Conversation & Conflict: A System-Agnostic TTRPG Module for Character Communication

Explore a more nuanced mechanical system for in-game social interaction you can add to your favorite tabletop RPG!

Game Masters, are you tired of your bard charming the pants off your Big Bad and ruining your encounter? Or perhaps your pacifist party loves collecting NPCs thanks to their persuasive superpowers? Maybe you just want a bit more structure to help facilitate creative but realistic social roleplay between characters in game? After all, communication is powerful, but it's not mind control. It should have nuance while still leaving room for thoughtful roleplaying. And why not make it easier on you as the GM while we're at it?

This module provides a rich set of rules for facilitating communication and conflict between GM-controlled creatures and player characters. It uses a multi-tiered system of Cooperation to determine how likely a character is to work with a player or the party as a whole. Then it offers six skills to use to change the attitude of the character: Intimidation, Seduction, Deception, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. Using a more sophisticated and well-defined Insight mechanic, the players can determine which skills are most likely to work with a particular character. Finally, the players can put these skills to use with a unique d20-based system where the NPC rolls first and the player attempts to roll within a certain range of what the NPC rolled, symbolically representing the process of meeting the character where they are at.

This system also includes rules for building long-term alliances with characters, introducing mechanics useful for campaigns built on political intrigue or faction-based conflict. Non-violent encounters are supported by these rules beyond what many game systems provide, but hostility (both physical and social) is also explored by these mechanics. 

Explore the breadth of character-to-character interaction in all its fun and glory without feeling like you're flying by the seat of your pants the whole time. Wishing you happy gaming! 

This module is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). This basically means you can share and remix these rules however you'd like as long as you credit me, mention what you changed, and release your creations under the same license. For more details, check out the Licensing section of the rulebook. Please let me know what you come up with and share on this page!