Adjudicating Social Requests: a tool, and how I use it
Here's a quick tool for adjudicating certain NPC interactions that I built a while ago.
It assumes that one or more PCs want something from a (group of) NPC(s), which might be favors or things, but also simply information, affection, validation, attention, etc. We call this the PC’s request.
NPC reactions to the PC's request, in (roughly) decreasing order of severity:
- Hostility: NPC refuses (openly or secretly) the PC’s request and starts (or will start) actively trying to oppose the PC, in whatever form best suits them. Might mean the start of an open confrontation right then and there.
- Final Refusal: NPC doesn't give PC what they want and closes the communication channel (ends the call, leaves the room, ignores the PC, has security escort them out, etc.). Reopening communications may require an adequate gesture of good faith or enough time to cool things down. May be accompanied by a negative change in their relationship to the PC.
- Relationship Breaking Acquiescence: NPC feels obliged to do what the PC requests, but their relationship to the PC will change as a result. They might lose respect for the PC, try to get out from under their influence, grow distant, cold or resentful, etc.
- Final Counteroffer: NPC makes demands that must be met for the PC to get (some version of) what they want. Further attempts to negotiate are rejected, and insistence might cause the NPC to end the conversation, moving to Final Refusal.
- Refusal on Issue: NPC can't or won't give the PC what they want, but can still be talked to. Pushing on the same issue they've already refused is likely to close communication (possibly with a final refusal or final counteroffer), but PC can still pursue other wants, if any.
- Inept Acquiescence: NPC tries to fulfill the PC’s request, but is incapable, unmotivated or produces undesired consequences.
- Miscommunication or Misdirection: NPC gives the PC something different than what the PC wants or gives something that might make the PC change priorities. The NPC may be deliberately trying to redirect the PCs attention, or earnestly trying to appease them while lacking the capacity to fulfill the PC’s request.
- Negotiation: NPC is still holding the thing the PC wants back because they want something in return, but is willing to hear the PC out and find a deal based on what the PC is willing to offer.
- Show of Good Faith: NPC gives part of what the PC wants, or something else they think is useful, to show they're willing to help, but either can't give the PC what they want fully or are holding back for something in return.
- Open-ended Favor: NPC fulfills the PC’s request now, with the expectation of a return favor later.
- Acquiescence: NPC fulfills the PC’s request with no particular strings attached.
- Full Assistance: NPC gives the PC everything they can provide, going above and beyond what they were being asked for, where they can.
External complications to the interaction:
- Time Constraint: negotiations might be cut short by an outside force, or the PC might have a limited time to make their case.
- Opposing Advocate: someone else is trying to sway the NPC not to act in the way the PC wants, directly or indirectly. Might be happening right then and there, or could be conversations behind the PC’s back.
- Weak Communication Channel: communication might suffer delays, interruptions, outages, ambiguity, etc. Likely to cause miscommunications or delays in fulfilling the request.
- Costly Communication: opening the dialogue with the NPC might require spending some resources – because the communication channel isn't free or the NPC demands tribute before hearing you out.
- Unexpected Revelation: information that changes the context of the negotiation or the PC’s situation is disclosed in the middle of the interaction. Can be revealed to the PC or the NPC, by the participants themselves, or a third party intruding on the conversation, or by reaching a conclusion based on clues.
- Unsafe Secrets: some NPC involved in the interaction will tell others any information shared or gained during the conversation (deliberately, by accident or being forced), or the communication channel isn’t secure, and third parties listen in on the conversation had by the PC and the NPC. The end result is that others learn information the participants of the conversation would rather keep private.
- Public Opinion: the interaction is being watched by others, who will form (or change) their opinion of both the PC and NPC based on how their arguments (and surrounding actions) go. This complicates the request, because it introduces a secondary reaction to the PC’s request, which may not align with the PC’s desires or preferred methods, or may change their social standing in unforeseen ways. If the point of the interaction isn’t to convince the NPC being argued against, but the public itself, it might be easier to treat the public as the NPC who will react to the PC request, and the NPC arguing against the PC as an opposing advocate.
So how do I use this tool?
Maybe reading through the lists above make it immediately obvious to you how and when you could use this to run a game. But if you have no idea why I went to the trouble to build this list, and how I could use it to run a game, allow me to quickly explain.
I'm not going to tell you the way I use this tool with the expectation that you use it like I do. It is just an example, and any way you can conceive of to use this framework is right. Obviously not using it at all is also fine: chances are you've been doing it throughout all of your RPG career, right?
So. The way I use this tool was just to write it, and occasionally read through it again.
That's it. That's all I do with it.
I wrote it because it was too easy for me to think of social interactions where PCs ask something of NPCs as a binary set of possibilities: they either get what they want, or they don't.
Reading through the list, it is hopefully clear that these are not the only options. Is it worth it to get some version of what you're asking the NPC for if it means straining your relationship with them? Can the NPC only meet the PC's request halfway? What if there is someone listening in to the conversation? These are considerations that open the possibility space of the situation beyond simple success or failure.
I could occasionally come up with some of these "more complex" consequences to a social request before I made this tool, but only if something I already knew about the situation strongly pushed me to the conclusion that it would be the natural response for the NPC. As a default, though, it was always "they say yes" or "they say no", just because that was the basic framework I had in my mind. Pass or fail.
Likewise, the external complications are things I can take into account when making rulings, but that were hard for me to use in improv before I took the time to consider them as possibilities. Each one individually doesn't apply to most situations, but when they do apply, it is nice to keep that in mind as an additional point of tension to throw at the players.
Realizing that the results of any given action the PCs try don't have to be exclusively understood in a binary way is nothing new. But if I didn't make the effort to think through what some of the actual breadth of possibilities were, it'd be hard for me to come up with these options more consistently during the game.
So I wrote this down to explore and expand every option I could think of for dealing with this kind of situation, in a bit of dedicated creative effort toward seeing more possibilities of how these social interactions might go clearly laid out. This made all of these options clearer in my mind, making them more likely to pop up as an idea when I'm adjudicating the result of some roleplay moment or resolution mechanic.
The purpose of this tool was just to give myself a more complex mental model of how social requests can go. Maybe it can do the same for you?
Hopefully this was interesting to you. If it was useful as well, all the better!