I would like to see some town or village life. The adventurers probably have some place near to the wilderness/dungeon/badwrong place that they crash in. What do the people there think? It’d be cool to have sort of a “day in the life” session where the adventurer’s are in-between-things and are hanging around trying to be useful (maybe) or doing what they do, and seeing how people react.

Another cool thing would be having a festival or a series of olympic-like games (or both) as a breather. Not really a bunch of skill challenges – rather, ability and improvised checks (Page 42) and just genuine player creativity.
Wyatt´s last blog ..The Feats of Eden I: Weapons

“Role-playing,” my friend. Not “roll-playing.” You don’t need to throw Ye Olde Monstere of the Weeke at them at each session to keep them entertained. Have them investigate a mystery or unsubstantiated rumor. Have them encounter an eccentric townsfolk who claims to be the rightful heir to the throne. Have them visit their clan, guild, or school for more training. Perhaps there’s a festival in town with some wacky goings-on. There are so many options for non-combat adventures, I truly don’t know where to begin…
Tim´s last blog ..Savage Menagerie: Pozzum

First off I better state that I run a 3.5 but either works for this since both are role-playing:) Usually when I run a game that has no combat there is a different challenge of sorts, or something fun to do.

About a month ago I ran a session that took place around a festival. I had several game ideas written down and more in my head.

There was a fun magic contest where the sorcerer in the group had to do a prestidigitation spell, and I had the other players control the NPC contestants. This got everyone involved and each getting to be creative! It went over really well.

Other times, if it is applicable to your game, a session of political intrigue- an audience with the King or Baron, a murder mystery, or a calamity (natural disaster) hits a city and the players use their skills to navigate to save others and get the hell out of there. The city and destruction is the enemy, but there is no combat, just a chance for the players to be heroic and really shine.
wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Play By Post Part 2

Pretty much anything that involves a ton of NPCs. A party, an election, a murder mystery. I ran an auction in my 4e game recently and there was no combat until after, and they had to talk to each NPC and influence them to end up with the pieces they wanted.

Giving the players something to argue about usually works. Even better is giving the characters something to argue about. We went about two combat-free sessions once as the party split into two different groups who were both trying to resolve the problem of what to do with a group of goblins who were willing to follow the party, but only at the cost of a human sacrifice. (The fighter still hasn’t forgiven the paladin for all that, even if it was the cleric who ended up sacrificing him. But I don’t think most groups would have gone that route.)

It’s not uncommon for me to have a session without combat. My games tend to be heavy on RP and story driven, and the best part is my players drive a lot of the story. The current campaign the players do a lot of investigation, which means lots of talking to NPCs and looking for clues.

Let me say that I run a 4E game and have had multiple sessions with no combat. Here are some suggestions that always work for me:

1) NPC Dialogue: Stopping to talk to the local magistrate, sheriff, taxidermy expert can take up a lot of time especially if the NPC has a lot to say or is very interesting. It might even be fun if he only has a little bit to say but is reluctant to say it. Now if your players are used to just dumping their social skill rolls on you, I suggest you get them in the habit of at least giving a cover story. “I lie, bluff 22″ is boring. Follow up with a “How do you lie? What do you say?” If the player needs a mechanical reason to get interested tell them if it’s particularly inventive or actually logical give them a +2 to the roll.
2) Complicated Plots & Plans: If you have a good story but it’s a bit complicated your players may want to take a break to discuss where to go or who to see. This also works great for the “heist” adventure. Give the players a goal like “Rob the Merchant Timaldi of his Cursed Painting which has the map to the Dragon’s Lair on it’s back.” Sure it’s a bit National Treasure, but it works. Give them details on the layout & guards. Or better yet make them scour the town for these details. Once they get it together ask them to make a plan. If they rush in have it foiled or have the defenses impossible to pass without a plan. If you get the players thinking “Man we need a plan to get through this” they’ll entertain themselves coming up with a great heist plan. This can be a couple sessions just going through the steps.
3) The Non Fight Fight Encounters: Sometimes your players are going to roll over opponents. By the times your players reach level 6 or above, there are going to be people who stand up to them that they won’t even have to have the dice to fight. I do this a lot for small gangs or local guards. The players may have had to fight them once upon a time, but now they have a choice. Spare these men or kill them, or not fight them. These opponents are no threats to the players at all. I have a group that at level 11 never fought city guards. They just weren’t a threat anymore. But there were still stories to be told about crime bosses, corrupt crime lords and what not. The players sorted it out without ever picking up the dice. They did kill some gang members, beat up some guards and arrested the gang leader but were never in any danger. Now the next session their Beholder boss came looking for them and that led to some real fights. What I’m trying to say is that there comes a point where the players aren’t going to be threatened by everything they have to fight. They have power, but they must learn to handle the responsbility of their actions. Let them feel the power of blowing through these, but show them how their actions have repurcussions. Sure they can slaughter every city guard they see, but how long before some real heroes show up to put the kibosh on them. Like a level 13 team of heroes out to capture these “criminals?”

I would say about a third of my sessions are combat free. I love skill challenges myself and use them all the time. That said its less about drafting a skill challenge than it is about playing a natural situation. A couple of examples from my game -

The PCs arrive in a town and thanks to an incident with some bandits on the road (I know, cliche much, but there was more story to it than that) are summoned to a feast put on by the town\’s Lord, a boisterous, hard drinking, fat halfling. The entire evening was a three stage skill challenge played in the background. The PCs ate and engaged in conversation and debate with the dinner guests, then they were asked to entertain the assembly with tales of their exploits, which they did beautifully, finally, the halfling drank them under the table in a drinking contest, but they got in good with him and got a \’job\’ out of it.

After completing the mission, they returned and spent two sessions creating a base of operations. The Lord was happy with their performance and could see the benefit in having a mercenary company in town, so they sat down to some tense negotiations about how all that would go, the PCs ending up with an empty building to turn into barracks and offices, a contract for limited services and some other concessions. Then they met some of the locals and attended a holiday festival with the goal of endearing themselves to the townsfolk, which met with mixed success (and a tiny bit of non lethal brawling). Finally, the wizard put a plan underway to start luring away the city guard and the soldiers that manned the Lords keep to join their company with the plan to eventually entice enough away that they could negotiate a contract to provide sheriff and guard duty for the town, profiting and gaining a high level of control over the local affairs.

Skill challenges oversaw much of the action above, the negotiations, the party, the festival, enticing guardsmen…

You could have them recieve a quest or in some interesting chain of events must capture some kind of mischievous fairy or a criminal maybe even some wizard’s magical expirament gone awry, anything you can imagine, this “target” has run into a forest or labirynth (again use your imagination) and your group must track it through solving puzzles along the way and finally capturing the “target” in some kind of magical capture device given to the group by the quest giver or a net found on the ground. Also, to make things interesting, when they face the “target” you could turn the capture into another kind of puzzle;
for example the group has cornered a fairy who is bothering the people of a town with mean pranks, they are trying to capture it with a magical capture device but the fairy slips into a small dead end tunnel, too small for the hand held capture device to fit into, and sits taunting the group from just out of the capture device’s range, the group then must use items around the room to reach the fairy while making sure it doesn’t escape.