WHEN TO NEGOTIATE
In order for a negotiation to occur, an NPC must have an interest in negotiating with the heroes—but must also have a reason to not simply
jump on board with whatever the heroes propose. Negotiations happen only when an NPC has that internal tension between interest and reluctance. For example, if the characters ask a king to send his army into a neighboring kingdom to battle a demon incursion, the king needs to be conflicted. He wants to stop the incursion, but he doesn’t want to risk the lives of his
soldiers defending a foreign nation while leaving their own people unprotected. If the heroes want the help of the king’s army, they need to negotiate.
Heroes aren’t expected to use the negotiation rules every time one character tries to convince an NPC to see things their way. For instance, if a hero wants information about a cult leader from a captured cultist, a single Presence test using the Lie skill or a Might test using Intimidate is likely all that’s needed. A character who wants to flirt with the local alchemist to obtain a free Healing Potion likely just needs to make a Presence test using the Flirt skill.
By contrast, negotiations typically involve all the heroes interacting with one or more important named NPCs who can provide information, items, or services that dramatically change the course of an adventure. Often, this involves the heroes seeking an item of great power, a retainer or companion, the services of an influential organization or nation, or a plot-twist-worthy piece of information. Convincing a lich to lend the party the legendary Codex Mortis, trying to convince a dragon to halt an attack on a wizard’s tower, or talking the leaders of an enemy army into standing down means that a negotiation is in order.
To negotiate successfully, the heroes must make persuasive arguments to convince NPCs to do what they want. “Do it or we kill you” is a threat that might well accompany a single Might test using the Intimidate skill, but it’s not a negotiating tactic.
LIMITS OF NEGOTIATION
Some players might instinctively feel that the negotiation rules should give them something akin to mind-control superpowers. They’re not used to imagining NPCs complexly, and might attempt to negotiate in situations where negotiation is either completely unreasonable or literally impossible. No matter how persuasive or well spoken a hero is, there’s no argument to be made that might convince the vile Lord Syuul to give up his pursuit of evil and become a gardener. A negotiation typically can’t convince a queen to hand over her crown to the heroes and name them the new rulers of the land, or inspire a dragon to fork over every piece of treasure in their hoard.
Negotiations only work when the heroes ask for something from an NPC that the NPC is willing to seriously consider giving them.
Negotiation is not a process that changes an NPC’s character. Rather, the heroes are trying to make an NPC understand how behaving differently would be in character. You might well be able to get the hitherto loyal lieutenant of an evil boss to reconsider the error of their ways. That’s a classic dramatic trope. But even then, you’re not changing their character—you’re convincing them that their current evil ways are out of character. “Is this who you are? Is this how you want to be remembered?!”
If some players want to use the negotiation system as a means to an end by having their characters say, “Just do what we tell you, or else!,” you can remind them that that’s not how most people, including NPCs, work. Any heroes who open with that attitude are likely to lose the negotiation before it begins.
THE THREAT OF VIOLENCE
In the real world, negotiations rarely come with a threat of immediate violence. Ambassadors don’t usually get into fistfights. But this is a heroic fantasy RPG, featuring heroes who are armed to the teeth and able to alter reality with their minds. The threat of violence is already implied. Everyone involved knows that the characters could draw steel at any moment.
The Director typically assumes that the underlying potential for events to turn violent is already factored into every negotiation. However, if the heroes decide to bring that threat to the forefront, then they’ve exited the realm of negotiation and have entered into a different type of relationship—and it’s probably time to determine initiative.
Negotiation is about persuading someone to help you willingly because you’ve convinced them that meeting your objectives is a good idea. Working with you is wise or logical, or might make them look good. A hero can absolutely threaten someone with violence and force them to do what they want, but this is an incredibly temporary state. A threatened NPC isn’t willingly doing what they’ve been asked. They’re doing it on threat of violence, and will comply only while that threat is evident—after which, they’ll likely go back to their previous behavior as soon as they think they can get away with it.
NEWGOTIATION
If you’ve never played a game with a dedicated negotiation system like this, you might need to run it once or twice before you master it, similar to learning any new subsystem in an RPG. The new rules you’ll learn are all dedicated to facilitating roleplaying by allowing the heroes to beseech an NPC for aid, and only involve rolling dice when the heroes don’t directly appeal to that NPC’s motivations.
