If you’re like most game masters, you probably got your start running dungeon crawls. But after a dozen or so sessions, when the player characters are ready to emerge from the darkness and step into the limelight of society, the skills you’ve used to run dungeons don’t quite translate to social encounters. Crafting a compelling social encounter is a different challenge, but with a little bit of practice and preparation, you can add compelling intrigues to your tabletop RPG sessions.

Tip #1: Determine Who, What, and Why

Like all RPG encounters, it’s important to define the player characters’ (PC) objectives early on. Before diving into play, ensure the PCs understand whom they need to talk to and why. If the PCs don’t know, have an NPC make their goal clear. Don’t be afraid to swoop in and talk directly to the players as GM, recapping what they already know and what they still need to find out.

Most social encounters, boiled down to their most basic level, have one of two objectives:

• The PCs must figure out what an NPC wants, knows, or is doing
• The PCs must change an NPC’s allegiance, beliefs, or course of action

Both of these situations can be flipped so that the NPCs are in the active role, but you should ensure the PCs have some goal they’re actively working toward, otherwise they might feel powerless or even bored.

During prep, starting with the objectives allows you to assemble a cast list that hits all the plot beats you need. Once you have the essentials covered, then you can sprinkle in characters to serve as set dressing and red herrings. Begin with the end in mind to avoid ending up with too many extraneous NPCs, dangling plot threads, or conversations that lead nowhere.

Great social encounters also include new, secondary objectives that the PCs can discover through play. Besides the immediate excitement of a new quest or mystery, these subplots can add dimensionality to the main objectives (e.g., you didn’t change so-and-so’s mind, but you did gain another unexpected ally!). The rewards for accomplishing these secondary objectives might be the leverage needed for the main objective, something that relates to a PC’s backstory, or items and information that will help the PCs in later encounters.

As with any activity that requires you to perform in front of other people, GMing can be nerve-wracking. Some amount of nervousness is to be expected, but when your fears overwhelm you and you consider canceling the session at the last minute, you can unwittingly put your entire campaign in jeopardy.

Many of us creative types know how anxiety and depression can interfere with the way we want to live our lives. If you haven’t already heard Wil Wheaton’s powerful talk on anxiety, depression, and recovery, you owe it to yourself to have a listen. Our inner demons are insidious, but you can empower yourself to mitigate their effects on your game.

Arm Yourself with the Tools You Need

It’s natural to worry that you haven’t prepped enough for a given session, but have you ever felt so unprepared that you wanted to cancel the session outright? If you feel this way often, it’s time to take stock of your current prep habits. Maybe you need to try a different method (I’d recommend Engine Publishing’s Never Unprepared for ideas). Can you devote more time to prepping, or can you switch to an adventure that requires less prep, such as a published module? Alternatively, you might investigate improvisational techniques for RPGs (again, check out Engine Publishing’s Unframed) or games that are designed to be run with minimal prep. If you have the time to prep for your game, yet you still find yourself falling prey to procrastination, perfectionism is probably rearing its ugly head.

In September of 2013, I picked up the reins for the Teen Intro to Dungeons & Dragons class at my local library. I spent a year having a blast introducing kids, tweens, and teens to the hobby, but Dungeon Mastering for kids aged 6 to 16 comes with its own unique set of challenges, especially for someone who is not a parent themselves. There are a few pit traps I had to learn to avoid along the way that I hope to point out here. Without further ado, the following is a list of five ways you can fail at hooking the next generation of gamers.

#1. Dumb Things Down

Kids are a lot smarter and cleverer than many adults give them credit for. You can “dumb things down” for young roleplayers and let them run roughshod over towns and NPCs Grand Theft Auto-style for lack of anything better to do, but then they’ll miss out on the most rewarding aspects of role-playing: character development, investigating mysteries, and progressing through a story.

Sure, they might not be ready for an intricate game of political intrigue, but most RPG campaigns I’ve played in don’t get that sophisticated either. Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, for example, was aimed at the general D&D populace but is perfectly suited for the 10+ demographic. In some ways, it seemed like it was written with kids in mind, given the hefty dose of humor in the form of the “dworcs,” curses, clockwork cat familiars, and a pet black dragon hatchling.

Kids will rise as high as the bar you set for them, in my experience. When you’re running a game for young people, take the game a step further than it was before. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how quickly they can learn and grow, and soon you’ll be able to take them to the next step after that.