Talk Nerdy To Me: How to Make Social Encounters More Interesting
In my previous blog posts, I have tackled both how to avoid boring combat and how to use exploration encounters. Today I want to talk about my personal favorite aspect of role-playing: social encounters! Social encounters are encounters which require the Player Characters (or PCs) to interact with non-player characters (NPCs) and try to negotiate, gather information, or talk their way out of trouble. This allows the players to get into character and engage in some minor theatrics. Some of my favorite and most memorable sessions have been social encounters; encounters that are 100% role-playing, without a single die roll! Social encounters allow us to engage in a pure form of cooperative storytelling. One where the players and the Game Master can share in weaving the threads together as the story unfolds. One of my favorite techniques is to have my players play as the villains in cut-away pure roleplay scenes so they can see that the villains are people too with their own motivations and goals. It also helps the villains from becoming two dimensional loot pinatas for the players to whack on. [More on this technique in a future blog post.]
The biggest piece of advice I can offer as a veteran Game Master is to read the room. If your players are not digging the social encounter, move it along so your players can get back to the things they do like about the story, such as exploration and/or combat. Even if you yourself enjoy social encounters, you should not focus on them if your players do not enjoy them. Not every group is going to be The Dead Poets Society. But if you are lucky, maybe one or two pairs of eyes light up just before the players ask, “Can I talk to them?” This is when you know you have players who love social encounters.
Always try to avoid making the social encounter about rolling the dice and make it more about Let the characters lead the conversation and ask the questions but don't give them all of the answers or reveal all of your secrets at once. Sometimes they have to learn that the Duke is lying to them by speaking to some of the other guests at the party.
I find that it is often easier to role-play social encounters by doing a little more prep for the important NPCs they might encounter along the way. I try to ask myself the following questions in order to properly capture their motivations and role-play them accurately:
What does the character want?
What obstacles stand in their way?
What are they willing to do/actively doing about it?
How can the Player Characters help/hinder them in accomplishing their goals?
What secrets are they keeping from the Player Characters?
I will often keep my answers to these questions written down on a notecard or in a document that I can then reference during my games. If you are using notecards, it can be helpful to put an image on the other side of the notecard so the characters can connect a face with a name. If you are running digitally, you can always find an image via a quick image search. A little prep for these characters goes a long way towards helping them feel fleshed out with motivations and plans of their own instead of a walking text-box.
[An aside on accents. I like using accents; I feel like they make each character whom the players interact with more interesting and feel like a different character. However, being able to do a plethora of accents is not one of the hallmarks of a great Game Master. I know plenty of Game Masters who are tremendous wordsmiths even if they do not have a history of voice-acting. Also, be very careful to avoid stereotypes when doing accents as they may not come across as you intend and may even be perceived as insensitive or insulting. Be mindful of this when you use accents of any kind.]
I hope you found this helpful and that you can put some of these tips to use the next time you run a social encounter in your campaign!
Take Heart!
Karington Hess
Game Master and Founder of Open Heart Games
