This here’s yet another lesson in my long-running True Game Master course. The lessons are best read in order, so use this link to start at the beginning if you’ve not been following along.

True Game Mastery Series Index

To be honest, I’m sick of this shit.

I swore up and down that this series was going to focus on actionable, practical advice; that it wasn’t going to get lost in the conceptual weeds; and that it wasn’t going to get into protracted debates with morons about its lessons are worth following. And I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels doing exactly what I swore I wouldn’t for weeks.

Today’s the end of the whole social interaction thing. I’m gonna tell you how to Determine and Describe the outcomes of social interactions. And with that, you’ll be able to resolve social encounters. Some of you won’t like this shit because there’s a bunch of wishy-washy judgment where you think the math and rules should be. And I don’t give a single, solitary crap.

Today’s also the end of the first part of the True Game Mastery series. The one about Running Games. I know there are a few topics I promised a more detailed treatment of, but honestly, I can’t figure out how else to say, “Just do the shit I keep telling you to do and stop believing whatever it is requires a different treatment just because it’s illusion or divination or stealth or whatever.”

So that’s it. Next lesson we move on to Campaign Management.

How Social Actions Turn Out

Welcome to my literal last word on social interaction. At least in this series. I know this shit’ll keep coming up as long as I’m still cranking out content. And as long as tabletop roleplaying game designers keep sucking at their jobs.

Last time, I told you your job — as a Game Master running a social interaction — is to pay careful attention to everything the players say and do — especially when it pertains to things their characters say and do — and to pounce on anything that looks remotely like a productive social action. I told you to decide what outcome that social action could possibly have — without asking your players because they’ve got no fucking clue — to resolve it as a game action, and then to describe the outcome so that it seemed like the sort of way a real human person would respond.

Remember?

…As a Game Action

Non-player characters aren’t characters. They’re not roles you play. They’re not living, breathing inhabitants of your fantastic world. They don’t have hopes or dreams or fears or desires. They’re game constructs. They exist for game purposes. And in encounters, that game purpose is to provide the players with a challenge. NPCs are obstacles the players have to overcome.

Convincing a witness to provide information is the same as jumping a chasm, picking a lock, or stabbing an orc. You must evaluate and determine the action’s outcome from a game mechanical perspective. You must consider whether the player is thinking strategically and using their resources to win. You must reward their experimentation with information even if their experimentation amounts to taking random actions to see what happens. You must consider the degree of challenge the encounter is supposed to provide and stretch the encounter to provide it. But you must also reward players who are so strategically clever — or lucky in their guesswork — that they find a way to resolve a complex challenge with a single, brilliant — and lucky — action. And you must utilize the players’ characters’ — and the non-player characters’ — skills and stats and determine the outcome.

And you have to do it all subjectively. With good judgment.

If you impose too many arbitrary, abstract mechanics on social encounters, they stop feeling like social encounters. They feel, instead, like board games. When that happens, the players won’t fully engage with the characters in the world. And no amount of dressing up the outcomes as the actions of real, living, breathing people will work. And then your players won’t give a shit about your world.

That’s why Social Combat systems suck.

The Social Stat Block

Note that I said you can’t impose too many abstract, arbitrary mechanics. I didn’t say you can’t have any mechanics at all. You need some. The players can’t know the non-player characters are just game constructs, but you know they are. And game constructs have mechanically fiddly bits.

The problem is that lots of you dumbasses don’t consider something a mechanic unless it’s made of math.

True Game Masters generally keep five basic social statistics when resolving social encounters. Though most True Game Masters aren’t even totally consciously aware of what they’re doing. They couldn’t give you the list.

These social statistics are vague and fuzzy and they’re not numbers — though some of them can be. But they nonetheless help Game Masters adjudicate social actions, decide when social encounters are over — for better or for worse — and portray the outcomes of social actions. They also provide discoverable information. That is, they represent shit the Game Master can reveal to the players — explicitly or implicitly — when the players do research or probe the non-player character.

These five statistics represent the absolute minimum that you should know about non-player characters before you run a social encounter with that NPC.

Source of Conflict

If a non-player character isn’t cooperating with the player characters — if they’re an obstacle — there’s got to be a reason for that. And you’ve got to know it. Why is the non-player character in conflict with the players’ characters?

The Source of Conflict is like the lock on a treasure chest or the guard on a door. It’s what the players have to overcome to get the sweet, sweet treasure inside.

It takes a narrative sentence to describe a Source of Conflict. You can’t do it with a single word.

A non-player character can have multiple Sources of Conflict. That’s like putting a lock and a trap on a chest and maybe hiding it in a secret panel. Each Source of Conflict is another obstacle so each additional one makes life harder for the players. And, obviously, new Sources of Conflict can arise through play.

