Social Interaction
Exploring dungeons, overcoming obstacles and slaying monsters are key parts of fantasy adventures. Nevertheless, the social interactions that adventurers have with other inhabitants of the world are no less important.
Social interactions have two primary aspects: roleplaying and ability checks. In general terms, an NPC’s attitude toward you falls into one of the following categories:
| Atttitude | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Helpful | The creature takes risks to help you. |
| Friendly | The creature wishes you well but won’t take life-threatening risks on your behalf. |
| Indifferent | The creature regards you as neither a threat, not an ally and probably doesn’t attack you. |
| Unfriendly | The creature wishes you ill, but won’t go out of its way to harm you. |
| Hostile | The creature takes risks to harm you, usually attacking on sight. |
Friendly and helpful NPCs are predisposed to help you, while hostile and unfriendly ones are inclined to get in your way. It’s easier to get what you want from a helpful, or friendly NPC.
Interaction comes in many forms. You might need to convince an unscrupulous thief to confess to some malfeasance, or you might try to flatter a dragon so that it will spare your life. The GM assumes the roles of any characters who are participating in the interaction and don’t belong to another player at the table. Any such character is called a nonplayer character (NPC).