I'm about to start a new campaign that will feature lots of social encounters and scenes where the PCs have to work big crowds. I'll be using the social encounter rules in the Genesys CRB (pp. 118–124), but I'm trying to spice up the crowd rules, and to account for friendly crowds.

So first, RAW makes swaying a large crowd inherently difficult; the chart on p. 120 makes a social check against a crowd of 51+ a Formidable task (PPPPP). That makes sense for an indifferent or potentially hostile crowd, but what about a friendly one? As an example, imagine a famous musician is addressing a crowd of fans to convince them to support some political cause. They're a sympathetic crowd, so would you still make him roll PPPPP? Or maybe give +2 boosts, since he's playing to their Motivation of a desire to be entertained? Even with the +2 boosts, it still seems like a very difficult task. It also doesn't allow for the idea that some members of the crowd might be convinced even if everyone isn't.

Second, is there some way to do longer social encounters rules with crowds? If a PC or group of PCs is trying to sway a crowd to do something, it might be more dramatic to require several checks, as you would when targeting a single opponent. However, with the single opponent, your social checks impact his Strain Threshold, making it more likely the opponent will compromise or capitulate. But the rules seem to imply that swaying a crowd is a one-and-done proposition. Would you just make it something like a "skill challenge," with the crowd possessing a collective Strain Threshold? Or would you divide the crowd up into minion groups? Doing one of those options might make it possible to sway portions of the crowd, as well, but I'm not sure if it would be too complicated to track ten minion groups of five or whatever.

Thanks for any advice. I'm excited about the campaign, which should be quite different!

I wouldn’t track the strain of every minion in a crowd of 50. Perhaps just give them a collective Strain Threshold, perhaps 20 or so. Then you can even give them skill pools for each of Discipline, Vigilance, Cool, and Negotiation. That way you can make the skill checks of the players all opposed checks. It would also be worthwhile creating the Desires/Fears of the crowd for the players to discover and leverage.

effectively you are treating the entire crowd as a single rival, or if you want then split them into factions with different motivations and skill pools if that’s appropriate

Ah, those are good suggestions. I also like the idea of maybe having a few different factions in the crowd with different motivations. I'm still not sure the RAW is right as far as a sympathetic crowd, though. Saying that Michael Jackson had to roll against 5 purples or more every time he performed doesn't seem right, even if he got +2 boosts from their motivations being met.

He had the signature dance talent(s) that reduce the difficulty ?

Like you said, take the circumstances into account, a crowd of celebrating villagers will be much easier to charm than Coerce.

I suppose it would make sense to make liberal use of boost dice, too. State-of-the-art stage design and pyrotechnics? +2 boosts at least. Crowd predisposed to have a good time? +1 or +2 boosts. Good opening act? +1 boost. And Michael Jackson was probably rolling at least YYYYG for his Charm skill.