Disposition

Disposition represents the non-player character’s attitude toward the players’ characters. And, believe it or not, there are rules for this shit. And they’ve been around for years and years. They’re usually called Attitude or Reaction. In modern D&D, non-player characters have three possible Dispositions: friendly, indifferent, and hostile. Check DMG 244-245 if you don’t believe me.

Three degrees of attitude ain’t enough for a True Game Master though. Most use at least five categories — as in the old days — which are usually something like: hostile, unfriendly, indifferent, friendly, and super-mega-friendly. Personally, I prefer to say respectful and disrespectful instead of friendly and unfriendly.

Remember how I said that the thing that most determines the outcomes of social actions is the subject’s attitude toward you? That’s why Disposition is the second most important thing to know. It determines just how far a non-player character will go for someone and also the baseline difficulty for interacting with that NPC.

Patience

Like you or hate you, people have a limit for how much of your shit they’re willing to put up with. You can only be grilled, cajoled, wheedled, prodded, and convinced for so long before you just stop listening. Narratively, Patience determines when a non-player character is done with the players’ characters’ bullshit. Mechanically, Patience sets a failure stat on the whole encounter.

Different Game Masters track Patience differently. Some just wing it. Me? I put a number on it and tick it down periodically as things go back and forth. It’s kind of how I track time. “Well, it’s probably been about ten minutes since the last time I said ‘It’s probably been about ten minutes.'” If I were more mechanical, I’d probably tick it down every time I resolved a social action.

Also, I’m lying. I just wing it.

The important thing is that Patience is always ticking down. Very, very rarely a player will manage to say or do just the right thing to earn back a little patience — they’ll say something that seems like the sort of thing that would get a non-player character to open up — but it’s on the players to do something that makes me say, “Yeah, the NPC would cut them a little slack.”

Motivation

Narratively speaking, Motivation describes what the non-player character values, pursues, or considers meaningful. Do I have to explain this shit at this point? Or point out how Motivations are different from goals? I sure hope not. You should be past that by now.

In Game Mechanical terms — which are the only terms that matter because non-player characters aren’t characters you play — Motivation is either a level to pull or a trap to fall into. It’s either a Vulnerability or a Resistance. They provide alternatives to fighting over the Source of Conflict.

If a non-player character is motivated by wealth, offering an NPC something of value can help overcome their Source of Conflict. And trying to get them to part with something of value is fraught with peril.

If a non-player character is motivated by their Integrity or Honor, trying to bribe them is just going to insult them, but demonstrating respect for their virtue might get them to listen.

Non-player characters can have multiple Motivations. While each is a double-edged sword, every Motivation represents a social vulnerability or alternative social strategy. Thus, every Motivation, on balance, makes life easier for smart players and their characters. And dumb players don’t deserve to win.

Mood

A Mood is a temporary, emotional state. In Game Mechanical terms, they’re situational, circumstantial modifiers. They add an extra dimension of challenge or make things easier. If Motivation is akin to Vulnerabilities and Resistances — each Motivation being a double-sided coin — Moods are like Buffs and Debuffs.

Now, most Game Masters — even the True ones — ain’t masters of human psychology and social interaction. The more social encounters you run, the better you’ll understand this shit, but it’s still a lot to manage. That said, it’s way easier to manage if you know that most psychologists agree there’s only a half-dozen or so primary emotions. There are several different lists available — people disagree about which primary emotions count — but generally, I classify NPCs as Neutral, Happy, Sad, Angry, Disgusted, Afraid, or , Surprised.

When professionals want to help folks understand their moods and feelings better, they often hand out a thing called an Emotion Wheel which lists the Primary emotions and shows how they give rise to Secondary and even Tertiary emotions. You should grab one. I like this one from the University of New Hampshire. Of course, I only recommend it for gaming purposes. Because I don’t do life advice.

Building a Social Stat Block

Those five things I described above — Source of Conflict, Disposition, Patience, Motivation, and Mood — they’re basically the essential components comprising a True Game Master’s Social Stat Block. And now I’ve got a frigging problem. Because this lesson is about resolving social encounters, not designing them. Designing them is for Scenario Designers and that’s a sssonwho separate course for when this one’s done.

The problem’s that most Scenario Designers aren’t True Game Masters themselves and thus, they absolutely freaking suck at giving True Game Masters the information they need to fill out such a stat block. which means it’s on you, the True Game Master, to pull the information you need from whatever crap the module you’re running provides. And if there’s information it doesn’t provide, it’s on you to pull it out of your True Game Master ass.

