where the first roll against them was a manticore tail spike that critted and came withing 1 HP of killing the minotaur outright) people from all over town, and countryside come to hear them play. They stay a little over a week and then have to make their way to the capital playing at every inn they come across.

Soon they find that crowds are already appearing at inns ahead of them, waiting to hear them play and by the time they arrive in the city they are of some local fame. People come from all over to hear them, even guardsmen who must surely have seen the faces of the kingdom's most wanted men but never once seemed to notice how similar the manta-cats appeared.

That is where the last game of the campaign ran and even now, with the party literally on the doorsteps to the castle, the wizards have no idea they are there having sent envoys and elite squads to all corners of the kingdom trying to find and capture them. What is even better is that the party has NO idea just how badly they are wanted by the wizards, though they now wanted posters have been distributed to all guard outposts, and most of them still use their real name when asked.

Sometimes the best part of the game has a couple of dice rolls and a whole lot of RP especially when one want to essentially hide in plain sight!

[Reads_Books]

I'm not sure if you could call it the "best", but there is one encounter that will definitely be the most memorable. We were playing GURPS, and my character, Felicia, was a spell-casting half-elf weretigress.

Felicia found a wagon, covered with a tarp. To be honest, I don't remember anymore if she was looking for something in particular, or if this was just an opportunity. So she stealths herself into the back of the wagon, and finds a big box. She successfully picks the lock and looks inside, where she sees.... a large crystal sphere with what looks like a head inside. Before she can see what else is inside, the head opens its eyes and starts talking. A bit surprised, Felicia has a conversation, until the head says "Well, this has been nice, but I should probably go back to work now." Felicia, very confused, (I admit, it was near the beginning of the campaign) asks "Work?". The head takes this as a command and starts yelling "Alarm, Alarm, there's a Girl in my box! There's a girl in my box! Alarm!"

Danged mage car alarms!

[T-RexWithTourettes]

My players had to get to a mind-flayer's lair, and nearly the entire journey was non-combat and definitely non-puzzle.
Spoiled for length:

► Show Spoiler

I run my own dicked-up version of DnD 3.5, so excuse me if any races or classes seem unfamiliar.
Their chosen "best" route: Take a ship across the Sea of Wyrms (the Wyrms at this time had migrated north for the summer), land in the nearly uninhabited, unexplored region of Mesmaphite, cut down south through some mountains and arrive undetected in what is essential his back doorstep.
The party was a huge, asshole-y, orphaned Nightelf battlemage, Grimstead; a kind but weak exiled Venate psion, Dissema (Venate being a race from my girlfriend's novel she's working on); and a pessimistic and complaining half-elf ranger, Captain Tirsel. This was after a while through this campaign (they were all Level 3, for my campaigns that's a decent amount of work put into a character), and they had just wrecked the Captain's two ships, leaving them to borrow a ship from some nearby gray elves, the W.R.S. Icelight, and its small crew of ten. Six of Tirsel's surviving men still had both the courage and health to set off again, leaving the total crew for the rather small galley at nineteen.

I don't like being too nice or too evil to my players, so in long-distance situations like this, I roll a d4 and a d20 to decide what happens in a given day from a bunch of charts I made (depending on the region).

Smooth sailing for the most part, besides running into an incredible large school of crocodile-sized whalefish, which the player Grimstead almost drowned trying to fish. However, things went down south pretty quick when a storm of port-wrecking magnitude (I rolled as low as I could have) hit the party only a mile off the shore of Mesmaphite. Immediately, my brainy players went to work; Grimstead took over the helm with his ridiculous strength, Tirsel commanded the inexperienced crew to where they were needed, and Dissema ran back and forth from port and starboard, contorting the swell of the waves with a scroll of Channeled Energy Burst.

After landing surprisingly safely, they fixed up the Icelight, and--another odd surprise--sent the entire crew home, leaving the 3 of them and a nameless and stubborn crewmember they aptly titled "Crew." They roughed out the night in an evergreen forest near the beach and found shelter as a blisteringly cold and wet storm assaulted them.

