Running social encounters — for GMs

No turns — a spotlight

Social scenes have no initiative, no rounds, no "up next". Instead your view carries a spotlight strip: who has spoken lately and who hasn't weighed in yet — a coaching nudge computed from the action log, visible only to you. One PC can act three times while another watches; when the quiet one finally speaks, the strip shows it.

Talks go wrong: "Things turn violent" converts the scene to combat in place — same participants, same log, dispositions coarsen into sides and initiative gets rolled now. Combat's "Parley" goes the other way. The conversion is a party-visible log entry, so the story never restarts from a blank encounter.

Disposition is the health bar

Each NPC stands somewhere on hostile — resistant — neutral — open — friendly. That's the scene's real progress meter, and it only moves when you say so:

• Suggestions, not bookkeeping. When a PC lands a social task against an NPC, the engine suggests a step: success moves one toward friendly, a major success (natural 19/20, or beating the target number by 6+) moves two, a natural 1 slips one toward hostile. The suggestion appears on your dispositions card as a one-tap Confirm — or set any value yourself, with your reason landing in the audit trail.
• Approaches color the log. Player tasks carry one of five approaches — Charm, Reason, Deceive, Intimidate, Bribe — so the log reads like the conversation ("Vess appeals to reason with the Conductor — success"). Your per-NPC approach notes (resistant / vulnerable to an approach) ride your view of each result as difficulty guidance. Repeating an approach that already failed against the same NPC gets the book's retry treatment: warned, allowed, recorded.
• The concession ladder. Three prep lines per NPC — what they give at open, what they give at friendly, what they will never do — with an "unlocked" marker as the disposition climbs. Prep it next to motivation and leverage; only you see it.
• Write-back. When a social encounter ends, each NPC linked to your campaign directory writes its final disposition back to the stored attitude — win the Conductor over in the scene and he's friendly next session too. A talk that turned violent writes nothing back.

What your players see

The player view leads with the cast: character cards with a revealed impression ("seems wary", "seems open") instead of your true disposition — the impression is the newest step that surfaced in the party-visible log, so an NPC whose standing never came up reads "hard to read", and your GM-only adjustments deliberately leave it stale. Each player's own panel lists their skills and abilities with a one-tap Talk to them flow: pick who, pick an approach, roll through the normal action composer. Concealed NPCs have no card at all.

Shape the scene: clocks, leverage, promises

• Progress vs. pressure. One tap creates the pair: a party-visible progress clock ("Convince the Conductor") and a GM-only pressure clock ("The train reaches the border"). Fill progress on successes, tick pressure on failures and time; either filling raises a banner nudge — the scene ends when you say it does.
• Discoverable leverage. Prep hidden wants, fears and trades per NPC. When the party earns one, reveal it: the a-ha lands in the party log and the chosen PC gains a party-visible asset that eases their social tasks — one motion, prep to payoff.
• The promises ledger. Record one-line obligations as the talk produces them ("party promised the Conductor safe passage for his cousin"). When the scene ends they flow into your latest session log as dangling threads — social scenes generate obligations, not loot. Any promise can spawn a notebook thread in one tap.
• Social intrusions. The intrusion-ideas panel adds a social table — an eavesdropper, a misunderstanding, the wrong person walking in, a secret slipping out — alongside your prepped material.

Scene dice: rolls vs. actions

One line matters here: rolls are color and commentary; the scene only moves through a committed action. Both encounter views carry a scene-dice panel showing the rolls attached to this encounter, live. Rolling from there attaches automatically, optionally naming a target and approach so the log reads as prose ("charming the Conductor — 17").

Play-by-post tables roll before the scene formally exists — so your view also lists the campaign's recent unattached rolls ("rolled outside the scene"). One tap opens the pull-in step: stamp target and approach, then either confirm the disposition nudge the roll's result suggests, tick a clock, or just attach it. Attaching is reversible bookkeeping; every consequence goes through the same audited operations as always.

Play-by-post over Discord

Async tables live in Discord: they roll there, talk there, and check the web later. Three layers make those rolls part of the scene, from most to least intentional — full command reference on the Discord bot page :

• Intent at roll time. /sheetwright roll target:… approach:… is a real social task through the same engine as the web composer: difficulty from the NPC's social resistance, your disposition suggestion, the retry warning — and the d20 lands in the scene dice with the same color. An approach with difficulty: instead of a target rolls at large. The target autocomplete offers only the cast that player can see.
• Soft auto-attach. A bare /sheetwright roll while exactly one active scene has that player in its cast attaches automatically — the reply says so and carries a one-tap "Not part of it" undo (theirs or yours). With several candidate scenes the bot asks once with a select menu the roll can simply ignore. Ask forgiveness; never block an async table.
• Roll requests — how async scenes advance. Ask a named player for a specific roll: /sheetwright gm request pc:Vess target:"The Conductor" approach:Charm from Discord, the Request a roll card on your social panel, or an AI assistant over MCP. The player gets the prompt on their sheet, on their web encounter view, and — if they opted into DMs — as a direct message with Roll it / With Effort… buttons. Their answer commits as a real task with your target and approach already attached, and the prompt resolves itself. Open requests appear in your prompt queue (cancel or expire them any time) and are cancelled automatically when the encounter ends.

Everything a player does from Discord shows up live on the web panels and to connected AI assistants — one shared surface, three doors.

A scene, start to finish

1. Prep: create the social encounter, set objective and stakes, add NPCs with dispositions, social resistances, approach notes, hidden leverage and concession ladders.
2. Open: start the scene, create the progress/pressure clock pair, and let the cast cards introduce themselves.
3. Talk: players roll approaches (web one-tap or Discord intent); you confirm disposition nudges, reveal leverage when it's earned, tick clocks, record promises, and request rolls from whoever the scene turns toward.
4. Turn: if blades come out, convert to combat in place — nothing is lost, and you can parley back.
5. Close: end with an outcome. Final dispositions write back to your NPC directory, promises flow into the session log as threads, and the whole conversation sits in the action log for the recap.