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Sample Negotiation: Chatting It Up With A Goblin Queen
🕑 Added 2023-11-22 14:16:27 +0000 UTCLast week, I (your James Introcaso) showed you the latest and greatest iteration of our negotiation rules. Now it’s time to show you a sample negotiation encounter. This one is a modified version of what's in from one of our first playtest adventures: The Crypt of Caldurac Keep, and it’s a chat with everyone’s favorite goblin from Flee, Mortals!
Sample Negotiation: Queen Bargnot
The formerly abandoned island fortress of Caldurac Keep was recently overtaken by the Jagged Edge Bandits, a crew of outlaw goblins led by the self-crowned Queen Bargnot. All was well until a necromancer claimed the keep, imprisoned Bargnot, then took over the Jagged Edge Bandits, forcing them to work for her on threat of killing their queen. Once undead started emerging from the island, walking across the ocean floor, and journeying to nearby shore settlements, the heroes were dispatched to the keep to uncover and eliminate the source of the undead.
After the heroes defeat the goblins, skeletons, and zombies guarding the keep's exterior, they enter the keep proper, searching for the necromancer. They quickly find the jail cells on the keep's first level and discover that Bargnot has escaped her cell. When the goblins in the keep heard the fighting above, they killed the undead they'd been paired with and used the confusion in the keep to break their queen out of her cell.
Now the heroes face a freed and angry goblin queen and her small coterie of goblin guards. The bandits are a nuisance to the locals and eager to fight the heroes, but Bargnot sees an opportunity that may allow her to reclaim Inferno, a magic greataxe stolen by Dinrac, a goblin who sold her out to the necromancer. She’s standoffish, but orders her goblins to hold and not attack the well-equipped and capable heroes unless they attack or ignore the bandits first.
She introduces herself and is willing to start a negotiation if the heroes ask any of the following of Bargnot:
- What’s creating the undead in the keep and where is it?
- Call off the keep’s goblin guardians.
- Join our fight to stop the undead emerging from the keep.
Bargnot’s Negotiation Stats
Queen Bargnot is suspicious of the heroes when negotiation begins and starts with the following stats. The heroes can also learn some of her Motivations or Pitfalls if they question bandits they fight in previous encounters.
Queen Bargnot Negotiation Stats
Interest: 2 Patience: 2 Argument TN: 14
Motivations
- “If someone hurts me, I pay back the pain tenfold. Vengeance begets respect.”
- “Money can’t buy everything, but it can buy power—and power can get you a lot. Money and power are what I value most in this world.”
- “I want to see my band reunited under my banner.”
- “I yearn to see new sights and wander the land freely with my crew by my side.”
- “I take great pleasure in working with a group of people as blunt, rough, and rude as I am.”
Pitfalls
- Bargnot was imprisoned once in Sealton Heath. The experience of losing her freedom was awful, and she plans to never be imprisoned ever again.
- Bargnot abhors the idea of giving up any of her wealth, power, or equipment.
- While Bargnot knows the heroes may have killed some of the bandits who used to work for her before they came to her prison, she takes great offense if the heroes bring it up as part of an Argument.
Roleplaying Bargnot
Bargnot is suspicious of the heroes at first, giving them short and to-the-point answers that are sometimes downright rude. She likes making jokes and has a dark sense of humor from a lifetime as a bandit. This self-proclaimed queen makes no apologies for who she is. If the heroes raise her Interest, she opens up more, allowing her tough facade to crack a bit and sharing some of her deeper beliefs. If the heroes ask what she wants out of the deal, she tells them that she’d like their help recovering Inferno from Dinrac and she wants to assure the safety of her remaining bandits.
Bargnot only accepts a deal that allows her and her remaining band to leave the island alive and free.
Bargnot Negotiation Outcomes
Negotiation with Bargnot can have the following outcomes. Bargnot only agrees to these terms if she believes she can go back to her old life when the adventure is over.
Interest 5: Bargnot offers to call off any remaining goblin guards in the keep and personally accompany the heroes down to the Crypts of Caldurac Keep to confront the necromancer. If Bargnot accompanies the heroes, she uses the goblin sneak retainer stat block. All she desires in exchange is freedom for her and her band, and she tells the heroes about Inferno, saying they can keep the axe for themselves if they recover it.
Interest 4: Bargnot offers to the heroes whatever they initially asked for, and accepts any offers they made to her.
Interest 3: Bargnot offers the heroes whatever they initially asked for in exchange for whatever they are promising her, but before she does anything for them, she tells them that they must take Inferno, a magic greataxe, from Dinrac, a traitorous goblin who sold her out to the necromancer. If the heroes have already promised this, she asks them to give her a consumable supernatural item, such as a potion, to seal the deal instead.
Interest 2: Bargnot won’t give the heroes what they want. She instead offers to send them a map that will lead them to a cache of treasure she buried outside of Sealton Heath. If the heroes agree, she is true to her word and sends them a map 1 week after fleeing the island.
Interest 1: Bargnot doesn’t trust the heroes and refuses to negotiate with them. If they force her to come with them, she looks to escape as soon as she can.
Interest 0: Bargnot wants the heroes to die. She agrees to help them and insists on accompanying them in the crypt. If the heroes agree, she leads them into danger then Attacks with her band. A TN 12 Intuition-Empathy Test reveals that she is insincere. If the heroes get away, Bargnot makes plans to attack them once she has recovered what's left of her forces.
That’s It For Now!
That’s all for now, folks. We’re hard at work and already testing some tweaks to the negotiation rules you saw last week. If you want to talk about the game with other Patrons, head on over to the MCDM Discord. And don’t forget to sign up for an email when the MCDM RPG BackerKit campaign goes live!
Ex animo,
James Introcaso
MCDM Lead Game Designer
Comments
I worry that that would make it to gameified. I like how the negotiation framework is loose enough that the DM can follow where the roleplay leads using the tools it provides
Rhys Cottle-Vinson
I think I'd agree with this, though I think it's wanting to do a roleplay system as robust as the combat system. I'll probably be doing skill challenges, but the six scales of response is definitely something I'll be doing!
Kevin Brown
...Y'know, the more I look at this, the more I think it is just an unnecessary sub-system. I do like that it gives structure to negotiations; I don't like is extremely narrow in scope. Why not just steal skill challenges instead? It is almost exactly the same gameplay and pacing, but can be applied to a much broader range of circumstances and also also for negotiations to be a more flexible kind of interaction. Encouraging player imagination and still giving structure while making it easier to understand: 3 fails always equals failure of the challenge, hitting a Pitfall is an automatic failure, hitting a Motivation (maybe it would need a new name for a more general Skill Challenge system?) is an automatic success. Less overall cruft / set-up for the DM, much more straight-forward rules for the players, less data to track, etc etc. Also a lot easier to decide to implement on the fly sicne you don't need a whole stat block.
Step Christopher
I like the structure and framework in theory. I am curious to try and play with it, see if it helps these situations. I haven’t had trouble running negotiations much but it is true that many players often don’t understand that what they choose to say has consequences for negotiation. I wonder if this helps those players “play the game” a bit more.