Tirsel, being half-elf, and Grimstead, being a nightelf, were the only two with darkvision, so as the adventure continued, they were the only ones who switched shifts every night to keep watch while the others crammed into a single tent. They all were smart enough to stock up on coats, blankets, and lots and LOTS of preserved food, but still, the weather was brutal.

Luck smacked them good next, however, as they stumbled on both an abandoned dwarven outpost full of goodies (see: mechanical spider that could make thread out of anything, and gloves that could craft anything for the user if given the correct materials. Grimstead instantly went to craft a nice sled and some snowshoes for the group) and later, a hoxor village (TL;DR for hoxor: Neanderthals with a deep spirituality with nature and damning curiosity). There they hired a guide with some salted fish and a colorful map, and the chieftain was more than pleased to provide them with a guide, which they lovingly named Hodor (reference intentional). However, as soon as Hodor joined them, they quickly realized that someone/something was following them. They'd see a single figure, sometimes two, silhouette against the very fresh and very brazenly white snowfall, only to quickly disappear behind an evergreen, or a crag, or the like. They all figured it was for the better to not pursue, but to keep moving.

Dissema, being a psion, could communicate telepathically with anyone she had a higher Intelligence score than (aka: everyone in the party by a longshot), but so far she had only done so with Grimstead. Note: telepathy, and psions in general, are very rare, if not unheard of, in my world. I like to keep stronger magics reserved for special moments, to give it more of an BANG.

Thus, when they encountered a cave on their way up the mountain, with light and laughter coming inside, she didn't stop to think when Tirsel approached quietly, and she telepathically asked him, Do you see who's in there?
In a moment of beautiful roleplaying, Tirsel began screaming at the top of his lungs, freaking out that he just heard a voice in his head at over-the-shoulder volume in such a high-tension moment. Dissema's player, and probably her character as well, facepalmed with earth-shattering force.

So, it's a troll nest. Typical. As one of the party-destroying beasts reared its ugly head from the entrance, however, Grimstead made out for some very quick--and kind of stupid--thinking. Using the aforementioned scroll, he energy-blasted the cliffside above, instantly triggering an avalanche that blanketed the troll. He leapt on his previously crafted sled, and snagged Tirsel in a "ride the wave mannn" kind of moment. Crew was far from the site, but Dissema, with her paltry full health, wasn't quick enough, and instantly became blanketed in rib-crushing amounts of snow.

As a Level 3 Psion in my game, she knew Blink, but it was the weakest form of the spell, and she could only teleport within 200 ft. of her line of sight--which, underneath feet upon feet of snow, was nowhere. Luckily, in more quick thinking, Grimstead energy-blasted the area where she was covered as he sledded past, offering her a glimpse of sunlight as the snow was blasted away. Right before it covered up again only a second later, she teleported--200 feet into the open air. She was lucky the ground below was powdered snow, but not lucky enough that she didn't break a leg and drop to -1 on impact.

Recovering from their near-death, the players pressed Hodor for an alternate route, which he grimly conceded would be much longer and arduous. With Grimstead pulling behind the crippled Dissema on a sled, Tirsel complaining the entire way up, and Crew being too incompetent to keep up with the ballsy Level 3's, their situation wasn't looking too keen.
To add on to it all, they were still being followed. On one particularly stressful night, Grimstead opted that they didn't start a campfire for the night. He shrugged off the cold during his watch with his beefy Fortitude, but Tirsel, on the other hand, woke up to find he had both slept through his entire watch and now had frostbite on all of his toes.
They used what healing magic they could mending Dissema's leg and healing Tirsel's frozen toes, with limited success. They were moving again, but slowly, and another storm was approaching.

Luck stroke again. They stumbled upon a large herd of frost deer, very sturdy, long-legged, stripe-nosed, one-horned deer that leapt up and up the steep mountainside like cocaine-happy mountain goats. Tirsel, being a ranger, sucked up his pain for a moment and approached the group, taming some as best as he could and returning with a compliant group of 4. The group mounted, and off they went, clinging just barely for deer life (pun intended) as they pranced up the face of the mountain, gaining back precious hours of time they had squandered.

