Social Contracts Shall Be Splintered
On building complex social dynamics in adventuring locales using petty desires and the local social contract.
I believe that an important component of developing an interesting village location for an adventure is ensuring not all problems can or should be solved with a sword. When I start writing adventures, the first thing I start working out is the people and their social dynamics. This does not need to be large scale, world shifting fiction with hidden princes being raised by the local cobbler. It can be as simple as: Fritz the woodcutter distrusts Peregrine the hunter. This may seem simple on its face, but if you layer many of these over one another, it starts to make a messy stew. This can be strengthened by identifying a few petty desires and the overarching social rules for the small community.
Player interactivity is of course, important as well as this is for a roleplaying game and that must always be top of mind. That being said, grubby adventurers cannot solve every problem.
On Petty Desires
What do I mean by petty desires? Petty desires are minor desires, whether social, economic, or romantic, that create opportunities for direct or indirect conflict or power struggles.
An example using Fritz from earlier might be:
In the hamlet Mere, the population skews significantly older, leaving few eligible young people. Fritz the Woodcutter distrusts Peregrine the hunter because he views Peregine as a handsome and strong romantic rival for Gilda the herbalist’s affections.
This leads one to a few thoughts: what caused there to be so few young people? How toxic is Fritz? What rumors might he spread? How might Peregine react? Violence?
One could then layer on Gilda and her own petty desires. Gilda the herbalist believes she is ready to graduate but her teacher refuses to release her from her apprenticeship. Gilda’s desire to leave town could cause her to make shortsighted, impulsive decisions like making a deal with a ne'er do well merchant or agreeing to bear the child of a strange fey forest being.
The point of this is to say: one or two of these is boring. But when you layer say, 5 or 6 and then figure out how they interact and create additional complexities, then you have the beginning of an interesting location.
The Social Contract
The social contract, put simply, is the implicit or explicit agreed upon rules that allow a community to function. These can be as simple as ‘do not murder’. The punishment for violations of the social contract is separate from the rules themselves. Develop at least three specific rules, one of which should be particularly flavorful.
An example might be:
A weapon shall not be drawn with violent intent in the village limits. Merchant trade shall not happen on Sunday. Those who are to be wed must seek the Faerie’s blessing in the Moonstone Glen. Only those blessed shall be wed.
Then, examine your petty village conflicts and determine a few places where your social contract interacts with the petty desires and conflicts.
Determine: how can I make this more immediately specific, direct, and unsubtle. How will this problem be interactable for the players?
In Closing
Developing adventure sites is about creating problems for the players to interact with that also make a place seem ‘real’ or at least credible, only some of which they can have an impact on.
The town linked to an adventure site should be a space belonging to its immediate environment where there has been a significant disruption with interpersonal and broader social implications. The place’s social contract should delineate the community’s priorities and provide explicit opportunities and problems that the adventurers can have an immediate impact on.