When you think about putting your player characters into predicaments, consider that that doesn’t just mean traditional traps and puzzles like falling into a pit or working out the code to open a door. It also means social encounters that are designed to be a little tricky to navigate but which can be solved.

The best sorts of these puzzles and predicaments are when the heroes need something from an official or other NPC that can’t merely be bought. When you want to do this, consider what the NPC might want. It’s too easy enough if it’s money (altho it can sometimes be money), but it becomes a predicament if it’s something else.

Identifying an Artifact

Let’s say the heroes want information about a strange artifact. Merely paying for it may be a bit anticlimactic. Consider using the die of fate to decide if the sage:

1. Can’t identify it and thinks its secrets can only be unlocked by a quest.
2. Can’t identify it.
3. Can’t identify it but knows who can.
4. Can identify it but not fully.
5. Can identify it.
6. Can identify it and can tell of its history.

What does the sage need to be able to identify it or tell more? Oh, you could seek out the Tome of Rasticar and copy the page that tells its lore. The tome is held by the sorceress Galda in the city of Cuan, two day’s travel away.

But Galda may have her own requirements for the heroes if they want to copy from the Tome of Rasticar. There may be some side quest she could require of them or merely suggest they could choose to go on, such as dealing with some undead in a nearby barrow mound or exploring a ruin she’s curious about.

Keep in mind that increasing the difficulty of just getting the information they need about a magic item means the reward needs to be worth it, or the players won’t play along next time.

The Alchemist’s Desire

If the heroes need something from the city’s mayor, perhaps the mayor’s wife is an alchemist who needs a certain body part form a certain monster, such as a rust monster. Getting that gets the mayor on their side, and gets their request met.

The Judge’s Heirloom

Say the heroes need something from a judge, such as declaring a certain lord to be an outlaw for being a vampire or necromancer. It’s within the judge’s power, but it’s also at his discretion. He wishes his parents would give him a certain family heirloom–a painting of an ancestor who was also a judge.

The heroes could persuade the parents to part with the heirloom. This shouldn’t be another side-quest but more of a bit of social engineering: arranging to meet the parents on some official pretense, praising the judge, observing the painting, and suggesting it would look handsome in his chambers.

Bribes Instead of Combat

What the NPC wants might be something simpler, like food. If the NPC is a monster rather than a human or other person, gold probably won’t mean much, but food could change its mind.

Maybe an ogre could be bribed with food rather than fought, especially if the fight takes place in such a precarious location that the heroes are risking their necks even trying to combat it. Or maybe the goal they seek is at risk of breaking or falling into a crevice if they attack the ogre (a captive woman or something else fragile).

You may need to make it obvious that combat is a bad idea this way (or by making the monster far more powerful than the heroes) to make it clear that this is a predicament they can’t solve with swords.

Factions & Domains

For higher level play, this can get more complex. In fact, domain play and political campaigns are largely social predicaments the players must solve like puzzles. How can you satisfy the demands of the merchants guild and the church at the same time? How can you supply the islands in the bay plagued by pirates?

One tool is combat, one is gold, but diplomacy is a third. Are the guild and the church fundamentally opposed? Probably not. Maybe a festival in honor of a saint satisfies both. Can the pirates be tricked into thinking another coast has richer pickings with a couple of carefully planted letters?

Try to avoid writing in one singular solution for this sort of conundrum. Just be open to creative ideas that change the landscape. Sometimes, the heroes will resolve things happily, and sometimes their hare-brained scheme will make things worse or start fires elsewhere.

Play off that and keep the world turning. It’s immensely satisfying to the players to realize their actions have consequences–good and bad.