Finally, after their long journey, they reached the summit. They bid Hodor a very tearful (both in and out of character) farewell, and for his return journey, gave him a salted fish (which he immediately consumed) and a frost deer to ride back (which he promptly threw over his shoulder). In the teary moment, he gave Dissema a gift for their companionship--a rock. A tiny, insignificant rock. Which, being the sappy player that she is, she pocketed into her inventory.

They stood on the summit, catching their breath and looting a few skeletons of some explorers Tirsel found in the snow. Using the explorer's firewood, some spare rope, a few beat-up pieces of armor, and roughly a few hours with his enchanted gloves, and Grimstead had another sled ready for use. With not a moment to spare, as Dissema sensed that going down the mountain was a single figure (Hodor), but coming up? 3 dozen, undoubtedly the figures that had been following them since they left the village. Not wasting a second, especially with the storm still approaching, Dissema + Grimstead hopped on one sled, and Tirsel + Crew the other, and they were off into the foggy mists, right as the sun set.

...Did seriously nobody watch Monster's Inc.? Or, like, any movie where the protagonist sleds off of a mountain into the foggy snow at night?
Lo and behold, skidding down through cracks and crags and crevices, unexpected turns, and lots of lucky Dexterity Rolls, the group was sledding down the mountain at a speed somewhere in between a dragster and a meteorite entering atmosphere.

Oops, hard left or they would be ramming headfirst into a cliffside appearing into their view. Dissema's thought process? Well, I saved our ship from the waves, why not the snow? Using the last of the Channeled Energy Burst scroll, she let off a blast near a cliff face they were hugging along, hoping it would make the snow swell in such a way that it would quickly divert their path.

Instantaneously, the blast knocked Dissema off of her sled, as well as Tirsel and Crew off theirs, which was directly ahead. Crew tumbled off backwards, and with Grimstead now steering a sled alone with his piss-poor Dexterity...the metal runner skimming across the ground immediately clipped into Crew's head, dealing a sickening amount of damage and knocking him clean unconscious, bleeding in the snow.

Grimstead dug his feet into the snow, planning on bringing the sled to a stop, but instead snagging his foot on a rock, and sending him and the sled tumbling down the mountainside, further and further away from the group, and reducing the final sled to pieces of scrap metal and firewood.
Before anyone could come to their sense, with their heads still swimming, the storm hit.

The rest of that session was a mess. Dissema, telepathically communicating with the still-conscious but very injured Grimstead and Tirsel, trying to navigate through the fog to find both each other and to find the bleeding out Crew. Thanks to Tirsel's tracking, they did, but upon healing him, they found him to have horrible memory loss, demanding to know why they weren't back at port and why they were in the middle of a god-forsaken tundra.

They barely survived past the storm, and their unknown pursuers caught up. Drow. And lots of them. Hodor's cute little rock gift? A priceless relic. They were hiding rather well, until, well...Dissema tried telepathically talking to Crew. Who had since forgotten that she was a psion more facepalming ensued, with multiverse-crumbling impact. And, let's just say, the rest of that story is a combat-encounter

Forgive me once again for length, holy jeebus.

Also, @Groo, loved the Manta-Cats story, the turn was a little unexpected to say the least.

[Guus]

In fourth edition we have what we call "skill challenges". They are supposed to be unique to 4th, but it's basically a more specified version of "something happens, what do?". Scaling cliffs, passing a rope bridge through a windy passage, stuff like that. Apparently that's what you call a puzzle, so let's not get into these too much.

Thing is though, as a DM you often need to limit the options, because the players expect a limited number of options. The weirdest open ideas happen (in my experience) when you give a number of obvious and/or less obvious choices. Thinking outside the box works best when you create a box for them to think out of first.
As far as I see it, you ruled out just about anything with your definition of puzzles, because players will always want to achieve something, and that something is apparently the answer to your puzzle.