When you’re getting ready to run an adventure — or when you’ve got to run a social encounter on the fly — ask yourself the following:

• Why is this Encounter even happening? Why is the non-player character acting like an obstacle? That answer’s your Source of Conflict.
• How does the non-player character feel about the player characters? Initially, anyway? That’s your Disposition.
• How long will the non-player character put up with being wheedled, needled, questioned, and fought with? That’s your Patience.
• What does the non-player character value or want out of life apart from whatever it is that’s creating the Conflict? That’s your Motivation.
• How is the non-player character feeling today? That’s your Mood.

Hopefully, the Scenario Designer gave you enough to go on so that you can figure out most of that shit. At the very least, you can hopefully identify the Source of Conflict easily enough. But you might stuck deducing some of those answers based on the non-player character description. Or you might be stuck pulling it out of your ass. Either way is fine.

Regarding Disposition, if the players don’t have a prior relationship with the non-player character and they haven’t built a reputation, Disposition comes down to the NPC’s first impression of the party. The NPC will make a snap judgment about the party based on their appearance, demeanor, context, preconceived notions, biases, and assumptions. Just like in real life. Older editions of D&D had this thing called an Initial Reaction Roll to determine an NPC’s starting attitude. Chalk that up to one more thing the designers of modern D&D — in their infinite wisdom — jettisoned. So thank Crawford for leaving you to work this shit out for yourself.

Regarding Patience, Motivation, and Mood, that shit basically adjusts the difficulty of the social encounter. For moderate difficulty, assume an NPC is patient enough to put up with a half-dozen social actions before they shut down. Unless you want to make things particularly easy or hard — or you’ve got a good narrative reason to do so — assume an NPC is in a neutral Mood. And unless you want to make things easy by assigning more, give an NPC a single, broad motivation.

And that’s it. That’s a social stat block. Easy frigging peasy. You don’t even have to write this shit down. I usually don’t.

Non-Player Characters Choose…

Between my last lesson and this one, I’ve given you everything you need to resolve Social Encounters like a True Game Master.

Recall, first, that your job’s to pay attention to everything your players say and do and decide when something they’ve said might constitute a Social Action. Once you’ve spotted a Social Action, you’ve got to decide what it might possibly do, which probably has nothing to do with what the player intended. After all, players are just throwing social shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Recall that players might Connect, Assert, Understand, Convince, or Negotiate.

And now that you know what crap a True Game Master knows about a non-player character — Source of Conflict, Disposition, Patience, Motivation, and Mood — you can probably see how all this shit fits together. Connection is usually about shifting an NPC’s Disposition. Sometimes, it’ll shift their Mood instead. Understanding’s usually about learning what’s on the Social Stat Block. Convincing is usually about wearing down the Source of Conflict or sometimes changing a Motivation. Negotiating is usually about using a Motivation to overcome the Source Conflict.

Note my repeated emphasis of the word usually, though? This shit doesn’t always line up perfectly. That’s why we don’t hand out lists of buttons and stats. If you try to force this stuff to conform, you won’t have social interaction anymore. While the broad categories of actions are useful as a broad framework, they don’t supersede your best judgment. So don’t obsess over whether Adam is Convincing or Negotiating. Instead, just figure out how it might affect the NPC’s Social Stats.

Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink

Speaking of crap not breaking down perfectly and using your best judgment…

Players say lots of things during Social Encounters and most of those things don’t work as Social Actions by themselves. Social Actions ain’t always that granular and players mostly Act Socially at random. That means you’ve got to look for patterns of action.

True Game Masters often say things like, “Okay, the players have made enough minor points that they’ve probably chipped away at the Source of Conflict. I’ll let Adam roll a Persuasion check for that point he just made.” Or, “It feels like the players have made enough friendly small talk that I can resolve a Connect action.”

You’ve got to be willing to let a player roll a check not just for what they just said, but also the sum total of all the stuff that preceded what they just said. As a general rule, if the players pursue the same basic point three times collectively, let whoever made the third point resolve the action. That’s how social shit works.

Assigning Outcomes

So you’ve decided you’ve got yourself a thing to resolve as a game action. What now?

Now, you’ve got to pick the possible outcomes. What happens if that action succeeds? And does anything change if it fails? What changes?

From a Game Mechanical perspective and in the general case, there ain’t a lot of ways actions can turn out. Most actions either resolve or ruin conflicts or else they move the conflict closer to or further from resolution. Call those Wins, Losses, Progress, and Setbacks. Some actions, though, change the situation so as to make future Wins, Losses, Progress, and Setbacks more or less likely. Call those Buffs and Debuffs. And finally, some actions change shit if they succeed — or fail — but don’t have any impact if they fail — or succeed. Which True Game Masters know are totally fine. Especially in Social Encounters.

