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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8698181" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, yes.  What you describe is a big problem and there is not an easy solution.  One of the reasons that combat encounters remain the main focus of most RPGs is that combat (and simulations of combat, such as sports) have an almost unique aspect of requiring teamwork in which each member of the team is making important and meaningful decisions.  Just about nothing else has that attribute.  There are challenges that require a single person to make important and meaningful decisions, and there are challenges that require teamwork but where most members of the team aren't making a meaningful or skillful decision.  Combat is different and that's the real reason it remains a focus of play.So, yeah, this is a problem.  What you'll find though is that frameworks that try to make social encounters more combat like have the problem of making social encounters more abstract than simply role-playing out scenarios resulting in a less satisfying transcript of play and less immersion.  They also tend to not solve the problem as most social problems don't have the same time pressure as combat, so you can fight them as a series of duels just fine.What I do is a buffet approach to adventure design where I try to create a mix of challenges such that even when they aren't working together, they are at least dependent on each other and sharing spotlight.  Each character hopefully has things that they do out of combat, whether break things, investigate things, talk to things, or navigate so that each character gets a chance to step forward and help the party and contribute to success.There are things you can do to force everyone to do social interaction, but it requires more complex setups to the social challenge than I'm comfortable advising a novice DM to implement and run.  I've seen moderately experienced DMs struggle to run that sort of complex challenge, and also you run the problem that not everyone is into it and to keep the whole team entertained the players themselves have to be good role-playing entertainers.  So yeah, it can be done with some hard work and the payoffs can be real, but I think that would be learning to run before learning to walk.This is a huge topic and we could spend a lot of time talking about how to do it well.</blockquote>

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