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Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

by Mike on 8 April 2024

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

how we prepare them.
how we run them.
what pitfalls we might run into.
how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

In adventures focused on roleplaying and intrigue, the characters primarily talk to NPCs to accomplish goals or learn information. Intrigue adventures often overlap with Investigations and Mysteries with less of a focus on location-based clues and expanding the goals beyond uncovering mysteries.

Example goals in roleplay and intrigue adventures might include

convincing royalty to commit military forces in a war.
exposing treachery in a royal court.
saving the life of a condemned prisoner.
pitting two enemies against one another.
learning the location of a secret treasure vault.
getting permission to enter a closed city.
asking priests to hand over a powerful artifact.

Roleplay and intrigue adventures are often built around a set of linear or networked scenes. In these scenes, the characters talk to one or more NPCs learning something or attaining a goal that leads them to the next scene.

Preparing Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

During preparation for roleplay and intrigue adventures, GMs can focus on

clarifying the goal of the adventure.
fleshing out the backgrounds of notable NPCs.
finding artwork they can show to players for each notable NPC.
writing down what NPCs know and what they want.
defining secrets and clues the characters might uncover when talking to NPCs.
adding other adventure elements as needed from the eight steps.

Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Roleplay and intrigue adventures can begin with a strong start to bring the players into the game, clarify the goals of the adventure, set the stage, and let the players begin interacting with NPCs.

During play, the GM thinks as the NPCs would think given their backgrounds and goals as they interact with the players. As the conversation goes on, the GM may decide how NPCs react based on what the players say or they may have players roll ability checks if there's a meaningful chance for failure that doesn't end the adventure in a brick wall.

GMs can use ability checks to determine how easily or how difficult it is to acquire information from an NPC or shift the NPCs attitude without shutting off entire paths if the adventure on a single bad check.

Other elements from typical adventures may come up in these sessions including exploring locations or getting into a fight, even if the overall focus is on talking to NPCs.

Pitfalls of Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures

Roleplay and intrigue adventures might suffer from the following pitfalls:

Players don't understand what they're doing or why.
Too many roleplay scenes in a row can bore action-focused players.
The characters blow important rolls or engage in the wrong approach and shut off critical paths for the story.
Players don't understand how best to engage the NPCs.
Characters have better social skills than their players have or vice versa.

Avoiding Pitfalls

GMs can avoid or mitigate these pitfalls by

Clarifying the characters' goals regularly.
Including other action-focused scenes in the adventure such as combat encounters or location exploration.
Ensuring the whole story doesn't get shut down on bad rolls or poor approaches and instead leads the story down a different, potentially harder, but still interesting path.
Use the result of a roll as a scale of how well or poorly something went instead of a hard success or failure. See 1d20 Shades of Gray.
Offer suggestions to players who have a hard time understanding how to engage with characters. Don't let them make foolish mistakes their characters would know better than to make. Show them opportunities their characters would recognize.
Use a high-charisma character's charisma as a baseline, recognizing that their character might be better at negotiating than the player is.
Use a charismatic player's approach as a baseline even if their character has a lousy charisma. Don't always call for a roll.

A Common Sub-Adventure Type

Roleplay and intrigue adventures might often slide into or be shuffled into other larger adventures. As one of the core pillars of roleplaying games, roleplay and intrigue scenes appear often throughout campaigns and can drive the story forward as much, or more so, than other adventure types.

Clarifying the goal, building rich reactive NPCs, creating interesting paths forward regardless of the outcome, and delivering the other elements of gameplay can make roleplay and intrigue adventures as exciting as the most explosive combat encounters.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Running Evil Cities and 175 Free Tokens for Owlbear Rodeo.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Challenge high level characters by attacking several points — AC, saves, death saves, exhaustion, hit points, cumulative -1 penalties, and so on.
Build big arenas for big boss battles with interesting terrain and layers of monsters.
Offer weapon enchantment gemstones any character can affix to a weapon or armor to make it magical.
Let the characters glimpse their final villains. Make villains and boss monsters ever present.
With six regular players and two on-call players, five people have to cancel before you can’t get four to the table for a game.
Print maps, pen in one- or two-word room descriptions, and make a list of potential inhabitants.
Roll up treasure horde parcels and jot them down in your notes. Distribute them when it makes sense.