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Sample Negotiation: Chatting It Up With A Goblin Queen (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-22 14:16:27
Edited:
2023-11-27 15:24:01
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Last 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!

Don’t forget that the MCDM RPG BackerKit campaign is coming on December 7th and that you can sign up here to get an email when it goes live!

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

Files

Comments

Gogo M

So the results of the arguments are meant to be secret then? I guess the last case can only happen if the players are willing not to meta game about it

Jonas

The Target Number, so what needs to be rolled to succeed

Daniel Hendricks

I had the same question on TN. I wonder if calling it “Target” would enhance readability. As abbreviations can hide meaning to those not initiated in the new language.

Philip Richardson

It is nice to have abbreviations spelled out in these initial stages. I appreciate this community responding so quickly! I’m fairly new so I’m still trying to catch up on the lingo.

Jason Reid

This seems like it would take a lot of prep time to do something like this from scratch.

Elijah Espinosa

Matt and James have talked about this - their strategy to empower Directors to run their own negotiations. The idea is that, once you have run a few example negotiations like the one above, it will be fairly straightforward to improvise. Basically (and this is my assumption here) the underlying structure of the results will probably be the same for different negotiations. I'd imagine this would be part of the negotiation rules. Something like: Interest 5 - they actively help you (Yes, And) Interest 4 - the negotiation is simply successful (Yes) Interest 3 - success, but with a condition (Yes, But) Interest 2 - they don't agree, but they will help you in another way (No, But) Interest 1 - simple failure (No) Interest 0 - they actively hinder you (No, And)

Elijah Espinosa

As for Motivations and Pitfalls: if the negotiée is an NPC you've made, you have this stuff (albeit more abstractly) in your brain/notes. Like in any other game, it is useful to know NPC's goals and psyche to some degree. Published negotiations have to list Motivations and Pitfalls because you as the Director don't know the character.

Dandrew Streams

Going off last week's post, seems like the intent is for directors to try and stay in character as the NPC during negotiation. Running negotiations that way, an NPC with 0 Interest can keep secrets or outright lie without the players' explicit knowledge. Doesn't mean the players can't gauge the NPC's response though.

Addison Albert

There's really not a whole lot to prep if you have a basic character profile of the NPC the party is negotiating with. If you know their backstory, you should be able to assume their pitfalls and motivations. If you understand their motivations, and ask the players their motivations, you should be able to assume the result of ending the engagement with any interest level.

mcdm

No more so than any other kind of encounter. You just need a robust array of examples to pull from. It's just that we're all used to building encounters and we're not used to this. But building encounters can be a very time-intensive exercise if you are so inclined. Or you can just wing it with a basic understanding of the rules. Same thing here.

mcdm

How secret they are depends on how tight-lipped the person you're negotiating with is. Which is up to the Director.

Champions Forge (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 08:00 HM I like it at face value. Always really appreciate when a system gives mechanical structure to social interactions; I've been in a lot of sessions where such systems prevent awkward slow downs. I don't think it is a good idea (just at face value) to have there be a Divining Check to discover Pitfalls / Motivations, for two reasons: 1) Once players (especially players that really enjoy the crunchy bits of play) grok how Negotiations work, they will want to open every Negotiation with a Divining check (since there is currently no cost or even risk associated with the check), and may encourage other players to do so. This jeopardizes all negotiations into having a very rote flow - do Divining checks, trigger any known Motivation, THEN move on to the messier back and forth after have pressed for opening advantages. Within this ludology, Motivations and Pitfalls become a lot less interesting as the drama will circle around just the TN-hunting part of the Negotiation. 2) Anyone wanting to roleplay a smooth operator type of character with a lot of social intelligence can have their experience ruined by cold dice. The Fallout 3 scenario where you pumped Speech but the dice hate you and you fail a bunch of 80%+ speech checks. One might say that the same is true of a combat-oriented character... but combats give a lot of opportunities to roll dice against multiple opponents, whereas Negotiations involve just one opponent with (necessarily) rare opportunities to do things like divine motivations. IMHO it would be an improvement in both flow and player experience to have the ability to understand motivations be entirely deterministic, both in terms of divining them in the moment (so someone who is very socially intelligence just always knows, say, at least one pitfall or motivation going into a Negotiation and there isn't a rote round of divining checks) and in terms of investigation / preparation ahead of time. You snuck into the bed chambers and read the little black book - assuming good checks associated with that investigation, you just know X or Y Motivation / Pitfall. If your party isn't good at social interaction, nope, no divination of motivation by sheer chance because the opportunity to just blunder through the minefield of conversation on luck alone is already present in the TN hunting portion of the system.
2023-11-23 02:48

Step Christopher

Interest 2: … “but in exchange for her,” <- missing word. Presumably “freedom”

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.

Matt

I agree with you on this! If I were a player that is exactly what I would do and would be bored with the entire thing

Champions Forge (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 08:00 ...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.
2023-11-25 03:41

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!

Ashly Smith

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

Apex

Fully agree with this. Skill challenges are broad enough that they can be applied here. This subsystem feels like it belongs in a different game.

Sammie

Negotiations sound awesome, but not for this kind of game. It's begging more to be added to it. Like having negotiation powers and every character having a social "class". It feels like the basic idea of negotiation should fold into extended tests. Social extended tests: Patience vs. Interest (how much can you get from an NPC/NPCs before their patience runs out? Do you push for more benefits at the risk of losing all rewards?) Investigation extended tests: Trail vs Information (how much info can you gather before the trail goes cold? Do you push to get as much info as possible at the risk of it no longer being worth anything?) Exploration extended tests: Distance vs Danger/Time (how much do you get to explore before danger strikes? Do you push yourself into greater loot for great threats?) And so on... though the rules should vary slightly depending on what type of extended test it is.