I’ll explain that below.

There are other possibilities, of course, because True Game Masters are limited only by their imagination and judgment, but I’m keeping it simple for you stupids just now.

This is all true of Social Actions too. You have to decide whether the action can result in a Win or Loss, whether it can result in Progress or a Setback, or whether it can have some other influence on things. But with the Social Stat Block in your head — or written down, if you must — you can grok more easily how an action might affect a situation. If whatever Adam just said Ardrick said somehow addresses the Source of Conflict, that’s either going to score a Win or Make some progress, right? Or else not. And if Danielle’s stated action addresses the NPC’s Mood or Disposition, that’s basically a Buff or Debuff, right?

The point is, that the stats on the Social Stat Block are all either levers the players can pull or sliders they can adjust. Or both.

Keep in mind, though, that picking the possible outcomes at this stage — which you always do before you let anyone touch any dice — picking the possible outcomes is a purely game mechanical thing. You’re not trying to determine how the NPC responds as a person. You don’t care — yet — why they might refuse the bribe or get insulted or dig in or give up. You just need to decide the game effect the action will have on the conflict. Or the Social Stat Block.

Actually Resolving the Action

None of what I’m teaching you today undoes anything I’ve ever taught you about Action Adjudication. You still also have to use your best judgment to decide whether an action warrants a die roll or whether you can just call it a success or failure outright. Though, with social actions, it’s best to err on the side of die rolls. And you still have to use your Game Mastering brain and your game’s rules to determine the outcome.

When it comes to setting the action’s difficulty, though, the Social Stat Block is a giant help.

Start by considering the non-player character’s Disposition. Disposition sets the Base Difficulty to influence the NPC. Then, adjust the Difficulty based on the type of action the player is taking. Attempts to Convince are hardest, then attempts to Negotiate, followed by attempts to Understand, and finally attempts to Connect. That doesn’t just make good sense, but it also works mechanically.

Next, adjust the Difficulty further based on the player’s approach and how that plays into — or grinds against — the non-player character’s Mood and Motivations. Further adjust the Difficulty based on the NPC’s skills, statistics, and role as well. An authority figure with high willpower is tough to bully. An unintelligent potato eater is easy to deceive.

Remember: every action is a unique and special snowflake. Thus each needs a carefully crafted, bespoke resolution. If you aren’t tweaking the Difficulty of every action based on every little detail of the situation, you’re a bad Game Master and you should feel bad. That’s your fucking job!

And then, when you’ve got all that squared away — it should take you under five seconds at most — then you can use your brain and the dice to determine the outcome.

…Game Masters Act

Now that you’ve Determined the outcome of your player’s Social Action, you’ve got to Describe it. You’ve got to bring that shit to life. You’ve got to portray the outcome as if it’s coming from a real, actual person in your game’s world.

Remember, you ain’t roleplaying, you’re acting. You know a bunch of stuff about your character — though not as much as you’d probably like — and you know what the script says your character does next — because the game’s mechanics told you so. You’ve just got to play it out. And you’ve got to make it make sense. Because it must make sense.

Sometimes, it will make sense. Sometimes the Social Stat Block makes a non-player character’s action totally rational and sensible. Of course, the dude with integrity refused the bribe! Of course, the dudette who’s afraid won’t describe the gangster that shook her down. But sometimes, the Social Stat Block won’t have the answer.

And that’s when you need the True Game Master’s Nuclear Option…

Making Shit Up

You can’t portray the outcome of a Social Action unless you can make sense of it. If, given everything you know about the non-player character, the Social Action’s outcome doesn’t make sense to you, you have to discover something about the non-player character to resolve that.

Here’s where all that shit I told you about why social conflicts happen and how irrational people are comes in handy. First, it helps disabuse you of the expectation that people are rational. And second, it gives you a long list of things that can explain the irrationally unexplainable. Like why the wealth-motivated NPC refused a bribe. Or why the righteously angry idealist won’t help the party hunt the criminal.

The point is: if a non-player character’s game mechanical action doesn’t make narrative sense, invent a reason why it does make sense, add it to the list of shit you know about the non-player character, and act like it was true all along.

Revealing Information

Do you remember that shit I taught you long ago about Telegraphing? About how you should treat every action as a chance to reveal a fact about the game’s characters? Well, that’s especially true here. Whenever you resolve a Social Action, pick something on the Social Stat Block and play it up. And, ideally, choose something that’ll help the players pick their next action. Pick something that’ll suggest a strategy.