Players tend to think in a more binary way than the DM. The DM creates a lot of options, and the players think of a limited number of goals, often hinted at by the DM. Everything that happens from there on to the goal is either a combat encounter, a "skill challenge" as they call it in 4e or plain RP conversation between the PCs and/or NPCs. I don't see how there is anything else than that.

For my own experience as a player: trying to make a living in a strange dimension (turned out to be a safe haven in the elemental chaos), in which we developed from genuinely good guys to criminals, mainly because everyone and everything seemed to be out for our lives, causing us to disregard their rules and laws completely. We built a house, started a gang, killed some people that stood in our way, and ended up covering it up nice enough to get into important functions, running the place like mobsters. That was pretty cool.

[T-RexWithTourettes]

@Guus,that reminds me of when 2 of my other players found themselves in a prison deep in orcish territory called the Bear's Teeth. After their escape they rallied the prisoners into an army, and eventually claimed the prison as a fortified outpost that they began running a mercenary business from. Not necessarily mobsters but it just reminded me.
Their method of escape was (at first) non-combative, now that I mention it:
((This is a much shorter tale, I swear. Sort of.))

► Show Spoiler

Party members: Marroar, a half-elf half-halfling rogue; Dolain, a dwarven paladin; Neuman, a young human wizard)
Earlier they had been passing through a jungle, the Seiljhek Forest. Tired of various freakish wildlife attacking them, they found the Dryad of the Forest, Quella, whom they had acquainted themselves with earlier. They made a pact with her; she would give them one of her Ornenwood Rings, which would protect them from the wildlife of the forest, but they had to do a number of favors for her.

Insert a few generic sidequests, one of them being to drive off human settlers who were deforesting her beloved Seiljhek and overhunting the wildlife. They didn't want to outright kill and drive off the settlers, because they were from their home country and word spread really fast, so Marroar, who so happened to own a very well trained falcon, penned up a letter requesting a scroll from a very ancient and powerful wizard, Riar, whom they so happened to have an excellent relationship with. The TL;DR of the letter? "We need something to non-lethally scare off a very large group of people. Love, Party Members."

However, back seemingly eons ago (in-game, roughly 2-3 weeks), they threatened the wrong guy at the wrong time who, unbeknownst to them, was one of the highest council members back in their home country. SO, they show up to the settlement, knowing it'd be a solid 3 days before the falcon arrived back and figuring a few days of rest could do them good. Lo and behold, a herald interrupted them, backed by over 20 mounted knights, informing them that they had been (falsely) found guilty of murder and treason, and that their execution was arranged for them back in Thouridge (city they had threatened the guy at).

Realizing they were heavily outgunned, and still injured from their jungle exploits, they quickly surrendered themselves, figuring they could arrange a better plan than their last-stand-fight-to-the-death only other option offered them.

Skip ahead. On the way to Thouridge, one night later, the knights are camping, the 3 prisoners in cages on the back of a cart. Large bandit raid. Knights get spanked, big time.
Orc is with the bandits. He recognizes the players--the players are incredibly infamous back with the orcs. In fact, they're infamous with basically everybody. They haven't been painting a positive picture of themselves, especially with the orcs.

Bandits sell Marroar and Dolain to orcs, and Neuman to a slaver who needed a new spellcaster. They pawned off all of their gear (dungeons upon dungeons worth of loot, crazy magic items, the Generic Main Quest Artifact of Importance, you name it, down to their clothes, they took it). So, naked, blindfolded, and injured, and very afraid, both in character and out, they get shipped off in the opposite direction they need to be going, deep into orcish territory. The only thing they didn't lose? Marroar's blanket, which he had enchanted for him with a permanent Greater Invisibility spell. Aka, Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak, only an enemy had cast a weak Remove Curse on it, so the wearer was only invisible if standing completely still.

