I am fascinated by social dynamics and strategy. When I think about creating situations in roleplaying games, my focus is very people-first. From my point of view, interactivity and grounding depend on having a living world of people with their own desires and agendas. Locations matter to me, but are decidedly second in my own planning to whoever is at said location. It informs how I structure random encounter tables and how I write keyed locations, which I will attempt to delineate the thinking behind it here.

Determine Overarching Conflicts and Tensions

First: determine what is causing conflict and tension between people in the immediate area. It can be as small as “There are three missing teenagers who were last seen camping in the woods”. You might introduce as secondary layers “There’s a wizard that locals regard with suspicion,” or “There are restless undead wandering the forest” or “The local storyteller intimates that this has happened before, heightening local anxiety.” Ideally layer multiple tensions that are not all directly related upon one another. Think about how they might impact one another.

Creating Non-player Characters Tied to the Larger World

Each non-player character should have a clear drive, hidden desires, and treasured secrets they could share if approached correctly. These characters should be to a greater or lesser extent tied to the overarching conflicts and tensions, or create opportunities for the party to strengthen or weaken their overall position.

Non-player characters’ opposed desire conflicts can be based on opportunity versus disadvantage, differing responses to external danger, pressure created by time, goals that are at odds, individual idiosyncrasies, social pressure, or existing interpersonal conflict exacerbated by a new element. Also, not every NPC should be savvy on current events and politics. That is unrealistic, and ignorance creates a very natural source of tension.

The non-player characters should be placed in a location that relates to their drive, hidden desires or treasured secrets, ideally one the highlights these or creates additional pressure or tension.

Building Vignettes of Conflicted Desires

Building on these layered conflicts, the referee can create small-scale situations that I’ll call Vignettes for the players to stumble upon that imply a larger world. The components of a vignette are: a flavorful, textured location, interesting characters that push engagement and conflict, and opportunities for adventurers to engage in the overarching conflicts and secrets. Vignettes can be keyed locations or random encounters. I think about vignettes as a jack in the box, simple, tense, and responsive to applied action or pressure.

Ideally in a vignette with multiple NPCs, those drives and desires are not in alignment, creating more tension. This incongruity creates opportunity for the adventuring party to (deliberately or not) apply pressure, tipping the scales one way or another through their actions.

Examples:

In my zine Tannic, I wrote a series of Festival Encounters that are intended to push the party to become connected to and known to the town leadership. Here are two examples:

A youth is pocketing sweets and shiny things at the shop stalls. Guards appear to have noticed and are beginning to approach. The youth rushes over to the adventurers yelling “My parents! There you are!”. The Festival stage manager is arguing with a ‘wizard’ wearing a hat emblazoned ‘Mystical Larry.’ He was hired to create fireworks. A flock of four year old children dressed in owl costumes approached herded by a tired sheepdog. They begin messing with the fireworks lying around. No else has noticed.

You get the sense that the festival location has active guards but opportunistic young thieves are about as well. This is an all-ages festival. Every encounter has two or more moving parts creating opportunities for tension and conflict. This also illustrates that opportunities for conflict can be people-focused and not geared immediately toward violence.