Need a "RP-focused" RPG recommendation

[Frog of War]

A little explanation is in order. I've been GMing Pathfinder for some friends of mine and we love it. One of those friends is in several gaming groups, and all of those other groups play Pathfinder as well. He always complains about those groups when we play though. The GMs and players in those groups seem to be very averse to ever having any combat, sometimes going several sessions without an encounter, whereas my games tend to be a bit combat-heavy. He's been frustrated by these games and how his entire character builds seem to be pointless since he never gets to use any of his stats or abilities; it's always just a bunch of role-playing. Now, role-playing is a good thing of course, but it seems pointless to have a system such as Pathfinder in which most of the rules are dedicated to combat if you're not going to use any of those rules. Every few sessions they level up (despite having fought nothing) and my friend gets to make a bunch of changes to his characters which are pointless and trivial because they'll almost never be used. My friend is bored but he doesn't want to leave the groups. They are his friends, and he could be having a good time. The GMs seem to be pretty stubborn about their combat-averse campaigns though, even when he asks them for more combat, and the other players seem to be afraid of it (One of them even used a wish from a luckblade to get them out of a really easy encounter, twice). So my friend and I hypothesized that maybe if one of those GMs were to adopt a system which has more rules and content for things outside of combat than Pathfinder, the game would be much more enjoyable for him and for everyone; he'd get to make meaningful decisions in character-building and it would make the RP-ing into more of an actual game. However, he and I don't know what system that would be! So that is what I'm asking.

TL;DR - Do you know of a good RPG with a focus on things outside of combat? One that could even be very enjoyable in an almost combat-devoid campaign?

Thank you very much!

[king.com]

Are there any genre/time period/etc things your after or just....not combat focus games?

[Frog of War]

Well for the genre/time period/etc., Pathfinder is basically what they're using. High fantasy medieval. I suppose a system which doesn't do away with combat entirely but just downplays it a lot would be preferable.

EDIT: Even if you have a suggestion which doesn't use that setting I'd like to hear it.

[Jay R]

TOON.

Everybody knows how a cartoon character is supposed to act, and once youy convince experienced role-players to forget trying to "win" each encounter,m everybody acts like a toon.

[Geostationary]

Do you like social situations? How about philosophy? Elaborate plots? Than Nobilis may be for you! It's a diceless system where you play the personifications of various concepts, and it puts a heavy emphasis on social interaction and cunning plans to get what you want. It is hard to kill a Noble, so this tends to be the way to go.

Too high powered? Then you can play it low-powered! Just build characters with 9cp instead of the usual 25, and only give them attributes that they invest in (i.e., if they only have Aspect, they don't get stuff in Domain, Persona, or Treasure). Refluff to taste, though magical realism is rather likely to ensue.

I can keep going should you be interested.

[Hylas]

GURPS can work, but as with any campaign using GURPS, watch over what players can purchase. Disadvantages can be very good for roleplaying and it's pretty easy to know "a bit of this and that" with a single point investment in a skill, which means players usually have a skill list over 30 entries long, even if they aren't very good at the skill. The last campaign of GURPS I played involved 1 instance of combat (at most) every other session, and the sessions were generally 10 hours long.

Although I haven't played it, I heard Legend of the Five Rings can be good at non-combat campaigns.

[Knaight]

Chronica Feudalis can handle Medieval Fantasy, and it has rules for Parley, Subterfuge, and Chases that are just as developed as its combat rules. Burning Wheel is similar, but I suspect the group would favor a lighter system, and Burning Wheel is exactly not that.

[Frog of War]

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions! I'm going to look into all of them for myself as well as for my friend

Nobilis in particular seems interesting to me... Not sure if it'd suit my friend's groups but it sure sounds fun. And magical realism is a fantastic genre of fiction.

[Rakmakallan]

I will mention it one too many times, but I can never overstate my love for this game.
Polaris.
Doubtful you'll find something more rp focused than this.
Or if you are into something even more experimental, you could go with Microscope. Though I haven't played it yet, from a quick read it seems a hoot and a half.

[Zvendels]

If you like A game of thrones... Try out the ASOIAF a Game of thrones edition RP. I've played it a bit, so far it's pretty promising. The intrigue system might be just what you are looking for.

[Siegel]

If you like A game of thrones... Try out the ASOIAF a Game of thrones edition RP. I've played it a bit, so far it's pretty promising. The intrigue system might be just what you are looking for.

