Freeform Pbp: Action or RP?

[13_CBS]

I recently [shameless advertising] a Diablo PbP in the appropriate forums here[/shameless advertising]. One of the posters made this suggestion:

The second reason (my reason) is a little more complicated. Your game seems to be geared more towards combat than puzzles or RP, which is fine, and it's freeform, which is also fine. However, the two together are bad. Good combat requires hard rules; in fact, a common complaint among roleplayers is that they don't need all those skill check mechanics (etc) replacing good ol' RPing. Thus, a combat-heavy freeform game will very quickly turn into a twink-fest as the players god-mode their ways to victory.

So I'm considering gearing the upcoming game towards RP.

For those of you who have played freeform, how true is this? How much action should I include? Keep in mind that this PbP is based off Diablo II, which is literally hack & slash: you could probably complete the game by "talking" to maybe 4-5 NPCs.

[Catch]

I dunno, if I was designing a free-from game with a roleplaying focus, Diablo would probably not make my top ten list of settings. A hack 'n slash sort of game just isn't conducive or even amiable to multifaceted characters with depth beyond "I like swords (or skeletons.)" From the diceless games I've been in, though, the fewer combat rules you have, the less combat there will be. If there's no real work to chopping up monsters aside from describing where the blood spatters, players will generally shift towards more social interaction.

It's up to you to encourage that sort of posting, though. Good roleplaying doesn't spontaneously appear when there are no more NPCs to kill.

[The Duskblade]

Hmm I've played a freeform pbp game where we had to eliminate the other players. To do that the players wrote up what they were going to attempt and the Gm judged the effectiveness of such moves by how complicated they were and more importantly how well the post was written. You could try that.

Otherwise yeah Hack and slash freeform = god mode.

[Yami]

Amber diceless! It works, kinda.

You could also try the mook system. Basically your players get to describe thier killings of mooks in combat, but when it comes to something important, named NPC's bosses, eachother, you pull out the relevant stats, add some bonuses for creative thinking, and have at it.

[Behold_the_Void]

Hmm I've played a freeform pbp game where we had to eliminate the other players. To do that the players wrote up what they were going to attempt and the Gm judged the effectiveness of such moves by how complicated they were and more importantly how well the post was written. You could try that.

I've run a lot of these in my time, that's the best way to do it.