Hi! I have a question about social encounters. Is it so that a social encounter is treated as a combat encounter? Roll fellowship for initiative, everyone says theer line in order of initiative? It feels very stiff.

Could someone please give me an example of a social encounter and how to run it.

From my game, the party were following a rowdy mob rampaging through town with pitchforks and torches. The roadwarden PC wanted to stop this so he stepped in front of the mob and shouted for them to stop. I ruled that if he succeeded in his roll (his Intimidate (St) vs their Discipline (WP)) they would at least stop, instead of rushing by him obliviously.

He succeeded, but found himself confronted with a couple of dozen angry townsfolk. One of the mob leaders had a reason to stir up the crowd, while the roadwarden wanted to send them home to bed, so we ran a competitive check with the first one to 5 successes winning and managing to sway the mob. I gave the mobster a one-nil lead coz it was his mob, but let the roadwarden go first, coz he had clearly initiated the exchange. So we just had the roadwarden tell the mob why he thought they should go home, and then he rolled for it. Then I explained what the mobster was telling his men, and then made my GM's roll. Iirc we used the roadwarden's Leadership (Fel) against the mob's Discipline (WP) and then, because he was a shifty sort of character, the mobster used his Guile (Fel) against his mob's Discipline (WP).

Sometimes using initiative and taking turns might be required, for example with two parties appealing to an authority and trying to be the first to get their side of the story across, but often you won't need to bother with that; the natural flow of the conversation will do the job for you.

Personally, I would usually try not to interrupt the roleplaying but once the relevant conversation has finished, then try to make sense of what just happened in terms of system, by breaking down the interaction into a single opposed or competitive check. Often, of course, the interaction has a clear enough result and rolls aren't required, but I quite like the way the system can break down a bit of roleplay and give it system relevance, even if the system result isn't quite what you thought was happening around the table: 'You know, I thought that PC was speaking very entertainingly and eloquently, but everyone just ignored him.' or 'I thought that was the worst speech ever; I guess you had to be there!'

I should add that you only ever need to resort to system for social encounters when two or more parties have directly opposing goals. Ninety-odd per cent of the time there won't be any need to.