If the non-player character’s Disposition is low and the players just failed to Convince them, play up how the NPC doesn’t like the players’ characters or doesn’t trust them. You can’t be too obvious here. I mean it. It’s okay for an NPC to literally say, “Look, I don’t trust you” or “I can’t deal with this right now; I’m too depressed” or whatever.

Your goal in every Social Encounter is to clue the players in at least once to every entry on your Social Stat Block. By the end of such an Encounter, a savvy player should know, at the very least, why that conflict happened — from the NPC’s perspective — and how that NPC feels about the party.

I ain’t saying the players will pick up on that crap — players are stupid, after all — but the information should be there for the taking.

Updating the Social Stat Block

Once you’ve Described the outcome of a Social Action — by portraying the non-player character’s response — it’s time to mentally update the Social Stat Block in your head. Or update the actual Social Stat Block if you absolutely must write it down. Has the NPC’s Mood shifted? Has their Disposition changed?

Obviously, some of this follows direction from the action’s outcome, but don’t forget that actions have consequences apart from their outcomes too. An attempt to bully an NPC might leave that character feeling Angry or Afraid in addition to any Progress or Setbacks that result. And it’ll probably leave them liking the party a lot less. An attempt to cheer an NPC — even if it doesn’t clear their sad Mood — will likely increase their Disposition. People appreciate sympathy. Unless, of course, the NPC feels judged, patronized, or condescended to. It’s important here to use your portrayal of the non-player character as a guide. Did you play the NPC as unmoved but appreciative or did you play them as put off by the attempt?

Apart from applying the outcomes and consequences, remember that every Social Action chews up some Patience.

Getting Tired of the Players’ Characters’ Crap

Patience is finite and it’s always dwindling.

See, Social Actions aren’t the same as friendly interactions. They’re attempts to influence, coerce, or challenge. They’re tiring. And people can only take so much conflict before they’re just kinda done. Whenever the players take an actual Social Action, they’re one neuron closer to that NPC’s last nerve.

When a non-player character has run out of Patience, Social Actions just don’t get through anymore. That character’s stopped listening. Psychologically, this is called stonewalling. It’s refusing to listen, communicate, or cooperate. You can say anything you want to someone stonewalling you; they literally aren’t hearing you. They just want out.

There are lots of ways to lose Social Conflicts, but Hitting the Stone Wall is the most generic and the most common. True Game Masters know — intuitively — that every nonplayer character is only usefully engaged in a conflict for so long before nothing said to them has any impact at all. At that point, all Social Actions fail. When an NPC hits this state, don’t roll dice. There’s no way to succeed. Any Social Action is literally trying to chew through a Stone Wall.

How does a spent NPC act? It varies. A non-player character with a high Disposition and a friendly demeanor will just get distant and respond with short, perfunctory remarks. A Fearful NPC that dislikes the party will try to excuse herself or just flee. Hostile, Angry non-player characters might throw a punch if they’re not left alone. The key is that the non-player character just wants to get out of the conflict.

Practice, Practice, Practice

As with every other piece of advice I’ve ever given you, the key here is to practice. And that’s more important here than anywhere else. Because Social Encounters — and portraying non-player characters’ responses to Social Actions — is pretty much the most open-ended, judgment-reliant thing any Game Master has to do. Even the small amount of mechanical abstraction I’ve provided is too much and you should do your damnedest to move past needing it. If you try to be too mechanical about this shit — and if you ever let the players see the robots under the non-player character skins — you will be fundamentally breaking your roleplaying game. Nothing — and I mean nothing — produces emotional investment like human social interaction. If your world is full of living, breathing characters, it’s something the players can — and will — care about. If it’s not…

Let me just say that if you ever complain that your players are murderhobos or they just don’t care, I’m willing to bet good money that it’s because you suck at filling your world with relatable characters. Sorry.

That’s why, by the way, I kept emphasizing that a Social Stat Block belongs in your head, not on paper and that you’re better off winging Disposition and Patience than recording numbers and tracking scores. Because the more you see this shit as mechanics — even though it is — the less able you’ll be to breathe humanity into it.

The End…

And with that, I’m closing out not just this crap about Social Encounters and not just this crap about Resolving Encounters, but also the entire series on Running Games like a True Game Master. When next we meet here in the True Game Mastery classroom, we’ll be shifting to a whole new topic: How to Manage a Campaign. Which isn’t at all what you think it’ll be, but it’ll likely be something lots of you will realize you need.

Except…

I am also toying with the possibility of writing up a big-ass Social Encounter example similar to the one I did for Combat however many months ago. Let me know if that’s something you’d like to see.