NEGOTIATION STATS
During negotiation, the Director assigns NPCs four temporary statistics—interest, patience, motivations, and pitfalls. The heroes can strike a favorable deal if they maximize an NPC’s interest by making arguments that invoke the NPC’s motivations and avoid their pitfalls—but they have to do all that before the NPC’s patience wears out.
INTEREST
An NPC’s interest represents how eager they are to make a deal with the heroes. Interest is graded on a scale of 0 (no interest) to 5 (the most possible interest). When a negotiation begins, an NPC’s interest is between 1 and 4. If the NPC’s interest goes to 5, they make a final offer and the negotiation ends (see
Keep Going or Stop, below). If the NPC’s interest drops to 0, they end a negotiation without offering the heroes any deal.
Interest increases and decreases during the negotiation based on the arguments the heroes make.
PATIENCE
An NPC’s patience represents how much time and effort they’re willing to devote to a negotiation. Patience is graded on a scale of 0 to 5, with each NPC starting a negotiation with their patience higher than 0. If an NPC’s patience reaches 0, the NPC makes a final offer and negotiation ends (see
Keep Going or Stop).
Patience can decrease each time the heroes make an argument during a negotiation.
LANGUAGE AND PATIENCE
If at least one hero negotiating with an NPC speaks the NPC’s native language (not including Caelian), then the NPC’s patience increases by 1 at the start of the negotiation (to a maximum of 5). If three or more heroes negotiating with an NPC speak the NPC’s native language, the NPC’s patience increases by 2 (to a maximum of 5).
FOR THE DIRECTOR: SHARING INTEREST AND PATIENCE
It’s up to you as the Director to decide whether to share an NPC’s interest or patience during a negotiation. Sometimes sharing this information can make an encounter more dramatic, with the players watching their progress rise and fall in real-time. Other groups might find negotiation more fun, dramatic, and immersive if those exact numbers are hidden from the players. In playtesting, some groups loved seeing these statistics and some groups didn’t, just as some groups like knowing the Stamina of every creature in a battle and others prefer to keep that information secret. Talk to your group about what they’d prefer.
MOTIVATIONS
Each NPC has at least two motivations the heroes can appeal to with their arguments. Arguments that appeal to an NPC’s motivation require an easier power roll to increase the NPC’s interest. Arguments that don’t appeal to a motivation require a more difficult power roll. See
Making Arguments for more information.
Each motivation can be successfully appealed to only once during a negotiation. To successfully appeal to a motivation, the heroes must use the motivation in an argument without mentioning one of the NPC’s pitfalls or being caught in a lie.
PITFALLS
Pitfalls are motivations that spark ire, discomfort, shame, fear, or some other negative response in an NPC. Using a pitfall in an argument causes an NPC’s interest and patience to wane. Each NPC has at least one pitfall, and many have two or more.
Pitfalls and motivations are two sides of the same concept. They’re presented below as a single list, so that what might be a motivation for one NPC is a pitfall for another. Whenever the heroes make an argument, they risk stumbling into one of an NPC’s pitfalls unless they do their research beforehand or read the NPC well.
LIST OF MOTIVATIONS AND PITFALLS
An NPC can have any of the following twelve motivations or pitfalls.
BENEVOLENCE
An NPC with the benevolence motivation believes in sharing what they have with others. However, an NPC involved in a negotiation must be limited in their benevolence, so that they don’t just give the heroes what they need.
Sometimes an NPC’s benevolence might extend only to a specific group of people, so that a benevolent pirate captain might share their plunder freely with the rest of their crew—but they’re still plundering! Other times, an NPC’s charity might be limited by the fact that they don’t have much to give. A benevolent NPC might be hesitant to give the heroes help because they believe their limited resources are more necessary or could do more good somewhere else.
An NPC with the benevolence pitfall has a cynical view of the world, believing that no creature has a right to anything just by being alive. The idea of helping others because it’s the right thing to do is a preposterous, immature, or inexperienced idea to be laughed off or snuffed out.
Arguments that appeal to a benevolence motivation contend that if the NPC strikes a deal with the heroes, the people the NPC cares about will benefit from the deal. Example arguments include the following:
- “If you lend us the Sword of Agathor, we can make Capital safer for your guild by using it to lay your enemies low.”
- "If you can teleport us into the dragon’s cave, we’ll give you half the wyrm’s hoard once we cut off the creature’s head. That could benefit generations of students at your academy!"
DISCOVERY
Complete over the top descriptions of ability effects and shrugging off even the most brutal attacks ("I must admit that after that one I felt a bit winded") suddently can make perfect sense!
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