Help a roll-player role-play!

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Pretty simple to add interaction.

People talk before they fight; only a psychopath would prefer to attack a well-prepared party of adventurers than bargain his way out.. People surrender before they die. People shosimw mercy before they kill.

Political intrigue is simple. Just add PC's to any situation and watch hilarity ensue.

Create two factions. Let us call them the Capulets and the Montagues. They hate one another and often have small skirmishes.

One capulet, a nasty fighter named Tybalt, has just killed a fellow named Mercutio. A fellow named Romeo wants Tybalt dead; Romeo hires the PC's because he's not a good fighter.

So. PC's kill Tybalt.

In retaliation, the Capulets kill Romeo and put his head on a pike; the PC's may happen to be caught in the crossfire, or maybe not. The Capulets don't like the PC's but are entirely willing to pay them as mercenaries. The Capulets approach the PC's and offer money, marriage to a 14 year old girl, or lands and so forth. The montagues raise their offer.

The PC's may work for both sides as mercenaries for a while. They need to get to know the big names.

The PC's are working for one side. The other side pays another mercenary group to keep the PC's in check, effectively stabilising power again; the PC's destroy the other group, unbalancing it yet again.

It gets to the point where the PC's understand their own value, and both families want the PC's dead.

It's up to the PC's to then be alive, rich, and happy by the end of the campaign.

When PC's do something, think of the reaction, basically. Some actions will cause no reaction. Some will cause a lot. You will find that as soon as the PC's stop being hired swords and start using the families around them for a purpose you have just made a political game.

Or, well, you could just have the PC's kill more and more people until everyone is dead but them. Thats also the way of things.


Games like this can have bucket loads of combat, too - no need to worry about that. Just think of how any power imbalance can be stablised; neither family wants to be the lesser family, basically. Tensions will always raise the more people are killed. Mistakes will be made as tension raises.

I suggest you watch Yojimbo by Kurosawa. Admittedly, Sanjuro doesn't walk away with tons of money. But he does walk away with having been directly responsible for killing at least sixty odd people in a two hour movie. And thats the fun bit.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

My advice is to know who the important people are, and what they want. Everything flows from there.

As a DM, you're going to have to approach it somewhat differently from your players. The NPCs are there mostly as setting and sounding and framing for the PCs. By knowing who the important ones are, and what they've been going through this whole time, when it comes time to bring them in, they'll be ready to go. Got the guy who has been scheming for three months only to be thwarted by the PCs at every moment? Boy, is he going to love his "AT LAST! You, who have destroyed my plans will thwart me no longer," speech. Likewize, the crazy cultist is going to kill the PCs because his master has decreed it. And that evil merchant, who just wants money? Well, when they kick down the door, he'll probably just cower, or maybe try to sell them information.

Don't waste time on the unimportant guys. That'll just distract you trying to bring up irrelevant details. Focus on the big guys, figure out what they're like, what they want, and how they relate to the PCs. From there, just follow it like it's a TV show.

 

[Glyfair]

What is this... "social conflicts" you speak of? x_x

Yeah, never really comes up. My adventures, currently, are almost exclusively of the "Go to dungeon A, retrieve McGuffin B, return to Benefactor C" cliche.

Create social conflicts. Have they had multiple benefactors that they got along with?

If so, then have two of them contact different subgroups of the party for. Mr. Green tries to hire them to find the lost Maguffin and bring it to him because he believes it important to "save the world" (or some similar benefit). Mrs. Rose, on the other hand, tries to hire the ones she contacts to destroy the Maguffin, because it's dangerous and can destroy the world.

Already you have the players discussing which to choose and perhaps some inner party conflict. The NPCs might have to show their cases. If evidence shows up on one side of the issue, then the other side needs to contact the NPCs to rebut that evidence (try to make both sides as convincing as possible). In fact, that probably creates messengers that are another roleplaying opportunity, as long as you give them some personality (Mrs. Rose's messenger thinks the party are incompetent and resents being forced to deal with them, but is under orders, for example).

For the first try at this, you might make the pill go down easier if whatever choice the PCs finally make is the right one (retroactively).