Play Burning Wheel instead, it is way better at creating the feeling of the books. Heck, half of the books are failed skill rolls that lead to interesting situations. Burning Wheel makes GMs do this.
In the ASOIAF game, when you fail a roll you can "try again", no word about failure is interesting.

Burning Wheel in general is really good about making people play their charakter like they want to. You in general have to roleplay to powergame in this game.

[Analytica]

Thirding or fourthing Burning Wheel. To get a feel for it, perhaps listen in on the Strand Gamers podcasts?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Agreed on Burning Wheel, but two caveats. First, you have to grab the Gold edition; the only major changes through the editions are rules improvements and cleaning-up of the organization of the rules. Second, there's a lot of rules subsystems. Don't use them when you're first starting off; I cannot stress this enough. There's a lot of crunchy substance to BW, and if you try and dive in all at once, you're gonna get overwhelmed (and possibly scare off your group...heh).

When you have a good handle on how the flow of the main game goes (including the fact that it's not bad to fail tests), you can add something in, such as the Duel of Wits or Circles tests. The big, important part of BW is that you shouldn't worry too much about getting a rule wrong. If you mess it up, no big deal. It's a pretty stable engine, and it's hard to really throw it off the rails.

Also...

He's been frustrated by these games and how his entire character builds seem to be pointless since he never gets to use any of his stats or abilities; it's always just a bunch of role-playing.

I think that some variant of FATE might do the trick. In FATE, some of your character's most important attributes are their "Aspects", somewhat more subjective and narrative-based traits, such as "The Last Gunslinger" or "Driven to Solve Luanne's Murder".

[Geostationary]

Thanks everyone for all of the suggestions! I'm going to look into all of them for myself as well as for my friend

Nobilis in particular seems interesting to me... Not sure if it'd suit my friend's groups but it sure sounds fun. And magical realism is a fantastic genre of fiction.

If you go the magical-realism route, look at Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. It's an alternate Nobilis setting that's lower powered and more magical realism, and while it hasn't been released yet there's some good stuff out about it such as here. This also doesn't stop you from just adapting Nobilis to a magical realism-type setting of your own devising. Base it on ~9cp and don't let players do things like Words of Command. The recent Deciever Minibook also has a short section that details a Chuubo's character/design, should you be so interested.

[Frog of War]

Thanks again Geostationary, and everyone! These groups that he plays with aren't nearly as into magical realism as I am. They love absurd fantasticism. When I played with one of them I got really sick of it because we were 8th level characters dealing with ancient dragons and demons and artifacts and other whatare8thlevelcharactersdoingdealingwiththiskinda-stuff things. So Nobilis certainly seems more up my alley than theirs.

Several of you have suggested Burning Wheel, but Knaight mentioned that it's a pretty heavy system and suggested Chronica Feudalis over it. These groups (or at least the one I played with) tend to eschew/misinterpret a lot of the rules even from Pathfinder, so I am inclined to agree with him. A lighter system would probably work better. But just how heavy are those two systems compared with each other?

[Knaight]

Several of you have suggested Burning Wheel, but Knaight mentioned that it's a pretty heavy system and suggested Chronica Feudalis over it. These groups (or at least the one I played with) tend to eschew/misinterpret a lot of the rules even from Pathfinder, so I am inclined to agree with him. A lighter system would probably work better. But just how heavy are those two systems compared with each other?

Chronica Feudalis is a bit over a hundred pages, has a largely unified system and has fairly simple character generation. Burning Wheel is a bit over six hundred pages, in about nine point font, with a bunch of disparate subsystems. Here are some example documents:
Chronica Feudalis Character Sheet

Burning Wheel Fight! Matrix
http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/ind..._matrix_r2.pdf
That pretty much sums up the differences with the games right there.

[Raum]

TL;DR - Do you know of a good RPG with a focus on things outside of combat? One that could even be very enjoyable in an almost combat-devoid campaign?

Wushu. Over the Edge (or WaRP). Risus. FATE. PDQ.

There are a lot. ;)

[Knaight]

Wushu. Over the Edge (or WaRP). Risus. FATE. PDQ.

There are a lot. ;)

PDQ fails the "good" criteria; Evil Hat is clearly better off sticking to FATE. PDQ has some good settings in it, and quite a lot of material that would make a great FATE game, but is instead wasted on PDQ.

[UserClone]

Everyone's wrong. The answer, of course, is Dungeon World. This is why.