When I was preparing to run the playtests of my rune magic homebrew, I knew I wanted to run a more social focused session alongside the two other sessions. This meant I would have to figure out how to make social encounters both fit into and fill out a (more or less) 4-hour session.

What I mean by “social” is that the scene/encounter is primarily focused on interpersonal interaction, rather than combat or exploration. D&D doesn’t have a ton of rules for running these types of scenarios; it’s mostly left up to the DM. Social scenes can be a nice break from rounds of combat, where tension is high, a single decision can mean life or death, and the dice roll frequently.

But, social doesn’t always mean low-stakes. Information and rapport are valuable, especially when there are those working against your party’s goals. So, I sketched out a system for that first playtest, and now I’ve tinkered with it a bit for the second. As of this posting, the session has already happened– on Friday I’ll post my evaluation of how well this worked.

  • Each player rolls initiative as normal.
  • Allied characters can switch their initiatives between rounds.
  • Each round = 1 conversation and 1 check. A failed roll means you must try a different approach (the same character can’t repeat the same check on the same person).
  • At the top of each round, the players can regroup, strategize, and exchange information.
  • Every 2 rounds, a Complication will occur that could have positive or negative effects on the current situation.

This system is meant to organize the flow of action, allowing players to team up or split up as they wish, but ultimately giving everyone a turn in the scene. Spells and other effects can be used as normal.

 

Here’s the Complication table I used:

(*this can be used to eliminate red herrings or simply indicate the passage of time in the scene.)

 

My hope is that this is a good solution for making a whole session out of a social event. But, that remains to be seen!