 

[LostSoul]

What is this... "social conflicts" you speak of? x_x

Yeah, never really comes up. My adventures, currently, are almost exclusively of the "Go to dungeon A, retrieve McGuffin B, return to Benefactor C" cliche.

Two people want conflicting things, and they are using social means to achieve it. The conflict isn't physical; that is, it isn't violent.

Let's see... in a one of my games, I'm playing this crazy/holy monk/samurai who is bound to carry out the wishes of his father and family for 3 years. (That came about from a social conflict, which I lost.) Anyways, we're in the Valley of the Mists and it's controlled by a Spider Goddess, and all this evil is corrupting my father's lands (and everyone in it).

Now I suspect there is some connection between her and my father, but I don't know for sure, or what exactly. And I'm pretty much Lawful Good, so this is important to me. So I go up to the Spider Queen and talk to her, trying to get her to reveal to me what her connection is with my father.

We have a social conflict (resolved with dice rolls), and I lose. After some back-and-forth roleplaying, she tells me that my father made a vow to her, but won't go into further detail; then she shows me her true face and I freak out and run away. (That's what the Spider Goddess wanted - for me to leave her Valley.)

That's one example. In that game, we used dice rolls, which I think is important to mention.

Another example: In a different game, I'm playing a noble. We're going on a long trip and we want to bring along some men-at-arms. I go and try to convince the guys who are already with me, but haven't agreed to go on this much longer trip, to come along.

I was able to get some of them, but not all, to come, based on the DM's judgement of my in-character arguement.

So those are two methods of resolving these social conflicts.

In order to get a social conflict, all you need are two characters who have conflicting goals, but aren't willing to fight over it. You could make some NPCs in your game who want things from the PCs (or won't do something that the PCs want them to do), and no one is willing to come to blows over it. Characters like this might be: high-ranking persons of import (kings, nobles, high priests - not necessarily high-level, but possibly), children, wizened old people who can't fight back, and (especially) family members.

What's more, you have to let the players know that they can achieve their goals without having to draw steel. Tell them flat out before the social conflict starts. "Hey guys, I just want to let you know that if you [insert resolution method here], you can convince this guy to do what you want."


Now, a note on resolution methods:

1) Rolling dice. You can work this two ways:
a) NPCs are affected by the results of the roll, but PCs are not; or
b) All characters are affected by the results of the roll.

a) is typical in most games (and is RAW - kind of), I think, but it means that social conflicts will be strangely one-sided: PCs can influence your NPCs with rolls and get them to do what they want, but you'll have to convince the players with your own talky-talk skill.

I think this is good when players want to really get into a role that the player might not fit too well: a normal guy playing a James Bond-type guy, for example. He won't be forced to break "out of character" if he loses a conflict, because, well, using this resolution method the players can never lose these conflicts. That's a feature.

b) is less typical, I think, but what do I know? That's the kind of resolution I used in the Spider Queen example: I lost and had to do what she wanted me to (run screaming).

One thing to remember here is to always allow the both people to just "walk away". If, say, the Spider Queen wanted me to throw myself into a volcano, I would have said, "DM, you suck," and then I would have just walked away and not had the conflict in the first place.

This isn't so great for players who like to get deep into character, for a bunch of reasons: you have to abide by the roll; you have to know what the other person wants (so that you can do it), and that means working on out-of-character knowledge, and I'm sure there are others.

It is good if your group wants to really explore social conflicts and have a lot of them in your game. It's good if your group likes to bounce from conflict to conflict, as (hopefully) one social conflict should lead directly into the next.

2) Player (including GM) fiat. The person who controls the character takes stock of the other player's in-character argument. I think that it's obvious how this works; there's no need to describe it.

This is not so great if you want to play someone who has a silver tongue, but you find yourself a little tongue-tied at times. It can work well, and you will get lots of roleplaying, people really getting into their characters, probably more than any other method; however, there are some pitfalls which I don't feel like going into right now.


That's how I see social conflicts. I'm sure there are other ways to resolve them, but none that come to mind right now. I prefer method 1) b. above, rolling for everyone, but your group might like something else. I think the best way to try different methods is to play different games that have different methods. 2) you can find in 1e, 1) a. is (kind of) RAW, 1) b. is in Burning Wheel and some other games. Find out what your group likes best and go with that.