The next Dungeons & Dragons campaign will include a pacifist route, which will allow players to resolve every encounter without resorting to combat. The campaign in question is The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, which involves a jaunt to the Feywild as part of a magical carnival.
D&D has its roots in tabletop wargames, which is partly why it revolved around combat for so long. To many gamers, the role-playing aspects of D&D were secondary to the battles and exploration aspects of the game. It was often joked that the central core of D&D involved killing things and taking their stuff, with less emphasis placed on the storytelling by many. As time went on and other tabletop games entered the market, the style of gameplay in D&D evolved, with role-playing receiving more focus from the writers of the new books. In the current era of D&D, there are lots of people who play the game online, and role-playing is the most vital part of the experience to them, especially as the other aspects of the game are harder to accomplish when the group isn't in the same room.
The people who want to experience the next D&D campaign without bloodshed can do so. It was revealed during a recent D&D press event by writer Chris Perkins that The Wild Beyond the Witchlight was designed so that it could be completed without combat. This is just an option, and people who want to play it as a regular campaign are able to do so, but those who want to take the extra effort to avoid a fight can perform their own Undertale-style pacifist route.
Dungeons & Dragons: Avoiding Combat In The Feywild
It's difficult to run full pacifist campaigns in D&D for a variety of reasons. There are a number of opponents in the game that are impossible to reason with, such as constructs and most undead, to say nothing of the fiends that make their way into the Prime Material Plane. A full Game of Thrones-style political adventure has the possibility to be all about role-playing and persuasion, but there's always the chance that it could devolve into bloodshed. If a spellcaster has access to magic that can incinerate foes, then the temptation to pull the trigger in order to solve a problem will always be there.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is set in the Feywild, which is split up into Domains of Delight, each of which is ruled by an archfey. These Dungeons & Dragons archfey are incredibly powerful faeries that have the power to bend reality to their will. If ever there was a location where wordplay and solving riddles is the key to defeating enemies, it's the realm of the fey.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight will be released on September 21, 2021.
Source: Wizards of the Coast