They travelled all day and all night, got thrown into separate cells, and were informed that their execution would commence as soon as the orcish head warchieftain, Jukva Se, arrived to personally watch their gruesome and much applauded deaths.

So broke the third day.

Marroar's falcon taps on Marroar's tiny cell window, and slips a parchment through the bars. A scroll. Of course, Marroar wasn't a spellcaster, not in the slightest, so what does he do? Yells at Dolain down a few cells over to shove his meaty dwarven fist through the little hole on his cell floor for using the bathroom. Why? All the cell's toilets all flowed down in a giant trough. Using the transportation power of bodily excretes, Marroar dropped the scroll down his own toilet hole, the parchment, sure enough, meeting Dolain's fingertips, albeit completely disgusting and soaking. His character was just barely able to read it, using a spell of Holy Light and a high roll for squinting.

The rest was dominos. Marroar screamed in his cell, banging and thrashing, threw on his OP cloak, waited for a panicked guard to burst inside, wondering where the prisoner went, and chocked him out. Took the key, unlocked Dolain, who then used the scroll to summon an illusion of a giant, hellish, screaming face, which bought them a lot of time. They used it helping unlocking other prisoners to join in for the fight after a very inspiring speech from the two of them. The guards regained their courage and almost shut the entire thing down, if it weren't for the players' visit to the High Security Block.

The remainder was obviously combat+tactics only, with the players leading a raid on the barracks, equipping all the prisoners with heavy armor and weapons, using mess hall tables as giant tower shields against crossbow fire in the courtyard, and essentially starting a small revolution. The last session they had an army of over 200 highly disciplined, mostly orcish prisoners and rebels, all frenzied and ready to attack unsuspecting camps and towns through the region. The bastards flipped that one on me good.

Sorry for all the long-winded stories, I just realized the title said "encounter," not with an S. I suppose the beef could almost pass as backstory, if not for all the annoying details I give

[spiderwrangler]

Now the wedding itself did have some combat, but that came later. Damn wedding crashers..

All good weddings that end with death have a color... what was yours?

[Kamos]

Man I only wish I'd have some epic stuff like that go down. I'm really good at getting enemies to kill each other for me but nothing quite like that. We do tend to run some pretty combat heavy games though.

[T-RexWithTourettes]

For me it's hard to balance combat, puzzles, and non-combat. I tend to make campaigns where for an entire session it will all be noncombat, and then another entire session or even two that will be all combat. I'm always brainstorming for a nice setting/storyline where there can be plenty of each in quick succession of one and other, but it's rough.

[Guus]

I try to build epic campaigns on smaller quests.
"Kill some rebels" - session 1.
"Find out information where the rebels come from" - session 2.
"Fix the rebel problem" -session 3.
"Work with priests to find traitors and take them out" - session 4.
"Discover a pattern between priests and rebels and expose the leader" - session 5.

Etc. It doesn't always work, but it's something to strive for. You want to be able to end your campaign at any time if needed, to give the characters closure. Small things turn into an epic story quickly enough when you use the breadcrumbs tactic: give a little information of the greater story just about every session, but make it seem so trivial that the players won't notice until an "ah-hah!" moment later on. That gives you the freedom to embed the smaller "quests" in a big storyline without them actually noticing, up until the point they DO realize what's going on, which makes it all the better.

[Zathyr]

Now the wedding itself did have some combat, but that came later. Damn wedding crashers..

All good weddings that end with death have a color... what was yours?

Charcoal grey.

At least that's what most of the enemy ships wound up looking like.

[GameNightLife]

I had a party one time stumble upon a fairly deadly newborn critter. It was pretty hostile, and the thing was certainly the opposite of cute.

I thought they might run away from it, or lead it back toward their enemies, or try to kill it outright. I had no idea what they'd do.

One person in the group got 2 consecutive natural 20s on their handle animal check, and I ruled that since it was a newborn...it imprinted on her, and thought it was its mom.

They took that thing everywhere, and brought it out whenever they needed to just make everyone leap backwards. They still talk about how much they enjoyed doing that.